[House Hearing, 106 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CHANGING AMERICAN DIPLOMACY FOR THE NEW CENTURY
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2000
__________
Serial No. 106-117
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on International--Relations
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/international
relations
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
65-232 CC WASHINGTON : 2000
COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York, Chairman
WILLIAM F. GOODLING, Pennsylvania SAM GEJDENSON, Connecticut
JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa TOM LANTOS, California
HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DAN BURTON, Indiana Samoa
ELTON GALLEGLY, California MATTHEW G. MARTINEZ, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
DANA ROHRABACHER, California SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida
PETER T. KING, New York PAT DANNER, Missouri
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio EARL F. HILLIARD, Alabama
MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD, South BRAD SHERMAN, California
Carolina ROBERT WEXLER, Florida
MATT SALMON, Arizona STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey
AMO HOUGHTON, New York JIM DAVIS, Florida
TOM CAMPBELL, California EARL POMEROY, North Dakota
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
KEVIN BRADY, Texas GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
RICHARD BURR, North Carolina BARBARA LEE, California
PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
GEORGE RADANOVICH, California JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL, Pennsylvania
JOHN COOKSEY, Louisiana
THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado
Richard J. Garon, Chief of Staff
Kathleen Bertelsen Moazed, Democratic Chief of Staff
Kristen Gilley, Professional Staff Member
Jill Quinn, Staff Associate
C O N T E N T S
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WITNESSES
Page
Lewis Kaden, Chairman, Overseas Advisory Panel................... 4
Lynn E. Davis, Senior Fellow, Rand............................... 9
Ambassador Langhorne A. Motley, Member, Overseas Advisory Panel.. 10
APPENDIX
The Honorable Benjamin A. Gilman, a Representative in Congress
from New York and Chairman, Committee on International
Relations...................................................... 34
Admiral William J. Crowe......................................... 38
Mr. Lewis B. Kaden............................................... 43
Dr. Lynn E. Davis................................................ 50
CHANGING AMERICAN DIPLOMACY FOR THE NEW CENTURY
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Wednesday, February 2, 2000
House of Representatives,
Committee on International Relations,
Washington, DC
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m. in room
2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Benjamin A. Gilman
(Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
Chairman Gilman. The Committee will come to order. Members,
please take their seats.
We want to welcome all of you here today as we initiate our
Calendar Year 2000 oversight hearings. We welcome our witnesses
today.
We are using the Armed Services Committee hearing room
today because the International Relations Committee room is
being renovated to modernize our facility with high-tech audio-
visual equipment. It will keep us out of that room for a few
more weeks, but then we look forward to being able to have
exchanges with parliamentarians around the world through the
use of this equipment.
Today's hearing, ``Changing American Diplomacy for the New
Century,'' is an opportunity for our Committee to review and
discuss the findings and recommendations of the November 1999
report by the Overseas Presence Advisory Panel on ``America's
Overseas Presence in the 21st Century.
We decided to start the year with this hearing to emphasize
the importance we place on the issues tackled in this report
and to announce our support for implementing many of the
recommendations. The care of a great institution requires us to
be responsible not only for the day-to-day management, but also
to look forward to the future to make certain that institution
thrives.
We have received many advisory reports in my time, and I
want to compliment this panel for clearly laying out the issues
that must be addressed to modernize the foreign policy
structure. I wholeheartedly agree with the panel on the point
that the key to success is setting up on interagency process to
coordinate activities among the various government agencies
involved in foreign affairs. The President must provide the
leadership for a comprehensive approach to rationalize our
diplomatic presence.
I support an overseas presence for all reasons as stated by
the panel, but as this report points out, it is how that
presence is designed and whether the mission and goals are
results-oriented that will determine a modern State Department
operation.
The Results Act sets up the means to link goals and results
to resources. That must continue to be part of both the
mission-planning process and Washington's allocation of
resources. Let me note that it is regrettable that the
Administration chose at the time of its release of the panel's
report in November to bash the Congress over the nonissue of
cuts in State Department funding. As a chart I have distributed
to our Members makes clear, State Department funding has been
increased, not decreased, over the years. In fact, the moneys
available to the Department set records in real inflation-
adjusted figures last year.
The State Department needs to spend its money more
effectively, and we will certainly want to make some changes to
increase flexibility along the lines indicated by the Overseas
Presence Advisory Panel's report.
I have a long-standing respect for the generallists in
foreign service who undertake the challenges of living abroad.
However, over the years I have become a believer that certain
jobs should be confined to professionals in the field,
including security, personnel, information management, and
facility and construction management. In some instances that
has occurred, and that is to the benefit of the State
Department.
In addition, if the State Department has staffing gaps in
any particular area, they might well be addressed by lateral
recruitment, the practice undertaken by organizations thought
of as traditionalists, such as the British Foreign Service.
Over the past few years, senior leaders at the Department
have been more preoccupied with responding to day-to-day
crises, and they have neglected the changing needs of their
institution. I hope that the panel's recommendations will be
acted on in the Year 2000, and that the report will provide an
agenda for the incoming Administration.
Having visited many posts in my time, I know we have
talented people who can adapt to changes and probably would
welcome a new approach to diplomacy.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Gilman appears in the
appendix.]
I would be pleased to recognize the Mr. Delahunt for any
opening comments he may have.
Would you have any opening comments, Mr. Delahunt?
Mr. Delahunt. I note the Chair of the Subcommittee----
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Mr. Delahunt. I was just going to review a statement here.
Chairman Gilman. Mr. Smith does have a hearing.
Mr. Smith. I am chairing a hearing, as Chairman of the
Helsinki Commission on the crisis in Chechnya. We have Chechen
parliamentarians, and that is also taking off at 10 o'clock, so
I am going to be shuttling back and forth.
But I want to thank this extraordinary panel for the fine
work that you have done. Our Subcommittee in the past has heard
from a number of very, very interested people, including
Admiral Crowe who presented riveting testimony about a year
ago, in March, as well as David Carpenter, the Assistant
Secretary for Diplomatic Security, who pointed out at the time,
Mr. Chairman, as you know, that the number of threats against
our embassies abroad had literally doubled from 1 year to the
next, and that transnational terrorism had certainly raised the
bar, significantly underscoring the need for a significant
multiyear investment in embassy security.
I am very pleased to note that H.R. 3427, which I
introduced, and was cosponsored by our very distinguished
Chairman, Mr. Gilman, and the Ranking Member of our Committee
Mr. Gejdenson and Cynthia McKinney, not only passed but was
signed by the President in that final push for legislation in
the waning days of the last Congress. That bill was on life
support more times than I can shake a stick at, but it
significantly included $5.9 billion for embassy security and
general moneys over 5 years for that, $900 million per year
over and above the account for security and maintenance.
So we have tried to at least authorize, put us on a glide
slope to making sure that our people abroad are adequately
protected, that there is a proactive security arrangement so
that their lives and the lives of their loved ones are not put
at risk more than is required, and shame on us if we don't do
all that is humanly possible to protect our personnel overseas.
Again, you have recommended a $1.3 billion annual over 10
years which is pretty much in line with what we are trying to
do, and now the big fight in the out years to make sure that
the appropriators come up with the funds to meet the
authorization level at least.
So, again, I want to thank you for this excellent report.
Regrettably, I do have to run over to this Chechen hearing,
time being what it is, scheduling conflicts, but thank you.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you, Mr. Smith. Mr. Delahunt.
Mr. Delahunt. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to
read a statement prepared by the Ranking Member, Mr. Gejdenson,
who I want to assure you is under the weather, and he was here
just a moment ago, and I turned to my right and I noticed his
absence. So I am going to have to pinch hit for him, so to
speak, but I want to, on behalf of Mr. Gejdenson, welcome you,
Mr. Kaden, as Chairman of the panel and other Members of the
panel that are here today, Ambassador, and Dr. Davis, as well
as all the members who are not here but who put in a great deal
of work over the past 1\1/2\ years.
The panel did have broad representation, both from within
the government as well as the private sector, NGO's and
academic institutions. It is clear that much research, analysis
and thought went into the recommendations of the panel. Thank
you, Chairman Kaden, for leading this effort to re-examine the
systems and processes through which our diplomatic mission is
conducted.
As you pointed out in your report, the nature of diplomacy
has changed dramatically in the post Cold War era. Our
embassies are having to engage with a broad array of actors
through multiple mediums, and on an increasing number of
issues. The proliferation of international terrorism has added
a new level of risk to our overseas missions, and yet in the
face of these new and increasing demands on the talented and
dedicated men and women that carry our foreign policy, Congress
has not stepped up to its responsibility.
While we agree with many of your findings, I am frustrated
with the lack of support within Congress to adequately fund the
150 account and provide our President and Secretary of State
with the resources they need to upgrade and modernize our
foreign policy apparatus. I hope this report will serve as a
wake-up call to my colleagues that our diplomatic mission is in
crisis, and we look forward to hearing your testimony.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you, Mr. Delahunt. Any other Members
seeking recognition? If not, we will proceed with our
panelists.
Today, we have three distinguished Members of the Overseas
Presence Advisory Panel who have agreed to discuss their
findings and recommendations of their panel. First, we have
Lewis Kaden who chaired the panel. Mr. Kaden holds degrees from
Harvard and currently is a partner in the law firm of Davis,
Polk and Wardwell in New York City. Mr. Kaden has an extensive
background in the public and private sectors and brings a great
deal of experience to the task of modernizing our State
Department.
