The Foreign Service Journal, April 2006

chase were frustrated. By mid-1993 we recommended to the Foreign Buildings Office (now known as the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Opera- tions) that it develop the one piece of property we had in hand: the Mira- mar site — approximately one acre of land overlooking Luanda Bay and the city — where the temporary chancery and a number of mobile homes were located. OBO rejected this advice, insisting that the Miramar site was destined to be used exclusively for a chief-of-mis- sion residence. Through most of the 1990s various futile attempts were made to identify alternate sites for the new embassy compound. Finally, in 1998 the head of OBO, realizing the folly of this approach, accepted the mission’s recommendation to develop Miramar as our chancery site. I understand the new embassy com- pound was finally completed in 2004. But until then, mission personnel con- tinued to suffer with a temporary Butler Building chancery that was ill- suited for current embassy operations, lacking even minimal security fea- tures. And State had paid over $500,000 per year for leased manage- ment offices and consular space in another location in Luanda. Tripoli: More of the Same A stint in Tripoli from March to April 2005 as a When Actually Employed annuitant, convinced me that State is headed down the same path yet again in Libya. We had opened a liaison office in Tripoli in June 2004, following Moammar Qad- hafi’s renunciation of weapons of mass destruction and agreement to turn over to a Scottish court two agents allegedly behind the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 102. Nearly two years later, USLO/Tripoli is still operating in the Corinthia Bab Africa Hotel — and paying several million dollars a year for the privilege. The Corinthia is a comfortable five- star hotel, but it is ill-suited to U.S. mission operations from several view- points: communications (no regular State cable traffic nor even access to the Sensitive-But-Unclassified Open- Net system is possible); security (try- ing to run a secure embassy-type oper- ation in a hotel is an RSO’s nightmare); and, cramped, makeshift office ar- rangements. A prospective new em- bassy compound site identified nearly one year ago has run into local zoning issues, exacerbated by chilly relations between Tripoli and Washington. Accordingly, as anyone who has dealt with these projects recognizes, the construction of a permanent com- pound in Tripoli is at least three to five years away. Yet there has been little effort by Washington to establish interim offices outside the hotel, although the mission has suggested several alternatives. Nevertheless, the USLO/Tripoli team is doing its best to carry out its demanding mission under these diffi- cult conditions. To me, the present situation there — where the USLO team is striving to advance our impor- tant bilateral and regional interests — is a bit like trying to build the roof first, and then the rest of the building. Kabul: Poor Planning Embassy Kabul, where I worked as a WAE in late 2005, had operated since 2002 out of the old chancery building, which dates from 1967 but was closed in 1979. As one can imag- ine, after 23 years of non-use and neglect, it was woefully inadequate as a 21st-century U.S. embassy. Recog- nizing this, OBO undertook the con- struction of a new chancery in 2002, at a cost of several hundred million dol- lars. The new embassy is a beautiful facility, and many staff began moving into it in October 2005. But there’s a big hitch: Due to unanticipated growth, as well as for security reasons, it cannot house all embassy opera- tions, including much of the manage- ment section. Those folks now have to work in trailers for the next couple of years while the former chancery build- ing is renovated. How much say did the mission, or even the Bureau of South Asian Affairs (now the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs) have in planning the office space and other architectural decisions? I sus- pect very little. But this is an aspect that can be taken into account in the proposed solution below. A Possible Solution Given the increasing number of players, each with its own fiefdom (e.g., the regional bureaus, OBO, DS, RM, IRM, A, HR/OE, etc.), a new approach is needed to opening and developing new diplomatic missions — one that cuts across bureaucratic lines and gets the job done efficiently. In my opinion, this suggests the cre- ation of special New Embassy Teams, headed by OBO representatives but including relatively senior representa- tives (FS-2 or higher) from the above bureaus. The NET leader would report directly to the under secretary for management, and M would rate the team members on their contribu- tion to efficient establishment of new embassies — not on how well they serve their home bureau’s interests. The NET would be able to harmo- nize the design, sizing and construc- tion planning of a new embassy, so as to accommodate all relevant bureau- cratic interests from the start. This would permit the incorporation of the latest information technology innova- tions, current physical security stan- dards, etc., in the design and construc- tion phases, and largely eliminate cost- ly change orders. There are some who would argue that directly involving M in the new embassy process will only complicate 16 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 6 S P E A K I N G O U T u