Dissent Channel
The Dissent Channel is a messaging framework open to Foreign Service Officers, and other U.S. citizens employed by the United States Department of State and Agency for International Development (USAID), through which they are invited to express constructive criticism of government policy. Established in 1971, the Dissent Channel was used 123 times in its first four decades. In modern times, about four or five dissent cables are sent each year. U.S. foreign policies that have been the subject of dissent cables have varied widely. The 1971 Blood telegram, named for its author Archer Blood, condemned the U.S. policy  of support for Pakistani dictator Yahya Khan, who oversaw a genocide in East Pakistan. Other dissent cables have criticized U.S. support for various authoritarian leaders, dissented from U.S. inaction in crises and genocides, or criticized U.S. involvement in various military conflicts. For example, a 1992 dissent cable protesting the U.S. failure to act during the Bosnian genocide is credited with helping lead to the Dayton Accords. The dissent cable with the largest number of signatories, by far, was a 2017 dissent cable condemning Donald Trump's executive order imposing a travel and immigration ban on the nationals of seven majority -Muslim countries; ~1000 diplomats are listed as signatories. Dissent cables circulate to senior State Department officials, and messages receive a response from the department's Policy Planning Staff. Under department regulations, diplomats who submit dissent cables are supposed to be protected from retaliation or reprisal. Nevertheless, some U.S. diplomats are hesitant to use the Dissent Channel for fear that it could impede their career progress. History and uses. The Dissent Channel was established in 1971, as a response to concerns that dissenting opinions and constructive criticism were suppressed or ignored during the Vietnam War. Secretary of State William P. Rogers  created the system. In February 1971, the right of Foreign Service officers to dissent was explicitly codified in the "Foreign Affairs Manual". The Dissent Channel is reserved for "...consideration of responsible dissenting and alternative views on substantive foreign policy issues that cannot be communicated in a full and timely manner through regular operating channels or procedures." Use of the channel is reserved for dissenting or alternative views on policy concerns; views on "management, administrative, or personnel issues that are not significantly related to matters of substantive foreign policy may not be communicated through the Dissent Channel." Messages sent to  the Dissent Channel are distributed to senior members of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, must be acknowledged within 2 days, and must receive a response within 30–60 days. Diplomats who write such dissent cables are supposed to be protected from retaliation or reprisal. The "Foreign Affairs Manual" provides that "[f]reedom from reprisal for Dissent Channel users is strictly enforced." Nevertheless, many U.S. diplomats fear to use the channel for fear of retaliation. A 2020 Project on Government Oversight study of dissent channels used at the State Department and five other federal agencies found that most were "used infrequently  and that Across presidential administrations, irrespective of political party, and at agencies across the government these channels are often viewed as ineffectual, and many career employees with access to a dissent channel still fear retaliation for using it." From 1971 to 2011, there were 123 dissent cables. A 2020 report stated that over its half-century of existence, the Dissent Channel averaged between five and ten uses per year. The most dissent cables sent in a single year came in 1977, when 28 dissent cables were filed "under the Carter Administration, which everyone agrees created an atmosphere in which use  of the channel was encouraged—or at least not stigmatized." Some of the surge in Dissent Channel use in the late 1970s was attributable to a single individual. After Ronald Reagan became president, the number of dissent cables declined sharply, to 15 in 1981 and just five in 1982. This decline was due to a feeling in "U.S. embassies around the world ... that the Reagan White House and State Department were not receptive to viewpoints that diverged from the ambassadors' assessments," and that dissenting cables was likely to damage a diplomat's career. For example, some diplomats feel that using  the Dissent Cable reduces their chance of appointment to an ambassadorial post. In the 2010s, about four or five dissent cables were sent each year. Some notable uses of the Dissent Channel include: Public disclosure of dissent cables. Dissent cables are intended to be internal and not immediately made public, although leaks do occur. Some dissent cables are marked as sensitive but unclassified. Wayne Merry, a former U.S. diplomat who wrote a dissent cable in 1994 while posted to Russia, made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 1999 for a copy of his own cable; the State Department  denied the request in 2003 on the grounds that (1) "release and public circulation of Dissent Channel messages, even as in your case to the drafter of the message, would inhibit the willingness of Department personnel to avail themselves of the Dissent Channel to express their views freely" and (2) "Dissent Channel messages are deliberative, pre-decisional and constitute intra-agency communications." The National Security Archive at George Washington University has used FOIA to obtain dissent cables. The Archive's requests to the State Department for cables from the 1970s and the 1980s were initially denied, with the department citing  FOIA Exemption 5, which allows agencies to refuse FOIA requests for "predecisional" documents. However, the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 prohibited agencies from using this exemption for documents more than 25 years old. As a result, the Archive re-requested the dissent cables, and following a lawsuit, the State Department began turning them over to the Archives. In 2018, the Archives publicly posted the dissent cables that it had received, along with responses by the State Department Policy Planning Staff, including Anthony Lake, Warren Christopher, and Paul Wolfowitz. Constructive Dissent Award. Foreign service members who make constructive use of the  Dissent Channel may be eligible to receive the American Foreign Service Association's Constructive Dissent Awards (although use of the channel is not required to be eligible). Similar mechanisms. USAID also has a similar channel, the Direct Channel, established in 2011. Unlike the Dissent Channel, this is open to foreign national employees of USAID, and contractors. Several science-oriented federal agencies also have dissent channels: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the "Differing Professional Opinion" established after the Three Mile Island accident), the U.S. Department of Energy (process created in 2005), NASA (process created after the 2003 Space Shuttle "Columbia" disaster), and  the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (process created in 2004 and revised in 2010). The Central Intelligence Agency has "red teams" of intelligence officers and analysts "dedicated to arguing against the intelligence community's conventional wisdom and spotting flaws in logic and analysis." Neal Katyal writes that the State Department's Dissent Channel is analogous, and argues that the federal government needs more such intra-agency checks in order to institutionalize the practice of dissent.