Also joining us is Ambassador Tony Motley, who was our
Ambassador to Brazil, and the Assistant Secretary of State for
Inter-American Affairs. He has also been in private and public
sector positions in the State of Alaska. Ambassador Motley
currently heads an international trade consulting firm and
finds time to Co-chair the State Department's Ambassadorial
seminars.
In addition, we have Dr. Lynn Davis, currently a Senior
Fellow at Rand where she has served on the review boards that
investigated the embassy bombings in East Africa as well as
this panel. She is also on a study group of the Commission on
National Security in the 21st Century. Dr. Davis previously was
the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control in International
Security Affairs. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from
Columbia University.
I welcome all of our panelists and ask that you proceed
with your statements. Without objection, your statements will
be entered into the record. Also, without objection, I am
submitting for the record the statement of Admiral Crowe, who
is not able to be with us today but commented on the panel's
findings. Please proceed, Mr. Kaden.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Crowe appears in the
appendix.]
STATEMENTS OF LEWIS KADEN, CHAIRMAN, OVERSEAS ADVISORY PANEL
Mr. Kaden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me make just a few
points about the panel's report and the recommendations that
are more fully summarized in the statement which you have
included in the record. Let me say at the outset, on behalf of
all the panel members how much we appreciated the cooperation
and the opportunity to consult with you, Mr. Chairman, and with
Members of this Committee in the course of our work. I spoke on
several occasions with you and with others, including
Congressman Smith and Congressman Gejdenson, Congressman
Bereuter and other Members of your Committee, and those
consultations were enormously helpful to us in our work.
Let me summarize our conclusions this way, and then I will
be happy to elaborate in the course of our colloquy.
First, we concluded, as you know, that in today's
environment, the activities engaged in by U.S. Representatives
overseas are, if anything, more important than they were in the
past. That is not a self-evident proposition. There are those
who say that in the era of CNN and rapid communications and
travel around the world, why do we need to have on-the-ground
presence in so many places? Why do we need to subject thousands
of men and women who serve the United States to the dangers and
risks of activity overseas. We conclude that given the array of
challenges and opportunities for the U.S., the complex tasks we
ask our representatives to perform, and the importance of those
tasks to our national security and our national interest, that
it is even more important that we have the right people, with
the right skills and the right support and the right protection
on the ground around the world.
So that is our first conclusion. I can elaborate on that.
You are all familiar with that agenda. Some years ago, several
decades ago, diplomacy consisted essentially of interacting
with other governments and reporting on those interactions back
to Washington. Today, it is entirely different. As markets open
up, as political systems change, we ask our representatives to
interact on a daily basis, not only with the governments in the
countries in which they serve, but with the civil society, with
business groups and labor groups, with political interests and
other groups, public interest groups of all kinds, and that
requires a degree of skill and training and background that is
really quite different than it was some time ago.
We ask those representatives to be expert and to engage not
just in the kind of political and economic issues and strategic
issues that occupied the agenda in past decades, but to also be
involved in global environmental issues, in combating crime and
terrorism, in dealing with weapons proliferation, in dealing
with the spread of disease and the development of vaccines
against new diseases and a host of other issues. So we see
these functions and the activities we ask our representatives
to perform as more important than ever, more challenging than
ever.
Second, we concluded that the state of our activities
overseas, the way they are organized, the way they are staffed,
the way they are housed and equipped, is in a sorry state of
disrepair. The report says that it is perilously close to
system failure, and those were words we chose carefully. For
the greatest country in the world, with the greatest potential
influence of any nation in the world, to send our men and women
overseas and put them in the conditions that they serve in, in
so many places, not just in terms of dilapidated physical
facilities or inadequate security, although those are extremely
important, but also in circumstances lacking basic technology,
basic training and skill development, basic match up of their
experience with the challenges and tasks they are asked to
perform.
This is an area in enormous need for improvement, and the
promising thing is that this is not an area that provokes
partisan differences like so many other issues that we debate
in this town. Everyone, from whatever political persuasion, has
an interest in seeing to it that the United States engages in
these activities effectively. As you said, Mr. Chairman, in
your statement, the government has to perform these functions
efficiently in order to set the foundation for asking for the
resources necessary to perform them, and it is an obvious
tradeoff. Until the government manages these activities
effectively they are on weak ground in asking you for the
additional resources that are necessary.
So the answer to us is, and the report says this, that this
requires a partnership between the Administration and the
Congress to see to it that the activities are properly
organized, efficiently managed, effectively performed and
properly funded. It all goes together.
Our recommendations, let me just highlight four or five of
them very briefly. The first is security. As Admiral Crowe
concluded in his review of the circumstances in the bombings in
East Africa, our first obligation is to offer adequate and
secure protection to those men and women we ask to serve
overseas, and in this regard, not only the facilities and the
capital improvements have to enhance security, and that does
take resources, but also the simple things, the procedures, the
training, the windows, the things that we can do in the short
term on limited budgets are areas of improvement that we have
to do, and we have to do urgently so we can say to our
representatives the government has done what it takes to
control and limit the risks under which you serve.
Those risks will always exist. There are dangers in the
world. There are dangers we are all familiar with. But it is
simply inexcusable not to make the investment and training and
procedures and leadership, not to have clear lines of
accountability and responsibility for security within the
government, and those are the issues that our report addresses.
Second, right sizing. We think it is important that all the
agencies of government with an involvement overseas cooperate
through an Interagency process under the President's leadership
and chaired by the Secretary of State to develop staffing
patterns post by post around the world that do two things: that
match up skills with mission priorities, and there are some
enormous challenges in that regard; and that size the staff of
embassies in a way that we can say is as efficient and
effective as possible. So there are two objectives, at least
two objectives here. One is a better match up of mission tasks
and the skills of the staff we assign to do them, and the other
is to be able to say that we have a lean and agile and well-
equipped force to do the job as efficiently as possible.
Our panel concluded on the basis of our visits that there
are places in the world where there is a great deal of room for
improvement in this area, both on the match up of skills and
tasks, and on the number of people. Let me just give you one
example. Ambassador Rohatyn, who serves in Paris, was an active
member of our panel and a very distinguished businessman and
public servant from New York with whom I have worked for many
years. He arrived in Paris and observed--the numbers varied
depending on how you count and which day you ask the question--
but there are somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 people serving
in the embassy and consulates in France. Many of our allies who
are doing considerable business in France have their staffs
around the country at a third, a quarter, some cases 40
percent, of those numbers. Britain and Germany, for example,
who do a tremendous amount of business in France of all kinds,
have great interest in France, have roughly a third the number
of people we have.
Ambassador Rohatyn also observed that the people weren't in
the right place. In France, the centers of commercial and
business activity are not in Paris. They are not around the
national government. They are in Lyon and Tours and other
cities, and he came up with the idea, why don't we take a
single officer and some support staff and put them in those
places, they can do a great deal of good with a cell phone and
a computer and a car, advocating U.S. commercial interests,
pursuing other U.S. national interests, and he has managed to
implement, with congressional help, three or four of those
small presence posts as they are called.
I think when he is asked by this Interagency right sizing
Committee to come up with a pattern of staffing for France, you
will see significant reductions in the number of people and
significant enhancements in the skill level and tasks which
they are capable of performing, and there will be savings in
that, but equally importantly, there will be an enhancement of
the effectiveness with which they represent U.S. interests. I
think the same is true in many other places in the world.
So we suggest that the President convene that Interagency
Committee, designate the Secretary of State as the Chairman and
get it moving on some selected posts. You can't do them all at
once. You have to pick out some targets. I think the Secretary
of State has taken some steps in that direction, and hopefully
the President will put his influence behind it so that all
agencies of the government cooperate in the effort.
Second, technology. It is a disgrace that our
representatives don't have the simple capacity to communicate
between agencies or back to Washington. The kind of
communication that in my small law firm with 500 lawyers
scattered around the world, we take for granted and the
business organizations represented on our panel like Goldman
Sachs and General Electric have taken for granted for years.
The representatives we ask to serve there can't communicate by
e-mail with the people that are serving back in Washington or
with their colleagues across the street in the capital in which
they serve, and this is not a technological problem.
The technology exists. We had consultants look at it. It is
not even a budgetary problem because it would be remarkably
cheap, and we suggest that the first step ought to be to
provide that kind of common technology platform for
unclassified communication which represents 80 or 90 percent of
all communications in embassies and consulates around the
world. You could do that this year at modest cost, and then you
could initiate a study with all appropriate agencies
participating about how to provide a common technology platform
for more sensitive classified information. We estimate that
that would take 2 years.
Third, human resources. The government is far behind the
times of the best practices in the private sector and other
governments and State governments in many respects on personnel
practices, how you recruit, train, evaluate, promote the most
talented young people in the service. This is something that
shouldn't be controversial. Undersecretary Cohen has begun some
efforts in the State Department in this direction. We think
that process ought to be accelerated, supported, and again will
yield significant benefits and efficiency and effectiveness.
Finally, the buildings' management and construction process
itself. We say in the report that constructing and managing
buildings is not a core competence of the State Department. It
seems like a simple statement. It has aroused enormous
controversy, but our observation was that the State Department
is quite good at many things, but designing, building,
maintaining the 12,000 facilities under their jurisdiction
around the world is not one of the things they are good at. It
is now performed, as you know, in the FBO. We suggest that--and
this is an area in which our country has the greatest expertise
of any place in the world. Designing, constructing, maintaining
physical facilities, there is an enormous wealth of experience
and learning in this country. We need to put it to work for the
nation's interest.
