Category Archives: Public Service

May 20, 2013 · 4:12 pm

Josh Rogin’s Exclusive: Benghazi ‘Scapegoat’ Raymond Maxwell Speaks Out — Duck and Cover!

Whoops! Too late!

Raymond Maxwell was placed on forced “administrative leave” after the State Department’s own internal investigation, conducted by an Administrative Review Board (ARB) led by former State Department official Tom Pickering. Five months after he was told to clean out his desk and leave the building, Maxwell remains in professional and legal limbo, having been associated publicly with the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American for reasons that remain unclear.
[...]
“The overall goal is to restore my honor,” said Maxwell, who has now filed grievances regarding his treatment with the State Department’s human resources bureau and the American Foreign Service Association, which represents the interests of foreign-service officers. The other three officials placed on leave were in the diplomatic security bureau, leaving Maxwell as the only official in the bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA), which had responsibility for Libya, to lose his job.

“I had no involvement to any degree with decisions on security and the funding of security at our diplomatic mission in Benghazi,” he said.
[...]

Since the leave is not considered a formal disciplinary action, Maxwell has no means to appeal the status, as he would if he had been outright fired. To this day, he says, nobody from the State Department has ever told him why he was singled out for discipline. He has never had access to the classified portion of the ARB report, where all of the details regarding personnel failures leading up to Benghazi are confined. He also says he has never been shown any evidence or witness testimony linking him to the Benghazi incident.

Maxwell says he had planned to retire last September, but extended his time voluntarily after the Sept. 11 attack to help the bureau in its time of need. Now, he is refusing to retire until his situation is clarified. He is seeking a restoration of his previous position, a public statement of apology from State, reimbursement for his legal fees, and an extension of his time in service to equal the time he has spent at home on administrative leave.

“For any FSO being at work is the essence of everything and being deprived of that and being cast out was devastating,” he said.
[...]

The decision to place Maxwell on administrative leave was made by Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills, according to three State Department officials with direct knowledge of the events. On the day after the unclassified version of the ARB’s report was released in December, Mills called Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Beth Jones and directed her to have Maxwell leave his job immediately.

“Cheryl Mills directed me to remove you immediately from the [deputy assistant secretary] position,” Jones told Maxwell, according to Maxwell.
[...]
But Jones was not disciplined in any way following the release of the report, nor was the principal deputy assistant secretary of State at NEA, Liz Dibble, who is slated to receive a plush post as the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in London this summer. In the DS bureau, the assistant secretary, principal deputy, and deputy assistant all lost their jobs. In the NEA bureau, only Maxwell was asked to leave.

Read  John Rogin’s  Exclusive: Hillary’s Benghazi ‘Scapegoat’ Speaks Out from his new home at the Daily Beast.

The somebodies appear to have miscalculated that folks would just go away quietly …

And it’s all a coincidence, of course, that on the same day that this came out, the State Department released its Benghazi Accountability Review Board Implementation and Secretary Kerry showed up at the George P. Shultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center in Arlington, Virginia to deliver Remarks to the Foreign Service Institute Overseas Security Seminar  (dear heavens! it’s open to the press and cameras!). We can’t recall a secretary of state ever showing up for that overseas seminar, can you?

– DS

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May 15, 2013 · 3:34 pm

Name That Embassy: Where The DCM Has Two Official Residences (the Second, For DCM Junior’s Playdates)

Most of this blog’s readers are already familiar with the term DCM.  For those who aren’t, a DCM or a Deputy Chief of Mission is like the chief executive officer or chief operating officer of the embassy. He/She is a career diplomat and acts as Charge d’Affaires (person in charge) whenever the Ambassador is absent from the host country or when the position is vacant. The DCM is responsible for the day to day management of the embassy, ensuring the mission can operate with allocated resources and together with the Ambassador runs the Embassy “front office.”  He/She oversees the heads of sections (Political, Economic, Public Affairs, Management, Consular and the Regional Security Office) at the Embassy and has overall responsibility for mentoring and professional development of the entry-level professionals.

All that serves as a preamble to this:

The Deputy Chief of Mission in Country X has an official residence in the downtown area of the capital city; the location is not too far from the embassy.

The second residence, an apartment is allegedly in the suburbs, in one of the U.S. government compounds in the capital city. The ostensible reason for the second residence is reportedly so the DCM’s spouse would have a place to arrange playdates near the international school where DCM junior is enrolled.

Imagine if you’re overseas and you demand a second USG-owned or USG-leased residence for your kid’s playdates.  Do you know what would happen?  They’d pack you up on a medical evacuation so quickly before you can even say BOO!

But when you’re a DCM, apparently they don’t do that, which we must admit is a nice perk.

Poor contract guards.

They wanted to know what sort of special protection they should be giving to the DCM and his/her visitors when he/she is using the second residence.

As you might imagine, the  security office was not happy about this.

And the housing office was pretty steam up about it.  The Housing GSO reportedly refused to have anything to do with this … um, unusual arrangement.

