The Foreign Service Journal, September 2005

to explain everything in that context. Because that is the only thing that really matters. When we were coming back from Peru that day [Sept. 11, 2001], on the airplane, everyone was sort of sitting around, and about a couple of hours into the flight, I walked up to Secretary Powell’s cabin. He had his yellow pads written out. And I had my little piece of paper. And I said, there’s half-a-dozen things we’re going to have to think about. I went through my half-a-dozen things. He said, “You’ve got to understand; this changes everything.” He was right. I don’t want to leave the impression that preventing another attack on the United States is a simple thing. It involves visa policy, proliferation poli- cy and democracy, how we interact with foreign governments, how for- eign governments treat their citizens, how much interest we take in differ- ent things. We’re now confronted with the problems of Uzbekistan. You want to have your base there. You want to be able to fight terrorism with the Uzbek government. So aren’t you compro- mising on democracy? The fact is the two are very closely related: building stability and healthy societies through democracy as well as working togeth- er on security. FSJ: How disruptive has the job been with respect to home life, late hours, late phone calls, etc.? RB: I suppose there are a variety of jobs where you never quite get away from them. This one is pretty constant. The advantage is you do everything in the world. The disad- vantage is you do everything in the world. If something happens far away, somehow you need to know about it and need to deal with it. Other people don’t have the same weekend as we do. Some people don’t have the same midnights as we do. It’s pretty disrup- tive. It’s a lot of travel and a lot of phone calls. The one virtue compared to a lot of other jobs is that you live in the unclas- sified world most of the time. And so you do a lot of your work on weekends by BlackBerry and cell phone. So you may be on the phone, but at least you’re on the phone at your kid’s soc- cer game. FSJ: Presumably your next job will be a little less disruptive? RB: A little more predictable. Not necessarily quieter. I used to say it’s time to leave this job when somebody has a coup on Friday night and you think they did it to ruin your weekend. I never quite got to that point of para- noia but you do start to take things a little bit personally ... It’s like being a wire service reporter sometimes. FSJ: Is there a particular answer that you’ve given over the past dozen years or so that you regret more than any other? RB: In my own mind, I think I screw something up every day. There is always something I think I could have done better or didn’t do as well as I should have. Sometimes if I got it wrong, I go out to try to fix it right away. 76 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 5 “I used to say it’s time to leave this job when somebody has a coup on Friday night and you think they did it to ruin your weekend.” The New Spokesman: Sean McCormack R ichard Boucher’s replacement as State Department spokesman and as assistant secretary of State for public affairs is Sean McCormack, a fellow Foreign Service officer. Seldom has a spokesman been better prepared for the job than McCormack. He served in that role for the National Security Council dur- ing President Bush’s first term, working closely with then-NSC adviser Condoleezza Rice. That experience permitted a relatively seamless transi- tion to his new State Department role. McCormack’s official titles while working for Rice were Special Assistant to the President, Spokesman for the National Security Council and Deputy White House Press Secretary for Foreign Policy. McCormack began his career in the Foreign Service in 1995. The fol- lowing year, he was assigned to the U.S. embassy in Ankara as the Farsi- speaking officer in the consular section. After two years in Ankara, he was posted to the U.S. embassy in Algiers from 1998 to 1999, with responsibility for economic reporting and consular issues. McCormack served in the State Department Operations Center in 1999 before moving to the Executive Secretariat Staff (“The Line”). He was detailed to the National Security Council Staff in 2001. McCormack graduated from Colby College in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. He received an M.A. in international relations from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1990. — George Gedda