The Foreign Service Journal, April 2007

announcement, “Responsibilities of Personnel with SCI Access” (2004-09- 099). Why doesn’t this information appear anywhere in the relevant FAM sections? This conspicuous omission perpetuates confusion among State employees, including DS agents. For example, DS agents sometimes apply SCI terms and concepts (which do not appear anywhere in the 3 or 12 FAM CRR), such as the oft-invoked “close and continuing contact” formulation, in cases in which the employee does not have an SCI clearance. Solution: Include in the FAM the CRR that pertain to SCI-holders. This open letter highlights some of the most egregious problems with the CRR in the hopes of alerting State’s management — as AFSA has repeat- edly tried to do — to the clear and present danger the current CRR pose to the department, its employees and the classified information they handle. Though the problems outlined in this letter are profound, they are easily remedied; this is not rocket science. Now is the time to end the abomina- tion that is the department’s current contact reporting regime and develop in its place a set of requirements that are better conceived, more precisely crafted and articulated and, above all, more protective of department per- sonnel and information. There is no room in a U.S. Cabinet agency — let alone the oldest and most venerable — for regulations this carelessly cob- bled together. As 12 FAM states, “The success of the [department’s contact reporting] policy is dependent ... upon each employee’s understanding of and cooperation with its intent.” That suc- cess will forever be elusive as long as the CRR are as riddled with major flaws as they are at present. The costs of continued inaction will be mea- sured in terms of more needlessly ruined Foreign Service careers, un- necessarily compromised information, and the sounds of laughter and clink- ing glasses in the headquarters of hos- tile intelligence services around the world. I implore management to con- front this critical issue immediately. Our diplomats and our nation deserve no less. David Firestein, a Foreign Service officer since 1992, has served in Beijing, Moscow and Washington, D.C. Currently assigned to the EAP Office of Public Diplomacy, he won the 2006 Secretary’s Award for Public Outreach. 18 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 7 S P E A K I N G O U T