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47–996 PDF 2009

FORTRESS AMERICA ABROAD: EFFECTIVE

DIPLOMACY AND THE FUTURE OF U.S. EMBASSIES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY

AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JANUARY 23, 2008

Serial No. 110–129

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.oversight.house.gov

(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California, Chairman

TOM LANTOS, California

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland

PETER WELCH, Vermont

TOM DAVIS, Virginia

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

BILL SALI, Idaho

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

PHIL SCHILIRO, Chief of Staff

PHIL BARNETT, Staff Director

EARLEY GREEN, Chief Clerk

DAVID MARIN, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts, Chairman

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAVE TURK, Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on January 23, 2008 ......................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Grossman, Ambassador Marc, vice chairman of the Cohen Group; Dr.

Jane Loeffler, visiting associate professor at the University of Maryland; John Naland, president of the American Foreign Service Association; and Ambassador Thomas Pickering, vice chairman of Hills and

Co. .................................................................................................................. 12

Grossman, Ambassador Marc ................................................................... 12

Loeffler, Dr. Jane ...................................................................................... 20

Naland, John ............................................................................................. 34

Pickering, Ambassador Thomas ............................................................... 40

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Grossman, Ambassador Marc, vice chairman of the Cohen Group, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 15

Loeffler, Dr. Jane, visiting associate professor at the University of Maryland, prepared statement of ......................................................................... 23

Naland, John, president of the American Foreign Service Association,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 36

Pickering, Ambassador Thomas, vice chairman of Hills and Co., prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 43

Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Connecticut, prepared statement of ........................................................ 8

Tierney, Hon. John F., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Massachusetts:

Letter dated January 22, 2008 ................................................................. 71

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 4

(1)

FORTRESS AMERICA ABROAD: EFFECTIVE DIPLOMACY AND THE FUTURE OF U.S. EMBASSIES

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2008

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN

AFFAIRS,

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:06 a.m., in room

2157, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John F. Tierney (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Tierney, Maloney, Lynch, Higgins,

Welch, Shays, Burton, Platts, and Foxx.

Staff present: Dave Turk, staff director; Davis Hake, clerk; Andy

Wright and Janice Spector, professional staff members; Dan Hamilton, fellow; A. Brooke Bennett, minority counsel; Todd Greenwood,

minority legislative assistant; Nick Palarino, minority senior investigator and policy advisor; and Benjamin Chance, minority clerk.

Mr. TIERNEY. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs hearing entitled, ‘‘Fortress

America Abroad: Effective Diplomacy and the Future of U.S. Embassies,’’ will come to order.

I ask unanimous consent that only the chairman and ranking

member of the subcommittee be allowed to make opening statements. Without objection.

I ask consent that the hearing record be kept open for 5 business

days so that all members of the subcommittee be allowed to submit

a written statement for the record. Without objection, so allowed.

On behalf of the members of the subcommittee, I want to welcome our panel of highly distinguished witnesses who are with us

today. We are going to discuss challenges—as well as the opportunities—for the future of U.S. Embassies and diplomacy with four

uniquely qualified experts.

We will examine not only the ramifications of the new type of

Embassies that U.S. taxpayers are currently funding around the

world—some call them ‘‘fortress’’ Embassies on the outskirts of

towns—we will also evaluate the broader purposes of our diplomatic presence abroad. We will discuss how we can best maintain

and improve our relations with foreign governments and the people

those governments represent.

Our diplomats put themselves in harm’s way for all of us day

and night. They live in every part of the globe, often in remote and

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austere places that are afflicted by poverty and violence. And they

suffer casualties, like Tom Stefani of the Foreign Agricultural Service, who was killed by a bomb in Afghanistan last October, or John

Granville, a USAID officer killed along with his driver earlier this

month in Sudan.

We all recognize the need for robust and effective security. Our

people deserve it and our missions cannot be effective without it.

At the same time, we have to recognize that the very effectiveness

we seek to maintain with that security is threatened if the security

measures are not carefully managed.

Take the symbolism of the American Embassy itself. For generations, the sight of the American flag flying openly in the heart of

foreign capitals and oppressive regimes gave hope to dissidents, relief to Americans abroad, and pause to many dictators.

Stories are legendary of young people learning in American Embassy libraries and cultural centers who would later become leaders of their nations, with affection for the United States that they

would never forget. Yet, our concerns with security have now led

us to build new Embassy compounds of cookie-cutter boxes surrounded by walls located on the outskirts of towns.

One magazine called our new Embassy in Iraq, for example, the

‘‘Mega-Bunker of Baghdad.’’ One of our witnesses today has referred to this phenomenon as ‘‘Fortress America.’’

But $700 million Embassy Baghdad is not the only example.

There are a number of others that we are showing slides of them

up on the board right now.

More and more, the American flag flies on the outskirts of foreign capitals, remote from daily life, from inside the fortified perimeter of a massive bunker. In the words of one commentator, ‘‘These

Embassies are the artifacts of fear.’’

My concern is that our diplomats are at risk of alienation, of becoming unable to communicate face-to-face with the very people

they must try to understand and to influence. They are at risk of

irrelevance.

I don’t think that anybody on this panel here today claims to

have the answers for the very difficult questions that confront us:

questions of safety, of costs, and of the best way to conduct diplomacy in this post-9/11 world.

That is why we have assembled such an extremely great group

of experts here for us to ask these tough questions and to learn

from the collective years of experience, and personal and professional study that these witnesses have given.

For example, if diplomats can’t meet with their counterparts,

travel the country and get to know people, what purpose do they

serve? What is the symbolism of Embassies and what messages do

they send to the host country and its people? What positive symbols should our Embassies be sending? Is the symbolism important? If so, how should this fact be reconciled with other considerations such as security and fiscal discipline?

What are the best ways to protect those serving in our Embassies abroad? Do we need to focus not on risk avoidance, but on risk

management? And how do we do that? How much does heavy security screening reduce casual traffic into American libraries or culVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:38 Mar 24, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\47996.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
3

tural centers on Embassy compounds? How significant is this and

what creative options are there for acceptable substitutes?

How can we best utilize and leverage advanced communications

technology in pursuit of diplomacy, especially diplomacy focused directly on the people of a host nation?

How is the U.S. Ambassador supposed to control and coordinate

the activities of an ever-increasing patchwork of government agencies, especially the large increases of military personnel who do not

report to the Ambassador, but to a distant theater combatant command?

Should so-called ‘‘American Presence Posts’’—that is, small expeditionary-type offices with a single diplomat in remote, but significant, foreign cities—be a part of the diplomatic puzzle? If so, how

can we best provide safety and the necessary manpower?

If we do not have adequate numbers of language-trained and otherwise adequately prepared personnel to send on these and other

missions—which the Government Accountability Office, among others, has documented—how do we get them?

In sum, how best should the United States pursue diplomacy in

the 21st century? And how can we ensure that we have this discussion before we spend more and more millions of taxpayer dollars

on fortress-like Embassies or other activities that don’t best serve

our core and long-term national security needs?

Defense Secretary Gates recently stressed, ‘‘What is clear to me

is that there is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the

civilian instruments of national security—diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development. . . . We must focus our energies beyond the guns and steel of the military.’’

This sentiment about the dangerousness of our lack of investment in diplomatic resources and funding is gaining ground across

party lines and ideologies. But how do we best set a goal to get

from point A to point B, and just what should point B look like in

operational form?

In the end, I am confident that we can do the right thing and

get the right balance of security and openness, of trained personnel

and resources necessary to carry out the vital task of American diplomacy in the 21st century. But we first need a robust and open

dialog among policymakers, experts, and the men and women who

represent us abroad in the face of great personal sacrifice.

I want to again thank our outstanding witnesses for being with

us today. I look forward to learning from your expertise and your

experience.

[The prepared statement of Hon. John F. Tierney follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. At this point, I would like to ask Mr. Shays for his

opening statement.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing,

and welcome to our very distinguished witnesses.

A determinant of U.S. success will be the size, scope, and skill

of the U.S. diplomatic presence abroad. International economic, political, military, and cultural alignments are changing rapidly. Our

diplomatic and interagency staff must be nimble to adapt to these

realignments. Adaptability includes having the correct number of

people and skill sets in our Embassies, and the ability to react to

changes within a country.

Members and staff of this subcommittee have had face-to-face

discussions with the men and women stationed in our Embassies.

We hear reports of Ambassadors having little more than titular authority to manage non-State Department personnel. We have continued security concerns, which, in many instances, have led to

limited mobility outside of the walls of the Embassy compounds.

And, of course, we hear reports of Embassies in need of additional

security upgrades both in terms of increased security for Embassy

personnel and security of physical structures. Congress must address these concerns through continued oversight and potentially

with new legislation.

In 2002, the subcommittee began investigating the Department

of State’s right-sizing efforts. We wanted to make sure the United

States was putting the right people in the right places and in the

correct numbers necessary to meet our foreign policy goals. Our

subcommittee held three hearings on this topic, including one in

April 2003. The April hearing focused on the GAO’s review of U.S.

diplomatic presence to ensure the appropriate number and types of

personnel were being assigned to U.S. Embassies and consulates.

GAO found staffing projections for new Embassy compounds

were being developed without a consistent systematic approach or

comprehensive right-sizing analysis. GAO recommended the Department of State develop a standard format for projecting staffing

requirements and ensure that staffing projects are validated within

the Department.

In June 2006, GAO reported State had either implemented

GAO’s recommendations or was taking steps to implement their

recommendations. However, despite State’s best efforts thus far,

more work needs to be done and GAO’s reports are useful in helping the State Department understand where they can improve

their efforts. Further oversight by this subcommittee will be helpful, and I look forward to working with my colleagues on this subcommittee to achieve the necessary reforms.

Mr. Chairman, we welcome all of our witnesses here today. We

truly appreciate their time, their dedication and expertise, and I

think we all look forward to their testimony. And I am going to try

to stay to hear the testimony. I have a very important meeting that

I have to get to, so if I leave before the conclusion, it is not that

I think this isn’t anything but a very important hearing. Thank

you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Shays.

Mr. Lynch, you want to make brief remarks, I understand?

Mr. LYNCH. Just brief remarks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I

want to thank the ranking member. As well, I thank our esteemed

panelists for coming before the committee to help us with our work.

I am one who, over the last few years, has come to spend a lot

of time in our foreign Embassies. I deeply appreciate the work

being done by our State Department, Treasury, Defense Department, and I believe that it is really an investment in personnel

that will cause the greatest improvement in our foreign policy. But

there is definitely a need to provide a secure environment for our

folks who work in our Embassies, one that provides security, but

also allows diplomacy to occur and to get out into the communities

in the cities and countries in which we are located. I will rely heavily upon you to tell us how to accomplish both of those goals and,

I appreciate all the experience that is on this panel before us this

morning. I am very interested in hearing your remarks. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Lynch.

