Hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee- Effective Diplomacy and the Future of U.S. Embassies

Interview

Hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee- Effective Diplomacy and the Future of U.S. Embassies

REP. TIERNEY: (Sounds gavel.)

A quorum being present of the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, the 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 five 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 all the panel here, our highly distinguished witnesses who are with us today. We're going to discuss challenges as well as the opportunities, for the future of United States embassies and diplomacy, with four uniquely qualified experts. We'll examine not only the ramifications of the new type of embassies that U.S. taxpayers are currently funding around the world. Some of us call them fortress embassies on the outskirts of towns. We'll also evaluate the broader purposes of our diplomatic presence abroad. We'll 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 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, in 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.

And yet our concerns of security have now led us to build new embassy compounds of cookie-cutter boxes, surrounded by walls located on the outskirts of town. One magazine called our new embassy in Iraq, for example, Megabunker 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. We're 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 cost, and of the best way to conduct diplomacy in this post-9/11 world. That's why we've 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, 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? Why is the symbolism of embassies and what messages do they -- 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 cultural 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 United State 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 members -- or 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 could 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 or lack 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'm confident that we can do the right thing and get the right balance of security and openness, of trained personnel and resources to carry out the vital task of American diplomacy in the 21st century, but we first need a robust and open dialogue 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 hearing your expertise and your experience.

And at this point, I'd like Mr. Shays for his opening statement. Thank you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you. Well, we'll bring you up to date on what the ambassador's doing in one moment, as we introduce people here.

We're now going to receive the testimony, in fact, from the witnesses before us, and I'd like to begin by introducing them with a little background on each.

Ambassador Marc A. Grossman has served as undersecretary of State for Political Affairs from 2001 to 2005, and I guess if we add that with Ambassador Pickering, we've really got from 1997 all the way to 2005 in that position of undersecretary of State for Political Affairs. That's 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's currently the vice chairman of the Cohen Group and was co- chair 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'll 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's widely recognized as an expert on the history and cultural impact of United States' 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 written and commented widely on the new embassy compound program and the United States 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 strategic diplomatic strategy on television and in the print press. Mr. Naland is a former Army cavalry officer and has served widely in Latin American, State Department Headquarters and the White House.

And Ambassador Thomas Pickering served as undersecretary of State for Political Affairs from 1997 to 2001. He has also served as United States ambassador to Russia, Israel, India, Jordan, El Salvador, Nigeria and the United Nations.

MR./REP. : You're that old?

REP. TIERNEY: (Laughs.) About five minutes in each place is what he did. (Laughter, laughs.)

Ambassador Pickering is a former senior vice president for international affairs at Boeing and is currently vice chairman of Hills & Company. He is also affiliated with many nongovernmental organizations, including the International Crisis Group, the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Welcome to all of you.

And Ambassador Pickering, just on that, you served a considerable amount of time in some of those locations as well. Was it four years in Jordan, three years in Israel? (No audible response.)

I want to thank all of you for your expertise and for your service for those that have been in the Foreign Service.

It's the policy of this subcommittee to swear you before you testify, so I ask you to please stand and raise your right hand. (Oath is given.)

Thank you. 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 on the record without objection, so ordered.

We do have a five-minute time limitation, as you'll 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 seem rude, if we think we're going extremely over the five minutes, we may just interrupt and ask you to wind it up on that point in time.

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

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REP. TIERNEY: Thank you, Mr. Naland. I think we've 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 actually said 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're starting to think about smart power and some of the other hearings that we've had in front of this panel or whatever, that may be something we all should take a look at, is re-allotting some of that money so we get the best security -- national security posture out there, using all of our resources.

Ambassador Pickering, please.

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REP. TIERNEY: Well, thank you all very much. And we're all pleased to have such great expertise and experience before us.

We're going to move on to the question period here. We're under a five-minute rule, and just five minutes for the questions and answers. With the number of people here I'm 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 a question of what is your opinion of the types of standard buildings that are now going up around the -- like the one Baghdad and others? And Ambassador Grossman, did your report make any recommendation with respect to the design and the architecture, whether those should continue as are? Whether they should be done on a different basis?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

REP. 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. (Laughs.)

Mr. Lynch, you're recognized for five minutes.

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REP. TIERNEY: Thank you, Mr. Welch, and thank our witnesses on that.

You know, I think that last point -- and we're going to have a second round of questions, and we may not, all of us, use our five minutes, but we would like to ask some more questions.

I think Secretary Gates -- as 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 complement that to the extent necessary.

It's 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're looking to try to help them in ways that will move their country forward. So I think that's very important in how we disburse 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, and do what would be far more complement -- complemented if we, in fact, had a diverse diplomatic presence?

Mr. Naland, you probably can best comment on that.

MR. NALAND: The main -- 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 more -- better than I can, but over the years, the change has been slow but the Foreign Service, both generalists and specialists, is increasingly looking more and more like America.

And if you've spoken to any of the new entry level officer classes, you can see it. We have them over to the AFSA Headquarters, and on the wall will be a picture of a Foreign Service class of 1934 -- and you can imagine what that looks like. (Laughter.) And then you have the new officers and specialists coming in.

Now there's a famous war for talent. And Hispanics, African Americans and others are being courted -- at least, before the stock market crash, 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, you know, on that demographic yet but we're getting closer and closer to it.

You know, the Foreign Service -- it's 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're 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.

REP. TIERNEY: Would you go into that a little bit for us -- 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, D.C. gets base pay, plus 20.89 percent. And everywhere in the U.S. -- continental U.S., federal employees get base pay, plus at least 13 percent.

REP. TIERNEY: And what does that 13 percent reflect?

