The Foreign Service Journal, May 2007

in each organization did what they could to help us, easing our administrative burdens considerably. More often than not, our requests for under-the-table assistance were granted immediately, and unofficially, and it really helped.” Despite such progress, it seemed that Foreign Service National employees would never come back to Moscow and Leningrad. And they probably would not have, if not for an earthshaking event. Jim continues: “The issue was closed, forever. No Soviet employees would ever be allowed to work at our missions in Moscow and Leningrad. There was just one catch, of course: only four short years later, there would be no Soviet employees anywhere, because the Soviet Union itself had passed into history.” The APD Legacy The APD veterans were a varied group that, under enormous stress, kept two posts operating — despite overt Soviet efforts to force them to collapse. In his citation for a series of Superior Honor Awards conferred on the State Department personnel in Russia, Secretary of State Shultz, a Marine Corps veteran of World War II, referred to the conditions faced by embassy and consulate general personnel in the Soviet Union during this period as akin to those faced during war. Perhaps that experience partially forged our charac- ters. An unusually high proportion of APD veterans went on to ambassadorships: Jane Becker, Mike Einik, Mary Ann Peters, Ross Wilson, Ed Hurwitz, Jim Schumaker, Priscilla Clapp, Eric Edelman, Steve Pifer, John Herbst, John Ordway, Steve Young. Many more served in highly responsible positions: Shaun Byrnes as envoy to Montenegro, Colonel Bob Berls as an adviser to the Secretary of Energy, Rear Admiral Ron Kurth as president of the Naval War College, and others too numerous to list here. One thing we have all carried with us, whatever our rank, is a deep and abiding appreciation for the work of our Foreign Service National employees, wherever in the world we’ve been posted. F O C U S M A Y 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 41