Mr. Burton, would you care to make opening remarks?

Mr. BURTON. No, I don’t have any remarks, Mr. Chairman.

I thought, Ambassador Pickering, weren’t you in the private sector last time I saw you?

Ambassador PICKERING. I am still.

Mr. BURTON. You are. I mean, I thought you were out there making a lot of money, and I didn’t know why you were back. I am just

teasing. I thought you were out there having a good time, instead

of working——

Ambassador PICKERING. [Remarks off microphone.]

Mr. BURTON. Oh, OK. Well, it is nice seeing you, Ambassador.

I don’t have any comments.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. We will bring you up to date on what

the Ambassador is doing in one moment, as we introduce people

here.

We are now going to receive the testimony from the witnesses before us, and I would like to begin by introducing them with a little

background on each one.

Ambassador Marc A. Grossman has served as Under Secretary

of State for Political Affairs from 2001 to 2005—and I guess if we

add that with Ambassador Pickering, we really get from 1997 all

the way to 2005 in that position of Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs—as the Department’s third-ranking official and its

senior career diplomat. Mr. Grossman has also served as the Director General of the Foreign Service and as Ambassador to Turkey.

He is currently the vice chairman of the Cohen Group and was cochair of the Embassy of the Future Commission for the Center for

Strategic and International Studies, which released its final report

last year and which we will be discussing at length this morning.

Dr. Jane C. Loeffler is an associate professor at the University

of Maryland College Park and is the author of The Architecture of

American Diplomacy and Fortress America. She is widely recognized as an expert on the history and cultural impact of U.S. Embassy design and construction. Dr. Loeffler holds a graduate degree

in city planning from Harvard University and a doctorate in American civilization from George Washington University. She has also

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written and commented widely on the New Embassy Compound

program and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Mr. John K. Naland. Mr. Naland is currently president of the

American Foreign Service Association, the professional association

and union representing 28,000 serving and retired Foreign Service

personnel. He is a career Foreign Service officer, commissioned in

1986, and has written and commented on diplomatic strategy on

television and in the printed press. Mr. Naland is a former Army

cavalry officer and has served widely in Latin America, State Department headquarters, and the White House.

And, Mr. Burton, Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering has served

as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 1997 to 2001.

He has also served as U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Israel, India,

Jordan, El Salvador, Nigeria, and the United Nations.

Mr. BURTON. Is that all?

Mr. TIERNEY. About 5 minutes in each place.

Ambassador Pickering is a former senior vice president for international affairs at Boeing and is currently vice chairman of Hills

and Co. He is also affiliated with many non-governmental organizations, including the International Crisis Group, the International

Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Welcome to all of you.

Ambassador Pickering, you served a considerable amount of time

in some of those locations as well. Was it 4 years in Jordan, 3 years

in Israel?

I want to thank all of you for your expertise and for your service,

for those that have been in the Foreign Service.

It is the policy of this subcommittee to swear you before you testify, so I ask you to please stand and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TIERNEY. The record will please record that the witnesses all

answered in the affirmative.

Your written statements are going to be put in their entirety in

the record and, Mr. Grossman, the report from your organization

will also be placed in the record. Without objection, so ordered. We

do have a 5-minute time limitation, as you will see on the lights

there. We try to be a little generous with that because what you

have to say is important and we want to hear as much as we can.

Without trying to be rude, if we think you’re going extremely over

the 5-minutes, we may just interrupt and ask you to wind it up at

that point in time.

Ambassador Grossman, we would really like to hear your remarks at this time, please.

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STATEMENTS OF AMBASSADOR MARC GROSSMAN, VICE

CHAIRMAN OF THE COHEN GROUP; DR. JANE LOEFFLER,

VISITING ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF

MARYLAND; JOHN NALAND, PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN

FOREIGN SERVICE ASSOCIATION; AND AMBASSADOR THOMAS PICKERING, VICE CHAIRMAN OF HILLS AND CO.

STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR MARC GROSSMAN

Ambassador GROSSMAN. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.

Mr. Shays and distinguished members of the subcommittee, it is an

honor to testify here today concerning, as you said, Mr. Chairman,

the recent Commission on the Embassy of the Future, which was

sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

And may I just stop for a moment and thank everyone here for

your interest in this subject. And I also heard in the opening statements also a very important point, which is the travel that you are

doing, and the fact that members of this subcommittee get out and

are at Embassies abroad and see people who are serving abroad.

I know that the folks abroad appreciate that and I certainly do as

well.

If I could just talk a little bit about how this Embassy of the Future Commission came to be, I think it would provide, I hope, some

context for our recommendations.

The Embassy of the Future Commission started actually with the

idea of the State Department, and I had the good fortune to be one

of the co-chairs of the Commission, along with Ambassador George

Argyros, who was Ambassador to Spain, and Ambassador Felix

Rohatyn, who was the Ambassador to France. And because neither

of my other co-chairs live in Washington, DC, I will do the best I

can to represent them today.

It is also worthwhile, I think, and you can see from the report,

we had a very distinguished Commission. Ambassador Pickering

was one of our commissioners, and I thank them for their effort.

And I would also say that we had the good fortune to consult with

Dr. Loeffler and a very lot of good cooperation from AFSA as well.

So we thank everybody here and the organizations that we represent.

Mr. Chairman, I very much appreciate the fact that you would

put my written statement and the Commission’s report in the

record. I appreciate that.

As I say, the study was conceived at the request of the State Department. The then Under Secretary for Management, Henrietta

Fore was in touch with CSIS and she asked that organization if it

might be possible for them to survey the State Department’s program to modernize its Embassies and to make recommendations

about how to improve the functions of the Embassies.

I also want to say that the Commission study was funded by the

Una Chapman Cox Foundation, which is a private foundation

whose commitment is to better the life of people in the Foreign

Service.

And as the chairman said, we reported our findings to the State

Department at the end of last year, including a briefing to Secretary Rice, and we made our findings public in October of last

year.

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Mr. Chairman, I would tell you and members of the committee,

that when CSIS first conceived of this report, they were focused on

the buildings, and they envisioned it as a study that would examine the structures of the Embassy, because, as, Mr. Chairman, you

said, there is a debate inside, outside the State Department about

what these structures are all about. Do we have the right ones?

Are they in the right place? How are they affecting the work of our

diplomats.

But as you said in your opening statement with all of those questions, our commissioners, once we got started, recognized that this

agenda was much too narrow and that the issue was really how do

you get the most effective foreign policy and diplomacy for the

United States in the 21st century; and this came to us as an issue

that was more fundamental, bigger, if you will, than the buildings

themselves. And I am not saying the buildings are not important—

and I look forward to the discussion today—but the issue for the

Commission was how do you get diplomats ready to do the 21st

century job. So that was the focus of our work. And if you would

allow me, I will tell you a little bit about it and our recommendations.

First of all, it is really important to recognize, as you did, Mr.

Chairman, as Mr. Shays did and Mr. Lynch did, that the job that

diplomats are doing today is changing. It isn’t the same job that

John Naland and Ambassador Pickering and I had when we joined

the Foreign Service. It is now a job that has to do with activity.

It is not just about reporting and sending back information for others to make decisions; it is about all the active things that our people are required to do, to get out to speak to individuals, to get out

into societies.

That is a different kind of job. It is a 21st century job. Sure,

there are, as we said in the Commission, the traditional things will

continue to be done. You have to go and visit the foreign ministry;

you have to go visit the government. But if you are not out now

with individuals and political parties and students, and in the culture of these societies, we believed, as a Commission, that we were

missing a very big set of opportunities for the United States of

America.

So the first fundamental thing that the Commission dealt with

was that the job of diplomats is changing. And we also recognized

that the State Department, over the past few years, has started to

make some changes. You see what Secretary Albright, Secretary

Powell, Secretary Rice have done, but we concluded that much,

much more needed to be done. And I would say, sir, that one of the

things that we hoped to have in our report was the kind of report

where people could open it up over at the State Department, start

reading and say, yes, we could do these things. It isn’t huge philosophy and a Ph.D. thesis on this, that, or the other thing; these are

recommendations, 20 or 25 recommendations, that people could do

if they had the will, and we hope that they will.

These recommendations go like this. First, people. As Mr. Lynch

said in his opening comments, we concluded that without the right

number of people, everything else isn’t going to work, and the Commission recommends the hiring, over the next 3 years, of 1,079 new

Foreign Service people; and the reason for that is that we believe

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the Department ought to have enough people to train people and

to have people moving without having to have losses at the various

Embassies. And as I say, without this, we believed, nothing else

matters. So this number is a number that we believed in. We believe it is a good number and a number we could justify, but it is

something we hope the State Department will move on, and I hope

also with the support of the Congress.

Our logic then went like this: if it was right, sir, that we needed

more people, you can’t just have more people; they have to do this

new job. And to do this new job, they need two things. First, they

need better training. So they need training in better security practices; they need training in the cultural affairs; they need more language training; they need a way to learn how to interact with these

societies; and, second, that they need new technology. And the

technologies that are out there in order to enhance the job of this

new diplomacy are legion, whether it is BlackBerries or video conferencing or the Internet. These are ways that the State Department could communicate better with itself and also with other government agencies, but also, very importantly, out to societies.

We said, if that is right, more training, more technology, then

you get to the question of platforms, and we concluded that the

State Department’s building program is something that ought to

continue; that people have a right to a safe, secure place to work

where they are working; that the job is now to get them out of this

Embassies and do the job outside of the walls. So, as you said, sir,

American Presence Posts, American Corners Virtual presence

posts. All these things are really important.

If the platforms are more dispersed, what do you know? As the

committee said, you need more authority, as Mr. Shays said, for

Ambassadors, if people are spread out, the Ambassador needs the

authority to run her or his country team.

And a final point that I would make is the question of risk management. We concluded, as a Commission, that it is important, obviously, that people be protected. But you need to shift from a culture of risk avoidance to risk management. And as people are out

farther into these communities, as they are in APPs, as they are

in Virtual Presence Posts, what is going to happen? Well, you increase their risk. But they ought to have better training and better

protection. But we are, as a society, going to have to deal with the

question of pushing our people out into these societies and running

the risk that more people will go into harm’s way even further than

they are today.

Mr. Chairman, I see that my time is up, but we thought that,

collectively, this issue of the right number of people, technology,

training, platforms dispersed and distributed, more Ambassadorial

authority, and a shift from risk avoidance to risk management

would allow us to really say that diplomacy already is a vital tool

of national security for the United States, but we hoped, as a Commission, to be able to enhance that thought and open it up for the

opportunities that are so evidently available for the United States

and the world.

Mr. Chairman, I thank you very much for the opportunity to testify this morning.

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Grossman follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Ambassador. Thank you very much.

