The Foreign Service Journal, September 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2020 65 air assets and streamline the request for and approval of U.S. government funds to carry out repatriation missions. This new process—robust, replicable and transparent—reduced the approval time from days to a few short hours or even minutes, enabling multiple missions to be planned and executed in rapid succession. COVID-19 also required outstanding and sustained inter- agency coordination, including collaboration with domestic agencies across multidimensional problems, some of whom are not State’s usual partners. Working with the Federal Avia- tion Administration, Transportation Security Administration and Customs and Border Protection, we facilitated more than 1,000 flights landing in the United States, while the Depart- ment of Health and Human Services and Federal Emergency Management Agency coordinated with state governors and local emergency management offices to receive evacuees. The Department of Defense hosted more than 800 evacuees from Wuhan and the Diamond Princess , in close collaboration 1 Stay calm and expect the unexpected. Rephrasing Forrest Gump: “Task forces are like a box of chocolates—you never know what you’re going to get.” 2 Do not use the word “quiet” when describing the task force’s operational tempo. Vocalizing this observation during a task force might result in an unwelcome immediate uptick in activity. 3 Sleep when you can. Task forces can be taxing on your body; working 24/7 for months on end with 8- to 12-hour shifts takes a toll. 4 The legendary “trough” is hard to resist despite your best intentions to maintain a nutritious diet. You’ll find a spread of donuts, pizza, baked goods and refined sugars brought in by co-workers. Make sure you know when items were brought in to weed out expired treats! 5 You will rise to the occasion! It will be challeng- ing; however, the reward will be one that you will always remember. A task force is an opportunity to live through history and carry out the Department of State’s core mission to protect and assist Ameri- can citizens overseas. —CM, HA, MS, FCdH Tips for Serving on a Task Force In 44 years of experience responding to crises, the State Department’s CMS had never faced a scenario where the same threat simultaneously affected our colleagues overseas as well as those charged with responding to it in Washington, D.C. with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services. Insight into the complexity and unique challenges of the repa- triation mission can be gained from considering what’s involved in flight clearances. During a Wuhan evacuation, hundreds of Americans were set to depart on our evacuation flight. After sud- denly learning that a bureaucratic snafu—somewhere between Washington, Beijing and Wuhan—was about to derail the flight, with a customs approval spiraling into a flight clearance issue amid the cacophony of babies crying and officials argu- ing at increasing volume, the task force room grew anxious, and animated. As the minutes ticked down, our tarmac slot, with a plane full of Americans that needed to take off, was due to expire; the Washington Task Force then leapt into action. We rapidly identified senior government officials in China and D.C., initiated contingency and escalation scenarios, and began putting a new plan—and calls at the highest level—into motion. In the end, the situation was luckily sorted on the ground after intervention fromU.S. Embassy Beijing. For us in Washington, clustered on the 7th floor and in teleconferences in operations centers and points across the city, it was a moment of high ten- sion and drama that demonstrated how vital it was to have medi- cal, logistical, diplomatic and operational experts seated side by side, when minutes matter and outcomes are on the line. The Repatriation Task Force marshaled and coordinated this effort, continually synchronizing with interagency partners, govern- ments, medical professionals and others to ensure a seamless, whole-of-government response in real time. Many task forces aren’t quite this pressurized—but, increasingly, many are, with moments made difficult by virtue of multidimensional or multi- geographic complexity that demand cohesion and performance from the department and the interagency.