So we suggest then that Congress ought to take action to
create a new entity, a government-chartered corporation. We
call it the Overseas Facility Authority. It ought to have more
flexible tools for financing. It ought to have the ability to
create a lean and sophisticated staff in this area. It ought to
be able to enter partnerships with private sector organizations
to get the job done. It ought not replace the statutory
responsibility for policy and priorities that now are vested in
the combination of the Secretary of State, the President of the
United States and this Congress. In other words, the decisions
on where to build, the shape of the buildings, the priorities
of activities there ought to remain as they are now with the
Secretary of State and the Congress and the President, but the
more mundane task of implementation, of designing, constructing
and maintaining buildings ought to be vested in this
government-chartered corporation. All the agencies who use the
platform should be represented on it, and we think the benefits
can be a faster pace of development and construction, better
facilities, lower costs, a fairer way of allocating the costs
among those who use it and a better staff to perform the
function.
It is an idea that Ambassador Rohatyn and some of the
business members of the panel, Steve Friedman, the former
Chairman of Goldman Sachs, Jack Welch from GE, and Paul O'Neill
from ALCOA took a special interest in. We would be happy to
work with you and other Committees of the Congress on the
details. We have urged the President to put his staff to work
on the design of this legislation, and whether it comes from
the White House or it comes from the Congress, I think it is an
idea that we would like to see receive serious debate.
Those are the highlights of the report, and I look forward
to responding to your questions.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you, Mr. Kaden, for your extensive
review, and we welcome your suggestions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kaden appears in the
appendix.]
Chairman Gilman. We will withhold questions until all of
our panelists have an opportunity to be heard.
Before I turn to the next panelist, I would like to welcome
Ambassador Peter Burleigh, our former Deputy U.S.
Representative to the U.N. I understand Ambassador Burleigh
will be heading up the right sizing effort for the Secretary,
and we look forward to working with Ambassador Burleigh on this
effort as we realign our overseas resources. Welcome.
Now, we will turn to Dr. Lynn Davis, our expert on a number
of areas, and former Assistant Secretary.
STATEMENT OF LYNN E. DAVIS, SENIOR FELLOW, RAND
Dr. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be
back and to appear before your Committee. I have been
privileged since I left the Department of State to serve on the
Accountability Review Board that investigated the tragic
bombing in Tanzania and then on the Overseas Presence Advisory
Panel, which was charged with looking at the character of our
overseas presence, and at the same time ensuring that we
provide security for those overseas personnel in the face of
budgetary restraints and the new foreign policy priorities.
Let me begin, Mr. Chairman, by subscribing to the view of
the Overseas Presence Advisory Panel: the dramatic changes in
the world make our overseas presence in virtually every country
more valuable than before. So I begin with that objective, and
it is, as our chairman said, not one that we all came to
immediately, but over the course of the work of this panel, I
do believe strongly that we need to be overseas, but at the
same time thousands of Americans representing our nation abroad
still face an unacceptable level of risk from terrorist attacks
and other threats.
So as part of the work of this Committee and the
implementation of the recommendations of the Overseas Presence
Advisory Panel, it is very important to keep in mind that we
have to address those security risks by a number of different
steps, and we have to ensure as we right size or find the right
overseas presence that we keep security in mind in making those
decisions, that security is an integral part of the process by
which we make those decisions.
Mr. Chairman, you have heard from Admiral Crowe, who more
eloquently than I, can describe the various steps and goals
that were outlined by the Accountability Review Boards. I would
like to just highlight a couple of those as we move forward in
this next year.
The first is that we need to think about security in terms
of a comprehensive strategy. No single one step will be enough.
We must appreciate that no one is safe. Every single embassy
and every American overseas is at risk, and we have to
undertake a strategy that focuses everywhere, and no place is
seen to be safe. We also have to understand that everyone must
share responsibility for security, those of us here in
Washington and those of us overseas. It is not that security is
done by someone else, but everyone has to take seriously
ensuring our security.
The Secretary of State must give her personal priority and
attention to security. She needs to ensure that accountability
and clear lines of responsibility are in place for assuring the
security of Americans overseas. This was not the case at the
time of the embassy bombings, and I would strongly urge the
Secretary of State to implement the recommendation of the
Overseas Presence Advisory Panel to designate the Deputy
Secretary of State as the individual responsible for carrying
out her legislatively mandated responsibility to provide
security for all American officials abroad. A single person
needs to be designated and be accountable and responsible for
the security of Americans overseas.
We have a number of near-term steps that need to be
undertaken. Many are underway, and now they need to be
sustained, and most important, though, Mr. Chairman, as you
suggested in your opening remarks, is the need to ensure that
there is the proper amount of funding to take care of and
address the vulnerabilities of our embassies. It is expensive
but it is not too much to ask for those who carry out our goals
abroad.
You know the numbers. You will be getting the new budget. I
have been disappointed quite frankly that the President has not
done more to find the funds necessary, and I would encourage
you all to give your continued attention as authorizers to this
task and work closely with the appropriators to find these
funds.
Fifteen years ago, Admiral Inman's advisory panel produced
a comprehensive report on the issue of embassy security. The
Accountability Review Boards were struck by how similar the
lessons were for the East African bombings as those drawn by
the Inman panel. What had happened was that the U.S. Government
had failed over the years to take the steps necessary to
sustain the priority and funding for security. Once the
bombings were over, people forgot about the dangers, and the
lesson we need to learn from the East African bombings is that
we can't afford to lose focus and not give priority to security
in the future.
In the words of the Chairman of the Accountability Review
Boards, Admiral Crowe, we must face these facts and do more to
provide security or we will continue to see our people killed,
our embassies blown away and the reputation of the United
States overseas eroded.
I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to your
questions.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you, Dr. Davis.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Davis appears in the
appendix.]
Chairman Gilman. Ambassador Motley.
STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR LANGHORNE A. MOTLEY, MEMBER, OVERSEAS
ADVISORY PANEL
Ambassador Motley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you and
the Ranking Member, and Lew certainly laid out very well what
we were all about. It is a small part within a very large
portfolio that you have, and I think that I will just tick off
five things that this report is not about, which brings it back
into the focus of which we have talked about.
This report is not about policy. It is about the climate in
which you make policy work. That by itself makes it a dull
subject because policy is a thing that everybody likes and
spends the time on and that is where all the action is, and yet
you can't get policy implemented if you haven't got the back
room straight. So we are not about policy in that sense.
We are not just about the State Department either. We are
about all the other agencies, some 30 or 40 that serve
overseas, bring in their different cultures and how is it that
they adapt their administrative procedures, and as Lew talked
about, just simple things like information technology. It is
not just about money or more bodies. It is about how we train
and equip the force that will implement the stuff.
It is not a critique of any one term or one Administration,
and thus we have to keep making the case, because sensitivities
are that if we say something, people take it as if it is in the
present day. It is not that. I think those of us that have
looked at it know that as we have looked at this, it is decades
long of either neglect or lack of oversight, or whatever you
want to call it, that has created this.
Finally, let me say to you that it was not prepared in a
vacuum. This is not 25 people in a room gathered together since
February through September hammering it out. We were fortunate
to have enough backup with consultants. We reviewed 108
documents, earlier studies done by the State Department, done
by outside groups, done by the GAO. We reviewed testimony and
proposals in Congress. The reason we did that was we did not
want to operate in a vacuum, and we reached out beyond that.
Working overseas are multinational companies. DHL is in many
more countries than the U.S. Government is. General Electric
has seven times as many people overseas as the State Department
does. How do they handle it, how do they handle their pay, how
do they handle bringing them back in, how do they handle their
security, how do they build buildings, how do they do things.
So we sought out some of the best practice of all of these
and put them in a matrix form. The net result I think is, one,
we didn't reinvent the wheel. There have been a lot of good
ideas in there. We have incorporated them. We gave credit,
Stimpson Report, CSIS. What we have tried to do here is put it
all in one place, in just this area, non-policy, and hope to
give it the push because our goal is not to be a study that is
looked at by the next group that gets together in a few years
to look at this aspect.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you, Ambassador Motley. We will now
proceed to our questions. I note there are about 40-some
recommendations in the report. Can you prioritize some of the,
say, top 10 out of all of that?
Mr. Kaden. I think as I indicated in my preliminary
statement, we would say there are a top four or five: right
sizing, technology, the buildings and maintenance authority
corporation that we suggest, the human resources and personnel
practices improvements that we suggest, and the investment in
security. Those are our top five.
Chairman Gilman. I appreciate that. I understand that your
panel worked with various government agencies in the White
House on this report. Are the State Department and the White
House following the time line for recommendations included in
your report, and has someone been appointed to implement this
at the State Department? are you working with someone at the
White House?
Mr. Kaden. I think there have been a number of discussions,
but the jury is still out on the implementation process, and I
hope you, Mr. Chairman, and your colleagues follow up with the
Administration. Within the State Department, there are a number
of efforts underway as I understand it, and Ambassador
Burleigh's assignment to lead the right sizing effort is an
important part of that. I think Undersecretary Cohen has also
initiated a considerable amount of work on the personnel
practice and human resource issues as well.
I think, with respect to the White House, we will have to
see. I would hope that there will be some news from the White
House about the designation of and implementation coordinator
in some of these areas, and I hope that the budget, when it is
submitted next week, will include some initial provisions
toward implementing these recommendations. But I think those
two are subjects that I would encourage you to follow up on
with representatives of the Administration.
Chairman Gilman. Did you ask the White House to appoint an
implementer?
