The Foreign Service Journal, June 2013

24 JUNE 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL FSOs have “street cred” with Congress as the professionals who carry out U.S. overseas policies and programs. Here are tips for maximizing that entrée. BY BETTE COOK CONGRESSIONAL RELATIONS: BENEFITS AND PITFALLS T he U.S. Air Force plane touched down on the runway, quickly offloaded its passengers and cargo through the rear exit, and took off. Watching it fly away, I realized: We’re alone in a dangerous conflict zone! The cargo consisted of bags of food labeled “USAID FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.” And we pas- sengers were part of a bipartisan congressional delegation the leadership of the House of Representatives had dispatched to Somalia to see the crisis firsthand. Two U.S. Agency for International Development officials were accompanying the delegation: a Foreign Service officer who had previously been mission director in Mogadishu and now directed the U.S. humanitarian relief effort, and me, a congressional liaison officer. For security reasons, the delega- tion had split into two groups bound for separate locations, Baidoa and Mogadishu. It was November 1992. A civil war that had been raging among clan-based warlords ever since the collapse of the military government the previous year was still in full swing. Displaced by the chaos, hundreds of thousands of people were Bette Cook joined the International Cooperation Administration, a predecessor of the U.S. Agency for International Development, in 1959. Her 42-year federal government career spanned the Foreign Ser- vice (Tunisia and Vietnam) and the Civil Service (the bureaus respon- sible for Vietnam, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Legislative and Public Affairs). Among other responsibilities, Ms. Cook man- aged the preparation and submission to Congress of USAID’s budget request for 23 years, and maintained a continuous flow of informa- tion to Capitol Hill on the agency’s development and humanitarian assistance programs. After a brief retirement, Ms. Cook rejoined USAID in 2008 for another four years as a consultant for strategic communications with Congress. She is now a Red Cross volunteer at the Fort Belvoir, Va., hospital that provides medical care to the nation’s wounded warriors, service members and their families. starving to death. The international aid agencies were sub- ject to looting and extortion by militants driving “technicals,” vehicles mounted with machine guns and other weapons. The aid agencies’ local staff rapidly completed the loading of cargo and passengers, and we sped away to the compound of a U.S. private voluntary organization. There we met with relief workers and visited a couple of distribution centers to FOCUS ON WORKING WITH CONGRESS