MR. NALAND: It's this convoluted idea of locality pay. It's the cost of attracting talent --

REP. TIERNEY: To the United States?

MR. NALAND: To Washington, D.C. or Houston, or San Francisco. That's why their different locality pay -- I didn't, I didn't vote on this thing, but -- (laughs) -- but, basically --

REP. TIERNEY: Quickly, everybody here will say that they probably didn't either, so -- (inaudible) -- (laughs).

(Cross talk)

MR. NALAND: Everyone used to get base pay, and that was kind of it. But then they put in locality pay -- and it's not cost of living, it's 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're overseas, they get Washington locality pay. But the Foreign Service doesn't. And it's now a 21 percent gap.

Now, yes, if you go to Baghdad, you're 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 two- income nation.

But in the Foreign Service -- and the uniformed military has this to some extent too, our spouses often can't get a job in Lagos, Nigeria, or Tajikistan. And so our family income over a 30 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.

REP. TIERNEY: So is that an adverse impact on recruitment, generally, as well as on getting people to volunteer overseas? Or -- (inaudible) --

MR. NALAND: I don't --

REP. TIERNEY: -- volunteering overseas aspect?

MR. NALAND: Sir, I don't think it's hurt recruitment yet because, frankly, no one knows what they're getting into when they --

REP. TIERNEY: (Laughs.)

MR. NALAND: -- when they join the Foreign Service. And the State Department, certainly on their website, doesn't highlight this -- although they do highlight the danger and other issues, which is quite extraordinary. There's a little 20 or 40-question, you know, pretest you can take to see if you're material for the Foreign Service. And I'll bet a lot of people take it and say, okay, something else, because there's some real challenges there.

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you.

Mr. Lynch.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

REP. TIERNEY: The challenge, Mr. Naland, I was 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.

MR. GROSSMAN: Over three years, sir.

REP. TIERNEY: Over three years. And if he has the perspicacity to actually take it out of the Defense budget of $700 billion, instead of just creating another 200 million (dollars) 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.

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MR. NALAND: Could I just briefly mention -- and this is in the CSIS report -- we do have Foreign Service members who are posted in a country for 30 or 40 years. They're 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 the stuff in the consulate. And I'm sure some of that's 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's something we ought to really work at, try to figure out how to do.

REP. TIERNEY: That's an excellent point. It dovetails on what we were all talking about earlier about the APPs. If you're going those, you're 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 or whatever. So we do have to move on that.

Dr. Loeffler, do you have a --

MS. LOEFFLER: Just one point on that -- picking up on that reference to the APP. If what the CSIS report says is true and there will be a de-emphasis on the embassy itself, or new ways of doing diplomacy, is then that argues for rethinking the infrastructure, this really big, permanent, very, very expensive infrastructure -- the worst example being Baghdad -- but similar and lesser examples that we're doing around the world.

REP. 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 --

REP. TIERNEY: They don't really mean that. (Chuckles.)

MS. LOEFFLER: No --

REP. TIERNEY: 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 and placement, all that.

MR. GROSSMAN: Absolutely right. The report says maintain the building program, because that's a very important thing.

REP. TIERNEY: Keep building, just do it better.

MR. GROSSMAN: Yeah, with these considerations about openness and the environment and where they should be placed and who decides.

And very importantly as well, as the report says, maintain those buildings.

REP. TIERNEY: I got the feeling that the commission had actually read Dr. Loeffler's book. (Laughter.)

MR. GROSSMAN: Well, as I said in my opening statement, we had the good fortune to consult with Dr. Loeffler.

MS. LOEFFLER: Thank you. Thank you.

REP. TIERNEY: Mr. Welch, do you have any questions?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you, Mr. Welch.

Thank you, Ambassador. You hit on a note, and I was just showing staff here that I had written that down myself. We're 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 at, I think, a great risk to us.

Mr. Lynch and Mr. Welch, do you have any further questions.

(Off mike commentary.)

Thank you.

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.

MR. 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 that needs to be maintained.

I think in your report but certainly in other reports, Marc, it's been suggested that 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. It takes two or three years and some presidents even in a four-year term haven't produced this magic letter.

REP. TIERNEY: Who are they negotiating with?

MR. PICKERING: It's usually negotiated with the White House by the State Department.

REP. TIERNEY: It takes four years to get it done?

MR. 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's 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's 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. That provides the legal basis.

Then I think the second question is choosing ambassadors. Now, I've 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 many too many appointees -- and I'm not concerned at all about saying this -- who haven't measured up to the job, who have other training backgrounds and experience. And I'm 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 Wars. 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 that makes a lot of sense, that 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 two-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're 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 of, 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.

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you.

Do you have something to add to all that? Sure, go ahead.

MR. NALAND: Yes, I was going to add one sentence. Just to prove the fact that we were trying to find out the practicalities of the embassy's future, one of the things that was very important that we recommended was to put the ambassador in the chain of performance evaluations for all the people who are represented at the embassy.

REP. TIERNEY: That makes sense. Thank you.

Dr. Loeffler, we'll have you have the last word since you started off talking about buildings on that. We've created some new courthouses around this country, federal courthouses, that are both, I think, unique in their architecture in some sense but somehow always manage to also 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 State Department can learn from GSA. GSA still has a panel of architectural advisers. 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 no director at the present and a new one to be, obviously, appointed. So new direction is on the horizon.

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you. And I note that on January 22nd of 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 we ask that that be entered on the record. Without objection, it is.

I want to thank all of our expert witnesses here today. Your experience has been invaluable to us. Your comments are deep and insightful. And we hope that we're going to continue on. We'll get a debriefing later on for what legislation might be necessary. I suspect that 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.

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