Mr. Kaden. We certainly have. We recommended it in the
report, and I have followed that up with several conversations
with senior staff in the White House.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you.
Dr. Davis, in addition to this Commission, you also served
on the Commission on National Security in the 21st Century.
When that Commission issued the first of three reports in
September 1999, former-Speaker Gingrich said the following: ``I
would emphasize that the way that this was drafted in the
original legislation in which General Boyd and I had, and the
President had jointly worked on was to allow us to look at all
aspects of national power, and I would argue that means not
only the Defense Department, but the State Department national
security apparatus, the Treasury, et cetera.'' It seems
Gingrich is suggesting that a serious look at revamping our
national security apparatus will have to review all the
departments and agencies that affect our ability to protect
national power. Do you agree with that premise?
Dr. Davis. I can describe to you the charter that set up
this Commission, and it is a three-phase study which began by
looking at the world in the 21st century. The second phase,
which is currently underway, is to describe a strategy to
respond to the threats and opportunities of that world. The
third phase is to look at the governmental structures and
processes to carry out that strategy.
The national security strategy is broadly defined, and so
the Commission is charged at least to look at the whole
national security apparatus and to make recommendations by the
end of this year.
Chairman Gilman. How do the two commissions you have served
on complement and inform each other?
Dr. Davis. The accountability review boards were set up to
investigate the tragic bombings in East Africa. One of the
recommendations of that board was to ask the Secretary of State
to investigate the overseas presence, the size and the tasks of
America's overseas presence in light of the security dangers
and threats that now face us. Our Chairman's panel is a follow-
on to that recommendation, that is, because security needs to
be set in the broader context. It was precisely our hope that
through such a panel, we could integrate thinking about
security with why it is that we are overseas, our goals, and
how it is that we can afford within the budget situation to
have security, but also have as effective an overseas presence
as we possibly could.
Chairman Gilman. Should we focus just on the State
Department or should we be looking to some of the other
agencies such as Defense?
Ms. Davis. In terms of providing security for Americans
overseas, this is a task that involves all Americans, official
Americans, not the military because that is a separate set of
tasks, but when we think about preserving security of Americans
overseas, our embassies, these are all Americans. It is not
just those that serve the State Department. One of the
challenges of the Overseas Presence Advisory Panel was to put
together a set of recommendations that would cut across the
agencies and try to rationalize and make more effective the
ways in which we go about sizing the American overseas presence
across all the agencies and not just the State Department.
Chairman Gilman. I am going to ask all the panelists,
another member of the 21st Century Commission is our former
Chairman, Lee Hamilton, and at a press conference he said we
know that in Washington there are commissions and there are
commissions. Some commissions file reports and they go up on a
shelf and gather dust, nobody ever looks at them. Other
commissions really do have an impact. What will your panel do
to make certain it has an impact?
Mr. Kaden. Let me say from the outset--I think I speak for
all the members of the panel--we were determined to do our best
to make sure that this would not be a report on the shelf. We
didn't want it to be a large book. It is a relatively short,
accessible, readable report. But more important, we wanted both
to prepare it and to promote it in close consultation with
leaders in the Administration, the Congress and outside groups.
So as you know, Mr. Chairman, in the course of our effort, I
met repeatedly with you and Members of your Committee, with
Members of the Appropriations Committee, with your colleagues
on the Senate side.
We did the same thing throughout the Administration, not
just in the State Department as Dr. Davis and your comment
indicated. The State Department accounts for about a third of
the personnel serving the United States interests overseas
outside of command activities in the military. There are 30
other agencies involved in those activities. We worked closely
with virtually every one of them, and we also consulted widely
and talked extensively with leaders in the business community,
the labor community, the nongovernmental organizations and
environmental and other areas.
Now the question is whether all of those efforts toward
making this a report that has some life to it will bear fruit,
and I think that depends on the follow-through from the White
House, the State Department, the rest of the Administration
and, most particularly, the Congress. We have been encouraged
so far by the reaction of you and your colleagues. As I say, I
am eager to see both in the budget next week and in the
comments from the White House about the follow-through from
that direction, and I am encouraged with the early efforts in
the State Department to tackle some of these problems, but it
will require continuing partnership and continuing oversight on
your part.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you, Mr. Kaden. We hope that when
the budget starts floating around these halls that you will let
us know if you see some failure to implement some of your
proposals. Ambassador Motley.
Mr. Motley. Yes. Chairman Hamilton usually puts his finger
right on it. This is just a report unless it gets legs, as they
say in the trade, and I have to hand it to Lew Kaden who bent
over backward all the way through this thing to go to every
think tank that has an interest in this thing, and all of them,
at one time or another, have done a report, and so you have to
get over the parochial approach. I think as a result of that
you will find that there is pretty much unanimity behind this
report. It is coming from business. I think it will come from
labor. It comes from the think tanks in this town.
Many of us put 9 months in this thing, and I am speaking
for myself, I am not prepared to sit back and just say we did a
report. I went to New York at Lew's instigation in the middle
of that snowstorm and talked to 15 people that had nothing else
to do that night, and so we are actually trying to get out and
build the kind of consensus we know it takes in order to
compete with all the other items that are on your agenda.
Chairman Gilman. Dr. Davis, my time has run out so if you
would be brief.
Dr. Davis. Just briefly to say, as part of the panel
reports, you will see that we tried to give you rough estimates
of the costs, that this was a report that tried to set itself
in the realism of today's world of the budget realities, and so
what we were trying to do is have some recommendations that
would not only focus on the new world but be realistic as to
what it is going to cost, and maybe that will help you all as
you take the task forward of helping us implement the report.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you. I want to thank our panelists
for their response. Mr. Gejdenson.
Mr. Gejdenson. As I read your efforts here, it is a pretty
comprehensive work. I think there is only one place you missed,
and maybe I can understand that since you are reporting to us
today, but while you were very accurate, I think, in pointing
out that this is not an attack on any one Administration, the
one place where there has been a consistent failure to respond
has been the Congress, and we have sometimes been in collusion
with Administrations to inadequately fund these areas. But
oftentimes the Congress has led the effort to underfund our
needs overseas.
It seems to me that if you had a report like yours talking
about the military, that we were sending people into battle
without adequate security and preparation, it would have banner
headlines, and Members of Congress would be running to the
Floor to take action to defend themselves from the inaction
that has occurred here for all too long, and I think that we
have to take the same attitude about all people when we send
them overseas, whether they are in the military or the State
Department or DEA or CIA. We ought to give them the absolute
best that is possible, or else we are not doing our job here.
While I understand not wanting to point the finger, up at this
panel today, while you are here, I think that an honest
assessment of Congress' role would be a healthy addition to the
debate. Again, I wouldn't suggest you do it today. We probably
wouldn't like it.
Mr. Motley. We thought it about it, and then it made us
feel good and we rejected it.
Mr. Gejdenson. The questions I have run to a couple of
issues here. One is, we had this problem with the former head
of the CIA, Mr. Deutch and the problem with Ben Ho Lee at Los
Alamo, where essentially the problem is that both of these
individuals got in trouble because they took information they
had a right to have, but they had it on the wrong computer. My
sense is that that is part of the panic in the State
Department, that everybody is afraid, if you let them start
using e-mail, it will be more than a nasty review of the boss's
performance that will go out over the Internet. You think that
is not a big challenge to make sure they can keep intelligence
information, stuff that has some sensitivity, from being
inadvertently sent out; and then, of course, the response.
Members of Congress will come beat that person up, wanting them
incarcerated. So the papers will demand more investigations.
They are now asking George Tenet why he didn't do more about
the former head of the CIA taking stuff home on the wrong
computer.
Mr. Kaden. You see, Congressman, as the report indicates,
there are different degrees of protection required for
different kinds of communication, and obviously sensitive,
classified information has to be subject to different
procedures, but a great deal of the day-to-day business that
goes on around the world among our representatives is not
classified, doesn't need to be classified. It may be sensitive,
it may be confidential in the same way other organizations have
confidential material, but that communication can be adequately
protected.
I think the real problem is cultural rather than
confidentiality. As we all know from all the literature about
the computer age, technology breaks down barriers. It breaks
down hierarchies. It facilitates communication on a horizontal
basis among people working together so that you would have a
much more rapid sharing of information and consultation on
issues across agency lines without always going through many
levels of hierarchy, and it is the reluctance to open those
doors that I think causes some agencies in the government to be
wary about giving their people the communications technology
links that they need to have to engage in their activities.
Mr. Motley. I think what you have laid out is a continuing
problem, and e-mail is just another pipe or avenue where this
can happen. I mean it is the same as do you use the STU-3 phone
which is classified, or do you use the other phone, when you
write something out do you put confidential. I think we have to
keep in mind about the continual training of classified
material and how you do it. I think e-mail just presents
another challenge.
Mr. Gejdenson. Yes. Let me just ask one last question then.
You create a new agency to deal with the structures, and I can
understand that the State Department may not be the place to,
worry about building buildings and security and all those other
things. Why wouldn't we just use an existing government agency?
I don't know, GSA, don't they usually build our buildings?
Mr. Kaden. They do domestically. Part of the driving force
for this new entity that we propose is that we are attacking
several different problems. Multiple agencies use these
platforms. They say all the agencies that send personnel
overseas, they are the tenants in effect. The logical thing is
to have a fair allocation of the cost. So that, for example,
when the FBI decides how many people it wants to send to
Bangkok, it makes that decision reflecting the reality of how
much it costs to get them an office space and housing and so
forth. The current system doesn't do that and it makes for poor
decisions.