Luckily, the Housing GSO’s supervising officer …. no, not the GSO but the Management Counselor is said to have arranged the details so the DCM gets the second USG housing. This is the part where we need to point out that the Management Counselor’s Employee Evaluation Report rater is no other than the DCM.

So –

If you were the Management Counselor at this post, would you have “arranged the details” so the DCM gets a second residence?

Or would you have taken out the Foreign Affairs Manual  and  said, “No your excellency, you may not have a second residence.”

Perhaps this should cover as our ethical dilemma exercise for the day.

According to FAM  15 FAM 211.1, the objective of the housing program is “to provide safe and secure housing that is adequate to meet the personal and professional requirements of employees at a cost most advantageous to the U.S. Government. For the purposes of this policy, adequate housing is defined as that comparable to what an employee would occupy in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area, with adjustments for family size and locality abroad.”  The housing provided to employees is based on position rank and family size:  “Where an employee’s position rank is greater or less than his or her personal rank, the position rank determines the employee’s maximum authorization.”  

We have been unable to locate regulations in the FAM that allows an employee to occupy two USG-owned or USG leased housing overseas.  It might be that the FAM in a parallel universe does not specifically prohibit the allocation of two residences to a DCM, especially if one needs an apartment for the officer’s kid’s playdates. But — even if we grant that this is not illegal — holy mother of goat! How can a senior official even think this is not waste and misused of U.S. government property?

In any case, we understand that several mission staffers thought this was just plain wrong and appropriately filed complaints at the Office of Inspector General (OIG).

We heard that State/OIG “passed it on” to the regional bureau which then had a “conversation” of some sort. Subsequent to the conversation with the regional bureau, the keys to the second residence were returned.

We checked with the OIG and this is what we’re told by its spokesman, Douglas Welty:

[I]t is OIG policy not to comment on complaints submitted to our Hotline, nor do we comment on any possible, pending or on-going investigations.

It is also OIG policy to refer  non-criminal, but inappropriate activities to the Department (or bureau) for administrative action - with a request for a response and report of remedial actions taken.

So unless you don’t return the keys … then it becomes a big deal. But if you do return the keys, then things can be forgotten and forgiven? Did the bureau even charged the DCM rental for the use of the second residence? Was any administrative action ever issued? No one knows since that’s all done behind doors because hey, privacy!

In what ethical landscape would anyone consider this appropriate behavior for any public servant, particularly one who is a senior official with mentoring responsibility for our next generation of diplomats?

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Updated May 16@8:37 am to include RSOs under the responsibility of the DCMs.

 

 

 

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May 13, 2013 · 4:59 pm

Raymond Maxwell: A happy ending … despite the fact that the “system” does not work

Following our publication of Raymond Maxwell’s poem in this blog, we received an unsolicited note from  a veteran FSO we know from Post X.  The FSO knows Raymond Maxwell well, all the way back to A-100 and notes that Mr. Maxwell spent 14 years in the United States Navy before joining the Foreign Service.  The FSO added that Mr. Maxwell was “definitely the first one to become a DAS” [deputy assistant secretary] from his A-100 class, and the first one to make it to Senior Foreign Service. Excerpt below:

For years, I have told a story about Ray to junior officers that I thought showed that there was justice in the “system,” and which I thought had a happy ending (until now).  Ray has always been a stand-up guy.  On his first tour, he went as a General Services Officer to a small West African post.  He had a boss (Admin Officer) who did not play by the rules, and Ray refused to go along with unethical or illegal practices in the execution of his duties.  He hadn’t left the Navy just to sell out his principles in the Foreign Service.  For a first tour officer, that put him in a precarious position and made tenure (and a career) less than a sure thing.  Fortunately, Ray’s next tour went well, as did every tour after that.  Not only did he set the standard in every position he ever held, he also took the hardest jobs — a couple of them in Iraq back when nobody else wanted to go there.

When I first learned that Ray was going to be a scapegoat for our most recent 9/11, I felt that this story no longer had a happy ending.  He was a victim of “damage control,” which in government tries to push accountability down to the lowest level possible.  But in a sense, the happy ending is that Ray remained the stand-up guy, the man of principle that he has always been, in service to our country for over 35 years in the United States Navy and in the Foreign Service of the United States, despite the fact that the “system” does not work.  His service has been a great gift to our nation.

I do hope that a generation of officers who worked with Ray, were mentored by Ray, or who hear the stories about him, are themselves inspired to a higher standard of public service than is currently the accepted norm in our beloved Department of State.  Is there hope for the future?  Actually, I don’t know.

The FSO who wrote this is in active service, so there will be no other details on that.  Mr. Maxwell remains in administrative leave status and defers all press inquiries to the State Department spokesperson and State Department Public Affairs.
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September 25, 2012 · 1:36 am

US Embassy Ljubljana: Where Ambassador Mussomeli Runs for Office in Election 2012

US Ambassador to Slovenia Joseph A. Mussomeli gets a starring role in this public service announcement urging U.S. citizens to register to vote.  Gotta give the brains behind this a thumbs up for fun and creativity. We particularly like the pan down of the ambo’s feet. Wait! He’s barefoot! And he’s running for president?  And he wears a shirt that says “I am awesome.” What’s this world coming to, only awesome people can run for the presidency?

