The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2020 15 Washington Post Publishes “The Afghanistan Papers” O n Dec. 9, The Washington Post published “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War”—a six-part series of articles detailing how “U.S. officials misled the public about the war in Afghanistan,” according to confiden- tial U.S. government documents the Post obtained. “U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it,” according to the Post . The Post fought a three-year legal battle against the U.S. government to win release of more than 2,000 pages of “Les- sons Learned” interviews of more than 400 people, including generals, ambas- sadors, diplomats and more, conducted by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. One of the main themes that emerged from the papers, according to the Post , is that “year after year, U.S. officials failed to tell the public the truth about the war in Afghanistan.” Another is that “the United States wasted vast sums of money trying to remake Afghanistan and bred corruption in the process.” You can access the six-part series, as well as all of the released interviews, at bit.ly/afghan-papers . Pay to Play 2.0 L ike Gordon Sondland, Pres. Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, San Diego real estate developer Doug Manchester (who likes to be called “Papa Doug”) donated $1 million to the presi- dent’s inauguration fund. The president nominated him for an ambassadorship to Nassau the day after taking office. But the nomination then stalled in the Senate for more than two years. Then