Dr. Loeffler.

STATEMENT OF DR. JANE LOEFFLER

Ms. LOEFFLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Shays, for

holding this hearing and inviting me to participate. The remarks

I am making now are a summary of those that I have submitted

for the record.

I am not an architect nor a diplomat. I am a historian who studies architecture and public policy. My observations are based on 25

years of research into America’s Embassy program and its impact

on the international landscape. And there are pictures that go with

this talk, if you want to be distracted a little. They will help.

People ask if architecture really matters when security is such

a huge concern. There is no better illustration that it does matter

than Congress’s instinctively correct decision after 9/11 to maintain

the Capitol as its place of business. You might have relocated to

a lower profile, less accessible setting, or retreated to home districts and chosen to communicate via teleconference, but you did

not. You decided to conduct business here, adding as much security

as possible without impeding the business of government or public

access to government.

During the Civil War, when he might well have stopped construction of the great Capitol dome, President Lincoln did not.

‘‘When the people see the dome rising, he declared, it will be a sign

that we intend the Union to go on.’’ Lincoln recognized the power

of architecture. Congress has recognized it. When it comes to America’s presence abroad, we must recognize it too.

Good design conveys good intentions. Well-designed buildings

represent the best of modern technology, show our respect for countries that host us around the world, and proclaim our confidence

in the future. Sadly, OBO’s program, with its cookie-cutter approach to production—which you have mentioned, Mr. Chairman,

conveys neither good will nor strength.

To the contrary, it is dotting the global landscape with Embassies that resemble big box stores, only they are bigger, more isolated, and far more forbidding than any store designed to attract

business or sell a product. And an SED does not belong everywhere

any more than a Wal-Mart belongs in Georgetown.

With globalization, when we face the world, we face ourselves,

and what we see matters. The standard Embassy design, the SED,

is an expedient solution that ignores the message it sends. More

than that, it utilizes a design/build process that gives direct control

to individual contractors, weakens the government’s negotiating

role, and minimizes the contribution of architects and other design

professionals whose skills are needed now more than ever.

For these reasons and more, experts warn that soaring maintenance costs will plague our new Embassies. Poor oversight and cut

corners are bad news for those who have to live and work in such

facilities, and for those who maintain them. It might be OK if these

buildings were going to be replaced in 10 or 20 years, like shopping

malls here at home, but they are not.

No one would argue that security should be compromised for aesthetic purposes, but as GSA has shown here at home, security is

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bettered by design excellence. A good overseas example is the new

British Embassy in Yemen, which not only meets security requirements, but is also a model of sustainability in a desert climate. We

can point to nothing comparable. Anyone who has seen the American flag flying atop U.S. Embassies in Prague or London knows

what Lincoln meant when he compared the Capitol to a symbol of

strength and a beacon of freedom. And that little arrow in the slide

points to the American flag that flew over Prague all through the

cold war and was considered a symbol of strength in that city and

a beacon of freedom. It is in the picture, but it is hard to see.

Are isolated Embassy enclaves really ‘‘platforms for diplomacy,’’

as some maintain, or just platforms for maintaining an overseas

presence? Do such facilities support or undermine the expansion of

public diplomacy, a key weapon in the war of ideas? Is a design formulated for Kampala really right for The Hague? These questions

call for answers, and in seeking answers we would do well to be

guided by the same thinking as those who strive to maintain the

openness of the Capitol.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer recently spoke out on this

subject because of his concern that we are allowing security experts

to make too many of our decisions about public buildings. ‘‘We’ll

end up with buildings that look like our Embassy in Chile,’’ he

said, deploring it as a ‘‘fortress.’’ It is not just about money, he

said, it is about finding people who will listen, who understand

that Embassies make ‘‘a statement that the United States is a democracy and not walling itself off from the world.’’

Former Ambassador to India, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, addressed these issues in 1999. Senator Moynihan saw architecture

as a national policy issue and called for an ongoing conversation on

how to balance security and openness at home and abroad. That

conversation has not yet occurred, but with your help it can begin

now.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If, with your permission, I can have

a few more comments that I would like to add to this statement.

Mr. TIERNEY. Go ahead.

Ms. LOEFFLER. One, on minimizing the role of—six comments.

On minimizing the role of architects in the Embassy production

process, it should be noted that OBO no longer even hires architects for individual projects. The exception are only the high-profile

projects such as Berlin and Beijing. And they also abandoned the

highly respected peer review panel that served the State Department so well between 1954 and 2004, in its 50th anniversary year,

and, instead, created a panel of industry representatives who vied

for OBO contracts and simply rubber-stamped the director’s policies.

Two, architectural sophistication and cultural expectation are serious factors to reckon with. Both of these matter in places like

Oslo or The Hague, both of which are slated to receive SEDs in the

near future. These are not Third World countries with undeveloped

infrastructure; they are places where historic preservation and

urban design are taken seriously. We would not want to return to

the architectural ego trips of the 1950’s, but we must ask if a big

box prototype will further our interest in Norway or The Netherlands.

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Three, design excellence can contain costs and enhance security,

while standardization can lead to the opposite. One example, OBO

buys all its windows from one vendor. They all meet the same specifications. That single window is engineered to withstand blasts at

30 meters, the minimum setback for all Embassy perimeter walls,

but it is being used everywhere, even at distances far exceeding 30

meters. Large Embassy compounds have many buildings, some situated far from perimeter walls. This means that a costly fixture is

being installed many places, where a less costly one would meet all

requirements.

Four, the future of Embassies, the right priorities are offensive,

not defensive. It is far easier to spend money on security improvements to protect buildings than it is to devise and implement programs, such as those that Ambassador Grossman has cited, that

might diminish the threat of attack and boost respect for America

and what it stands for. After all, that should be our first priority.

Unfortunately, it is easier to install more ballards of blast protection than it is to devise ways to make such barriers unnecessary.

Five, programs designed to decentralize services and reach more

people, such as those outlined in the CSIS report, will pose

logistical challenges unmet by conventional solutions. It is worth

asking whether the isolated fortress-like Embassy even provides

the security it advertises if many diplomats must travel outside its

confines to do their work and many employees live beyond its

walls.

And, six, Congress is the one that determines our face abroad.

The only reason the building program expanded so dramatically in

the 1950’s was because it was funded through flows in counterpart

funds, not new tax dollars. The only reason it expanded so dramatically in the last decade was to avoid a repeat of the tragic bombings of our Embassies in East Africa. That is reason enough to

build better buildings, of course, but a country like ours can do better at what we are doing.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Loeffler follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Doctor. You found a unique way to get

around the 5-minute rule, and I commend you for it.

Ms. LOEFFLER. I am sorry. I was put up to it by——

Mr. TIERNEY. We are really appreciative of it; we wanted to hear

what you had to say. But whenever I see colored paper hidden underneath the white statement, I am going to know what is coming

from now on.

Mr. Naland, please, your remarks will be welcome.

STATEMENT OF JOHN NALAND

Mr. NALAND. Thank you, sir. Mr. Chairman, subcommittee members, the American Foreign Service Association welcomes this opportunity to discuss the future of U.S. Embassies. We are grateful

to you for convening this hearing. In fact, we are grateful for any

interest given to diplomacy and development assistance.

Our Embassies are bricks-and-mortar platforms for projecting

U.S. influence in foreign lands. As such, their design, location, and

accessibility certainly matter. But as the CSIS Embassy of the Future report stresses, diplomacy is foremost about people: our diplomats and their capacity to carry out their missions. Thus, I will

focus on the human element of the Embassy of the future.

The Foreign Service is a worldwide available corps of professionals with abilities essential to foreign policy development and

implementation. Foreign Service members need to possess a range

of abilities, including foreign language fluency, area knowledge,

management skills, public diplomacy skills, and job-specific functional expertise.

Unfortunately, due to chronic understaffing and chronic underinvestment in training, the Foreign Service at State and USAID

has long been shortchanged on many of the prerequisites for its

own effectiveness.

For example, recent data show that the Foreign Service is below

85 percent staffing, short 1,015 positions for overseas and domestic

assignments, and short 1,079 positions for training, transit, and

temporary needs. A 2005 GAO report found that 29 percent of language-designated positions were not filled with language proficient

staff.

As a result of understaffing and under-investment in training, today’s Foreign Service does not have to a sufficient degree the

knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for diplomacy and foreign

assistance. Future U.S. diplomacy will suffer unless the White

House and Congress views staffing our Embassies as being no less

vital than staffing our military units. Future diplomacy will suffer

unless professional development of our diplomats is seen as being

no less vital than the professional development of our military.

If calling for more resources seems self-serving coming from the

president of AFSA, please let me quote also recent remarks of the

Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates: ‘‘The Department of Defense

has taken on many burdens that might have been assumed by civilian agencies in the past. The Military has done an admiral job,

but it is no replacement for the real thing—civilian involvement

and expertise. What is clear to me is that there is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national

security.’’

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Secretary Gates clearly recognizes the value of a well-staffed and

well-trained diplomatic corps. Thus, as we think about the Embassy of the future, we must not lose sight of the human dimension. Future U.S. diplomacy will suffer unless human capital deficits are addressed.

No matter how well trained U.S. diplomats are, their effectiveness will be limited if they are unwilling or unable to get out beyond the Embassy walls to conduct face-to-face diplomacy. Fortunately, the Foreign Service has a proud tradition of working the

alleys and offices of dangerous foreign cities to promote U.S. interests. But our diplomats face an ever-growing shadow of political violence. Just this month, USAID officer John Granville, from Mr.

Higgins’ district, was brutally assassinated in Sudan and a U.S.

Embassy vehicle was bombed in Lebanon.

I have full confidence that my colleagues will continue to volunteer for dangerous assignments and will get out beyond the Embassy walls to interact with foreign publics. To do so, however, they

need more training and full staffing. For example, a diplomat who

lacks fluency in the local language may well be hesitant to make

contact with a wide variety of segments of the local society. A diplomat who received a fraction of the physical security training that

is routinely given to intelligence community officers may well feel

ill at ease going out to meet a contact. An Ambassador with an

understaffed security office may be unable to safeguard the members of his or her mission. Thus, before existing security procedures

are revised in the name of risk management, these training and

staffing gaps must be closed first.

Finally, I must mention an ever-growing disincentive to service

abroad that threatens the long-term health of the Foreign Service

and, with it, the future of U.S. diplomatic engagement. I refer to

the exclusion of overseas Foreign Service members from receiving

the locality pay salary adjustment given to other Federal employees. Groups such as the intelligence community officers receive the

same basic pay overseas that they receive while in the United

States. However, our Foreign Service currently takes a nearly 21

percent cut in base pay when they transfer abroad.

Both AFSA and the Bush administration are seeking a legislative correction. I thank Representative Van Hollen of this subcommittee for his support in trying to solve the problem. I encourage others to follow suit.

