F OCUS - American Foreign Service Association

LETTERS
Progress on Contact
Reporting Requirements
I am pleased to report an update to
the information contained in my March
Speaking Out (“Twelve Recommendations
to Improve the Security Clearance
Process”). On Feb. 12, after the
Journal had already gone to print, the
Bureau of Diplomatic Security published
new contact reporting requirements
(12 FAM 262 and 270). However,
the larger questions I highlighted
in my piece about how DS handles security
clearance cases remain pertinent.
Daniel M. Hirsch
FSO
Silver Spring, Md.
A Clarification
The Foreign Service Journal carried
my account of a Moscow confrontation
as the February Reflections column. I
was gratified at the opportunity to illustrate
the courage, skill and “cool” of
one of our greatest career diplomats,
Llewellyn Thompson. However, I
would like to clarify a point that was inadvertently
distorted in the course of
editing.
When I commented that “In retrospect,
it probably was as close to World
War III as we came,” I was referring to
the entire Berlin Crisis of 1958-1962
and the attendant Cuban Missile Crisis
— not our single meeting on Jan. 13,
1961.
I would also like to note that the
piece was excerpted from the introduction
to my memoirs, Cold War
Saga, which is scheduled to be published
in the spring of 2010.
Kempton Jenkins
FSO, retired
Bethesda, Md.
Ingredients for Change
The February issue of the Journal
contained three items that deserve
careful attention. They constitute an
unorchestrated — and all the more
compelling for that reason — call for
greater creativity and wave-making.
John Naland’s President’s Views column
raises two especially important
and related points. The first is the
need for members of the Foreign
Service to do more professional writing,
“provocative essays by active-duty
officers analyzing professional issues”
of the kind that fill the many military
journals. The second is the steady decline
in nominations for AFSA’s constructive
dissent awards, the only ones
of their kind in the U.S. government,
which recognize employees for their
neck-on-the-block courage in challenging
policies or management practices.
In Letters, retired Ambassador Ed
Marks offers a number of thoughtful
suggestions to strengthen that faltering
dissent awards program. Two of them
that make a great deal of sense, and are
also mutually reinforcing, concern generating
more awareness of that unique
program, as well as greater recognition
for the winners, by providing more extensive
recognition inside the Journal,
and placing their photographs on the
cover.
Then retired Ambassador David
Passage takes on the Defense Department
in a thoughtful and informed
Speaking Out column presenting the
rationale for doing away with AFRI-
COM and SOUTHCOM, which he
describes as “Reliquaria from an Earlier
Age.” Few FSOs know as much
about working with, and the workings
of, DOD and that massive organization’s
involvement with foreign policy
as he does, and the case he makes merits
close study. Amb. Passage is doing
just what Naland suggests, and his proposals
could earn him a dissent nomination
(if he were still on active duty
and — a firm requirement — if he had
not gone public).
There is a great deal happening in
foreign affairs currently, much of it focused
on significantly expanding the
size and strengthening the role of State
and the Foreign Service. A requirement
for success in taking on this increased
role is to improve the manner
in which the work is performed. More
professionalism, improved communications
and a greater willingness to
take up the cudgels, in the broadest
sense, are important ingredients for
such a change.
Ed Peck
Ambassador, retired
Chevy Chase, Md.
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