The Foreign Service Journal, May 2003

his own agency. In an effort to cultivate good relations with the powerful Democratic majority congressman, one of President Nixon’s first acts in 1969 was to create the Export Marketing Service in USDA, to be headed by the GSM. This lasted until 1974, when President Ford, a former House minority leader, ordered the GSM back into the Foreign Agricultural Service as the third-ranking official. Chairman Whitten continued to fight for a separate agency, however, and one of President Jimmy Carter’s first acts was to create a new Office of the General Sales Manager. That lasted four years. Finally, in 1981, President Reagan ordered OGSM merged with FAS, where it has remained for the last 22 years. The story didn’t end there, however. Chairman Whitten pushed legislation through which stipulated that the GSM should report directly to the Secretary of Agriculture. Thus, though the FAS administrator had to report to the secretary through the under secretary for international affairs and commodity programs, by act of Congress his number-three subordinate had a direct pipeline to the top! That law was repealed after Chairman Whitten’s retirement in 1995. One result of this back-and-forth movement was that the old OGSM, now called Export Credits, consolidated the surplus disposal subculture of FAS. These folks are the spiritual successors to Gwynn Garnett, the major architect of P-L 480. They focus not on analysis, nor on market development, but on the arcana of law and regulation gov- erning surplus disposal, food aid, and export credit guar- antees. Their culture is one of implementing the multi- tude of legal amendments and regulatory changes that have grown up around USDA food aid and export credit programs in the last half-century. By the 1960s FAS had settled into a routine. The agency at home largely consisted of agricultural economic analysts and commodity marketing specialists, and during those interludes when the general sales manager was on board, of the surplus disposal specialists as well. As far as the over- seas crowd went, they were divided into two groups: “house dogs” and “yard dogs”. The house dogs did one tour F O C U S 40 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 3