In any case, if you don’t vote this guy will win, he has a 100% approval rating from a most ignored but easily swayed demographic.

New absentee voting info for overseas voters via the US Embassy in Slovenia:

New absentee voting laws are in effect for the 2012 elections.  You will no longer automatically receive ballots based on a previous absentee ballot request.  All U.S. citizens outside the United States who want to vote by absentee ballot in the 2012 primary and general elections must complete a new Federal Post Card Application (FPCA) every year if they wish to vote from abroad.  States are now required to send out ballots 45 days before an election.  No matter what state you vote in, you can now ask your local election officials to provide your blank ballots to you electronically (by email, internet download, or fax, depending on your state).  You can now also confirm your registration and ballot delivery on-line.  Be sure to include your email address on the form to take advantage of the electronic ballot delivery option.  This is the fastest and most reliable way to receive your ballot on time, and we strongly recommend every overseas voter take advantage of it.  Learn more at the Federal Voting Assistance Program’s (FVAP) website www.FVAP.gov.

Go register and vote.

 

 

 

 

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October 9, 2011 · 3:28 am

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month

Domestic Violence Awareness MonthImage by heraldpost via FlickrDomestic violence can be defined as a pattern of abusive behavior in
any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power
and control over an intimate partner. A NOW statistics
that cites the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control
indicates that women experience about 4.8 million intimate
partner-related physical assaults and rapes every year. Less than 20
percent of battered women sought medical treatment following an injury.

The diplomatic service is, of course, not immune to such type of
violence. Domestic violence can happen to anyone regardless of race,
age, sexual orientation, religion, or gender.  It is an equal opportunity offense. 

In June 2010, I wrote
about a DS Agent who was arrested after his wife reported an assault in Washington State.  That case seemed to have disappeared quietly, and the agent was never named publicly. 

In July 2010, an unnamed South American ambassador abandoned his wife in Israel
after taking all their shared assets including reportedly 40 cats.

In
January this year, in a very public case of alleged domestic abuse, an Indian diplomat was recalled from the UK for causing embarrassment to his government.

Last week, a U.S. diplomat assigned as political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Dakar, Senegal was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on domestic battery charges. In Virginia where this case is filed, “Assault and Battery Against a Family or Household Member” is a Class 1 misdemeanor. Criminal Defense.com indicates that “a person can therefore be sentenced to 12
months in jail. He may be charged up to $2,500 in fines or both
punishments may be imposed in any combination up to the maximum penalty
for each.” Read more here. We note that the DOJ presser states that if convicted, the diplomat faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.  We do not pretend to be a lawyer but suspect that the max penalty has to do with the unspecified “dangerous weapon” in the indictment.

If you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-SAFE (7233) or TTY 800-787-3224. See also the following resources below:

Domestic Violence in Virginia (PDF)

Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence

DCCoalition Against Domestic Violence

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Filed under Court Cases, Hall of Shame, Public Service

September 20, 2011 · 4:15 am

Will the State Dept Declare FSO Peter Van Buren Persona Non Grata For His Book on the TragicComedy of PRT Iraq?

In April, I wrote New FS Blog: We Meant Well, Plus a Book Coming Out This Fall  

In July, I wondered out loud, Peter Van Buren: Oh, dude — WHO did you get “more than upset” at the State Department?

It’s now September. Next Tuesday, the 27th, his book,“We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle For the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People” (Metropolitan Books, 2011) will hit the stores.

And a tsunami is forecast to hit Peter Van Buren at his cubicle in Foggy Bottom.

DiploPundit will try to cover the event when it happens. Although if State is smart, as it is full of smart folks, it probably should not order a tsunami on the same day that the book comes out. People might think the tsunami is intentional wrath from god.

I had the opportunity to read the book this weekend.  I’ll post my review separately.  I can, however, tell you that the 267-page book carries the following notice:

The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Department of State, the Department of Defense, or any other entity of the US government. The Department of State had the chance to review this book in manuscript form before publication, as required by 3 FAM 4170.

The Department of State does not approve, endorse, or  authorize this book. With the exception of historical figures (e.g., President Bush, General Odierno), I have changed all names. The events depicted in this book are true, however, although some details have been changed and the timing of some events has been altered or obscured. Except as noted, I was present at any event reported on and at any conversation repeated.

Information from the SIGIR Web site is in the public domain and may be used without further permission, provided such use is not reasonably calculated to convey the impression that such use is approved, endorsed, or authorized by SIGIR. SIGIR did not approve, endorse, or authorize this book.

The curious phrase, “The Department of State had the chance to review this book in manuscript form before publication, as required by 3 FAM 4170.”