Thank you again for holding this hearing.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Naland follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Naland. I think we have all quoted

Secretary Gates a little bit here, but I think one of the more interesting comments at the end of that expression was that he thought

that he would be happy to transfer some of his budget—which is

almost $700 billion this year—to these other causes, and if we are

starting to think about smart power and some of the other hearings

that we have had in front of this panel that may be something we

all should take a look at, re-allotting some of that money so that

we get the best national security posture out there, using all of our

resources.

Ambassador Pickering, please.

STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR THOMAS PICKERING

Ambassador PICKERING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members

of the committee. It is an honor to be asked to speak with you

today about the Embassy of the future in its broadest possible context.

I want to try to take the view from 30,000 feet, having just come

from the aviation industry, and talk a little bit about the conditions

which I think shape the focus that you have on the Embassy of the

future, some of the steps that I think need to be taken to make our

diplomacy more efficient both from Washington and the field.

Certainly, everything that I mention here as a problem facing

the United States is interconnected as never before. Each of these

issues is related one to the other and has an influence on the other.

I think that we have never faced more difficult problems in our

history than we do now. I would note, to begin with, that

globalization itself has changed the focus of diplomacy and its role.

And, unfortunately, while it has benefited many, it has left many

more impoverished.

We also have, obviously, a leadership role to play in the international community, given our unrivaled power as an economy and

in the military area, and we are seeing today some of the influences of changes in our economic situation around the world, as

well as new and old states failing. We have specific new challenges

with states like China, India, and Russia, which can become partners or protagonists, depending upon how our diplomacy deals with

them. Similarly, we, with the United Nations and others, have a

major role to continue to prop up and help states in Africa and

elsewhere which need assistance and help, states which, if we are

successful, can move to managing these problems on its own.

Terror will continue to be a tactic widely used against our

friends, ourselves, and our partners around the world. And we have

challenges in the health field with HIV/AIDS, with TB, with malaria, with SARS. Just a few months ago we might have happily

ignored some of the interconnectedness of our economies around

the world. Today, as I just mentioned, the sub-prime crisis and its

ramifications is not going to let us forget that. And nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction remain major problems

for us, just to list a few on the row.

Our role in the world, which I mentioned a moment ago, will continue, I believe, to be foremost. We may be challenged over time

by individual states or coalitions, and even while we occupy this

particularly significant position, we are not omnipotent. Much of

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what will have to be done in the world will be accomplished by diplomacy, working and acting with other states. Where we choose

to lead, we will be very, very significant, perhaps in some ways the

vital party in that effort. Where we choose not to lead, we will be

a vital player in making things happen. And where we choose to

oppose, we have an enormous possibility of making sure that

things don’t happen.

The result is that while we may have been in an unipolar moment for a fleeting time in the last decade, what is true for the future is what we will need cooperation, and leadership and diplomacy is the hallmark of that. Force is important, but it will not

solve all our problems, as we have found out. And, in fact, diplomacy not backed up by the use of force is going to be increasingly

ineffective. At the same time, the most important value of force is

to be there, but not have to be used; and diplomacy can play a role

in making that happen.

What makes for successful diplomacy for us is the careful integration of our people, of our policies, and our presence around the

world, and that is what your hearing is all about. Without these

factors operating smoothly and together, the ability to deliver in

the field, out at the spear point, in the Embassies will be certainly

less than ideal.

Our Embassies and our missions represent us with people, with

organizations, with countries and nations around the world, and as

Marc has pointed out, this particular, most dynamic aspect of our

diplomacy has increased over the last 10 years in ways that we

never foresaw back at the end of the last century.

Even more important than the posts themselves, the physical

fabric of which, as you pointed out, Mr. Chairman, is emblematic

of our country, are the people who serve us there. These two are

inextricably intertwined and, indeed, I think it would be safe to

conclude that good people in poor buildings are far and away much

better than the opposite. Not that any of us would recommend that

we not provide the kind of excellent facilities and tools to do the

job that make good people even more effective in our national interests.

There are specific recommendations in many of the reports that

you will see that are before you and that are very important. I

would just mention, in summing up, a few.

In Washington, we need to find new ways to bring our government together. Too much stovepiping has once again resumed. The

1947 National Security Act was designed to try to find ways to prevent that. If our departments and agencies aren’t working together,

our diplomacy in the field can be much less effective.

The State Department itself now has an unusual opportunity to

bring new and, I think, important changes to bringing our diplomacy together. We now look at diplomacy in four fields: our traditional diplomacy through Embassies, our public diplomacy, our development diplomacy through AID, and our new efforts to provide

for stabilization and reconstruction. They all should go ahead in my

view, under the umbrella of the Secretary’s leadership.

There are many challenging and complex tasks to be performed

in this area. The fact is that the most vital for you and the most

vital for us in seeing how this work can be carried out by our EmVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:38 Mar 24, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\47996.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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bassies in the field is the funding issue. It has been mentioned before, and I want to reiterate to you again, that neither our Embassies nor our diplomacy at large, and all the various aspects of that,

can be successful if they are not funded in ways that bring together

and make more synergistic and capable those people who have to

do that job overseas.

My written statement contains many recommendations; I won’t

repeat them here. I will just say that it is an honor and pleasure

to be asked to come, and I look forward to addressing your questions.

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Pickering follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you all very much. We are all pleased to

have such great expertise and experience before us.

We are going to move on to the question period here. We are

under a 5-minute rule; 5 minutes for the questions and answers.

With the number of people here, I am certain that we can probably

have more than one round, and hopefully get some good information on the record and for our information.

Let me, if I might, just begin by asking everyone, except Dr.

Loeffler, the question of what your opinion is of the types of standard buildings that are now going up, like the one in Baghdad and

others?

Ambassador Grossman, did your report make any recommendation with respect to the design and the architecture; whether those

should continue as are or whether they should be done on a different basis?

Ambassador GROSSMAN. Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very

much for the——

Mr. TIERNEY. You will have to put your mic on, I am sorry.

Ambassador GROSSMAN. Thank you for the question. First, let me

say that I think, from the perspective of the Commission, we decided that Baghdad was unique, that if we spent our time figuring

out whether Baghdad was right, wrong, or indifferent, that it

would distort the recommendations of the Commission. So I tell

you that we did not take a position on Embassy Baghdad, and I

just want to be clear about that.

But, yes, sir, there was a huge conversation that went on in the

Commission about the Embassies, and here is what we came to as

a recommendation. First of all, we believe that the State Department building program ought to continue; that people have a right

to be in a building that is safe and secure and efficient; and in

countries in which the United States of America is represented,

people ought to have that kind of a building. But we said that it

should do so under a certain number of considerations.

First of all, that the Department has to take the approach, as Dr.

Loeffler said, to combine the questions of security and design; and

we felt that there were new ways to do that.

Second, we also believe that the Secretary of State should be the

person who, in the end, had the capacity to decide where Embassies should be located. And there is a huge debate going on in the

Department about where these things should be, and we thought

the Secretary herself or himself should be able to make that decision.

Third thing we said was that as she, currently, as the Secretary

of State makes that decision, that a key factor is that locations remote from urban centers ought to be avoided wherever possible. We

recognize that there were sometimes when that wasn’t going to be

possible, but as a principle we thought that the remote locations

were a disadvantage to our diplomacy.

Next, we in the Commission said that there are architectural features and new ways in thinking about architecture that ought to

be included in these design features that meet, as we said in the

Commission, security needs and are consistent with the American

values of openness. Because, as you said, sir, one of the things that

we were worried about is that we give off this sense of fear.

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And I would just, as a parenthesis, if I could, recognize that it

isn’t just the new buildings. If you go to Embassy London, for example, today, or Embassy Paris today, those are buildings that

have been there a long time, but they also now, I think, give off

this sense of a closed or closing American society.

One other important point, and that is that we also highlighted—

because it shows the importance of American values—that these

Embassies ought to be at the leading edge of environmental standards, and that this is a LEED standard, as it turns out. There is

am Embassy in Sophia now that meets these standards, but more

and more ought to do that because it shows the U.S. commitment

to those values as well.

Thank you, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Ambassador.

Ambassador Pickering, you were on that group, so I assume that

you either filed a dissent on this or you are in full agreement with

Ambassador Grossman.

Ambassador PICKERING. I am in full agreement with what the

committee reported on the Commission report, and I had two

thoughts that I think ought to be considered by you all as you look

at this question.

One is that it seemed to me lamentable that we didn’t do two

things with the standard box: that we didn’t submit it to an architectural contest and we didn’t provide that the standard box could

have different facades in different places; that is, standard interior,

standard security, but maybe a public face that was more appropriate to the location where it was being put and more appropriate

to being symbolic to the United States of America.

The second issue is what I would call the hidden hand of funds.

I mentioned it a moment ago. But we all know that location was

not just a question of security, but how much money we had to

spend. And while obviously buying a large expansive property in

the center of Tokyo would be, I think, wildly expensive, beyond the

range of comprehensive, I know in a couple of cases—because I

worked on them when I was Under Secretary—had we been able

to have more funding, we could have provided more setback closer

to the center of the city. We could have been a park-like structure,

but accessible to the people who needed to have access. And there

I agree with Marc, we need to provide different kinds of access for

different functions within the standard Embassy compound. To the

extent that we can do that, I think it would go a long way.

But those are two or three personal ideas.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Naland, do you have any comments on that?

Mr. NALAND. Yes, sir. The life of the rank and file Foreign Service, I believe, is that beggars can’t be choosers. After the Beirut

bombings in 1983 and 1984, there was a flurry of discussion about

the need for secure Embassies, but then funding never came. So

after the tragedies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the Foreign

Service was just ecstatic that the Congress, year after year, has appropriated funds for Embassy construction. So I think we were just

so overwhelmed that the Congress was going forward with the

funding that perhaps that is where people like me kind of stop

thinking about the issue.

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The President nominated, and the Senate confirmed, a very

strong-willed person to head the overseas building office. He

pushed through a lot of construction that we are very thankful for.

But now that he is gone, perhaps it is a time to ask some of these

questions, and the issue of funding is critical. We need a new Embassy in Mexico City, but to buy a square block in Mexico City, let

alone Tokyo, would cost a lot of money.

So I totally agree that we need to look at this more. I just hope

that the funding continues. And if more funding is needed to buy

land in the middle of the center of a city, then we will need that

funding.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Doctor, we are going to give you a chance to fit back later, but

it was basically your work that we were commenting on, so I hope

you don’t feel left out on that.

Mr. Burton, 5 minutes.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I won’t take the full 5

minutes. I have been to a lot of our Embassies around the world.

