The Foreign Service Journal, January 2003

cedure was new and that sort of thing “simply wasn’t done” in the minds of traditionalists. The issue, as I understood it, was whether a chief of mission was bound by legislation and by interagency agreement in Washington to institute the “through the DCM to the ambassador” regime. A sub-issue was whether FCS members could use the State grievance procedure. The Grievance Board not only accepted jurisdiction, confirm- ing the Foreign Service status of FCS personnel but, to the surprise of everyone I know save one, held for the grievant. That should have been a landmark that resolved the problem worldwide. However, I am aware that the reporting problem existed at two large embassies in the mid-1990s, and maybe still does. I should add that I, personally, never had to confront the issue. People outside of government may feel that civil ser- vants are preoccupied with ranks and titles, but my expe- rience in the private sector suggests that things are no dif- ferent there. In the Foreign Service, especially abroad, an officer’s standing can determine access to information and decision-makers as well as the ability to obtain and employ resources; in short, it can determine the officer’s effectiveness. From the beginning, the SCO should have enjoyed the same diplomatic title as the senior economic officer, but State management fiercely resisted requests to accord minister-counselor titles to commercial officers. Political Appointees In this case, having political leadership rather than careerists at the head of FCS paid off. The DG, by then enjoying assistant secretary status, used his contacts in his party and the Congress to get the requirement to upgrade SCO status at a few large embassies attached to a DOS funding bill in the late 1980s. I was in Bonn at the time and was one of those grudgingly tabbed; I can well remember a few weeks later receiving thanks for the DOC effort from the political counselor who may have been champing at the same bit, and who, along with sev- eral other section chiefs, had just been accorded the same status by State. Despite its small size within the Washington land- scape, ITA, especially in the early years, attracted an unusually high number of Commerce’s allotted political appointees. Few were interested in or qualified for posi- tions in the Census Bureau or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, but ITA dealt with the glamorous subject of international trade and no specific background was necessary to qualify as a pro- gram manager. Overseas experience was not a widely- held strength. As a consequence, programs and procedures were often mandated without reference to local market condi- tions and practices. For example, SCOs were required to clear their annual commercial plan with the in-country American Chamber of Commerce. There may be posts where the local Amcham’s primary interest is in promot- ing U.S. exports, but I never served at one. They were more likely interested in exporting to the U.S., lobbying for in-country advantages, or maybe, as in Canada, didn’t even exist. It was also automatically assumed that a trade promotion vehicle effective in one market could be lock- step implemented worldwide with equal effectiveness. It is difficult to believe now, but one of the issues which dogged early SCO conferences was that of charg- ing businesses for services. For some ex-State officers, including me, the thought did not sit well. Our private sector colleagues had no such qualms, however, and once we saw the opportunities for innovation and flexibility opened up by a locally-controlled revenue stream, almost all SCOs followed suit. Of course, we had an earlier precedent at hand if we had thought about how our con- sular sections operated. A Strong Desk An operational feature that I missed most from State was the “strong” country desk. As I recall, no tasking message ever left Main State without a desk clearance and only a seventh-floor override could overcome the desk’s refusal to clear. In the FCS, I always benefited from having able and dedicated domestic colleagues in ITA handling issues and policy matters, but a totally sep- arate office handled personnel, administrative and fund- ing issues. Even then, if a question involved a core Commerce promotion vehicle, one or two other offices, reporting in turn to other assistant secretaries, might be involved. Tasking messages could arrive from a variety of sources and all originators clamored for, and most got, a piece of the SCO’s annual performance evaluation. In this management-by-committee arena, work plans might nominally be cleared in advance, but the various DOC offices didn’t necessarily agree at evaluation time. The potential to be pointed in more than one direction was ever-present. If one of the mid-level political appointees, who seemed to crop up unnecessarily in working-level F O C U S 46 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 3