Which could mean a couple of things. 1) Somebody at State had reviewed this book and found it free of classified materials. Which is well and good, no tsunami will be ordered. Somebody has read the book and the Spokesman can say something like, let’s see — “We know this books is coming out. We do not agree with Mr. Van Buren’s views but his views are his own. We have nothing further to say about this issue.” This would be bad for the folks who want Peter Van Buren’s head on a platter.

Or 2) Somebody at State forgot that the manuscript of this book was in his/her inbox and did not take action during the “reasonable period of review” indicated in the FAM “not to exceed thirty days.” In which case, there are taskers now on what the Spokesman should say about the contents of the 200-something page book. And no, you can’t read my copy.

I’d like to believe it is the former, but I would not be surprise if it is the latter. That said, 3 FAM 4172.1-7 on the Use or Publication of Materials Prepared in an Employee’s Private Capacity That Have Been Submitted for Review appears clear enough:

“An employee may use, issue, or publish materials on matters of official concern that have been submitted for review, and for which the presumption of private capacity has not been overcome, upon expiration of the designated period of comment and review regardless of the final content of such materials so long as they do not contain information that is classified or otherwise exempt from disclosure as described in 3 FAM 4172.1-6(A).”

Because clearly, it’s not like they want to gag anyone, particularly on a contentious subject like Iraq that has been sucking up the U.S. Treasury, right?

Of course, what is clear to you and me, may not always be clear to the officially-paid interpreter of regulations. Remains to be seen what happens. After all, State’s cousin, the DOD back in 2010 reportedly bought some 9,500 copies of Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer’s 299-page memoir “Operation Dark Heart” after its publication was green lighted by the Army Reserve Command then proceeded to burn them. Burn all the books, seriously.  So then you know, nobody could ever read that book ever again. 

Pardon me? WikiLeaks has obtained a copy of the unredacted book?  Oh, dear.  Okay, sorry, I meant to say, they have bought and burned 9,499 copies of the Colonel’s book.

Peter Van Buren book carries a special acknowledgement of “Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, who led an organization I once cared deeply for into a swamp and abandoned us there.”  

A visit from the new SecState in 2009 made it into the special acknowledgement page, too:

“On our last day of PRT training, the facility was put into lockdown for a visit from the new Secretary of State (it’s cool that when she visits her own staff the Secretary’s security puts us into lock-down). She greeted and congratulated the Afghan PRT class down the hall from us Iraqis, then left. We didn’t even rate a walk- on. Our war no longer really mattered, though it would take me a long year in the desert and writing this book to fully figure that out.”

I understand from a couple of news interviews online that Peter Van Buren is now subject of internal investigations at the State Department.

So since it appears that Peter Van Buren went through the clearance process as required by the FAM, and if it turns out that the somebody in the higher pyramid pay-grade have not done the actual reading and clearance thingy, would that then be the author’s fault? Really?

I get searches in this blog for “Who hates Peter Van Buren?” Seriously.

Apparently there is also a rumor going around in the FS community that the reason Foreign Service bloggers are having a tough time these days is, you guess it — Peter Van Buren!

Well — there was a 7.3 earthquake in the Fiji region four days ago, must have been Peter Van Buren’s fault, too!

And that all made me think that the somebodies may have a tsunami order on speed-dial specifically for Van Buren’s cubicle. Which would be very bad for Peter Van Buren, indeed, but would certainly be great for book sales.

I must add here that although I have a digital copy of the book, I am buying additional copies to send to my State Department pals for the holidays, at least those still talking to me. 

I’ve never meet Peter Van Buren in person but this seems like the least I could do for a public servant whose career will most certainly be over, and who will be ostracized by most folks big and small in the Big House.  If I see him down some corridor, I will not take the nearest exit or pretend to be busy with my phone thingy.  It is not hard to imagine that not too long ago, he is like all other wide-eyed newbies in A-100 hoping to change the world. Iraq has been our mess since we broke it, Peter Van Buren did not break it. I would thank him for putting his career on the line to tell these stories that the American public needs to know. Perhaps if we learn all the details, we’d demand next time that our elected representatives think harder, ask serious questions, and have the spine to have convictions before allowing our country to blunder into another war.

Any how, I’d definitely love to be wrong on this one, the tsunami and all, including the stealthy shunning.

I would also like to formally request (that is, if the tsunami doesn’t get him), that they send Mr. Van Buren to Afghanistan so he can write about PRT-Afghanistan, too. I seem to be developing gastroesophageal reflux disease every time I consume something served by the US Embassy Kabul on Facebook and Prilosec is no damn help!

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March 13, 2011 · 6:45 pm

PJ Crowley’s Firing Offense: You can have a personal opinion, you just can’t talk publicly about it

Last week, during an “informal conversation” at MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media, U.S. Department of State Spokesman and Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs, PJ Crowley used three words to described the treatment of Bradley Manning at a DOD brig: “ridiculous,” “counterproductive,” “stupid.” And they hastened his already rumored departure.

