The Foreign Service Journal, September 2003

the True Right must look out for the president’s interests. The most famous of these sentinels was Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., first elected to his post in 1972, when he became a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. Helms took it upon himself to form a “shadow State Department” within his staff, who became “country desk officers” for the senator to ensure that his policies were followed. He also exacted favors by holding up the appointments of ambassadors whom he claimed President Reagan could not possibly have really wanted to appoint, lacking the time to ensure their anti-communist credentials. Helms’ banner year was 1985. When he finally freed the “State Department 29,” he took the oppor- tunity to publicly lecture the Senate on the evils of a nominating system that puts forth candidates not suffi- ciently in tune with his conservative president, although he had appoint- ed them. The reason, he said, is that the president relies on the Secretary of State, who in turn relies on “the foreign policy system. ... And that is where the problem is.” On top of that, he said, there is the “absolute necessity of doing something about the functionaries in the State Department who are elected by no one, whose activities are not even monitored, and whose activities have so often led to distressing circumstances in various parts of the world.” Of the 29 now-freed appointees, the Associated Press reported that one was held up for advo- cating observance of the SALT II treaty — a policy adhered to by President Reagan himself — and another for ejecting from her Eastern Bloc embassy a supposed asylum seeker who, in fact, was threatening to kill himself while wielding surgical scissors. The same month, three former political ambassadors who had served Reagan held a symposium at the conserv- ative Heritage Foundation, where they charged that a “network” of anti-Reaganites in the State Department was undermining the president’s foreign policy objectives in several critical regions. They painted a picture of an influ- ential cabal that was advancing an “internationalist” ideol- ogy and was avoiding confronting adversaries in areas where Reagan was trying to stop communism or Third World anti-Americanism. The three demanded Secretary George P. Shultz’s resignation as the official responsible. The Foreign Service “network works frantically to den- igrate the latest information from the field regarding human rights violations and technology transfers,” charged David Funderburk, ambassador to Romania from 1981 to 1985. “The State Department has not effectively implemented the president’s stated foreign policy goals” of liberation for the peoples of Eastern Europe, he said. Rather, “it has undermined them at every turn.” Charles Lichenstein, who had been Amb. Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s deputy at the United Nations from 1981 to 1984, said that State ensures that those who favor the president’s policies do not get promoted. “The system first, the system last, the system always.” The third panelist, Curtin Winsor Jr, who served in Costa Rica from 1981 to 1983, where he used his diplomatic status to avoid having notice of a legal action served on him, was relatively silent. As an example of one of their falsehoods, Lichenstein told of an officer who had done very well for four years under Kirkpatrick at the U.N. Then the new assistant sec- retary of the Bureau of Inter- national Organization Affairs “wanted this highly trained, highly skilled, and by this time highly experienced FSO to be his princi- pal deputy here in Washington. The system decided, however, that he was urgently required in Nigeria.” Lichenstein declared the appointment “retribution” for the officer’s having so faithfully served the conservative Kirkpatrick. However, upon investigation, it turned out that the officer in question had been assigned to Lagos before the incom- ing assistant secretary requested him. Ironically, another conservative, a member of Congress, found it convenient to insulate Sec. Shultz from criticism the same month over a minor matter in the news — because it was all the Foreign Service’s fault. “When the Secretary of State is the person in the headlines it is not his fault. He is surrounded by, guided by, and advised by a professional bureaucracy which is weak and ineffec- tive. The State Department has been weak under Shultz as it was weak under Haig as it was weak under Muskie as it was weak under Vance. ... The State Department view of legalism, of conflict avoidance, of negotiating to get a ‘yes’ at virtually any cost, that view is fundamentally wrong.” That member of Congress was Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. Finally, there was the charge of Evan Galbraith, Reagan’s businessman-turned-ambassador to France, who in leaving his post told the New York Times that “foreign policy is too important to be left up to Foreign Service officers. ... There is something about the Foreign Service that takes the guts out of people. The tendency is to avoid S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 63 For someone who was an assistant professor of history before entering political life, Mr. Gingrich seems woefully ignorant of his subject.