But just as we want to charge them a fair share of the
cost, they are asking for a proper degree of input into the
planning process. So part of our motivation for this new agency
was to have it governed by a structure, a board of directors in
effect.
Mr. Gejdenson. It is not just the efficiency of the
operation. You want to get them a nice piece of change so they
can operate more like the private sector in the sense of
managing assets for a company with multiple divisions?
Mr. Kaden. Exactly, and then we want to charge them fairly
for the facilities they use so that the costs are rationally
allocated.
Mr. Gejdenson. Did you take a look at the impact of
bringing--it seems to me a lot of what happens in embassies
could be handled at central locations with modern
communication. Now, the disadvantage, of course, is if you
bring it here, it may cost you more because you know it is more
expensive to do a lot of stuff here, you may have some other
advantages, but does it make sense to look at functions that
are now handled out in the field and move them either here or
maybe continentally, in each continent, or perhaps a central
location so you have a better use of manpower?
Ambassador Motley. I think you have hit the nail on the
head, and there was an example that we went through in looking
at this, centralization, regionalization, bring it back to the
U.S., or put it somewhere else. Lew and I received a briefing
on what they call Nairobi 2010, which was the new embassy that
is going to be built, and it was done inside the State
Department by some of the FBO types, and it was very well done.
They had a campus-type approach. The classified stuff you could
separate so you could have ingress and egress well done and the
rest. We asked and they did centralization there for parts of
Africa of the State functions, and this is a key aspect. We
said what about the other agencies. They said we don't have a
mechanism today to find out what AID or somebody else is doing,
and so that is one of the reasons for having this.
Mr. Gejdenson. I have used too much time. I apologize, I
have to go off to another meeting. I will tell you, I just took
15 companies to India with me on a trade mission for 5 days or
so on the ground, and you are right that this--in the process
of these meetings, we were meeting with all the elected leaders
of India, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Defense
Minister and others. Simultaneously, the foreign commercial
service and other people at the embassy were working with our
companies to have private sector meetings with matching
companies. India is a pretty big country, but we really put a
strain on the system I think in some ways by showing up there,
and then of course the Secretary of the Treasury was coming a
week later. The Secretary of State may be going there. The
President is going there in March. We had four Senators come
through at the same time, and so it does put a tremendous
strain on the resources, and it might help if we could get
better management, I think, of the back office functions.
Now, the danger of course, is Congress will look to steal
that money for something else rather than use it to create a
better operating system, and I think you are going to have to
go back and gently, because we are very sensitive up here
unless we are attacking somebody else, prod us a little to do
our job because all too often, when Presidents, Republican and
Democrat alike, ask for security and other things, it is the
Congress that ends up shortchanging them. Thank you.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you, Mr. Gejdenson.
Mr. Houghton.
Mr. Houghton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a wonderful
report. I think it is very helpful for us. It puts into sharp
focus some of the things that we have got to be thinking about.
Obviously, it is important to bring us along early, but it
seems to me if you boil it all down, what you need us for is
security money, and that is about $13 billion over 10 years.
The rest is money I would imagine that could be handled within
the State Department, particularly if other people than Felix
are doing the types of things in their embassies they ought to
be doing. This is a lot of management stuff. I mean, it is
executive order, right sizing, enhancing, refocus the role of
the Ambassador, human resources, consular service, perform
administration, information. This is stuff that really should
go on in the Department if the President and the Congress will
respond to that in terms of the money.
Mr. Kaden. I agree with you, Congressman, that the
resources for security upgrades are a critical part of it, and
only the Congress can do that, but I think also the
congressional oversight and interaction with the Administration
is critical to these management improvements. I think unless
there is really a sense of partnership, of working together, it
won't happen, or it won't happen at the pace that it should. I
think this is, in some sense, an unusual area in which you
should cross party lines, and in both houses have a common
interest in working with the Administration in getting the job
done.
Mr. Houghton. I agree with that. That is an ongoing
process, and it gets a little difficult these days,
particularly if you go home to town meetings such as we go home
to and people don't think we ought to spend a dime overseas.
That is wrong. We have got to change that. But those are
should. But in terms of the critical thing, if you can look
back on how Congress could be most helpful, it is really in the
security money, isn't it?
Ambassador Motley. I think it is important, but the
security money actually came, and the Congress, too, came as a
result of the first panel that Dr. Davis sat on, the
Accountability Review Board. We don't shortchange security, but
I can tell you that the biggest single shortcoming we found-and
this is why I take a different view from your analysis-the
single biggest shortcoming we found, in my view, was the
absence of an interagency mechanism or structure in Washington
to deal with the nonpolicy aspects, and in that sense, it isn't
enough to say, we will put it in the State budget or the rest
of it. These other agencies, some 30 or 40, have a right to a
seat at the table.
Mr. Houghton. But that is an executive function.
Ambassador Motley. Yes, it has changed mainly.
Mr. Houghton. As a matter of fact, I don't think you want
us to meddle in that area.
Ambassador Motley. It may be too late. I think we have.
Mr. Kaden. I think there is a difference between meddling
and doing it and using your oversight powers to hold their feet
to the fire, make sure it is done.
Mr. Houghton. I was just trying to get a priority here
because we can get, in terms of reforms and all sorts of things
which have to do within State Department, between agencies, the
managerial aspects of this and the cost of them, but I was just
trying to, in my own mind, figure out what is the quintessence
of it.
Mr. Kaden. I think the structure for getting the security
done and the building upgrades made is critical, too. If you
just appropriate the funds, even the amounts that we or Admiral
Crowe and Dr. Davis asked for, and leave the current mechanisms
in place to do the job, you won't get the bang for the buck
that you want. You won't get the efficiency in using those
resources in terms of how long it takes and how much it costs
to get the facility upgrades done. So we think the new
mechanism--which should be quite familiar to people like
yourselves with experience in New York. The notion of a
specialized government-chartered corporation with flexible
powers to do tasks like construction and maintenance and
building management is one that is quite common in State and
local governments around the country.
Mr. Houghton. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Again, a great report.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you, Mr. Houghton. Mr. Delahunt.
Mr. Delahunt. I want to agree with my friend from New York,
Mr. Houghton. I think it is a very good, I think it is a solid
report, and it raises the consciousness, if you will, of
Members of Congress, but hopefully it will also have an impact
beyond the Department of State and this institution in terms of
the needs to update the infrastructure, because I think that is
what you are saying, Ambassador. It is not about policy. It is
really changing the infrastructure to meet the new role of
American diplomacy. Is that a fair statement?
Ambassador Motley. Yes, sir, and within infrastructure is
not just buildings.
Mr. Delahunt. Sure, I understand that. Right, but the
reality is, too, as Mr. Houghton indicated, it has a lot to do
in terms of our role with funding of the security issues. I
read recently--I come from Massachusetts, if you haven't picked
up on the accent yet--in the Boston Globe, a story about our
Ambassador to--because he is a Massachusetts native, Mr. Burns
from Andover, Mass.-our Ambassador to Greece, and they were
talking about the changing role of the Ambassador and about the
evolving role of the American diplomat and within--for lack of
a better term--the culture there seems to be great disagreement
in terms of what that role is.
I think I noticed, it was Mr. Kaden's written testimony,
which I concur with, I think our Ambassadors and our diplomatic
missions ought to be about advocating for American commercial
interests. We are in a new era. The economy is a global economy
now, for good or for bad. I am not commenting on that, but I
think that is part of the change that you are trying to adapt
to.
But what concerns me, I guess, and I would be interested I
think from you, Ambassador, more than the other panelists, is
an observation about raising the profile and the need for the
Ambassador to coordinate American policy in the host country,
and when you hear the statistics--and I think it was Mr. Kaden
who was saying in terms of American personnel, official
personnel, a third is from the Department of State. There are
some 30 agencies, and I get this uneasy feeling often that
maybe the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
Do you think there is a need to revisit, in terms of the role
of the Ambassador, the necessity for a new infrastructure in
clarifying and establishing some bright lines in terms of the
Ambassador as the prominent, the coordinator or the voice for
American policy in these other nations?
Ambassador Motley. In some interagency-type mechanisms,
the law is very clear and I wouldn't suggest that it change.
Section 207 of the Department of State Act in 1980 clearly
states that the Ambassador is responsible for the direction and
coordination and supervision of all executive branch
activities, their people and their activities. That is very
strong bureaucratic language, and Ambassadors take that to
heart, and many of them don't have a leadership management
problem.
What we found was that a look of interagency coordination
about how many people we send here and how many do there, that
is what starts to create the problem. Embassies work very well.
They are family, they live together and the rest of it, and
they can absorb those different cultures in most cases. It is
the support system back here. We went to look at embassies
overseas and very quickly figured out that the problems really
lay back here, a lot of it.
Mr. Delahunt. But wouldn't the Ambassador, make
recommendations in terms of--I think the term is in right
sizing, right matching? Isn't the Ambassador the key to
achieving what you are saying?
Mr. Kaden. We have suggested that the initiative should
come from the Ambassador, but you need this interagency
committee back here because that is where the power to make
decisions lies, and if the process works if the process that
Ambassador Burleigh is now helping to set up works you will
have Ambassadors coming forward with sound plans and then an
interagency process in Washington to react to those plans, to
refine them and to put them into effect.