Here’s what was said at MIT (h/t to Ethan Zuckerman for the post here):

Charlie deTar: There’s an elephant in the room during this discussion: Wikileaks. The US government is torturing a whistleblower in prison right now. How do we resolve a conversation about the future of new media in diplomacy with the government’s actions regarding Wikileaks?

PJC: “I spent 26 years in the air force. What is happening to Manning is ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid, and I don’t know why the DoD is doing it. Nevertheless, Manning is in the right place.” There are leaks everywhere in Washington – it’s a town that can’t keep a secret. But the scale is different. It was a colossal failure by the DoD to allow this mass of documents to be transported outside the network. Historically, someone has picked up a file of papers and passed it around – the information exposed is on one country or one subject. But this is a scale we’ve never seen before. If Julian Assange is right and we’re in an era where there are no secrets, do we expect that people will release Google’s search engine algorithms? The formula for Coca Cola? Some things are best kept secret. If we’re negotiating between the Israelis and the Palestinians, there will be compromises that are hard for each side to sell to their people – there’s a need for secrets.

Philippa Thomas blogged about it here, and The Cable’s Josh Rogin confirmed it:

“What I said was my personal opinion. It does not reflect an official USG policy position. I defer to the Department of Defense regarding the treatment of Bradley Manning,” Crowley told The Cable. 

The MIT event took place on Thursday. On Friday, President Obama was asked about Crowley’s comments during a nationally televised press conference.  The National Journal quotes President Obama:

“I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards,” Obama said. “They assured me that they are.”

Jake Tapper of ABC News later reported that while some White House officials knew of Crowley’s comments, White House chief of staff Bill Daley learned of them when ABC News asked that question of the president. Daley reportedly told White House officials of Crowley, “he’s done.”

And indeed less than 48 hours later, PJ Crowley is “done” as top talking head of the State Department. Secretary Clinton released a statement, Sunday, March 13, accepting Mr. Crowley’s resignation.  

HRC STATEMENT

It is with regret that I have accepted the resignation of Philip J. Crowley as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs. PJ has served our nation with distinction for more than three decades, in uniform and as a civilian. His service to country is motivated by a deep devotion to public policy and public diplomacy, and I wish him the very best. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary (PDAS) Michael Hammer will serve as Acting Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs.

STATEMENT BY PHILIP J. CROWLEY

The unauthorized disclosure of classified information is a serious crime under U.S. law. My recent comments regarding the conditions of the pre-trial detention of Private First Class Bradley Manning were intended to highlight the broader, even strategic impact of discreet actions undertaken by national security agencies every day and their impact on our global standing and leadership. The exercise of power in today’s challenging times and relentless media environment must be prudent and consistent with our laws and values.

Given the impact of my remarks, for which I take full responsibility, I have submitted my resignation as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs and Spokesman for the Department of State.

I am enormously grateful to President Obama and Secretary Clinton for the high honor of once again serving the American people. I leave with great admiration and affection for my State colleagues, who promote our national interest both on the front lines and in the quiet corners of the world. It was a privilege to help communicate their many and vital contributions to our national security. And I leave with deep respect for the journalists who report on foreign policy and global developments every day, in many cases under dangerous conditions and subject to serious threats. Their efforts help make governments more responsible, accountable and transparent.

Mr. Crowley was an Air Force officer for 26 years. He also previously served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. Older and wiser, he most certainly knew what he was getting himself into when he spoke on the record. But perhaps, he also miscalculated that this administration is somehow different from its predecessor when you cross that chalked lines.    

Glenn Greenwald over in Salon.com writes:

So, in Barack Obama’s administration, it’s perfectly acceptable to abuse an American citizen in detention who has been convicted of nothing by consigning him to 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement, barring him from exercising in his cell, punitively imposing “suicide watch” restrictions on him against the recommendations of brig psychiatrists, and subjecting him to prolonged, forced nudity designed to humiliate and degrade. But speaking out against that abuse is a firing offense. Good to know. As Matt Yglesias just put it: “Sad statement about America that P.J. Crowley is the one being forced to resign over Bradley Manning.” And as David Frum added: “Crowley firing: one more demonstration of my rule: Republican pols fear their base, Dem pols despise it.”

Andrew Sullivan in The Daily Dish writes:

“By firing PJ Crowley for the offense of protesting against the sadistic military treatment of Bradley Manning, the president has now put his personal weight behind prisoner abuse. The man who once said that forced nudity was a form of torture, now takes the word of those enforcing it over a distinguished public servant.”

Note that Mr. Crowley’s statement contained no apology for what he said at that informal gathering. Instead he writes that “The exercise of power in today’s challenging times and relentless media environment must be prudent and consistent with our laws and values.”

Can’t preach about human rights abroad, if we don’t practice it at home.  Or the world will throw shoes at us.
 
