The Foreign Service Journal, October 2003

Civil Service personnel. The Foreign Service became a quasi-expatriate corps. My first boss entered the Foreign Service some 30 years before I met him, and all of his assignments were overseas: he inevitably had a lim- ited understanding of the State Department and even the United States. Soon after he became Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles appointed Henry M. Wriston to head a commis- sion to assess this problem. Wriston concluded that all Civil Service per- sonnel with substantive responsibili- ties in the department should be “inte- grated” into the Foreign Service, even though they outnumbered career FSOs. Dulles subsequently appointed Ambassador Loy Henderson, the most outspoken critic of “Wristonization,” to implement it. Remarkably, as Henderson waded into the swamp, he became genuinely convinced that two parallel personnel systems with in- compatible recruitment, compensa- tion, promotion, leave, and retirement policies — and disparate cultures — could not be managed equitably with- in the same structure. “Integrating” Civil Service per- sonnel into the Foreign Service brought instability to the depart- ment and dislocations to many dedi- cated employees in the 1960s. Former Civil Service officers were assigned to embassy slots they were ill prepared to fill: office directors became DCMs and experts on con- sular invoices headed large visa operations. Tensions were high. Unfortunately, President Kennedy rebuffed Henderson’s offer to contin- ue for a brief transition period, and in early 1961 Henderson was replaced by Roger Jones, who, as head of the Civil Service Commission, had battled Henderson on many occasions. Instead of “de-Wristonizing” the Foreign Service (“unscrambling the eggs”), Jones asked former Secretary of State Christian Herter to head a committee to review personnel mat- ters. Before its excellent report was completed, Jones resigned. He was replaced after a hiatus by William Orrick, a protege of Robert Kennedy with no relevant experience. A year later Bill Crockett replaced Orrick; and in 1967 Idar Rimestad replaced Crockett. In short, State management was a shambles throughout the 1960s. The Young Turks, ignoring this back- ground, saw their careers as stymied by Wristonees. They thought large- 10 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 3 L E T T E R S An ice cream soda is one of the few items we cannot mail. Drugs, cosmetics, sundries mailed to every country in the world. • Homeopathic & Herbal Remedies • Natural Body Products