Ambassador Motley. If there is one shortcoming in
Ambassador authority and practice, it lies precisely in the
area that you have pointed out. There is an animal called NSDD
38, National Security Division Document 38, that was written
more than a decade ago which in essence is the process in which
an Ambassador or an agency can figure out how to put a person
or to remove a person from post, a position, not a person. That
is a fine-tuning aspect that unfortunately does not work very
well. What is needed, I think, is this overall, to set the
general pattern, where should we be, with how many and what
composition, and then you do the fine-tuning one on one. All we
have now is NSDD 38. It requires that the Ambassador be backed
by the Secretary of State because it is a one-on-one drill. It
is the Secretary of Justice or Treasury or something of that
nature wanting, and the Secretary of State is not going to
argue that a famous case of an assistant Naval attache in
Stockholm because you are not going to sit down and spend a lot
of time on it, understandable.
Mr. Delahunt. You are right. I am not suggesting
legislation is needed, but somehow empowering the Ambassador
and conferring upon that Ambassador management prerogatives, to
put his or her own team together within that country, despite
the agency.
Dr. Davis.
Dr. Davis. To follow on from that, the Ambassador doesn't
always have the influence to make those decisions. That is a
fact.
Second, an agency sends their people overseas essentially
as a free good. So they don't have any incentive not to do it
if someone says I think we should go. So you end up with an
embassy with a variety of different people, with various
different tasks, and the Ambassador does the best he or she
can, but there is no overall rationale for it.
Mr. Delahunt. Right, but I think that is really one of the
concerns that I have, and I think is very fundamental to the
management system changes that you are focused on here in the
report.
Mr. Kaden. One of our suggestions, which I think goes
directly to the concern you expressed, is that the Ambassador's
management prerogatives be clearly spelled out in a
Presidential Executive Order, so it was transparent, so
everybody knew what the scope of authority was. That is done to
some extent now in something called the Presidential Letter
that each Ambassador receives, but we thought it would work
more effectively if it were clarified, strengthened and made
transparent.
Mr. Delahunt. As Ambassador Motley points out, for the
Ambassador to come back and have a lengthy discussion with the
Secretary of State or some Undersecretary of State about some
attache, in the real world that just isn't going to happen and
somehow----
Ambassador Motley. It did happen.
Mr. Delahunt. I imagine it has on occasion, but again, so
much depends upon who that particular Ambassador is.
Mr. Kaden. That is why we thought that if you had this
permanent interagency committee, if it was established by the
President so it had the force of the White House behind it, you
would have a mechanism for dealing with the staff.
Mr. Delahunt. I think the report is well done, and I do
think and I would hope that we could work bipartisan to
implement it, in a bipartisan way, to implement it and provide
the necessary oversight to see that it moves forward. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you, Mr. Delahunt.
Mr. Sherman.
Mr. Sherman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A lot of the
discussion has been about embassy security, and I think that
has been covered reasonably well. I think we all appreciate the
hardships and dangers that those who serve our Nation overseas
endure. I want to echo Bill's comments about the importance of
providing staff to deal with the commercial interests of the
United States.
Most of what the State Department does is almost impossible
to judge according to standards; that is to say, if we don't
get a peace treaty in the Middle East this year, I can't say
that is the State Department's fault. If we have a trade
deficit, it isn't because our commercial attaches have flunked
some time and efficiency standard. But there is one area where
you can actually measure the efficiency of what State does, and
that is in the issuance of visas, and here we have a situation
where State has done everything possible to avoid measuring its
success or, should I say, terrible failure and where every
interaction I have had with them has given me another
indication that they are doing a terrible job, and it is a job
that can be measured. I mean, I can't say that if we don't have
a treaty on this or that that someone has done a terrible job.
But this first came to my attention when an American
citizen was put in touch with me who had to live in the United
States 2 years without his wife because it was standard
operating procedure in the Philippines that, we would wait 2
years before we got around to letting the wife of an American
citizen get a visa to come to the United States. So I want to
thank the Chairman and this Committee for prodding and
including one of my amendments that ultimately was grafted on
to the appropriations bill to get a study of how long this visa
process takes.
Now, it doesn't take 2 years in Britain or France because
the political powers in this country wouldn't tolerate that,
but in Santo Domingo or Manila it does, and I would hope that
we would go further in measuring the success of our visa
operations, looking at every visa granting officer and every
post and the State Department in total and say what percentage
of the visa requests are rejected, what percentage of those
that are granted involve overstays, what percentage of those
that involve overstays are long-term overstays, how many of
those overstays have been convicted of crimes in the United
States, and we should recognize that when you deny a visa and
you deny a chance to visit a family member or you deny a chance
to come to Disneyland and spend money in my area, that that is
a mistake just as it is an even greater mistake to issue a visa
to somebody who overstays.
So we can look at the success of avoiding granting visas
where people overstay. We can also look at the rejection rates
to see if those are too high. We can also look at the speed,
and as I commented, 2 years of enforced separation of a husband
and wife, if any other country did it, this Congress would
demand that our Ambassador to the United Nations seek a
resolution of the U.N. condemning that country for its
violation of human rights, and I don't know whether your report
deals at all with the allocation of visa officers, but it is
not like this is unintentional.
I am not saying it is purposeful. It is just if year after
year you have a 2-year backlog in Manila and a 2-week backlog
in London, and you don't round up five visa officers from
London and transfer them to Manila in a couple of weeks, and
you let that go on year after year after year, then you have
decided that if an American marries a Filipino, they are going
to be separated for 2 years, and that is just the penalty for
marrying a Filipino or marrying someone from the Dominican
Republic.
So I would like to know if your study reviewed the
efficiency in denying visas to people who overstay, in granting
visas to people who come here, and the speed with which visas
are issued, especially when you are reuniting a nuclear family
of minor children and of husband and wife where either the
husband or the wife is a U.S. citizen.
Mr. Kaden. I am glad you raised that issue, because it is
one we looked at very closely, and I didn't include it in my
initial summary. I must say this is an area that I had never
given a moment's thought to until I took on this task, but one
of the first visits I made with members of the panel was to
Beijing, and spent a couple of hours watching the processing on
the visa line, these thousands of people standing in line,
having paid a sizable fee for the privilege, being reviewed in
a matter of 20 or 30 seconds; and then in talking to consular
officers and leaders in the consular service and meeting with
Ambassador Peterson, I think, who was one of your colleagues
before he became Ambassador to Vietnam, talked about the
enormous management task that lay ahead of them when they
opened the consulate in Ho Chi Minh City, where they
anticipated 1,000 to 1,500 applicants a day.
Our report concludes that this is a tremendous management
assignment. How you train consular officers, what kind of staff
you use, as you say, how you allocate them around the world in
the areas of greatest need, how you measure the performance of
those functions, how you organize those and deploy those
resources is a management task of tremendous importance and
complexity, and one in need of significant improvement. We make
some suggestions about how to use technology better, how to do
advance appointments, how to use family staff members. You
probably don't need full-time career foreign service officials.
What you do need is people with the right language skills and
the right interest in being involved in what amounts to a form
of customer service, form of consumer service.
So this is a very important area in which some reforms have
been implemented and progress made in the last few years, but a
great deal more room for improvement was identified.
Ambassador Motley. If I could comment.
Mr. Sherman. With the Chairman's indulgence, I would just
like to add one thing here, and that is I had suggested to the
State Department----
Chairman Gilman. Without objection.
Mr. Sherman. Thank you.
I had suggested to the State Department that they use
private bonds as a second way to validate that someone will
return. This is a privatization of the decision, just as we
demand bonds in the construction field, where a government
agency says we are not going to hire capricious bureaucrats to
decide whether you can complete the building, we will make you
post a bond. There was what appeared to be such tremendous
resistance by those in the field to get to exercise capricious
power by applying vague standards. I have been called at 3 in
the morning--they knew it was not an urgent matter, but they
wanted to call me at home at 3 in the morning--they thought I
was in Washington, so they thought it was 6 in the morning--
that any congressional involvement in any of these cases was an
additional reason for staff to exclude somebody. So the desire
to avoid privatization of the decision or any congressional
input seems very strong.
Congress is at fault to some extent here in underfunding
this, but the Administration is at fault for not requesting a
lot more funds.
Mr. Kaden. I think there is a lot of room for improvement.
The idea of private bonds or private sponsorship, in other
words, an affirmation if someone has an employer who is a
familiar institution, that employer can either bond or
guarantee the likelihood of return.
Mr. Sherman. And with a dollar amount that the Federal
Government will get if the person overstays.
I might add, Mr. Kaden, if your small law firm with 500
lawyers didn't know down to the tenth of an hour how many hours
each of your associates billed, you wouldn't have 500 lawyers.
Yet no one can tell me whether Ms. X or Mr. Y--whether 90
percent of the visas that they issue overstay or 1 percent
overstay. No one can tell me whether they were just rejecting
everybody, because we have no statistics as to how effective--
and if somebody were to just make capricious decisions that
turned out to be very erroneous, either keeping people out or
letting nobody in, we would have no idea.
Ambassador Motley. You are correct in no statistics on
overstay because we are one of the few countries in the world
that has no exit governmental authorities. Everywhere else you
go, when you go through, you go through some kind of
immigration that restamps it on the way out. We don't do that.
Mr. Sherman. Why don't we do that?
Ambassador Motley. America has never done that.
Mr. Sherman. I would hope that those of you writing a study
like this would suggest it, because if we don't have statistics
as to who is overstaying, then we can't possibly appraise the
effectiveness of our visa-granting officers.
Ambassador Motley. I would agree with you. You have talked
about visas. There are some 8 million visa applications each
year, that we know. The vast majority fall into--the
overwhelming majority in the category that visit Disney World.
