The Foreign Service Journal, October 2009

O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 31 diplomacy aspects of various options. Murrow famously complained that public diplomacy personnel were not “in on the takeoffs,” but only brought in afterward for the “crash landings.” This seems not to have changed with the merger. Other USIA officers were trans- ferred to new State bureaus, such as International Information Pro- grams or Educational and Cultural Affairs. The latter bureau was headed by an assistant secretary, but both IIP and ECA stayed put across town in the old USIA headquarters at 301 4th Street SW— out of sight and mind of the policy people at Main State. This dispersal of career PD officers around the State Department destroyed the cohesion and efficiency of the public diplomacy field support function in Washington that had worked very well when USIA existed. All of the transferred USIA officers now had to work through layers of State De- partment bureaucracy to support public affairs officers and other public diplomacy professionals at embassies and consulates around the world. Moreover, the new under sec- retary of State for public diplomacy and public affairs, while nominally the successor to the director of USIA, in fact had none of that po- sition’s authority over personnel and budgets, and was therefore unable to provide cohe- sion and unified direction to PD officers at State or at embassies abroad. And overseas, each PAO reported only to the ambassador, and through the ambassador to an assistant secretary — no longer to a public diplomacy agency in Washington. While USIA existed, its regional area offices deter- F O C U S The dispersal of career PD officers around State has destroyed the cohesion and efficiency of support for public diplomacy field offices.