On March 14, Steve Aftergood of Secrecy News writes:

Mr. Crowley, an uncompromising critic of leaks of classified information, is no friend of Private Manning who, he said, “is in the right place” (i.e., in jail).  It was the gratuitous abuse of the prisoner that he deemed “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.”

He was right.  In America, the pre-trial detention of any person who has not been convicted of a crime should be beyond reproach.  In the Manning case (and in too many others), it hasn’t been.

Though in criticizing Defense Department detention policy Mr. Crowley was clearly outside of his bureaucratic “lane,” he deserves credit for speaking out on a matter of principle.  In an intelligent system of government, such views would be freely aired and honestly attended to.  But it seems that there is not much place for such speech in the current Administration.

To its credit, the State Department did publish Mr. Crowley’s non-retraction on its website.

Continue reading PJ Crowley and the Limits of Openness here.
 
Updated on March 14 with excerpt from Secrecy News.

 

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Filed under 67, Dissent, Obama, People, Political Appointees, Public Service, State Department

March 7, 2011 · 11:18 am

“Fast and Furious” gun killed ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico?

You must have seen the CBS news item alleging that ATF purposely allowed weapons to be smuggled to Mexico.  An ATF agent in it says that its “Fast and Furious” program let guns “walk” into the hands of Mexican drug cartels with the aim of tracking and breaking a big case.

On Dec. 14, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down. Two assault rifles ATF had let go nearly a year before were found at Terry’s murder, according to CBS.  

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry may not be the only federal agent who became a victim of the walked guns.  Last week, FBI Dallas released a statement on the arrest of three Dallas-area men on federal firearms charges related to trafficking firearms to a Mexican drug cartel. Apparently ballistic tests trace one of the firearms used in the February 2011 shooting of ICE Agents in Mexico to one of the defendants.

March 1, 2011 | DALLAS—Three individuals have been arrested by agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), assisted by other state and local law enforcement, on federal firearms charges outlined in two complaints.
[...]
Ranferi Osorio, 27, and his brother, Otilio Osorio, 22, were arrested yesterday at their home on East Colonial Drive in Lancaster, Texas. Each Osorio brother is charged with possessing firearms with an obliterated serial number. Separately, according to information contained in one complaint, Mexican officials recently seized three firearms that were used in the deadly shooting on Feb. 15, 2011, of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent. One of the firearms recovered was traced by ATF to Otilio Osorio.
[...]
According to the court documents, at the meeting, two men unloaded several large bags containing firearms into the CI’s vehicle, which was kept under surveillance until a traffic stop in Laredo. According to the court documents, the men’s vehicle was later stopped by local police and the men were identified as Ranferi and Otilio Osorio. Morrison was the third passenger in the vehicle. The vehicle stopped in Laredo was searched and 40 firearms, all with obliterated serial numbers, were seized. Trace results indicated that three of these firearms could be specifically traced to Morrison, who bought them from federal firearms licensees (FFL) in the Dallas/Fort Worth area on Nov. 4, 2010. The investigation now has also revealed that on Aug. 7, 2010, a Romarm, model WASR, 7.62 caliber rifle was discovered by law enforcement officers in LaPryor, Texas, near the U.S./Mexico border. Trace results indicated that Morrison purchased this firearm on July 30, 2010, from a FFL. According to the affidavit, between July 10, 2010, and Nov. 4, 2010, Morrison purchased 24 firearms from FFLs.

In addition, according to one affidavit filed in the case, one of the three firearms used in the Feb. 15, 2011, deadly assault of ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata that was seized by Mexican officials has been traced by ATF to Otilio Osorio. Otilio Osorio allegedly purchased that firearm on Oct. 10, 2010, in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, prior to law enforcement’s awareness of the purchase. Ballistic testing conducted by Mexican authorities on this firearm indicated it was one of the three firearms used during the deadly assault on Special Agent Zapata’s vehicle.

Read the whole thing here.

A much more detailed report from the Center for Public Integrity says that the ATF operation code named “Fast and Furious” permitted hundreds of guns to be purchased and retained by suspected straw buyers with the expectation that they might cross the border and even be used in crimes while the case was being built. It was based in Phoenix and reportedly done with the direct blessing of ATF headquarters in Washington and with the supervision by the U.S. attorney’s office in Phoenix, a special ATF strike force known as Group VII.

Officials told the Center that ATF allowed about 1,765 firearms over the 15 months of the operation to pass from gun dealers to the suspected straw buyers that were the accomplices of the gun running ring. Another 233 weapons had been bought by the suspects prior to the ATF operation starting, bringing the total number of guns in the case to 1,998.

Of those, 797 of the guns were eventually recovered as a result of criminal activity on both sides of the border — including 195 from inside Mexico — after they were used in crimes, collected during arrests, or interdicted through other law enforcement operations, the officials told the Center.

