The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2013

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2013 9 training, education and mentoring? The U.S. Marines do it. IBM did it. Once we pull our heads out of the sand of the past, when the Foreign Ser- vice was overwhelmingly pale, male and Yale, we can do it, as well. Indeed, as the premier foreign affairs arms of our gov- ernment, the State Department and the Foreign Service must do so to serve the long-term interests of the United States and its people. And yes, we can do it while still rep- resenting the diversity that is America. Charles A. Ray Ambassador, retired North Potomac, Md. State (not USIA) Visitors In Allen Hansen’s May review of Nicholas Cull’s book, The Decline and Fall of the United States Information Agency , both the reviewer and the book’s author err in describing the International Visitor Program as a U.S. Information Agency program. It was actually a State Department program. I ought to know, because in the 1970s I was director of the Office of International Visitors in State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Yale Richmond FSO, retired Washington, D.C. Captive in the Congo I agree with the main point of Guy W. Farmer’s February letter, “A Bad Decision,” that it was Ambassador Chris Stevens’ own choice to visit Benghazi last September—a choice that had fatal consequences. I say that as someone who was serving in Stanleyville, in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), as rebels approached the city in 1964. I had advised the embassy that the only way to protect ourselves and other Americans would be to evacuate. Instead, our ambassador ordered a small number of us to remain. Rebel forces took over the city and attacked the consulate on Aug. 5, 1964. Although the “simba” attackers could not break down the vault door, they held us captive there for 111 days, dur- ing which period we underwent many beatings and threats to our lives. By the time of our Nov. 24, 1964, rescue by a joint U.S.-Belgium parachute mission, we were among a hundred hostages. Although 20 hostages died in a hail of bullets during the rescue, in a real sense it was “safety in numbers” that saved us. (You’ll find more details about this episode in my book, Captive in the Congo: A Consul’s Return to the Heart of Darkness , Naval Institute Press, 2000.) Based on that experience, I believe Amb. Stevens would have been better protected in a downtown hotel than an isolated, suburban “consulate.” Michael P.E. Hoyt FSO, retired Santa Fe, N.M. Double-Talk on Benghazi Last September I listened closely to President Barack Obama’s Rose Garden remarks the day after the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on our facility in Benghazi. I also reread the transcript several times after- ward, just as I did as an FSO in Zagreb, Moscow, Warsaw and Brussels, and on the Soviet desk in Washington, when- ever I analyzed statements by foreign- government officials. On that occasion Pres. Obama referred 10 times to Benghazi and its perpetrators, giving him 10 chances to label the incident “terrorism,” and the attackers “terrorists”—but he never once did so. True, he called the event