The Foreign Service Journal, April 2009

6 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 9 Progress on Contact Reporting Requirements I am pleased to report an update to the information contained inmyMarch Speaking Out (“Twelve Recommenda- tions to Improve the Security Clear- ance Process”). On Feb. 12, after the Journal had already gone to print, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security pub- lished new contact reporting require- ments (12 FAM 262 and 270). How- ever, the larger questions I highlighted in my piece about how DS handles se- curity clearance cases remain pertinent. Daniel M. Hirsch FSO Silver Spring, Md. A Clarification The Foreign Service Journal carried my account of a Moscow confrontation as the February Reflections column. I was gratified at the opportunity to il- lustrate the courage, skill and “cool” of one of our greatest career diplomats, Llewellyn Thompson. However, I would like to clarify a point that was in- advertently distorted in the course of editing. When I commented that “In retro- spect, it probably was as close toWorld War III as we came,” I was referring to the entire Berlin Crisis of 1958-1962 and the attendant CubanMissile Crisis — not our single meeting on Jan. 13, 1961. I would also like to note that the piece was excerpted from the intro- duction to my memoirs, Cold War Saga , which is scheduled to be pub- lished in the spring of 2010. Kempton Jenkins FSO, retired Bethesda, Md. Ingredients for Change The February issue of the Journal contained three items that deserve careful attention. They constitute an unorchestrated — and all the more compelling for that reason — call for greater creativity and wave-making. John Naland’s President’s Views col- umn raises two especially important and related points. The first is the need for members of the Foreign Service to do more professional writ- ing, “provocative essays by active-duty officers analyzing professional issues” of the kind that fill the many military journals. The second is the steady de- cline in nominations for AFSA’s con- structive dissent awards, the only ones of their kind in the U.S. government, which recognize employees for their neck-on-the-block courage in chal- lenging policies or management prac- tices. In Letters, retired Ambassador Ed Marks offers a number of thoughtful suggestions to strengthen that faltering dissent awards program. Two of them that make a great deal of sense, and are also mutually reinforcing, concern gen- erating more awareness of that unique program, as well as greater recognition for the winners, by providing more ex- tensive recognition inside the Journal , and placing their photographs on the cover. Then retired Ambassador David Passage takes on the Defense Depart- ment in a thoughtful and informed Speaking Out column presenting the rationale for doing away with AFRI- COM and SOUTHCOM, which he describes as “Reliquaria from an Ear- lier Age.” Few FSOs know as much about working with, and the workings of, DOD and that massive organiza- tion’s involvement with foreign policy as he does, and the case he makes mer- its close study. Amb. Passage is doing just what Naland suggests, and his pro- posals could earn him a dissent nomi- nation (if he were still on active duty and—a firm requirement — if he had not gone public). There is a great deal happening in foreign affairs currently, much of it fo- cused on significantly expanding the size and strengthening the role of State and the Foreign Service. A require- ment for success in taking on this in- creased role is to improve the manner in which the work is performed. More professionalism, improved communi- cations and a greater willingness to take up the cudgels, in the broadest sense, are important ingredients for such a change. Ed Peck Ambassador, retired Chevy Chase, Md. L ETTERS