According to ATF, a “straw purchase” occurs when the actual buyer of a firearm uses another person, “the straw purchaser,” to execute the paperwork necessary to purchase a firearm from a gun dealer. The actual buyer is often prohibited from purchasing the gun. The straw purchaser violates federal law by making a false statement with respect to the information required to be kept in the gun dealer’s records. According to ATF, straw purchasing is one of the most frequent methods used to illegally acquire guns.

The March 1 statement says that “Otilio Osorio allegedly purchased that firearm on Oct. 10, 2010, in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, prior to law enforcement’s awareness of the purchase.”

So – basically, he bought the gun on XX at XX but ATF did not know about it, is that it? Sounds awkward and defensive to you?  Are we to understand that the gun used to kill the ICE agent in that Monterrey road was not/not one of the guns that the ATF allowed to “walk” across the border? 

DallasNews.com reports that “Tom Crowley, spokesman for the ATF’s Dallas division, insists that at no time did weapons involved in the Dallas division’s Gunrunner operations ever make it across the border.”

But the accused reportedly were kept under surveillance. So if the guns were not allowed to “walk” into Mexico but ended up there anyway, isn’t that really poor surveillance work? 

The Chief of the ATF Public Affairs Division, by the way, has written a February 2011 internal memo to PIOs to “Please make every effort in the next two weeks to maximize coverage of ATF operations/enforcement actions/arrests at the local and regional level” in hopes it would drown out the “negative coverage by CBS News.”  He also writes, “ATF needs to proactively push positive stories this week, in an effort to preempt some negative reporting, or at minimum, lessen the coverage of such stories in the news cycle by replacing them with good stories about ATF. The more time we spend highlighting the great work of the agents through press releases and various media outreaches in the coming days and weeks, the better off we will be.”

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November 8, 2010 · 3:11 pm

Which State Department attrition rate do you like best?

One of our readers wrote and pointed us to a new report on attrition rates released by the Partnership for Public Service with a note that says “14.5% of State new hires quit after two years – seems to not match what the Director General put out in its stats.” 

Joe Davidson’s column in WaPo is here – Attrition is high among new workers at many government agencies (Friday, November 5, 2010; 2:08 AM).

The PPS report indicates that the attrition rate for newly hired employees varies widely among the agencies, with some federal workplaces such as the Departments of Treasury, Commerce and Homeland Security losing more than one-third of their new workers within two years. 

WaPo’s Davidson writes that “It’s scary to think that an agency so important to the security of the United States was being run by so many people with so little experience. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that on the Partnership’s 2010 list of Best Places to Work, Homeland Security ranks 28th out of 32 agencies in its category.”

Quite sobering this  — “As of the end of fiscal 2009, only five percent of federal employees had served less than one year, and just 10 percent had up to two years of service. With a large percentage of this already small population of new hires leaving, the federal government’s pipeline of future managers and leaders could be greatly diminished. Government has few opportunities to build its workforce and can ill afford to lose existing talent, especially when the wave of retirements seems poised to become reality.”

The report also says that “while attrition of recently hired employees means a loss of the considerable investment expended to bring them on board – literally money down the drain – it also can indicate weaknesses in the agency’s recruiting, hiring and on-boarding processes, as well as shortcomings in supervision.”

The top five USG agencies:

(Screen grab from Beneath the Surface report)

The bottom five USG agencies:

(Screen grab from Beneath the Surface report)

So there – you see that the State Department has an attrition rate of 14.5% and ties with OMB in the second to the last place. Which is a good thing.  Davidson points out that “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was the best agency at keeping new talent, with a recently hired attrition rate of 10.8 percent. NRC also ranks first in its category on the Best Places list. The State Department, the Office of Management and Budget, the Air Force and NASA also do relatively well, with rates ranging from 14.5 percent to 15.7 percent.“

Which brings us to our correspondent’s note — the 14.5%.  We don’t know what numbers you’re seeing behind the firewall on the Intranet, but we have never heard of State’s attrition number from official pronouncement to be over 5%.  In 2008, over at DipNote, former Assistant Secretary Richard Boucher addressing that controversial AFSA poll results writes that “we have such low attrition rates (4%).” 
 
In the June 2008 issue of the Foreign Service Journal, then AFSA President John Naland cited some attrition numbers from the State Department’s HR Bureau (see A Career Out of Balance, FSJ, June 2008): 

“Attrition data recently made available to AFSA by State’s Bureau of Human Resources show that the mid-level generalist attrition rate was slightly higher during FY 07 (4.5 percent) than at any time since the last year of the Clinton administration (the last era when budget cuts and staffing gaps sapped employee morale). Entry-level officer attrition from FY 06 to FY 07 averaged 2.4 percent, compared with 1.7 percent from FY 03 to FY 05. Foreign Service specialist attrition rates have generally remained stable. While these modest upticks in generalist attrition rates are not unprecedented and may ultimately turn out to be temporary blips, they could also be harbingers of things to come.”

