The Foreign Service Journal, May 2015

34 MAY 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL I was allowed to drive myself around the city to keep our many U.S. Information Service programs on track. A few months later, after suicide bombers struck the Multina- tional Force barracks in Beirut, killing 299, Navy Admiral Bobby Inman chaired a commission to review our overseas security procedures. His commission recommended, among other things, new con- struction standards for diplomatic compounds and expansion of State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. DS was reorganized, and regional secu- rity officers began reporting directly to their deputy chiefs of mission rather than through their administrative (now called management) officers. RSOs were given larger budgets to manage, with broader liaison responsibilities. They focused on ensuring safe environments in which they and their colleagues could operate effectively. Everyone understood that being secure, by itself, could never be any mission’s primary goal. I am not sure we all share that consensus anymore. As other terrorist incidents followed, our security apparatus continued to expand—and became an increasingly public concern. In December 1988 Pan Am 103 was destroyed by a bomb, killing 243 passengers, 16 crew members and 11 civilians on the ground in Lockerbie, Scot- land. An anonymous warning, transmit- ted in a State Department cable, had been posted at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, where journalists had access. Following complaints after the crash that the U.S. government should have shared the threat information more widely, a “no double standard” policy was adopted, resulting in more public scrutiny of embassy security decisions. Ten years later, in August 1998, when truck bombs went off simultaneously at the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, hundreds were killed or wounded. Again, DS received additional resources, at the expense of funds for programs. And after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by al-Qaida, President George W. Bush launched the “Global War on Terror,” and everyone was talking about security. A new Depart- ment of Homeland Security began operations in March 2003. Then, as I noted at the beginning of this piece, on Sept. 11, 2012, militants attacked a small, makeshift consulate compound in Benghazi, killing Amb. Stevens and three other American employees. Ever since, overseas security has been a club for politicians to use against one another. After the State Department’s Accountability Review Board sharply critic ized State for “systemic failures” and “deficien- cies” at senior levels, increased security was ordered worldwide. The View Is Different from Outside Meanwhile, I had retired in 2009 frommy final Foreign Service posting, as public affairs officer in Paris. I had grown accustomed to all of the security procedures that had grown up over The April 2013 rededication of a plaque in memory of temporary staffers from Tunis killed in the 1983 bombing of Embassy Beirut. Presented by Beirut locally employed staff members to their colleagues in Tunis, the original was destroyed by the mob that attacked Embassy Tunis in September 2012. Viewing the plaque, at front left to right, are Information Officer Stephen Kochuba, PAO Jim Bullock and Ambassador Jacob “Jake” Welles. COURTESY OF JIM BULLOCK Flowering cactus plants are a traditional security barrier in semi-arid Tunisia. COURTESY OF JIM BULLOCK