The Foreign Service Journal, September 2005

scrapped, funding levels fell and domestic political ambitions became co-mingled with long- term foreign needs to the detri- ment of the overall program. Congressman Wayne Hays, D- Ohio, for one, had no confidence in the future of post-colonial Africa, and he translated his own doubts into funding stops that partially explain why Africa received so little attention during the many years in which he held sway over State Department authorizations. He also held up the Dublin chancery project (designed by John Johansen in 1957 but not com- pleted until 1964), ostensibly over objections to the drum-like design that he compared to a “flying saucer.” Intended as a modern version of a Celtic tower, it fea- tured large expanses of floor-to-ceiling glass (and a dry moat). When President Kennedy personally intervened, Hays quickly withdrew his objections and the project moved ahead — but five years behind schedule. Toward A Profound Makeover As U.S. involvement in Vietnam escalated, security became a greater concern at posts abroad, and designs had to meet revised specifications — eliminating, for example, popular features including stilts, glass walls and the sunscreens that had sometimes permitted intruders to scale building facades. The embassy in Nairobi (built in 1971) was one of the plain, unobtrusive and supposed- ly less vulnerable products of that era. Since the 1980s and 1990s, when terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities proliferated, America’s foreign presence has been undergoing a profound makeover. The agenda for that makeover was initially outlined in the Inman Report (1985), compiled in the aftermath of suicide bombings of U.S. facilities in Beirut. That report called for a seven-year plan to replace 126 posts (out of 262) with walled compounds, and it proposed stringent new security standards, minimums for setbacks, maximums for windows and other rules that constrained architectur- al choice. The Crowe Report (1999) reiterated the large- ly unheeded Inman recommendations 14 years later, after even more devastating terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, neither of which met Inman standards. The Crowe accountability reports stressed that safety had to outweigh considerations of con- venience, history or symbolism. In a 1999 interview, Admiral William J. Crowe, former chair- man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and also former U.S. ambassador in London, described how he supervised an emergency drill in which more than 700 embassy employees evacuated the London chancery and assembled quickly in the middle of Grosvenor Square, only to realize “how stupid that was.” No building can be totally secure, he noted, certainly no building in the middle of London; but he urged the State Department to enact stringent new security rules and military-style drills to better pro- tect its personnel. Why didn’t the State Department implement more of the Inman recommendations during those 14 years? First, and foremost, because Beirut faded quickly from memory and Congress reneged on promised funds, even cutting State Department appropriations. In addition, even at the highest levels of the department, officials were ambivalent about applying universal standards to buildings everywhere, and reluctant to abandon land- mark buildings and center-city locations. These officials recognized the added value that good design can bring to diplomacy. Adding to the impact of the two critical accountabil- ity reports, the Overseas Presence Advisory Panel — established by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as part of the effort to re-examine the role of U.S. mis- sions abroad in the aftermath of the Africa embassy bombings — issued a scathing overview of conditions at U.S. posts in 1999. OPAP panelists called for a reduced U.S. presence and questioned the State Department’s capacity to handle the enormous task of upgrading or replacing its embassies and managing its vast real estate holdings. Instead of calling on Congress to commit funds to needed programs, it recommended abolishing the FBO and urged the president to create a federally chartered government corporation to replace it. The State Department was not interested in that sort of makeover, however. F O C U S S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 47 Since the 1980s and 1990s, when terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities proliferated, America’s foreign presence has been undergoing a profound makeover.