The Foreign Service Journal, April 2013

the Foreign Service journal | april 2013 37 gave the campaign traction occurred. First, Foreign Service Director General Marc Grossman confirmed in October 2000 that he would not raise any objections to the substance of our message or methods of garnering support. Second, Election Day (Nov. 7) produced a muddled outcome rather than the decisive decision we had anticipated. This gave us additional time to ramp up the number of signatures for our letter, which stood at an anemic 138 at that point. Third, the Open Forum highlighted the SOS for DOS cam- paign in a well-attended meeting on Nov. 9. That meeting continued for almost two hours, with nonstop comments and suggestions from the floor. On Dec. 5, Open Forum Chairman Alan Lang distributed a summary of the meeting (the unedited transcript ran to 80 pages) as an all-hands telegram to the field. The confluence of these events reinvigorated the steering committee (see box), which decided to set a goal of a thousand signatures for the letter that would be delivered to the next Secretary of State. Of course, we had no way of knowing then that it would be Dec. 12 before we even knew the name of the next president, let alone the name of the next Secretary of State: General Colin Powell. We also asked our Foreign Service and Civil Service col- leagues to identify specific problems and offer their ideas for how to fix them. This elicited dozens of concrete examples. Before the holiday season, the steering committee adopted a symbol: a small, notched blue ribbon, inscribed with “SOS for DOS.” As further evidence of his support, Director General Grossman agreed to wear the ribbon after we updated him on the progress of the campaign. The new year began with a Jan. 3 article in the New York Times , headlined “From His Perch, Powell Scans the World.” The article reported that “Blue, lapel-sized ribbons, snipped with a symbolic cut, are appearing on diplomats’ jackets this week as part of an organized campaign suggesting that the general elimi- nate ‘blue-ribbon’ commissions set up to study a department whose employees feel unappreciated and underfinanced.” The article stated that State Department employees had writ- ten an accompanying manifesto urging Gen. Powell to “choose action over words” to help bring America’s diplomacy into the 21st century. The article quoted our manifesto—“The era of quill pen diplomacy is over”—and noted that “SOS for DOS”meant that there was an emergency at the State Department. Shortly after the article appeared, we zoomed past our original goal of 1,000 signatures to reach 1,129. So we set a new goal of 1,500. On Jan. 24, 2001, Curt Struble and I met with Grant Green, who headed the transition office and would soon become under secretary for management. He received us warmly and spent 45 minutes discussing the SOS for DOS initiative. We empha- sized the broad, grassroots support for fundamental change at State and the conviction that the institution’s resource prob- lems require better management, in addition to more financial resources. Green assured us that he saw a great deal of common ground between our letter and Colin Powell’s own view of State’s problems. Meeting Colin Powell On Monday, Jan. 29, when the signature count stood at 1,474, we were notified that our requested meeting with Secretary Powell would be at 11 a.m. the following Friday, Feb. 2. (The sup- porter count reached 1,614 that evening.) Representing the steering committee, Curt and I met with Sec. Powell, who received us in a warm and gracious manner. We summarized the history of the initiative, emphasizing its future- looking orientation and pointing out that it had begun before anyone knew the outcome of the presidential election or who would be the new Secretary of State. We described how the effort was focused on presenting the message of needed reform at State and highlighted the commitment of the signers to support We quickly realized that for any reform effort to be successful, it had to be embraced by the rank and file, as well as by management. SOS for DOS Steering Committee Ted Strickler, DS/OFM Curt Struble, WHA/BSC Glen Johnson, VC/VO Frank Moss, CA Stephanie Kinney, M/DGHR John Campbell, FSI Wayne Logdson, WHA/EX Christina Gross, EUR/PRP