The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2008

aircraft was an American flag carrier. Then I noted that I was an American diplomatic official and declared that the passengers could not be interrogated without my per- mission. He said, “Oui, Monsieur Secretaire,” and rushed off to tele- phone his superiors. I took that as a good sign and, sure enough, after some more phone calls and a day and a half of confusion, everyone got out in one piece. FSJ: Your first ambassadorship was to Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso (1978-1980), followed by Co- lombia (1980-1983). What were some of the challenges you faced as chief of mission in each country, and how did you handle them? TDB: The main reason we had an embassy in Ouagadougou was eco- nomic development. At that time, 30 years ago now, the Sahara Desert was moving south, so USAID had an $18 million development program in this tiny country to help the government cope. We must have had 15 USAID officers there. Being an activist and a believer in ambassadorial authority, I duly asserted my authority over the mission. There was a certain amount of friction at first, mainly because they’d never had an ambassador who took that view, but we got that worked out. And I learned a lot about eco- nomic development in the process. Keeping morale high was another priority, of course. We had a theater group, the “Way Off Broadway Play- ers,” and a softball team called “Sahel’s Angels,” among other things. Every weekend we could, the teamwould go play our counterparts in Niamey or Bamako or Dakar, which was great for us because it was R&R. We’d play two games on Saturday and two on Sunday, with parties Friday night and Saturday night. It was just fun. FSJ: Bogota was a much more demanding posting, I imagine. TDB: The drug problem was the main challenge there, of course. In fact, we were one of the first embassies to have a huge influx of FBI and DEA agents, who were mak- ing cases in Colombia to try to head off drug trafficking at the source. I didn’t just coordinate all these agen- cies, either — I tried to direct them. As you know, when you’re ambas- sador, you represent the president, not just the State Department. And, of course, just surviving the multiple death threats was a challenge. Bogota was a very violent place at that time, so I had my own little army of bodyguards on top of embassy securi- ty. My car was armored, and I always traveled with an armored lead car and follow-on vehicle. I had an armed guard with me at all times, and I was armed. The last line of defense was me! So I practiced with a .38, an Uzi and a 12-gauge shotgun. Keep in mind that my predecessor, Diego Ascencio, had been at an embassy reception when the M-19 took it over. So he, in effect, had been taken hostage. My security offi- cer had been the security officer when that happened, and before that was in Kabul when Adolph “Spike” Dubbs was assassinated while serving as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in 1979. So when he was introduced to me, he grabbed me by the lapels and exclaimed, “Sir, I’m not going to lose you!” And he meant it. FSJ: Fortunately, he lived up to his word! TDB: Yes, he did. I felt sorry for him because he’d had a really trau- matic career, but he was a really good guy. FSJ: As a former ambassador to Bogota, what do you think about the current difficulties of winning con- gressional approval for the U.S.- Colombia Free Trade Agreement? TDB: It’s very sad. First of all, President Alvaro Uribe is doing a great job for his country, both in terms of reducing crime and helping the economy, for which he’s enor- mously popular, with something like a 75-percent approval rating among Colombians. Second, if anything, the agreement is more in our interest than theirs from a commercial point of view. Colombia already has duty- free entry to the U.S. for its goods, so what this would do is give our busi- nesses access to its market. It’s just crazy what we’re doing — it’s all about trade-union symbolism, not economic factors or sensible diplomatic reasons. Colombia has done everything right, on the human rights front, the economic front and the political front, so we should be encouraging them, not punishing them. FSJ: In 1983 you were promoted to the personal rank of career minister before retiring from the Service. Tell us about the transition to post- Foreign Service life. TDB: I think the most important thing for retiring Foreign Service per- sonnel to realize is that entering the business world is like being assigned to a new foreign country. The busi- ness world has its own way of looking at things, its own objectives, language, traditions and so forth. If you keep 20 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 8 “Being an activist and a believer in ambassadorial authority, I duly asserted my authority over the mission.”