The Foreign Service Journal, September 2014

40 SEPTEMBER 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL On the day of the meeting, I served as spokesman, accom- panied by George Moose, Barbara Bodine and Alan Romberg. After assuring Sec. Vance of our deep commitment to excel- lence in foreign affairs, we then conveyed our concern that this basic principle was being undermined and eroded. The Secretary was clearly taken aback by our candid outline of concerns, and immediately committed the department to a thorough review of every issue we identified. Our initiative set off a chain reaction that helped pave the way for passage of the Foreign Service Act of 1980. It also led to my receiving the William R. Rivkin Award for constructive dis- sent by a mid-level FSO, in 1978, my first AFSA dissent award. Formulating a Road Map In 1990 I returned to Washington from the Philippines to serve as a deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. I also chaired the Interagency Com- mittee on Vietnam POW/MIA Accounting. Opposition to moving forward on normalizing relations with Vietnam came from many directions. Many critics, including members of Congress, believed that the State Department and other fed- eral agencies had suppressed information about U.S. military personnel left behind alive in Indochina. At one point, I invited a group of about 30 of the most stri- dent critics to the department. In fact, we gathered in the same EAP conference room where the Foggy Bottom 46 had met. I told them that I would stay as long as they wanted and would answer every question. After more than two hours, when the group had no more questions to ask, one of them stood up and said, “This was the single best meeting we have had with a government official in the 18 years since the end of the war.” That remark brought home to me again how critical openness is to promoting trust in U.S. policy. Despite that success, the leader of one POW/MIA family organization met privately with senior department officials to urge that I be removed as DAS. That campaign briefly suc- ceeded, but as I was packing up my office, Under Secretary of State Frank Wisner reversed the decision. The result was that over two administrations, from 1990 to 1994, I was able to help put in place the “Road Map Policy,” which provided for simultaneous steps by both Hanoi and Washington that led to significant progress in POW/MIA accounting, the establishment of liaison offices and, even- tually, the normalization of relations. It was for my role in bringing about this transformation of U.S. policy, in the face of entrenched opposition and personal efforts to remove me, that I received AFSA’s Christian A. Herter Award for constructive dissent by a Senior FSO in 1993. A Matter of Life and Death My last dissent came right at the end of my career in 1999, while serving as ambassador to Cambodia. We had a com- pletely defenseless facility with no Marines, no setback and no way to prevent a truck bombing like the ones that had hit our missions in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam the year before. In fact, the Diplomatic Security Bureau’s Mobile Assessment Team said that Embassy Phnom Penh was the most exposed mission More than ever, our foreign policy needs Foreign Service members to speak candidly. Amb. Kenneth Quinn and his wife, Le Son, departing from Embassy Phnom Penh at the end of his ambassadorial tour in July 1999. Embassy Phnom Penh