I have been on the Foreign Affairs Committee for about 25 years,

and it seems to me that the architectural aspect is nice, but security is much more important. You know, I think about—when you

mentioned Lincoln a while ago, Ms. Loeffler, you know, they used

to be able to walk in the White House and wait for the President,

get an appointment and go in and see him, and he used to walk

down the street. Harry Truman used to walk down the street doing

his exercise. You can’t do that any more. So the world has changed

dramatically. And it seems to me that the most important thing is

to have security for our people, architecturally pleasant if possible,

but it should be primarily of concern that we have security for the

people.

It seems to me a more important issue, in addition to the buildings being secure so that the attacks can’t be successful in killing

personnel in the Embassies, is that we have more trained and better trained personnel. You said you are short over 1,000 people. It

seems to me better trained personnel—and you can all comment on

this—better trained personnel and more personnel who have the

ability to bring leaders in these various countries into the Embassy, if it is not safe to go outside, and to discuss with them issues

that are very important as far as our relations with those countries.

You mentioned going out and shopping in the areas, and those

sorts of things, and that would be nice, but being realistic in this

world, it is very difficult to see that accomplished. So it seems to

me, of all the things you were talking about, security is No. 1; and,

No. 2, making sure we have diplomats that are conversant with the

culture, knowledgeable about the various dialects so they can communicate knowing about the people who are leaders in the community so they can bring them in and discuss the issues of major importance so that we have much better relations. Those are just my

observations, but I would be happy to hear what you have to say

about that in your comments.

Mr. TIERNEY. To whom are you directing that, Mr. Burton?

Mr. BURTON. Any of them. Ms. Loeffler, you can go back to Lincoln, if you want to.

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Ms. LOEFFLER. Well, I can’t go back that far. I totally agree with

you that we have to be protected and that the world has changed.

We are dealing with a very changed circumstance, for sure. I only

want to point out that, really, architecture and security are not

mutually exclusive. What I am talking about, they can support one

another. And, in fact, you can take examples of even a sustainable

design, for instance, such as Ambassador Grossman mentioned. If

you could have an Embassy be self-sufficient, if it could have its

own energy supply, if it was able to recycle and so forth, it could

be a safer place; it wouldn’t be dependent, it wouldn’t be—if, God

forbid, it were taken over, as some of them have been, people

wouldn’t be suffering for lack of water and so forth. That sort of

thing. There are lots of advantages in trying to be self-reliant and

also energy efficient.

But the main thing is that security can be augmented. And in

these places, such as Ambassador Pickering mentioned, where the

land is difficult to come by, it takes even more creativity to figure

out how to provide security in a place which maybe doesn’t have

15 acres to work with. So you really need more creative decisions

and input to accomplish those security goals, which are, as you

said, the most important.

Ambassador GROSSMAN. Mr. Burton, thank you very much. I just

wanted to agree with the points that you made. As I said in my

opening presentation, our logic was that if you don’t have the right

number of people, all the rest of this is not as relevant. And we

felt that the number 1,079 was a defensible number for precisely

the numbers that you said, is that it would allow for people to have

better training, not just in the languages and the culture, but also

in security. And so the logic of the report is you have to deal with

the people question first; training and risk management; and then

the building issue is part of this 21st century diplomacy. Security

is obviously crucial, but as you said and others have said before

you, it is the people.

And you are not talking about that much money. We took a look

at the resource implications in the report, and if you were to set

out today to hire 1,079 people over 3 years, it is $198 million. I am

not saying that is not a lot of money, but in the comparison of what

else we do as a country, if you could solve this State Department

personnel problem for $198 million over 3 years, I think it would

be something well worth doing.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. NALAND. Sir, speaking as the union guy representing the

Foreign Service, I just have to say that perfect security is always

going to be impossible. You read a profile of someone like Ambassador Ryan Crocker, and no matter where he has been, whatever

tough city it has been, he has always managed to sneak out the

back door of the Embassy to go down to meet with his contact to

figure out what is going on. Maybe he is not doing that today, but

as a junior officer and a mid-level officer. So we need a Foreign

Service that does that, that does take risks.

The absent memorial plaque has 225 names on it of people who

have died in the line of duty and, unfortunately, there are going

to be more as years go on. But we have to get outside the walls.

Give us the securest walls you can. Give us diplomatic security

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agents and obviously intelligence community colleagues to get an

idea what is going on out there, but at some point there is a continuum with kind of, you know, domestic Civil Service employees on

one side and maybe Navy Seals on the other end, and the Foreign

Service is more in the military continuum; they are not at the

Navy Seal end, but we are in harm’s way and we need to be in

harm’s way. Reasonable risk, obviously, but speaking as the union

guy, I am not going to say, you know, put us all in Wichita, KS

and we will be safe. We have to be out there.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. In a conversation we had before the

hearing, Mr. Burton, I think Ambassador Pickering put it right; he

said the best security is to have no Embassy at all.

Mr. Lynch, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Naland, it is ironic that you mentioned Ambassador Crocker.

I was with him last week in Baghdad and he mentioned, as well,

that he was stationed in Beirut when the Marine barracks were

bombed. So while you emphasize the need for some flexibility for

the Ambassador to move around, there is also some instances, glaring instances of the need for greater security. I wanted to ask you

about the idea of these American Presence Posts. This is an initiative that is cited in the report The Embassy of the Future. I gather

it is an initiative begun under Ambassador Felix Rohatyn, and this

is what an American Presence Post is, the establishment of a small

office with one diplomatic officer and a small number of locally

hired staff placed in more remote areas in some of these countries.

And having just come back from Lebanon and Afghanistan and

Pakistan, I am concerned that these APPs are just another word

for hostages. It would be, I think, extremely, extremely risky to use

something like this, given the current environment, and I just have

some real misgivings about this, and hoping you can help me with

this, any of you who have foreign Embassy service, especially Ambassador Pickering. You have had a fair share of it yourself. How

do you think this thing would work?

Ambassador PICKERING. Mr. Lynch, I am glad you raised the

question, and it is an important one. I was an early supporter of

it; I worked with Marc Grossman with Ambassador Rohatyn in setting up the post in France. If you ask me should we do the same

in Iraq or Afghanistan, I would say no. I would be certifiably loony

to do that. But there are a number of places around the world

where the threat is more moderate, where we have large cities.

When I served in Nigeria, we had something like six cities over a

million. No one American could name even three of them. But they

were extremely important for what was going on in the country,

they helped to set the political tone, they stimulated the economy.

There are cities in China, many of them, like that, where we have

almost no contact.

Ambassador Rohatyn proceeded with this and we, in fact, used

that particular approach, which was low key; apartments in upper

stories connected with a small office, basically very few office calls

on the individual. The individual was out and around. But the

mayor knew them, the head of the local French Department knew

them, the business community knew them, the NGO community

knew them, the American community knew them; and they were

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extremely important. We gave them no classified work to do. If

they had anything that was classified, they could take the train to

Paris and spend a day at the Embassy.

I wanted to do that in a number of places in Russia where we

had very low coverage. I faced the problem that, in order to do

that, we had to come to the Congress to set up a consulate. That

was a year and a half or 2 year proposition, and as soon as we

mentioned that, I had 35 American agencies who all wanted to assign people to that one-man post.

We have gotten away from those. We would obviously watch the

security very carefully. We would train the individual, as Marc’s report has discussed, in the best security practices of the U.S. Government wherever they are, as John Naland said, drawing on some

of our colleagues’ training from the intelligence community. We

would use local employees to help us understand and there would

be absolutely no prohibition on the individual leaving, going to

ground, or finding other premises if there were a peak-up in security problems; and that would be something we would watch very

carefully with the intelligence community.

And we think that in two-thirds of the world, at least, all of

those places where we are not now restricting, say, families for security reasons, these kinds of posts would do a great deal. And Ambassador Rohatyn put it very, very clearly, he said, I am willing to

give you the people from my Embassy complement because I feel

these are 100 percent more productive than they are working here

in the Embassy compound in Paris. And, indeed, that has been the

significance of this and it is the reason why we have supported it.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Ambassador.

Thank you, Mr. Lynch.

Mr. Higgins, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. HIGGINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just in reading and listening to the testimony, I am struck by the emphasis on physical

plants, on infrastructure. And while there seems to be a reference

to the human infrastructure that represents American diplomacy,

there certainly should be, I think, much more. I think America’s

problem today is not necessarily Iraq, it is not Afghanistan; it is

America’s isolation in the world. We are in these places virtually

on our own. Sure, there are other countries that are represented

there, but disproportionately. America’s presence is profound.

In traveling to Afghanistan and Pakistan with Mr. Lynch and

Mr. Platts late last year, I was also struck by the American military and their emphasis not only on their military duties, but more

on the humanitarian aspect of their job. I think that is very, very

refreshing. And you weren’t hearing necessarily from diplomats,

but from the military personnel themselves that their mission is

equal parts humanitarian and equal parts military.

And when we talk about buildings and fortresses, reference was

made to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was a great admirer of

American architecture, primarily because architecture says something about a community; it says something about a nation. And

I think when you look at these fortresses that represent American

Embassies throughout the world, it conveys a sense of isolation.

And in diplomacy, what it is you need is constructive engagement.

57

You know, the author Fareed Zakaria has said, in diplomacy, style

is the substance.

I know that it was referenced in the chairman’s opening statements, and Mr. Naland’s as well, about John Michael Granville.

John Michael Granville was not only a constituent, he was a kid

from the neighborhood. He grew up a couple of streets away from

me. And I spoke with his mom a couple of times on New Year’s

Day. John was murdered coming home from a New Year’s Eve

party at the British Embassy in Khartoum. He was shot five times.

He died about 3 hours after the incident, and his driver was killed

instantly.

But it was amazing, you know, his mom’s admonishment to me

as a representative of the U.S. Government, don’t feel sorry for us

that her son, who she spoke with the night before, always said that

the importance of his work, the importance of his work—peace and

reconciliation—in this particular case trying to reconcile the peace

agreement, the 2005 peace agreement between Northern and

Southern Sudan, after 21 years of bloody civil war—but the importance of his work far outweighed the danger of it. While a family

was grieving, a Nation and a community was grieving, there was

also this sense of purpose that John Granville’s life had represented, and I think it was an extraordinary testament to the

great work that diplomats are doing throughout the world.

John was with the Agency for International Development, U.S.

Agency for International Development, but when you look at what

is happening at places like Darfur and other places in the continent of Africa and other places in the Middle East, it is these

kinds of people, that are doing the work of peace and reconciliation,

who are most susceptible to violence. It is them, it is the non-governmental organizations. Because I think when they are doing important work in tough neighborhoods, they become most susceptible

to violence because they are truth tellers. And when you look at

what is happening in Darfur, the last thing the Sudanese government wants is westerners to tell the rest of the world what is really

going on there. And journalists and humanitarian workers and diplomats are thus susceptible to extraordinary, extraordinary violence.

So your thoughts on those things. And thank you for being here.

