The Foreign Service Journal, March 2014

10 MARCH 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL of merit principles, simply asserted that the department had legal authority to do what it did in denying me multifunc- tional eligibility. Now Mr. Lambrakis calls into ques- tion the wisdom of the department’s up-or-out system itself. He writes of the pernicious effects of a system that obliges officers “to compete actively, if not ferociously, against their colleagues for promotion.” I had not thought of my experience as the fault of the up-or-out system but rather as a woeful skewing of merit principles within that system. But Mr. Lambrakis’ comments come as a breath of fresh air. As such, his Speaking Out column is essential reading for anyone seriously concerned about the integrity and future of the Foreign Service. D. Thomas Longo Jr. FSO, retired Lawrenceburg, Ind. Thinking about George Kennan I enjoyed reading Robert J. Silverman’s President’s Views column in the January- February Journal , and was inspired to order a copy of John Gaddis’ biography of George Kennan as Silverman suggested. Kennan is certainly a mixed bag. While he was prescient about the geopolitics of the Cold War and the Soviet Union, and is rightly celebrated for that, as Silverman notes, “he seems to have shared many of the prejudices of his day.” Yet is that really all we have to say about that? I would point out that not everybody shared those views; indeed, many people were free of the conven- tional prejudices of Kennan’s day. This problem occurs over and over through- out history: someone has accomplished great things for which civilized humanity is grateful, yet that same individual also has committed shameful acts or has seri- ous character flaws. I also don’t know (yet) whether Gad- dis discusses Kennan’s outstretched hand to Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva, who stayed with the Kennans for some time after her arrival in the United States. I was a consular officer at our embassy in New Delhi when she defected (though I wasn’t involved in the procedures during the hours she spent at the embassy, and I wasn’t the one who issued her visa). But I believe that the embassy handled the matter extraordinarily well. My hat is off to Bob Silverman for writing on something less stuffy than the customary President’s Views column— and for writing well, in the finest tradi- tion of the Foreign Service. Larry Lesser FSO, retired Washington, D.C. Minding Couriers Thanks for publishing James B. Angell’s “The Island Hopper” (December), a fascinating account of a diplomatic courier run. It made me realize that dur- ing my 27-year career in the Foreign Service, I never met a courier. But what most astounded me was this passage, pertaining to his arrival in Guam: “The diplomatic courier is not allowed to descend planeside at Won Pat International Airport to retrieve our