In a recent issue of the State Magazine (Staying Put, September 2010), the HR Bureau reports on job attrition decline in the agency citing numbers from FY2008 and FY2009:

Foreign Service Generalist at 4.4% in FY2008 and 3.4% in FY 2009

Foreign Service Specialist at 5.6% in FY2008 and 4.0% in FY 2009

Civil Service rates of  8.4% at FY2008 and 6.3% in FY2009

HR also reports that “Overall, generalist attrition was down by 23 percent in fiscal year 2009, compared with 2008. The number of generalist retirements dropped 25 percent, and the number of non-retirements dropped by 18 percent. Attrition among entry-level officers decreased by 11 percent. Mid-level attrition dropped by 27 percent, and Senior Foreign Service attrition, which is almost entirely composed of retirements, dropped  2 percent.”

We note that the entry level officers’ attrition rate is not really clear from that HR article, only that it decreased by 11% in 2009. If you know what was the magic number before the decrease we’d love to know.

What is clear is that out of 747 hires in FY2006, 108 hires left by 2008. This number presumably includes not only the Foreign Service but the entire agency.  

The report, Beneath the Surface: Understanding Attrition at Your Agency and Why It Matters, released last week, is available to download in PDF format here.

 

 

 

 

 

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September 17, 2010 · 3:01 pm

Our favorite "Senator from France" Chuck Hagel: still telling it like it is

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) arrives at Camp Rama...Image via WikipediaIt’s not everyday that we find a politician who is able to keep his/her reputation of candor in office or out.  Hard to keep in office, because politicians pander to their constituents and are afraid to lose their votes; and outside, because they may be after a position here or there and presumably does not want to compromise their appointment prospects with the administration of the day.  But we are happy to see that Chuck Hagel still wear the same stripes, still own the same spots, and have not exchanged his views for political convenience.  And god bless the guy, he still makes sense.

Michael Coleman did an interview with the former Senator for The Washington Diplomat. Quotable quotes below:

“I think we’re in a mess in Afghanistan and I think we’re in a mess in Iraq,” said Hagel, who voted in support of the war in Iraq based on the intelligence assessments and later admitted he regretted his vote.

“Our military has been more valiant and done a better job than we could have ever hoped. But we have put the military in an impossible situation.”

“Look at the facts: No government, less electricity and people want us out,” Hagel pointed out. “Anyway you measure Iraq today I think you’re pretty hard pressed to find how people are better off than they were before we invaded. I think history is going to be very harsh in its judgment — very, very harsh. And I think we’re headed for a similar outcome in Afghanistan if we don’t do some things differently.”

“We are where we are today — going into our 10th year in Afghanistan, our longest war — because we did take our eye of the ball,” he said. “It’s becoming clearer and clearer. We really made some big mistakes during that time. I have never believed you can go into any country and nation build, and unfortunately I think that’s what we’ve gotten ourselves bogged down in.

“You can dance around that issue any way you like, but the fact is that there are billions and billions of dollars we’ve spent and are still spending, over 100,000 troops, and all the assistance we’ve got going in there,” Hagel continued. “It’s nation building. We should not nation build. It will always end in disaster.”

“We became completely disoriented from our original focus,” Hagel charged. “That problem in Afghanistan isn’t going to be solved with 100,000 American troops.”

“We’re sinking down further and further into the bog,” he lamented. “We’re going to have to unwind this because politically it’s not sustainable in the United States.”

“It’s the most combustible area of the world,” Hagel, a former senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, explained. “You’ve got three nuclear powers [China, India and Pakistan] that all come together at the same border and on the other side you’ve got Afghanistan and Iran. The worst thing we can do is continue to stay bogged down in those areas where we continue to undermine our own objectives.”

“I’ve been called the senator from France and all this stuff,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “But I’ve never thought that engagement was appeasement.

 “I’ve always found that engagement is critically important to statecraft,” he added. “That doesn’t mean that engagement is giving things away or appeasement. Engagement is a long way away from negotiation. But it will allow you some time and give you some high ground, some optics, some support worldwide and a dimension to try to assess things from as close to the scene as you can.

 “We say, ‘We’ll show you — we’re not going to talk to you. We’ll penalize you,’” he continued. “Well, it really doesn’t penalize anybody but us because we can’t make good judgments on just what we think. We have to engage.”

“The consequences of the blunder we made and the extenuation of the disaster in Afghanistan is going to play out in a number of ways that will affect our country,” he said. “Start with the Pentagon. Does anybody not think that these two wars have ground our people down? Our generals are saying it — record divorces, record suicides, not to mention the equipment — anyway you calibrate it. Quite frankly, I think there has been so much damage done to the infrastructure of our military and our force structure that it’s going to take a generation to build back.”

He pointedly added: “You can’t run people like machines  — even machines break down.”

Some quarters have actually cited his candor as “biden-nisque” that could cost him a possible position in DOD or DOS.  We don’t mind it if he’d suffer from occassional foot in mouth disease — somebody’s gotta tell it like it is. 

Keep going, Chuck! Maybe one day, the somebodies will listen.

Read the whole thing here.

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