Mr. TIERNEY. To whom are you directing your comments? Because there won’t be enough time, I don’t think, for anybody to respond to that.

Mr. HIGGINS. However far it gets.

Mr. TIERNEY. All right, Ambassador Grossman.

Ambassador GROSSMAN. Mr. Higgins, I certainly won’t be as eloquent as you in talking about these issues or about Mr. Granville,

but if I could just make three points, I think.

First, like with Mr. Burton, I agree with you completely that the

issue here is about the people, and Mr. Lynch said this in his opening statement. As I said in my statement, this Embassy of the Future project started with people thinking about it is going to be

about the buildings. And the buildings are important, but it is not

about the buildings. It is about the people. And it is about, sir, as

you said, the jobs that these people do. And what we tried to convey in our report is that the job is changing, and that it isn’t the

58

same job that I joined when I started in the Foreign Service and

popped out 30 years later in retirement. But it is a different job,

and a job that Mr. Granville is doing and others were doing. So it

is about the people. And then it is about if you have the right number of people, you can have the right technology and the right

training, and then you can have the right kind of platforms and,

very importantly, about security.

Second, I think this issue that you raised, sir, about how the

military is thinking about its job in a new way is very relevant to

the point that John Naland made earlier, and my suggestion to

you, or my proposition, is that 4 or 5 years from now we are going

to continue to see the lines intersect between what our military

forces are doing and what our diplomatic forces, if you would allow

me, are doing; and that it won’t, sir, be, as John said, we are not

all going to become Navy Seals. But the job of representing the

United States abroad is becoming a more unified operation. It is

becoming, in the names of Goldwater-Nichols, more purple, and everybody is kind of working to the same task; and I think that is

a really positive thing and something that we ought to do all we

can to encourage.

Third point that I would just make is that I just wanted to say

that the parents of your constituent, of Mr. Granville, I think hit

the nail on the head. Before the hearing we were talking with the

chairman. When I was the Ambassador to Turkey, 1994 to 1997,

I had people who would say to me—human rights officers, and they

would say, I want to get out now and go out to Diyarbakir and

spend a few weeks out among the people, and I would say, too dangerous; I can’t talk to your parents if you get hurt or you get killed.

But I would say, sir, that after 9/11, the level of requirement for

the risk has gone up. So now, if I was the Ambassador to Turkey

and I had somebody who was better trained and I had somebody

who was, as Ambassador Pickering said, had someplace to fall back

to, and I had some confidence that the mission, as with Mr. Granville, was of the highest priority, and then, God forbid, if somebody

got hurt out there, I would be able to face their parents and say,

yes, I did this. I took these precautions, but I made this decision

based upon my analysis of the interest of the United States, and,

yes, I took that risk and there was this challenge.

So I think you make a very important set of points, and I appreciate the chance to comment on them.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much, Ambassador.

Anybody else you want to hear from on that, Mr. Higgins? I

mean, that was a pretty complete conversation. If not, we will move

on to Mr. Welch.

Mr. Welch.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you.

I thank each of you for being here. I have done a little bit of traveling in my 1 year and I am amazed at how wonderful our Embassy personnel are, and discouraged that we don’t have more of

them doing the job.

Let me talk a little bit about training, because I think that obviously is extremely important.

Ambassador Grossman, you have a lot of experience in this.

What is it that we need to do, very concretely and specifically, in

59

order to provide a level of training that will meet the current need

for our diplomatic corps to be much more influential in our affairs?

Ambassador GROSSMAN. Thank you, sir. The most important

thing that could be done right away would be to hire the 1,079 people. And the reason I say that, Mr. Welch, is not to avoid the question of training, but to make this point. Every military unit that

you can have an arrangement with has a 15 percent float-for-training-in-transit, and that means that they are not stealing from the

operational requirement, the readiness of that unit to have people

get the training that they need either to do their current job or to

do the job that they might be going on to.

When Secretary Powell came to the State Department——

Mr. WELCH. No, I understand about the——

Ambassador GROSSMAN. Oh, I am sorry.

Mr. WELCH. I actually want to hear about—let’s assume we hire

those folks.

Ambassador GROSSMAN. That would be great.

Mr. WELCH. What do we need to do to train them?

Ambassador GROSSMAN. I think, first of all, that would be a

great assumption. Thank you very much. I think there are three

very important points. First of all, language training. There needs

to be a fundamental commitment on the part of the Department,

and I hope supported by the Congress, on language training. Second would be the use of new technologies to increase, enhance the

capacity of our ability to deal with individuals around societies, and

to get out among societies. And third, sir, would be security training, so that as we ask people to take more risk, to be out in societies, that they have the capacity to understand the things that

they are looking at and protect themselves.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you very much.

Ambassador Pickering, I have been to a couple of the big Embassies and my sense, in talking to young Embassy personnel, is that

as much as the security precautions that are being taken are,

maybe, necessary, they are causing them great frustration, because

people—my sense—who go into the line of work that you have

spent a lifetime doing really want to get out and want to interact,

and to have to only go out when it is ‘‘mission critical’’ sort of defeats the whole process of becoming—of building trust that a successful career diplomat has to do by kind of acceptance.

And the frustration I have—and I would really be interested in

your comments—is that we are kind of barricading our folks in and

not letting them do their job, and it really means that foreign policy is much more politically driven by the necessities of whoever is

in the White House, with diminishing significant input from folks

who have devoted their careers to trying to get it right in these

countries where we have interests.

Ambassador PICKERING. Mr. Welch, I agree with your conclusion

and, indeed, some of the ramifications. Let me just add a few

points.

We all know that there are posts where we are locked in, and

those are posts where we have ongoing battle, high security threat.

And, obviously, it is up to the Ambassadors and the State Department to right-size those in light of the job and to recognize we have

limited capacities.

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A friend of mine from the intelligence community said to me the

other day that we in the intelligence community need more State

Department insight, more State Department reporting, more State

Department contacts. This was because, traditionally—and I think

it is still true—about 80 percent of the intelligence base of the

United States came from State Department reporting, open and

classified.

Mr. WELCH. Right.

Ambassador PICKERING. And I think that is now missed. That is

just one indicator of the value of being able to get out and understand what is going on.

Wherever I worked, I attempted to encourage my officers to understand the opposition, to be in touch with the opposition, to know

what they were thinking; to understand what currents of opinion

were out there, what people were thinking in various areas. And

it always seemed to me as just a factor of evaluation that you got

twice as much value for an hour outside the Embassy as you did

inside the Embassy, and that empowering people to do that.

Russia was a huge country, 11 time zones. Travel was difficult.

But we did everything we could to encourage people to travel, to

know and understand what was going on across the vastness of

that country as a way of understanding what kinds of things were

motivating folks in the Kremlin and in the political sphere and in

terms of the economy.

So I agree with you.

I think that, of course, policy is made in Washington, but the

field must play what I would call nearly a determinative role in

Washington’s understanding of what is possible and what might be

the options; and without that synergy it doesn’t work. If the field

is blind or half blind, the policy can turn out to be something like

that and we have very significant issues.

I would just like to address one other point. Our military friends,

because they have the funds and the presence, are doing jobs that

are very important, but which, over time, at least in terms of the

detailed training, they were not brought up to do. I think they are

doing it well. And I don’t want to have this as a note of criticism.

But I do believe that the people who spend their lives working on

these missions need, obviously, to have the resources, the presence,

the capability, so that it doesn’t fall back on the military to have

to do these jobs; that it is the partnership that Marc described to

you; that we find a way to bring that together and to integrate it.

And I would just add to Marc’s comments. One of the training

efforts ought to be to do integrated training, if I could put it this

way, across the spectrum, so that people who need to work in the

humanitarian area can be trained alongside our military colleagues

who are going to have to face that question, so that through training and through doctrine they come out as a team, not basically as

two separate stovepipes that only meet at the time of crisis. I think

those are all important.

And thank you for the chance to make those comments.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you, Ambassador.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Welch and thank our witnesses on

that.

61

You know, I think that last point—we are going to have a second

round of questions, and we may not all use our 5 minutes, but we

would like to ask some more questions.

I think Secretary Gates—who we keep quoting over and over

again—recognizes it as much or more than anybody, that the military’s job is, in fact, not to be diplomats and not to be agricultural

experts and not to be commerce experts and things of that nature.

But they want to compliment that to the extent necessary. It is not

always our best interest to have a military uniform out there as

the projection of the United States. There are times we have to

have the civilian presence so that people see us differently and

know that we are looking to try to help them in ways that will

move their country forward. So I would think that is very important, and I would disperse our money and how we align our personnel.

What is the situation in the diplomatic corps right now with respect to diversity? Is our hiring process getting us the kind of diversity that we need? In many of these countries, even getting out

and about, and trying to mingle with others would be far more

complimented if we in fact had a diverse diplomatic presence.

Mr. Naland, you probably can best comment on that.

Mr. NALAND. One of the main purposes of the Foreign Service

Act of 1980, the revision in 1980, was to make the Foreign Service

look more like America, and a lot of provisions were put in to start

to do that. And Ambassador Grossman may be able to answer this

better than I can, but over the years change has been slow, but the

Foreign Service, both generalists and specialists, is increasingly

looking more and more like America. And if you have spoken to

any of the new entry level officer classes, you can see that. We

have them over to the AFSA headquarters and on the wall would

be a picture of a Foreign Service class of 1934—and you can imagine what that looks like—and then you have the new officers and

specialists coming in.

Now, there is a famous wealth of talent, and Hispanics, AfricanAmericans and other are being courted—at least before the stock

market crashed—being courted by Wall Street and a lot of other

places, so we don’t have—if you take whatever the target demographic is, the profile of U.S. college graduates, we are not on that

demographic yet. But we are getting closer and closer to it.

You know, the Foreign Service, it is in for some rough times

right now. Every time we in the active Foreign Service raise our

voice a little, there are a lot of people out there—not Secretary

Gates, but a lot of people out there who jump on it to say we are

wimps or whatever, and that disturbs me a lot. There are some

issues that need to be addressed. Staffing is one, this overseas pay

gap is another——

Mr. TIERNEY. Would you go into that a little bit, why that gap

exists and exactly what it is?

Mr. NALAND. Well, in 1990, the Congress passed locality pay legislation that came into effect in 1994, and I guess State and AFSA

were asleep at the wheel, because the overseas Foreign Service was

excluded. So now a Federal Government employee in Washington,

DC, gets base pay plus 20.89 percent. And everywhere in the conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:38 Mar 24, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00065 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\47996.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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tinental U.S. Federal employees get base pay plus at least 13 percent.

Mr. TIERNEY. And what does that 13 percent reflect?

Mr. NALAND. It is this convoluted idea of locality pay. It is the

cost of attracting talent——

Mr. TIERNEY. To the United States?

