The Foreign Service Journal, January 2007

handclasp symbol on the sacks and medicine pilfered from the UNICEF warehouse. I found myself looking into the grey and weary faces of the people on the street, sorting quickly, eliminating the women, the kids, the very young, the very old; looking at tall men with glass- es. I realized I was looking for Brady’s face in the crowd, for I didn’t believe he was dead. Back at the office, I pushed the case from my mind and began interviewing visa applicants. Most of them were displaced people desperate to join rel- atives in America. I recited the refusal formula over and over again, and handed out the form letter citing Section 214(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. I issued renewal pass- ports for two American aid workers and witnessed a will for a frazzled- looking journalist. Then I turned to my overloaded in-basket. At the top of the pile was an acerbic letter from the State Department’s most un- yielding critic on the House Interna- tional Relations Committee, demand- ing we issue a consular death certifi- cate “forthwith, and without further delay” in the case of Donald Brady. I drafted a reply. It was short, polite and negative. I brought it to the DCM for clearance. “You know I never interfere in con- sular stuff,” the DCM began, “but couldn’t you issue a certificate of pre- sumptive death? Brady’s family is very close to the congressman. If we could find a way to make the congressman happy — within the regs, of course — it would be a feather in your cap with the ambassador. At this point you could use one.” In the Foreign Service there’s a thin line between “scrupulous” and “unco- operative.” In the chaotic, corrupt, brutal atmosphere of a country ripped apart by civil war, I clung to the tidy certainties of the FAM as a drowning man clings to a life raft. My insistence on following the letter of the law was not, I suspected, career-enhancing. “Take it from an old hand,” the DCM said. “There are ways of making the rules work for you.” “I’ll think about it,” I said. In the weeks that followed, I heard J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 45 My insistence on following the letter of the law was not, I suspected, career-enhancing.