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 27 In lumping together the telegrams and memos of sev- eral dissenters, Pike noted, Kissinger would erase the par- ticular perspective of each one. In order to understand the process of shaping policy from a conglomeration of ad- mittedly partial perspectives, doesn’t one need to have some sense of who wrote what? In an amalgamation, it would be impossible to know whether the dissenting po- sition “comes from the doorman or the ambassador,” Pike pointed out. “And that,” he said, is a “ridiculous proposi- tion.” The Principle of Corporate Responsibility By offering to submit a summary of Boyatt’s and others’ written dissent, the department implied that the words of rank-and-file Foreign Service officers were not to be in- terpreted from the perspective of the individuals who wrote them, but rather from that of the senior policymaker who read them. And the principle of corporate responsi- bility made it possible for Kissinger to justify presenting the public with a flattened-out version of the rank-and- file’s policy analyses. The absence of authority and au- thorship thus became mutually reinforcing. By emphasizing the corporate status of career diplomats’ writ- ing, the department underscored the rank-and-file’s im- potence in the formulation of foreign policy. Conversely, by emphasizing the need to protect For- eign Service officers from being held accountable for for- eign policy decisions, the department strengthened its position about the corporate ownership of the rank-and- file’s written words. The situation had come full circle. Whereas McCarthy had branded State Department offi- cers authors of a policy that made America vulnerable to world communism, the State Department now implied that career diplomats were not authors of policy, in either the symbolic or literal sense of the term. Perhaps even more important than the specter of Mc- Carthyism was the desire on the part of many Americans to put Watergate behind them and end the mood of bit- terness and mistrust between the legislative and executive F O C U S