Mr. NALAND [continuing]. To Washington, DC, or Houston or San

Francisco. That is why there are different locality pay. I didn’t vote

on this thing, so——

Mr. TIERNEY. Everybody here will say that they probably didn’t

either.

Mr. NALAND. Everyone used to get base pay and that was kind

of it, but then they put in locality pay. And it is not cost of living,

it is some other thing.

But the Central Intelligence Agency—if I can say those words—

their people, if they have any overseas, get Washington locality

pay. Other folks—who I can’t even mention—if they are overseas,

they get Washington locality pay. But the Foreign Service doesn’t.

And it is now a 21 percent gap.

Now, yes, if you go to Baghdad, you are going to get a large danger pay differential, but 183 of our 286 posts you now take a pay

cut to go to 183 of our posts. And if America wasn’t a two-income

Nation, that probably wouldn’t be such a huge deal. But it is a twoincome Nation. But in the Foreign Service—and the uniform military has this to some extent too—our spouses often can’t get a job

in Lagos, Nigeria or Tajikistan. So our family income over a 30

year career takes a major hit, and retirement savings take a major

hit. So having this 21 percent pay cut when you go overseas just

adds insult to injury.

Mr. TIERNEY. So is that an adverse impact on recruitment generally, as well as getting people to volunteer overseas or just on the

volunteering overseas aspect?

Mr. NALAND. Sir, I don’t think it has hurt recruitment yet, because, frankly, no one knows what they are getting into when they

join the Foreign Service. And the State Department, certainly on

their Web site, doesn’t highlight this, although they do highlight

the danger and other issues, which is quite extraordinary. There is

a little 20 or 40 question pretest you can take to see if you are material for the Foreign Service, and I bet a lot of people take it and

say, OK, something else, because there are some real challenges

there.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Lynch.

Mr. LYNCH. I would be remiss if I did not say how proud I am

of our folks in the State Department and the wonderful work they

are doing in some pretty dangerous places around the world. I

think that they are a shining example of what is best about America, and I agree that they are underpaid for the work they are

doing and that we need to figure out how best to train them and

give them some more help.

I would like to ask one question about assignment, and that is

how are we handling now—Mr. Naland, maybe you would have a

pretty good read on this. My understanding is that there is a pretty

good rotation going on now in terms of folks that might want a shot

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at the Embassy in Paris instead of Baghdad. I know for a while

there some folks would get reassigned to one place for multiple

years, and that would sort of cause a logjam in the system, so that

anyone new coming into the system had to pick, you know, Kenya

or Somalia or some other place that was high risk versus having

a chance at a somewhat more normal assignment maybe in a western European country. How is that being handled right now?

Mr. NALAND. Well, sir, what needs to be understood is that the

normal assignment now is a hardship post. Two-thirds of the overseas Foreign Service posts are now hardship posts. Paris has been

cleaned out repeatedly. James Baker cleaned it out to open up the

Central Asian Embassies when the Soviet Union collapsed. Secretary Rice has cleaned it out to send people to India and other

places. So the idea that Foreign Service members are all sitting

around Paris and London is just absolutely no longer the case. In

fact,—this is only a little facetious—to get there now, you basically

have to serve in a provisional reconstruction team in Iraq and have

one of your top five picks guaranteed, and that is how, after serving and surviving a year in Iraq, you can get a 3-year tour in London or Paris.

But the Foreign Service has changed a lot. It is now mostly hardship posts. When I joined, I went to Bogota, which, with Beirut,

was the only unaccompanied or limited accompanied post. Now we

have something like 27 unaccompanied posts or limited accompanied posts.

And then we have the staffing deficit. This whole Iraq fiasco

from a couple months ago, the reason that they didn’t automatically immediately have all the volunteers is just that there is a 21

percent staffing gap at the mid levels. And now Afghanistan—I

don’t know, this is probably not public, but there is an interest in

providing more Foreign Service and other staffing for Afghanistan.

But from where? From where? So we just need more people. And

allegedly—or we will see with the President’s budget request—apparently, the President’s budget request next week will ask for a

lot of those people. But my point of view is that the President’s

budget request a year ago asked for 254 or 256, I believe, additional Foreign Service positions that weren’t funded. So, you know,

please fund the additional positions to hire people to staff these

places.

Mr. LYNCH. In yielding back my time, I just want to say I wasn’t

suggesting by any measure that folks were sitting around London

or Paris. My question was more toward is the rotation system fair,

so that some of our folks who are on those hardship assignments

right now get a chance to rotate over time to something less perilous, I guess.

Mr. NALAND. I believe it is. The Foreign Service always takes

care of people after they have done a hardship tour, in terms of

their onward assignment, so I think we are still OK there. The

truth is most Foreign Service members prefer the hardship tours

because the morale is better there and the job is more exciting. My

least favorite tour—and I don’t want to hurt the feelings of the Ambassador from Costa Rica, but my least favorite tour was Costa

Rica. It is a beautiful place if you have been there, but—and this

was 20 years ago—it was just boring as all get out. And most ForVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:38 Mar 24, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00067 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\47996.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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eign Service people want the challenge. So, yes, if I could get London for 3 years, I might do it, but then I might not, I might want

a hardship tour.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. The challenge, Mr. Naland, is going to

see whether the President puts in for 1,079 new positions, which

I think Ambassador Grossman said would be about $200 million or

less.

Ambassador GROSSMAN. Over 3 years, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Over 3 years. And if he has percipacity to actually take it out of the defense budget of $700 billion, instead of just creating another $200 million somewhere. That would be a really interesting conversation for this country to have and for Congress to

have. Don’t hang by your thumbs waiting for it, however.

Mr. Higgins.

Mr. HIGGINS. Just on this new vision for diplomacy, you know,

when you talk about the importance of language fluency, when you

talk about cultural immersion, isn’t that hard to achieve in the way

that Foreign Service is currently structured? It seems as though

people are kind of rotated on a pretty regular basis after a short

period of time, and for one to become immersed in a culture, for

one to develop a language fluency, I would think that reaching frequency and consistency is important.

Ambassador GROSSMAN. Yes, sir, both good questions. Let me answer in this way. First, one of the recommendations of the Commission was that as we train people in language and culture immersions, we find ways to move them out of Washington and send

them to the country, maybe, for some months so that they might

be able to really live with a family, be at a university, learn the

language, learn the culture, because we do—in my view, anyway—

much too much language training now only at the Foreign Service

Institute. They do a great job, but, as you say, they need to be part

of these cultures. I tried really hard, when I was the Ambassador

to Turkey, to get Turkish language speakers for their last few

months, even, to come and live in Turkey without jobs—their job

was to get their language and become immersed.

The second question is about—to go back a little bit to Mr.

Lynch’s question about rotation. The tension is this, is that somebody goes, let’s say, to Turkey, having Turkish language training,

and you leave them there 4 years or 5 years. It is human nature,

after a while, Mr. Higgins, that they kind of forget who it is exactly

that they are representing, and you have to break that. It is just

human nature; it is not a criticism of anybody. But we are all subject to it.

So my preference would be, as the Foreign Service does now, if

you teach somebody Turkish or Chinese or Arabic, then you would

like them to serve in a country where you can use that language

maybe three or four times over their career. Maybe not sequentially, but over time. So we had a number of people in Turkey who

were back for their third tour, for example, but it was broken up

with a tour in Bogota or a tour in Prague. And I think that is

healthy for human beings, is my observation, having been in the

Foreign Service 30 years.

Ambassador PICKERING. Could I add a point there too, Mr. Higgins? Because I agree with what Marc has said and I think the

65

State Department is attempting to do that, and that is shorter, but

more frequent, tours in area of language specialization. But often

those people come back to the United States and they serve in the

bureaus of the State Department and they bring back that kind of

knowledge, that ability in linguistics, and that informs the policymaking process in a way that I think is very important. And I

think that it is rotation of Foreign Service officers that continues

to enrich the State Department’s ability to have a good perspective

on and, indeed, a real feeling for what is the situation in that country and how and in what way policies can best be shaped to deal

with it, as well as dealing with visitors from that country, foreign

diplomats, foreign ministers coming here, who in fact expect to see

that when they come.

So I think it is a pretty good system, and it balances off this

problem of local-itis, which Marc described. It balances off the problem of how do you make the best use of that individual.

There are other things that have to happen, too. Too much focus,

too much narrowness, even with rotational assignments, I think

tends to produce people who have come up against a glass ceiling,

and I think it is also valuable to give specialists in Turkey a little

bit of a look at some other place, where different ideas, different

approaches, different innovative ways of thinking about things

could help them when they go back to Turkey. So I think all of

those kind of rotational things are important.

Admittedly, you have somebody in a place for 25 years—and

some foreign services have done so—you may have the world’s best

expert on a very narrow feature of the landscape. But you may not

make the best possible use of that individual and, psychologically,

very few individuals are attuned, I think, to spending their lives

in a 25 year assignment to wherever it might be. It is a little bit

of the devil’s island problem.

Mr. NALAND. Could I just briefly mention? This is in the CSIS

report. We do have Foreign Service members who are posted in a

country for 30 or 40 years. They are the Foreign Service nationals.

And one of the many bad things that happened after 9/11 was that

some of the trust was taken back from Foreign Service nationals,

where only cleared Americans now can do a lot of this stuff in the

consulate. I am sure some of that is appropriate, but, moving forward, if we could give back some more authority to the trusted 30

year Foreign Service nationals who are cleared also, at least to the

secret degree, I think that is something we ought to really work at,

try to figure out how to do.

Mr. TIERNEY. That is an excellent point and dovetails on what

we were all talking about earlier, about the APPs. If you are going

to have those, you are going to need foreign nationals to sort of

buttress the individuals that you put in those facilities and help

you with the intelligence and getting along with the culture. So we

do have to move on that.

Dr. Loeffler.

Ms. LOEFFLER. Just one point picking up on the reference to the

APP. If what the CSIS report says is true, and there will be a deemphasis on the Embassy itself, or new ways of doing diplomacy,

then that argues for rethinking the infrastructure, this really big

permanent, very, very expensive infrastructure—the worst example

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being Baghdad, but similar and lesser examples—that we are doing

around the world.

Mr. TIERNEY. Absolutely.

Ms. LOEFFLER. The Commission report says we should maintain

the building program, but we don’t know what that shape of that

program should be.

Mr. TIERNEY. They don’t really mean that.

Ambassador Grossman, would I be wrong to characterize the report that you think you ought to maintain the building program,

but you are also amenable to some of the changes Dr. Loeffler and

others have talked about in terms of size, in terms of materials, in

terms of goal, placement, and all that?

Ambassador GROSSMAN. Absolutely right. The report says to

maintain the building program, because that is a very important

thing.

Mr. TIERNEY. Keep building, just do it better.

