The Foreign Service Journal, March 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2014 15 W hile the Internet is home to countless websites dealing with various aspects of diplomacy, American Diplomacy stands out for the sheer scope of its coverage. The online professional journal publishes commentar- ies, analytical pieces, feature stories, Foreign Service memoirs, scholarly research and reviews of books and Internet articles, as well as comments from readers and announcements of upcoming events of interest to Foreign Service members. Established in 1996 by a group of retired FSOs in North Carolina, American Diplomacy Publishers operates the site with the active cooperation of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s College of Arts and Sciences and its Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense, as well as the Triangle Institute for Security Studies, which is a consortium of Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University. All members of the Foreign Service community are invited to contribute material to American Diplomacy, which also draws on submissions from distinguished academicians. (All submissions are peer-reviewed.) The site’s content is regularly refreshed. As of late January, it features artwork by “Dip- lomats Who Are Painters,” as well as commentaries on Afghanistan, human rights and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ new memoir. Traffic to the site has grown steadily over the years, reaching almost 300,000 visits in 2013. SITE OF THE MONTH: American Diplomacy where the U.S. has facilities under high threat. Given the current resource-con- strained budget environment, the com- mittee is working with the IC to identify resource gaps and realign assets to focus on those gaps, especially in North Africa. FINDING #4: Although the IC relied heavily on open source press reports in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the IC con- ducted little analysis of open source, extremist-affiliated social media prior to and immediately after the attacks. RECOMMENDATION: The IC should expand its capabilities to conduct analy- sis of open source information, including extremist-affiliated social media, particu- larly in areas where it is hard to develop human intelligence or there has been recent political upheaval. Analysis of extremist-affiliated social media should be more clearly integrated into analytic products, when appropriate. FINDING #5: There were “tripwires” designed to prompt a reduction in personnel or the suspension of operations at the mission facility in Benghazi and although there is evidence that some of them had been crossed, operations continued with mini- mal change. Some nations closed their diplomatic facilities in Benghazi as the security conditions deteriorated during the summer of 2012, but other nations stayed along with the United States, con- trary to some public reports and state- ments that the U.S. was the last country represented in Benghazi. RECOMMENDATION: Where adequate security is not available, the Department of State should be prepared to evacuate or close diplomatic facili- ties under the highest threat, as it has in recent years in Sanaa, Yemen and Damascus, Syria. RECOMMENDATION: The commit- tee supports the recommendations of the Accountability Review Board to bring greater collaboration and connectivity between the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the IC. The Department of State must pay special attention to the “on the ground” assess- ments of IC and State personnel in the field and IC analytic products about assessed risks to specific U.S. facilities overseas. FINDING #6: The State Department personnel at the Temporary Mission Facility in Benghazi relied on the security officers at the CIA Annex as a last resort for security in the event of an attack. RECOMMENDATION: There should be more specific information exchanged between DOD and the IC, through the appropriate channels, to make regional combatant commanders aware of the general presence of IC personnel in their areas of responsibility for the purposes of emergency evacuations and rescue. This information could have been helpful to the commander of AFRICOM and should have been more easily available to him. FINDING #7: There were no U.S. military resources in position to intervene in short order in Benghazi to help defend the Temporary Mission Facility and its annex on Sept. 11 and 12, 2012. RECOMMENDATION: It is imperative that the State Department, DOD and the