The very small percentage are those that are called--the big
ones are called NIV, non-immigration visas. The small portion
are the case to which you talked about, but they are an INS--
the INS has a huge say in this because the consular officers
overseas are enforcing U.S. laws that are under the INS.
I am excusing the delays of the rest of it, but I might
point out to you that we did cover some of the things. Our
recommendation 6.1 in the report was one that we debated a lot
in the fact that what we wanted to do was give the head of
consular affairs and the Assistant Secretary the authority and
power to move people exactly like you said, out of London into
Manila and the rest of it.
Now, there is internal, I will tell you, turf battle within
the Department of State in which the regional Assistant
Secretaries, of which I was one at one time, don't like this
idea because if they want to do it, then security wants to do
it, the whole argument. But we see the wisdom of what you have
talked about, and we have come forward with that
recommendation.
Mr. Sherman. Whoever opposes transferring from London to
Manila should stay separate from their spouse for 2 years or
until such time as you know--the level of human loss here can
be imagined only if you picture it happening to yourself. Mr.
Chairman, thank you very much.
Chairman Gilman. The gentleman's time has expired. Thank
you.
Dr. Cooksey.
Dr. Cooksey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I must say that my
experience with embassies abroad has been very positive and
very favorable, and there are some real professionals there
that I think are doing a good job, and we need to support them.
I have been in some embassies where they are aware of their
vulnerability from a terrorism standpoint, from a just
standpoint of having some more bombings. I used to spend a lot
of time in East Africa and particularly Nairobi, and those
issues need to be addressed.
This report recommends the use of some regional support
centers, and currently there are some regional support centers,
maybe even in Nairobi or Kenya. What else do you have in mind
for these centers? Do you think it is possible that some of the
work that is being done in these regional centers could, in
fact, get some of the initial information, say, in Nairobi, and
have someone back here in the States really do the detail work?
Because it seems that some of these embassy staffs are
overworked and understaffed, and yet here, I don't know that
they are over staffed, but there are more people, there are
more human resources to carry out these functions. Has that
been considered, or is it possible?
Mr. Kaden. That is directly part of the right sizing
process. We did think that many of the overhead functions,
payroll processing, vouchers, travel services, financial
services and the like, could be moved into regional centers, in
some cases back to the United States, and we did a survey of
other organizations, both other governments and private sector
organizations, and discovered that many of them were further
ahead than our government in centralizing paper processing
services, doing them more efficiently, and so we did recommend
that that effort be pursued. It should logically come through
the right sizing process.
For example, in Paris, to keep picking on the French
example, there are 170 back office support personnel in Paris
doing these kinds of functions, paper processing and financial
services. In Ambassador Rohatyn's view and in ours, those
functions could be performed, in many cases, back in the U.S.
in service centers at lower cost and more efficiently. Then in
other parts of the world, it may be that you want to move some
of these functions into regional centers. You don't have to
reproduce them in each post.
Now, a more difficult question, but one that we thought
should be studied, is even when you get into the program and
policy areas, are there functions where you could imagine an
officer covering more than one country, being located in a
regional center and having more territory to cover? There are
pros and cons about that, but again, it is something we thought
should be studied and evaluated as part of the right sizing
process.
Ambassador Motley. I think it is fair to state that the
Department of State has tried, and what we are saying is you
have got to do more of that. There is a huge passport center in
the Northeast that does all of our passports, even the ones
that are issued overseas.
Dr. Cooksey. Where is it?
Ambassador Motley. The issuing of passports, servicing
Americans overseas, at 3.1 million Americans.
Dr. Cooksey. You say there is one in the Middle East?
Ambassador Motley. No. There is one in the Northeast United
States. I can't remember the location. There is another central
location for Latin America in Miami that covers a lot of all of
the financial and the rest of it, and so what we are saying to
them is you have got to do more of this kind of stuff. Lew's
absolutely correct, when you get into the program and the
policy issues, it becomes very difficult.
I visited a post, a small post, Chisinau in Moldova, where
there is one political economic officer, and so a regional
environmental officer parachutes in. In this case it is he has
to go to the airport to meet them, they don't speak the
language. So he has to go on all of these meetings with him,
translating and the rest of it, and he is not getting his work
done in a sense. So just by itself this kind of regionalism
doesn't cover all things.
Dr. Cooksey. Yes, Dr. Davis.
Dr. Davis. The thing that you always have to keep in mind
is that as you think of consolidating functions in a particular
place, as you bring more people to that place, that the
security of that place is an important factor in those
decisions. You are correct to say that Nairobi had become a
regional center for a certain number of administrative and
other kinds of activities, and there they were in an embassy
building that was so vulnerable. It was vulnerable to crime, as
the Ambassador described. She didn't expect it to be as
vulnerable to a terrorist attack. But nevertheless, as you
factor in your decision about where to place these people, you
have to also factor in the security of that place, and the
concept of a regional support center is a good one as long as
it is a place that those Americans you put there are safe and
not more vulnerable by being there.
Dr. Cooksey. Basically you are saying you don't want to
create a bigger target for the terrorists.
Dr. Davis. Exactly.
Dr. Cooksey. I understand that, and that is a valid
concern. In this information age that we are going into so
quickly, it does seem that we could do a lot of these functions
back here.
Has any consideration been given to putting--let me just
give you an example. Let us say in Rome and Geneva, I
understand we have two different mission buildings in both of
those cities. Has any consideration been given to putting these
two missions into one building, or is it necessary to separate
some of these functions? Like in Rome, I think you have an
agriculture----
Mr. Kaden. I think it is fair to say that there may have
been different views among different individuals on the panel,
but I would think that the dominant view, or the closest thing
to a consensus on the location issue was that there are
advantages to collocation. People work together across agency
lines, and they are for the most part--if one were thinking
about an ideal physical setting, it would be something like a
campus setting in which certain activities required a greater
degree of security and dealt with classified information, as
well as physical security needs. Others needed to be more
accessible to the community in which they serve, but the need
to work together argues for them being essentially in the same
location.
So that I think while there are some agencies that have a
different view, our panel was more sympathetic to putting
people in close proximity to each other and less to having one
agency 20 miles away from the center of representation.
Dr. Cooksey. Yes.
Dr. Davis. The same argument leads you--the security issues
lead you to the same conclusion, and that was the
recommendation of the Accountability Review Boards that to the
extent possible, that you would try to put Americans in a
single place in order to provide a better level of security.
Mr. Kaden. At the same time I think we were quite
enthusiastic about this concept of small-presence posts that
Ambassador Rohatyn has initiated in France, because in many
countries there are centers of commercial activity or centers
of political interest or other issues. They don't require full-
blown consulates with all the trappings and support staff, but
they are places where the U.S. interests would be well served
by having a couple of people with the right equipment and the
right skills.
That is particularly true in commercial advocacy where in
many countries centers of commercial activity, centers of
technology development are different than the national
political capital.
Dr. Cooksey. In closing, I would hope that everyone
recognizes, certainly people from the State Department and the
Congress in its oversight responsibility capacity, that as we
move further into globalization, there are going to be more and
more Americans overseas making demands on these embassies, and
there are going to be more foreign nationals over there trying
to get in here that will be making these same demands. So it is
an awesome responsibility and no way to predict the future
demands, and they will be greater I feel, but hopefully with
information technology we can absorb that without adding too
many personnel.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you, Dr. Cooksey.
Mr. Delahunt.
Mr. Delahunt. I just have one question, and I don't know,
maybe this never came within the purview of your mandate, but
as the concept has changed and evolved, and as--I think it is
your term, Mr. Kaden--matching these new skills with the new
demands, have any of you any observations about whether our
academic institutions, whether it is Georgetown or the Fletcher
School, are they evolving in terms of their curricula to
provide the kind of training that is necessary in this new era
of diplomacy?
Mr. Kaden. I think Ambassador Motley would have views on
that--in terms of foreign policy and foreign affairs training
generally, but I would just make this comment. I think one of
the phenomena we are observing is that the new skills required
are often in areas of special expertise that we didn't need
from our diplomats years ago.
To just give you one example, one of the themes that we had
common views throughout all the agencies we consulted with in
the economic arena was that, to some extent, as a Nation we
missed a bet in not paying more attention to the development of
institutions for capital market activities as countries in Asia
entered open markets. So attention to issues like securities
regulation, accounting standards, banking oversight, where we
have a great deal of experience and sophistication, we didn't
put people on the ground with the ability to work with those
countries as they were developing new activities in those
markets, and to some extent, we paid a price in the Asian
financial crisis for that.
So those are skills. You don't need hundreds of people, but
you need people with very specialized backgrounds, and they can
come from any different agency. They might come from Treasury
or Justice or State or other places, but they are going to have
to have the required accounting and economics and legal
training.
Ambassador Motley. You have raised a very good point. You
would think it would be logical that if you have a need, you
would go to the academic institutions and say, we need more
environmental officers, or something. I don't know that that
goes on. I don't know that it doesn't go on, but I think
essential to that is you have got to know what you need, and
4.1 recommendation of ours--and I hope Ambassador Burleigh will
take it to heart--is the Secretary of State needs to direct
that there be a bottom up review of what is it that the State
Department wants; what does it want in political terms,
economic terms, also economic, environmental; are you going to
have cross-training; how are you going to do this. If you don't
have that, then there isn't anything to go over and tell
Georgetown what they ought to be training people for.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you, Mr. Delahunt. I just have a few
questions, and then we can wind up.
