The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2014 13 “A Foreign Service officer should keep his nose clean and his mouth shut.” I have ignored this excellent advice, with mixed results, for 18 years and will now do so again. I propose the reinstatement of the security clas- sification “Official Use Only” (but with a simpler name) and the abolition of the security classifi- cations “Limited Official Use” and “Confidential.” I also propose that declassification decisions be centralized. … If you are like me, at least half of the juicy items of gos- sip you have vouchsafed toWashington have come from your local employees. This is particularly true in the more developed countries where the locals tend to have more on the ball. To classify these vignettes as “Unclassified” exposes you to the risk of publication, but to mark them“Limited Official Use”means that the energetic but non-American types who wrote themmay neither read them, file them nor refer to them. By all means let us reinstate a classification which means, in effect, “fairly common knowledge but not for publication.” To appease the typists and the rubber stamp markers, I would suggest that this classification be titled “USG,” which would mean that the information would be available to any U.S. government employee, whatever his nationality. Such a classification would do much to reassure our first-class locals that they are indeed a part of the U.S. government. Obviously, we cannot entrust to foreigners really sensitive information, even if another foreigner is the source. But why must we have four gradations of sensitiv- ity (leaving out super-grades)? Surely it is enough to say that a document is “Confi- dential.”… I think we have all been somewhat shat- tered by the new responsibility of determin- ing when a document must be declassified. (I personally have forgotten to put the “group indicator” on a number of recent cables and airgrams.) I fully support the theory. Practi- cally all of our output is of transitory secrecy, and a good deal of it is overclassified to begin with. We need a system to downgrade our mistaken prophecies as soon as they are proved invalid. But in my humble opinion this could well be done by a team of experts at some central point, perhaps by those shadowy characters who receive files retired fromWash- ington agencies and overseas posts. Why not set up a degaussing crew at Foggy Bottom with summary powers? The man-hours thus saved would be considerable and the declassification criteria would be more intelligently and consistently applied. In making these suggestions I have, of course, glossed over a number of problems which would have to be resolved if the classification system is to be simplified. If someone could take a stab at it, however, it would be a great boon to us hard-working reporters. —From“Classification USG” (Department of Dissent) by John Q. Blodgett, FSJ , July 1964. 50 Years Ago were implementing. According to various reports, suspicion of public health workers led thousands of people in Pakistan to refuse to be vaccinated against polio. A 2013 Scientific American article (“The Spies Who Sabotaged Global Health”) noted: “The violation of trust threatens to set back global public health efforts by decades.” The letter from the deans, addressed to President Barack Obama, and shared with other U.S. officials and the media, stated: “While political and security agendas may by necessity induce collateral damage, we as an open society set boundaries on these damages, and we believe this sham vaccination campaign exceeded those boundaries. “As an example of the gravity of the situation, today we are on the verge of completely eradicating polio. With your leadership, the U.S. is the largest bilateral donor to the Global Polio Eradication Ini- tiative and has provided strong direction and technical assistance, as well. “Polio, which particularly threatens young children in the most disadvantaged communities, has been isolated to just three countries: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. Now, because of these assassina- tions of vaccination workers, the U.N. has been forced to suspend polio eradication efforts in Pakistan. … “Independent of the Geneva Conven- tions of 1949, contaminating humanitar- ian and public health programs with