Ambassador GROSSMAN. Yeah, with these considerations about

openness and the environment and where they should be placed,

and who decides.

Mr. TIERNEY. Right.

Ambassador GROSSMAN. And very importantly, as well, as the report says, maintain those buildings.

Mr. TIERNEY. I got the feeling that the Commission had actually

read Dr. Loeffler’s book.

Ambassador GROSSMAN. Well, as I said in my opening statement,

we had the good fortune to consult with Dr. Loeffler.

Ms. LOEFFLER. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Welch, do you have any questions?

Mr. WELCH. Yes.

There has been an emerging almost consensus that there has to

be a merger between the military activity and the diplomatic activity, and they have to work hand in glove. Obviously, there has to

be a fair amount of cooperation, but I would like to challenge that.

You know, Iraq and Afghanistan are two special situations, but, by

and large, the work around the world of trying to provide humanitarian assistance—and to the extent that the Embassies play a role

in that and coordinate USAID activities—is, by definition, civilian,

not military; and having people show up in work clothes, as opposed to a Humvee or an MWRAP, to a very rural village sends a

totally different message.

And what I am starting to hear is that with this turmoil in our

country about how best to address Iraq, there is a mission creep

that is being imposed on the military so that, in addition to them

providing fighting terrorists and al Qaeda and insurgents, they are

being asked, as we saw, to set up and run prisons, to set up and

establish a judicial system. I met a 55 year old career prosecutor

from my hometown who is out there trying to set up a judicial system. We have captains in Ramadi who are trying to figure out how

to get the trash collected out there. And that is the kind of mission

creep that it is hard for me to see how that would be sustained the

moment, when and if it ever comes, that we come home.

But my question is whether it is really sensible to be acting as

though your efforts—and I will ask you, Ambassador Pickering, because you probably have the most experience—should be seen in

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that way, as essentially of an extension of a military policy—I will

use Iraq as an example—of trying to win hearts and minds, where

the State Department folks are an extension of that. That, in my

view, has a significant negative impact in the long haul about what

is the real work that folks like you do.

Ambassador PICKERING. Thank you, Mr. Welch, for raising that

question, because I can see how an earlier comment I made might

have been taken as a generic prescription for all foreign policy, as

opposed to what it was supposed to be, which was a specific prescription in the areas where, for one reason or another, military

and civilians have to interrelate; and I would say those are in a

couple of cases. They are in the case of active war-fighting—Iraq

and Afghanistan—which are at one edge, if you like, of the continuum.

A little closer in is peacekeeping, the kinds of things that we

have done in Bosnia and Kosovo, that we and other people are engaged in in many places in Africa—Sudan, the Democratic Republic

of the Congo, and earlier in places like Liberia and Sierra Leone.

And, to me, the point there is that you do need to have this interrelationship. You need to have the mutual support and you need

to have the mutual understanding of how that works.

More broadly, the interrelationship is what I would call less salient and less pointed in other places. Sure, our military are

present in many Embassies and they relate to foreign military, and

they do everything from training cooperation, to joint exercises, to

mutual support in the intelligence area, to many other kinds of

things. And here there is a different kind of need for civilian understanding and a different set of relationships, and that is more easily come by; it is more standard in our diplomatic practice, and I

think in many ways less overwhelming in the sense that the military in the Embassies is sized to meet the mission. The mission

isn’t that they would run the foreign policy of the country at all.

There are other kinds of areas in the campaign against the use

of terror against us where obviously there needs to be more common understanding of what is happening, how it works and where

it is going.

So I can see several different cases that have to become part of

the curriculum, rather than the standard, basically all-out major

military effort that we are seeing in Iraq, and what I think has

been the difficulty of the civilian side to support that: to mobilize;

to find the right people; to train them; to have, in fact, military understand how and in what ways those two can go together; and

how, in fact, a synergy coming out of that process can work.

I would far rather have in as many places as possible the United

States represented by a civilian mufti dressed individual, wherever

that can be done, and I think it meets much more the concerns

that we have of the growing antagonism toward the United States

around the world, which I think is still borne out in the polling

data, particularly in the Islamic world, that we need to find important ways to overcome, and one of those I think is not to make the

military the spearhead.

Now, I am a little concerned by the creation of AFRICOM and

how——

Mr. WELCH. What?

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Ambassador PICKERING. AFRICOM, which is a new military organization for Africa, and how it will fit, because it is an apparent

possibility that they will see their role as basically—if I could put

it this way—militarizing African policy. And I think we need to be

aware of the fact that they can provide enormous support and terrific help, but the policy toward Africa needs to be civilianized and

it needs to be broadly represented by a civilian.

Not that the military does not have a portion of that, or a serious

part to play in making that happen, often in helping with training,

in preparing African units for peacekeeping responsibilities—and

Africans have tried hard to step up to those in places like Darfur

and elsewhere, but they have shortfalls—but there are vast parts

of our policy in Africa that are not militarized, don’t need to be

militarized, and, in fact, we would carry a burden in Africa if we

thought to convey the view that they are and will become militarized through AFRICOM.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Welch.

Thank you, Ambassador. You hit on a note—I was just showing

the staff here that I had written that down myself. We are contemplating having a hearing, in fact, on the AFRICOM mission because we have our own concerns as a committee that it has gone

from being focused in one direction and maybe sliding over to the

other, I think at great risk to us.

Mr. Lynch and Mr. Welch, do you have any further questions?

Mr. WELCH. No, thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. LYNCH. No. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Let me simply just ask two last questions on that.

One is, for the Ambassadors, with the growing variety of individuals that now find themselves located in our various Embassies,

and particularly the large increase in military personnel there who

answer probably to another commander other than the Ambassador, how are we going to get that so that the Ambassador has

the right amount of authority to make the Embassy and all of the

outreach from the Embassy really work effectively? Ambassador

Pickering?

Ambassador PICKERING. I would say that we have, over the

years, had the President designate for each Ambassador—sometimes in a generic way; through a letter—what that Ambassador’s

authorities are. Some of these have morphed over a period of years,

but, generally speaking, the situation is that unless combat operations are being undertaken by a combatant commander, the person who used to be called the unified commander or the commander in chief, one of the five major U.S. overseas responsible

commanders, that the Ambassador had full authority. And I think

that needs to be maintained.

I think in your report, but certainly in other reports, Marc, it has

been suggested that particular document be perfected and then incorporated at least in an Executive order, so it has the potential

to continue from one President to another. This has been seen as

a Presidential prerogative, an individual prerogative and has to be

negotiated. Often, it takes 2 or 3 years and some Presidents, even

in a 4-year term, haven’t produced this magic letter.

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Mr. TIERNEY. Who are they negotiating with?

Ambassador PICKERING. It is usually negotiated with the White

House by the State Department.

Mr. TIERNEY. And it takes 4 years to get it done?

Ambassador PICKERING. But other agencies get engaged in it.

But the effort is, obviously, since it has to be signed by the President and the State Department often proposes it, that is the negotiating channel for it. But it seems to me we are now ready for a

standard document; that it ought to become part of the continuing

aspect of U.S. regulatory law, if not basically congressionally enacted. But that is another step. But my recommendation would be

that this document be perfected and be signed very early as an Executive order and be inherited from one administration to the next

unless there are extremely valid reasons to change it. Now, that

provides the legal basis.

Then I think the second question is choosing Ambassadors. Now,

I have served a number of times as Ambassador. My own feeling

is that to exclude all political appointees is a serious mistake. But

I do think that we have too many appointees—and I am not concerned at all about saying this—who haven’t measured up to the

job, who have other training background and experience. And I am

fond of saying that, obviously, we all know that the first job that

was truly professionalized was brain surgery.

So our Army folks did away with this after the Spanish-American and Civil War. It is time, in my view, to take a look at a

smaller percentage. And indeed, a serious candidate for the President of this country, when he was here in the Senate, suggested

10 percent was the right figure, not the current 33 percent. My

view is that makes a lot of sense, that allows a president to bring

people of ability from outside the Foreign Service.

We also, I think, need to be cautious and careful about the Foreign Service officers we choose. We haven’t always had 100 percent

success rate, but I think the success rate is higher. I think more

training for Ambassadors is well recommended, particularly those

who come in from the outside. A 2-week training course is not sufficient to be able to do that. And I think all of those would be helpful

in making the point that in most places around the world we have

civilian activities.

I would finally say that if we are successful in this in every place

around the world, we will not have to use combatant commanders

to carry out our national security and foreign policy, because diplomacy can provide that first line—if I can call it—of action. I don’t

like to say defense because diplomacy is offensive as well. The first

line of action has to be diplomacy. And I think with successful diplomacy we have, in the past, avoided conflicts.

I would finally say—and I say in my report to you—that it needs

to be backed up by the best military in the world. So I don’t think

that in any way we are going to try to reconfigure the balance; we

just hopefully can use the diplomacy more effectively and the Embassies more effectively to carry that out.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

You have something to add to all that? Go ahead.

Ambassador GROSSMAN. Yes. I was going to add one sentence.

Just to prove the fact that we were trying to find out the

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practicalities of the Embassy feature, one of the things that was

very important that we recommended was to put the Ambassador

in the chain of performance evaluation for all of the people who are

represented at the Embassy.

Mr. TIERNEY. That would make sense. Thank you.

Dr. Loeffler, let’s have you have the last word, since we started

off talking about buildings on that. We have created some new

courthouses around this country, Federal courthouses that are

both, I think, unique in their architecture, but somehow always

manage to take care of security issues. Your last comments on how

we can do that, how the two are not necessarily at odds with each

other, that we can have security and we can have architecture that

works?

Ms. LOEFFLER. Well, the GSA program has shown that, that it

is possible, and we hope that the State Department can learn from

GSA. GSA still has a panel of advisors, architectural advisors. They

hire individual architects for individual projects; let them bring

their creativity and know-how and engineering and design skills to

the projects; and we have wonderful solutions, such as the courthouse in Boston or the courthouse in Phoenix or the courthouse in

San Francisco.

So I hope that we can take some tips from the GSA program and

see if we could apply some of that know-how to the building program. This is a time of opportunity for that building program with

a no director at the present and a new one to be obviously appointed, so new direction is on the horizon.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. And I note that on January 22, 2008

there was a letter from the executive vice president and the chief

executive officer of the American Institute of Architects to Secretary Condoleezza Rice making those recommendations exactly on

that, and I would ask that be entered on the record. Without objection, it is.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. I want to thank all of our expert witnesses here

today. Your experience has been invaluable to us. Your comments

were deep and insightful, and we hope that we are going to continue on. We will get a debriefing later on from what legislation

might be necessary. I suspect there may not be a lot of legislation,

but more appropriation, as well as just a way to help the administration work its way through some of these broad details on that.

Thank you all very, very much for your time and for your knowledge.

[Whereupon, at 12 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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