The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2011

J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 23 Management William Macomber proclaimed, “We want to get it to those people in positions of author- ity who can do something about it.” The very first telegram submit- ted through the Dissent Channel in April 1971 illustrates just how mis- leading this claim actually was. In December 1970, East Pakistan, whose population was majority Bengali — a group that had histor- ically been treated as second-class citizens by the ruling elite of West Pakistan — voted overwhelmingly for representatives of the Awami League, which advocated for an autonomous East Pakistan. Rather than accept the outcome, the leader of the mil- itary junta ruling Pakistan, General Yahya Kahn, cracked down, arresting the leaders of the Awami League and prompting mass protests in the streets. In response, Yahya unleashed the military on East Pakistan, initiating what was essentially a genocide against the Bengali peo- ple. State Department employees specializing in South Asia had foreseen such a crisis and had urged the ad- ministration to take steps to prevent it. But when the Nixon administration chose not to act, Dacca consulate members were forced to wait in the shadows, as thou- sands were killed in death squads on the streets — 7,000 in a single night — and millions fled to India, creating one of the worst refugee crises in history. Dismayed and frustrated, staff at the Dacca consulate sent a Dissent Channel message to Washington on April 6, 1971. The memo challenged the administration’s de- cision not to publicly condemn the genocide being com- mitted against the Bengalis by the Pakistani military: “Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities. …We, as professional public servants, express our dissent [from] current policy and fervently hope that our true and lasting interests can be defined and our poli- cies redirected in order to salvage our nation’s position as a moral leader of the free world.” Nixon had long harbored hostility toward the leaders of India and a striking warmth toward those of its enemy, Pakistan — a feeling that was only strengthened when Islamabad offered to play a role in aiding a renewal of U.S.-China relations. Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger regarded Yahya not only as an ally, but also as their main con- nection to China. Convincing them to put pressure on Yahya would have been virtually impossible for a high-level adviser, let alone a rank- and-file diplomat expressing his views through a formal bureaucratic mechanism. When the White House first learned of the likelihood of violence on a massive scale, Kissinger had decisively directed against action of any sort. One week before the dissent cable was sent, Nixon wrote to Yahya, expressing his happiness that Yahya had been able to cement his role as leader of all Pakistan. Not surprisingly, the Dissent Channel did not change the president’s position. But it did contribute to a grow- ing concern about leaks. This much is clear from the re- sponse of Secretary of State Rogers to the cable. Upon receiving the message, Rogers called Kissinger. The telegram was, he said, “miserable,” “terrible” and “inex- cusable.” It was bad enough that they “had bitched about our policies,” but the real problem was that they had given it lots of distribution, so “it will probably leak,” he railed. Kissinger agreed, and was particularly concerned that the memo would leak to Senator Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., a vocal opponent of the administration’s South Asia pol- icy. The head of the Dacca consulate, Archer Blood, was transferred to another post, as were many of his col- leagues. Thereafter, Nixon and Kissinger cut themselves off completely from the South Asia experts in the State Department, whose voices were ignored when the situ- ation escalated from humanitarian crisis to a full-blown war between Pakistan and India in 1971. As its inaugural message demonstrates, the Dissent Channel reveals the limits not only of dissent in the diplo- matic establishment, but also of bureaucratized diplo- matic writing, which threatened to displace the more traditional forms. Many Foreign Service officers lamented the shift and were nostalgic for the days when political reporting had more weight and prominence in the department. “Since the more traditional skills of analysis and reporting were identified with the old elitist concept of the Foreign Service,” lamented an old Ger- F O C U S Not surprisingly, the Dissent Channel did not change the president’s position. But it did contribute to a growing concern about leaks.