Leadership by Example

It seems like just last week, but in fact, it's more like a week and a half ago, that we wrote about administrative controls. About how the Bureau of Consular Affairs has them, and the Bureau of Diplomatic Security does not. Or more correctly, about how administrative controls seem to work in CA, but not in DS.

So it is not surprising that the past several days brought two additional pieces of evidence that DS, which vaunts its on-paper standards on every available award application, is in fact even more poorly managed than we noted before.

First, the annual inventory of security equipment, conducted separately from the inventory of non-expendable property in other sections of the Department, showed nearly three million dollars of security equipment unaccounted for.

Second, and more disturbing, a significant number of laptop computers, entrusted to DS, have gone missing. We're not talking about a missing laptop or two. A Department-wide audit found hundreds of laptops unaccounted for and identified DS, now rushing to close the barn door before the scandal really breaks, as having the laxest control of any bureau in the agency.

It is hard to calculate the damage to national security caused by these losses. But one thing is certain: the lack of accountability at the highest levels of DS infrastructure is filtering down to every level of DS.

It is easy to argue, as DS certainly will, that there is a war on. Or that the important work that DS does to protect each and every one of us does not allow time for things like counting one's equipment or remembering where on put one's laptop.

It is certainly true that DS agents, particularly those in the field, are busy. It would, in all fairness, be hard to find any other job in the Department that requires incumbents to be jacks of as many trades as most RSOs are required to be; or places such a heavy burden of responsibility on the shoulders of new and often inexperienced employees. It is certain that many, acting in the best of faith and with the best of intentions, are too busy "putting out fires" to properly manage their equipment.

But sloppiness in management is only one symptom of a larger problem. A tolerance, if you will, for consistently putting accountability aside in the headlong rush to catch the bad guys or keep them away. A tolerance encouraged and indulged in by the highest levels of security infrastructure.

Instead of teaching accountability by example, the leadership brought in by Frank Taylor established a DS culture in which agents are expected to get the job done by any means possible, knowing that however much they deviate from standard procedure, DS leadership will protect them.

And that is bad security.

In Iraq, it was Blackwater, and perjury to Congress.

In the security clearance cases we monitor, agents who conduct sloppy and improper investigations know they will be protected by DS's refusal to allow even State's OIG to review their investigations.

And in the current situation, there will be as many excuses as there are missing items.

It would be nice if the current revelations would lead to a shift in emphasis. A new appreciation in DS for doing things by the book.

But most likely, the folks who brought in the current cult of lawlessness would have to leave DS before that could happen.

Don't look into it!

Something happened this week which seemed to show that management controls in at least one area of the State Department work reasonably well.

A breach was detected. The guilty were identified. At least two different types of discipline were allegedly administered. And certainly, others involved will be punished as well. Certainly, quietly, controls will be tightened. And the Department will probably invest considerable energy to make sure that next time, there will be no next time.

If you read the news, you know that the passport files of at least three prominent Americans were improperly accessed. The breaches seemed to stem, in at least two cases, from "imprudent curiosity" and in at least one, from perhaps a playful accident taken too far.

At least one of the breaches was detected, and when it came to light, it was investigated. Not only that one breach, but any others like it that may have occurred. And as I said, the guilty were identified, punishment meted out and probably, behind closed doors, managers admonished for not reporting or perhaps not even detecting earlier incidents.

I think it is safe to say that, for a while at least, passport files at the State Department are going to be better monitored and managed.

And to my way of thinking, that is a positive thing.

The State Department is a huge organization. It has thousands of people performing thousands of processes independently. As with any organization of this size, sometimes things go wrong. Human error, or in this case, human nature, produced a problem. Which may have been ignored once or twice, but which was eventually detected and steps taken, and further steps being taken even now, to address it.

A handful of cases of human frailty causing problems, and nobody, even at the highest levels of the State Department said "Hey, it's only three or four cases out of literally millions of passport files we administer! What's the big deal!?"

Everybody, including the Secretary of State herself, understood (in this case) that when it comes to integrity, and the public perception of integrity, one case that is allowed to slide is one too many. That for issues involving integrity and the public trust, even if it is one case out of millions, it is incumbent on the system to address the issue and fix it.

Now contrast that with what happens in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS). And with the Department's position on improprieties in DS investigations and the security clearance process (not to even go near things like Blackwater).

