The Foreign Service Journal, January 2006

trade union movement headquar- tered in Europe, which was railing against the Argentine military dicta- torship in international fora. The AFL-CIO office in Buenos Aires, known as AIFLD, was surreptitiously broken into several times by Argen- tine security forces, and the AIFLD representative in Argentina was placed under surveillance and even threatened. At the same time, the embassy labor attaché was summoned one day through a ruse to federal police headquarters for a “friendly chat” with the army colonel in charge. As soon as I learned of this, I paid a call on the colonel and warned him he was playing with fire — Argentina was in danger of having its exports to the United States dumped in the New York harbor by the American labor movement. I made some arrangements to defuse the tension and the threat against the AFL-CIO representative receded. One-Way Loyalty? I served in Argentina during a very difficult and challenging period. I realize there is lingering controversy surrounding whether the embassy and the Department of State should have done more to intervene in this internal war in Argentina. But this does not give Prof. McSherry the right to let her imagination to run wild and spin theories that are not substantiated by the evidence she has accumulated. In my particular case, I feel aggrieved by her false conjectures about my performance, especially because she could have consulted me before going ahead with her book. I also feel aggrieved that State casually passed along a judicial inquiry based on information I had compiled in the course of my official functions — an inquiry which would not have been initiated in the first place if my reports had not been made public without any care as to protecting the identity of the draft- ing officer — and then failed to pro- vide any advice or support to one of its loyal employees who had been placed in a compromising situation and possibly even subject to sanc- tions by a foreign court as a result of its actions. I have been loyal to the department, but the department has not been loyal to me. I do not know how many other Foreign Service officers may have been placed in similarly compromis- ing situations in the past as a result of similar circumstances, but I believe the department should play a more positive role in such cases than it has so far. I also believe that AFSA, our union and professional association, should play a supportive role in seeing to it that this issue is raised in the department. n J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 75