Mr. Kaden, we noted a theme that the State Department needs
to professionalize many of its support functions to include
personnel management. Should we follow the earlier
recommendation made in the 1989 Thomas Commission Report on
Personnel to drop the Director General and replace it with a
statutory Assistant Secretary of Human Resources? What are your
thoughts about that?
Mr. Kaden. It is not a question that our panel specifically
addressed, and I don't have a view on whether it should be the
Director General or an Assistant Secretary, but I think the
broader point is well taken, that human resources has become a
complex, professional activity. That is true in organizations,
public and private, around the country. There has been a great
deal of change in strategic human resource management, and the
State Department ought to catch up with that trend.
Part of the broader point, too, which I am sure, Mr.
Chairman, you are well aware of, is that we didn't look
particularly at the structure of the State Department itself,
but I think many of our panel members, including myself, had
the observation that it is important for the Department
leadership to pay attention to management in the broadest
sense. There is inevitably a tendency both in the selection of
top leaders and in their daily activities to get involved in
the strategic and political crises of the moment, and that is
obviously always going to be important, but this is a complex
operation, thousands of people engaged in important functions,
and somewhere near the top of the Department there has to be
enough attention to operations and in the broadest management
sense. I don't mean just financial management in the
responsibility of the Under Secretary, but the Department, I
think, needs a chief operating officer, and whether that is the
Deputy Secretary, as someone has proposed, or someone else, it
is an important part of the proper exercise of foreign affairs
responsibility.
Ambassador Motley. Mr. Chairman, the Director General is
dual-hatted both in function and in title as the Assistant
Secretary of State for the Bureau of Personnel currently. So
they do. The Director General is an old phrase that came from
when it was just kind of like foreign service, Director of the
Foreign Service, but they are one and the same people now.
Chairman Gilman. Dr. Davis.
Ds. Davis. I can only urge the Committee to look at this
issue of whether there should be a single person responsible
for security in the Department. In my opening remarks, I
recommend to you the recommendation of this panel, that the
Deputy Secretary be given the responsibility to carry out for
the Secretary her legislatively mandated responsibility to
protect American officials overseas. We didn't have a single
person with that responsibility and accountability at the time
of the bombings in East Africa, and I would urge this Committee
to support that recommendation and urge the Secretary to make
that particular appointment as soon as possible.
Then the broader point, which is all of these management
tasks need to be thought about by somebody at that level and
integrating all the pieces into a single overall strategy.
Chairman Gilman. I would assume that person should have
some security professionalism.
Ds. Davis. I think that person needs to have the support of
the Secretary and the advice of the professionals, but not
necessarily himself or herself to be a professional security
officer. What you are looking for is that all the complex
issues that go into an overall security strategy are brought
together in one place and not dispersed throughout the
Department as it currently is today.
Chairman Gilman. Now, isn't there an Assistant Secretary
for Diplomatic Security in charge of security at the present
time?
Mr. Kaden. Yes, there is.
Dr. Davis. There is, but that responsibility does not cover
some additional functions that are associated with security,
including resources for the broader sets of people who were
involved in security. That person doesn't have the single
responsibility to take decisions or even make recommendations
on the closings of embassies when there are security threats.
It is just a multiple set of people within the Department that
have responsibility.
I wouldn't change that, but then now I would put over them
a single person that the Secretary can turn to, to make sure
that all of those activities are properly coordinated.
Chairman Gilman. Do we really need another person doing
this, or can we just enlarge his responsibilities, this
Assistant Secretary?
Dr. Davis. I think it needs to be someone more senior than
Assistant Secretary to carry out the charge and the set of
responsibilities that come together to make sure that the
security of Americans overseas is carried forward.
Chairman Gilman. Mr. Kaden, the State Department several
years ago created the overseas staffing model to use as a
modeling system to achieve the right sizing. From our
perspective this hasn't met the goal that it was supposed to
achieve. It seems that this becomes a bureau struggle as the
pressure is on, for example, the European bureau to down size,
while Asia, Africa and other Latin American embassies increase.
What can we do to overcome that turf battle?
Mr. Kaden. Our conclusion when we looked at that particular
exercise in the staffing models was exactly the same as yours.
It had not worked. It did not seem to be a model of how to
attack this problem, and we thought a far better way to deal
with it was the interagency process, with leadership from the
White House and direction from the State Department, was a much
better approach. If that interagency Committee is set up as we
hope it will be and functions well and demonstrates in the
short term that it can make some effective decisions on right
sizing and staffing patterns, enlist the cooperative effort of
the different agencies, if Ambassador Burleigh and his staff
are able to do that for Secretary Albright in this year, I
think it will create a pattern that the next Administration
will have to build on.
Chairman Gilman. Have you discussed with OMB their
opposition to the use of lease-purchase as a means of funding
facilities overseas?
Mr. Kaden. I have at great length, and I am not sure I can
report a complete change of view, but I think in the
consideration of this new vehicle, the overseas facilities
authority, for more efficient construction and maintenance of
buildings, the issue of the range of financing tools has to be
reviewed by Congress. There are different points of view, I
know, among your colleagues about lease-purchase financing, but
under proper controls, and subject to all the usual power of
Congress over appropriations and priority setting, I think it
is part of the tool box. It ought to be part of the tool box.
Chairman Gilman. Dr. Davis, a panel study identifies the
need to change the culture in the Department of State to
incorporate security as a fundamental element of overseas
presence. Since you are both on the Accountability Review Board
and now on this panel, do you detect any change in attitude
toward the issue of security among foreign service personnel?
Dr. Davis. I know that the bombings in East Africa were a
wake-up call for most of our embassies and also the Department,
and they have taken a number of steps, the near-term steps that
I described in my testimony. The task now is for every person
at home and overseas to understand that security is something
they have to worry about and take steps to try to improve. It
is not something that someone else does for you. It is not the
regional security officer's task. It is not the Assistant
Secretary's task for security. It is every person in the
Department, it is every person overseas tasked to think about
and prepare and try to be as safe as possible.
We can't reduce all the risks, but we can just make it a
part of the way we live and we act, and I think the bombings,
the only thing that one can say that might be good coming out
of those tragic bombings is now that people are taking it more
seriously, and everyone knows that they have to take it more
seriously.
Chairman Gilman. As we try to treat all the posts worldwide
with the need to address terrorist threats, is it realistic to
provide the same level of security in a place like Dublin or
Sydney as we would do for Pakistan, for example?
Dr. Davis. We still have to consider the character of the
potential threat, and some places will be more likely targets,
but the one lesson we learned from the East Africa bombings is
that terrorists are smart, too, and for those places where we
thought there were no real threats, or there was a low level of
threat, and we were doing all that we possibly could, they
found our vulnerabilities, and they found ways to kill
Americans. While clearly some areas of the world are more
dangerous than others, and we still have to think about those
threats in those terms, we can't assume that any place is free
from those risks, and we have to be vigilant, and there are
things we can do everywhere to improve the security of
Americans.
Chairman Gilman. When we talk about everywhere, is there a
risk that because of the magnitude of the job of providing
maximum physical security to all posts, that those projects
just won't be completed in a timely manner?
Dr. Davis. We will have to do it as quickly as we can. We
can't do everything right away. It is a formidable task, a
billion dollars a year, to try to do what it is we think will
be needed. In the interim, though, there are a number of things
that we can do to improve the security of buildings, and we
will give priority to those that are most vulnerable, both in
terms of their structure and where they are located. The real
difficulty, it seems to me, is that a year or two ago will go
by, and we will forget.
Chairman Gilman. We have done that already when we had the
Inman report.
Dr. Davis. Our plea to you is that we can't let that happen
again.
Chairman Gilman. We welcome your reminding us in the event
that happens.
What about the focus on physical security, does that impede
the attention of other kinds of security threats leveled
against our posts, or are we taking our eyes off the other
threats that could impede security?
Dr. Davis. I think the task of security today is a broad
range of tasks. It is certainly the car bombs. Those are the
immediate kinds of threats that we saw, but now we see a world
in which terrorists will have easier access to chemical and
biological weapons, even nuclear weapons. They will be able to
put at risk some of our own information structures so that the
character of the threats that we have to think about when we
think about preserving security is much broader than in the
past.
That doesn't mean, though, that we can't do some specific
things to prevent car bombs, those the Department has begun to
undertake and have a real urgency as well.
Chairman Gilman. Does our foreign service accept and
understand the importance of embassy security? Do they truly
throughout the service recognize the need for grasping the
importance, whether it be personal security, protection of
classified information, whatever the nature of the security be?
Dr. Davis. All I can say is I certainly hope so. I think
that our reports and what has happened has led the most senior
people in the Department, all of our Ambassadors, to see the
importance not only of thinking about security, but preparing
and training. A whole series of steps have been undertaken.
I can't speak for the foreign service, but I can certainly
assure you that all those I was most fortunate to meet during
my service in the Department are the kinds of people that I am
sure are smart enough to know this is something they need to
do, and I suspect they are doing what they can.
Chairman Gilman. We expect to follow up with additional
hearings to include Administration witnesses and businesses and
organizational experts in the coming few months so we can
support the work you have done. As we follow up on these
issues, we will also draw upon the recent studies in the
foreign affairs structure.
Again, I want to thank our panelists for being here today.
I want to thank Ambassador Peter Burleigh for sitting in, and
we wish you well in your new work. So again, our thanks to the
entire panel for the work you have done in preparing this
excellent report.
The Committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12 noon, the Committee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
February 2, 2000
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