When somebody says: "Hey, DS! Your agents in this case or that case violated the law," DS does nothing. CFSO has documented numerous cases where individuals, and even the State Department's Inspector General's office, have brought to DS's attention hard evidence of misfeasance and malfeasance in the conduct of DS investigations, where DS has apparently completely ignored the complaint.

The agents involved are not pulled of the case, the matter is never referred to the Bureau of Human Resources for disciplinary action, and in at least one case, the agent accused is promoted and given a high profile assignment shortly after a very serious allegation has been made.

DS does not police its investigative function, and it does not allow others to do so either. In fact, according to a former very senior member of the State Department's Office of the Inspector General, DS under recent management has thumbed its nose at Congress and the American taxpayer by refusing to allow even the IG's office to investigate complaints in this area.

As a result, dozens of security clearance cases within recent years have been biased, and dozens FSO careers destroyed, by cases based on biased or overzealous investigations, some of which appear to have even involved illegal acts such as improper seizure of property or entry without a warrant.

And when somebody points this out, what happens?

First DS releases press guidance denying the problem outright, then senior DS officials go on record, first saying "it's only four dozen cases out of 22,000" and then saying "it's only roughly a dozen cases out of more than 40,000," then accusing the accusers of being a bunch of "wifebeaters and alcoholics."

Only a few dozen FSOs have had their lives and careers destroyed recently by errors, failures due to human nature, ignorance, bias, prejudice and other human failings on the part of DS agents, so what's the big deal?

And how dare anyone expect us to take time out of our important mission of protecting this nation's security to check into the integrity of our agents?!?!!

Senior DS officials are satisfied that, on the whole, the DS security clearance system works well in the majority of cases, so why bother to investigate any allegations that, in several dozen cases, or even a handful of cases, or even three out of millions, something was done terribly wrong?

If an innocent FSO lost his clearance, a family lost its breadwinner, the American people lost the "use" of a talented public servant in whom the taxpayer may have invested considerable funds in training and preparation, if a key project has had a key player sidelined by the personal bias of a single DS agent, whats the big deal?

It's not as if anyone peeked into a passport file! Is it?

We Hire Gay People!

The March, 2008 issue of the Foreign Service Journal carries an article by Ambassador Michael Guest, former U.S. Ambassador to Romania, who happens to be Gay.

After a high-profile appointment and a tour at post, Ambassador Guest resigned from the Foreign Service in an equally high profile protest to the Department's failure to update its Member of Household policy to afford greater equity to long-term partners of Gay employees.

Ambassador Guest claims that the issue is not merely a Gay Rights issue, but rather a workplace equity issue. Logically, his statement is absolutely correct.

Subliminally, however, it is very much a "Homosexual" issue, just as civil rights for African Americans are very much a "Negro" issue, and just as the unique demonization of Jonathan Pollard among the more-than-sixty Americans arrested for espionage since World War two is very much a "Jewish" issue.

The core of the issue, at least in terms of what I want to write about here, has to do with something else altogether: the lip service that is paid to political correctness by people who are unwilling to follow through on the ideas of diversity that they claim to espouse.

The root of the problem is that the Department continues to view diversity, as it does nearly every Human Resource issue, in terms of following the letter of the law, rather than promoting a philosophy of "doing right by their people."

Equally, as a political entity, the State Department has yet to adequately confront the most basic issue of diplomacy: "Who and what does the Foreign Service represent?"

Does it represent the President, as this administration seems to believe it should; does it represent the values of the administration in power; or does it represent the American people, and the shared values of a nation that differs from nearly every other on earth in its diversity.

The one nation on earth founded on the principle that all people are created equal, the only country to actually put a sign out in front of its national gate urging others to "give us... your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," has a Foreign Service leadership that cannot seem to figure out who or what they represent.

As a result, the antiquated image of a State Department composed solely of good Christian White men, or at least of a narrowly limited clique representing only a small portion of our nation's diverse citizenry, persists.

And Foreign Service Officers, irrespective of background, are subliminally expected to conform to that ideal.

It is not that FSOs are biased. Nor even that the career leadership of the Department is biased.

It is more that appointed leadership, concerned with short-term and short-sighted political realities, lacks the political will to defend changes to the system, even when those changes are obviously just, and even when those changes would bring the Foreign Service more into conformity with the "face" of the country that we theoretically represent.

