The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2014 39 Ben East is currently serving in the Bureau of Intelligence and Re- search. He joined the Foreign Service in 2002, and has also served as an assistant information officer in Mexico City, information officer in Accra, cultural affairs officer in Managua and consular officer in Jeddah. “This Is HowWe Tweet” is a work of fiction; Mr. East has never run the Twitter clearance process for an assistant secretary of any kind, real or imagined. His articles have appeared previously in The Foreign Service Journal , and his short stories have appeared in the online liter- ary journals Atticus Review and Umbrella Factory Magazine. Twitter meets the State Department bureaucracy. BY BEN EAST A ssistant Secretary Crickshaw wants to tweet. His request (order) reaches us in Electronic Media via the staff aides in the front office, setting in motion a whole series of actions that repeat the actions of the day before and the day before that, all the way back to the day we first tweeted, which nobody knows exactly when that was. First, we initiate the Interagency Process to gather the Briefing Checklist, the Scene Setter, the Draft Remarks and all other documents related to the event the assistant secretary wants to have us tweet for him about. We then consult the lead office (in this case, Youth Rights/Worldwide Engage- ment/Sports Organizations/Diplomacy for Underserved Males— YR/WE/SO/DUM) for an analysis of the pros and cons of tweeting. The analysis is strictly pro forma, of course: we have our orders. So we will complete the process per the standard operating proce- dure, right down to tweeting at the exact second of the precise minute of the chosen hour, no sooner and no later, as presented in the Tweet Strategy Timeline, which we are about to draft. While YR/WE/SO/DUM completes the analysis, there is time for a quick cup of coffee and lemon pound cake from one of the many Starbucks within acceptable range (7 minutes) of the office. Upon return, we open the requested documents, unless they haven’t arrived, in which case we send a second (but not yet shrill) request, and then call the staff aides or drafters or clearers for bootleg copies that might be stuck somewhere in the process. The Scene Setter tells us why the assistant secretary is involved in a particular program, and should contain the nuts and bolts on audience and message. Without reading the Scene Setter we have no idea when, where, why or how the assistant secretary is giving a speech, signing an accord, lobbying for war, etc., and therefore can make no logical recommendation about possible tweets in the Tweet Recommendation Package that has been requested (ordered). Next we review the Draft Remarks, which are probably differ- ent fromwhat will become the Cleared Remarks, which we will only get at the very last minute. But draft remarks will give us an idea of what the assistant secretary wants us to say for him about a particular issue, which we already probably know from previ- FOCUS SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE FOREIGN SERVICE THIS IS HOW WE TWEET Kudos for USG @AmbCrickshaw supporting education. #Education #Girlchild #Boychild #BagofWind @GoUSA