So they ask questions like: why should the American taxpayer pay to provide benefits to a person who has no ties to the service except that some (insert anti-gay epithet here) has the hots for him/her? And they answer those questions rhetorically, rather than putting them to the test.

They defend their double standards, as Ambassador Guest noted, by saying that "the issues are complex." And pointing out, as they do in issues related to Jewish American employees, Moslem American employees, and others, that "the Department doesn’t discriminate in hiring and promotions."

"What a clever dodge!" as Ambassador Guest exclaims.

It is a dodge. A cheat. A shameless, cowardly, despicable way of passing the buck. The State Department equivalent of "don't ask, don't tell."

The State Department does not discriminate in hiring or promotions, but it does discriminate in countless other ways against anyone who does not meet the the lowest-common-denominator image of what some people would consider to be "a true American." Or at least, an American that the lowest-common-denominator-American would want to represent our country.

For Gays, some of the forms of discrimination they face in the Department are tied to the Members of Household policy, which does not make it easy for Gay people in a committed partnership to travel and live overseas.

For everyone else, including Gays, a primary expression of discrimination lies with the Office of Diplomatic Security, with the self-appointed guardians of a concept called "suitability," (which DS has recently stolen from HR, because nobody in leadership seems to have the courage to point out that the FAM appoints that function to HR, not DS).

Suitability used to refer to the process of ensuring that people who conduct criminal, infamous or blatantly anti-American acts are removed from the service through the applicable Human Resources procedures.

It now refers to the process by which nearly any Special Agent at any level in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security is empowered to decide who does and does not conform to their own personal opinion of who should be considered a "real American."

Which, more often than not these days, leads to the revocation of security clearances based on unsupported allegations of infamous sexual behavior or unfounded allegations of ethnic or religious "sympathies" for another country.

These DS determinations do not require evidence, nor does DS allow outside verification, even by the State Department's own OIG, of the procedures by which these determinations were arrived at.

The unique combination of plausibly defensible secrecy, a virtually-complete lack of outside oversight, and a political environment in which it is virtually anti-American to question the activities of a national security entity, makes DS one of the last refuges in our country where bigots can ply their trade with impunity.

The State Department's failure to reign in DS, like its failure to fully extend MOH benefits to partners of Gay FSOs, reflects the ambivalence with which the State Department approaches diversity issues.

One can be Gay, or Jewish, or Moslem, or Black or Asian, as long as you don't live with your partner, or wear a yarmulke, or fast on Ramadan, or fight for greater equality in the Service.

Ironically, DS itself has an internal office of Equal Employment Opportunity that ensures that, even as DS systematically culls selected groups from the service, a member of those groups, should he or she ever be hired by DS, would have a theoretically equal chance for promotion through the ranks.

Ambassador Guest was not the first Gay man to serve as an American Ambassador. But he was the first Gay man to seek to serve in that capacity without hiding that particular aspect of his identity.

And what is important here is not that he was hired, or appointed as an Ambassador, but that he felt that he was not allowed to be the thing that makes him different from somebody's impression of what an FSO should look like.

That is the difference between the "diversity" embodied by the lack of impediments in hiring or promotion, and the true diversity which should be an American value.

The legalistic definition offered by State has a sinister flip side. A year ago, the same legalistic view allowed DS to railroad an openly gay former DCM (a GLIFA officer) out of the service based in part on the fact that a homosexual act he allegedly performed overseas is illegal in Virginia, his home state of record (though not in the country to which he was assigned, nor in DC, the jusdiction of the State Department, nor in Maryland, his current state of residence).

The Foreign Service does more than negotiate treaties and gather information. We continue, as we always have, to represent the United States. In many cases, an American diplomat may be the first or even the only American a foreign official might meet, and it is important that our service represent our country and its values.

When Ronald Reagan appointed Edward Perkins to serve as the first of what would be several African American ambassadors of the United States to apartheid South Africa, he did so to make a political point. To express, in his choice of representative, an American value. To make a statement about who we are, and who we represent.

When the State Department hires but discriminates against Gays, or any other group, they make a different statement:

"We follow the law, because we have to, but not because we believe it is the right thing to do."

Department leadership should take a stand. If it wants a Foreign Service that reflects the diversity of the American population, it should do more than eliminate impediments to hiring and promotion. It should actively promote not merely tolerance for diversity, but appreciation of diversity.

That means treating every employee, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation, equally on all fronts.

Including overseas benefits. And security clearances.

Because it is the right thing to do.