The Foreign Service Journal, November 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2022 19 tary partnerships with civil society and industry to respond to cyber threats. In an interview with NPR on Sept. 13, John Hultquist, an intelligence analyst for global cyber threats, said: “Cyberattacks live in a very interesting space because they’re nonviolent. And because a lot of their effects are reversible, the actors who use them probably recognize that this may be a tool that they can use without necessarily launching some sort of Article 5 response.” Moscow Signal Documents Declassified A special collection of documents released in September by the National Security Archive, a nongovern- mental organization, in three declassified tranches may prompt new revelations on the Cold War–era phenomenon known as Moscow Signal. The documents, now publicly available at https://bit.ly/NSA-MoscowSignal , span three decades when Soviet intelligence was bombarding the U.S. embassy in Mos- cow with microwave transmissions. The first tranche of files concern Proj- ect Bizarre, a highly classified component of the Pentagon’s Project Pandora and the apt codename for a program of radia- tion experiments conducted on mon- keys to determine if Moscow Signal was intended to degrade the abilities of U.S. personnel to function at the mission. In the second tranche, telegram and telephone records reveal diplomatic efforts by Secretary of State Henry Kiss- inger and President Gerald Ford in 1975, plus additional back-channel nego- tiations, to end the radiation deployed toward the embassy as the Soviets increased the microwaves’ intensity. The third tranche recounts Vice President Richard Nixon’s visit to Moscow in 1959, when he and his wife This Secret (declassified) memo, dated 1976, recounts reports of radiation at Spaso House in 1959. were exposed to ionizing radiation that penetrated Spaso House, the U.S. ambassador’s residence, where the couple was staying. According to the archive website, the complete collection is currently being scrutinized by a high-level panel tasked by the Biden administration with investi- gating Havana syndrome, the mysterious brain trauma experienced by dozens of U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials over the past five years. The National Security Archive plans to post a larger special collection of supple- mentary documentation on the full his- tory of Moscow Signal “in the near future.” Strides on Reproductive Health Care S ince the publication of USAID Foreign Service Officer Andrea Capellán’s Speaking Out in the May FSJ calling for improved access to reproductive health care overseas, the State Department has taken a series of steps to provide equitable treatment to Foreign Service members. The article (https://bit.ly/dip-health- care) was based on a letter signed by more than 200 FSOs and recounted the experiences of dozens of female employ- ees and family members who were denied access to reproductive medical care by the Bureau of Medical Services (MED) at post abroad while experiencing women’s health challenges. In December 2021, the FSOs sent the letter to then–acting Under Secre- tary for Management Carol Perez, but it went unanswered. Capellán’s FSJ article months later drew attention to the issue, which subsequently received coverage in media outlets including NBC News, Bloomberg, and Foreign Policy . The FSJ provided an advance copy of the article to MED as a courtesy, invit- ing a response. The bureau declined to respond. Soon after, in April, Capellán received a response fromMED address- ing some of the demands in the group’s original letter and establishing a survey to serve as a permanent feedback chan- nel to MED. Find that here: https://bit.ly/ MEDFeedbackSurvey. MED also adjusted their all-male top leadership team to include one woman in a leadership role. In mid-May, MED announced to its units across the State Department and USAID that it would centrally supply emergency contraception (EC) to all posts with health units and would work to standardize its availability. The messaging also clarified that EC should be made available to any patient who requests it, replicating its over-the- counter availability in the U.S. While pro- vision of EC is not a new service for MED, in practice many health units did not stock it reliably at missions worldwide. In June, the original letter’s signatories sent a follow-up letter calling for addi- tional improvements, including a more transparently articulated and equitably implemented medical evacuation policy. They asked for a timely appeals process for final medevac determinations in cases where decisions by MED contradict the recommendations of other medical experts and insurance providers. THENATIONALSECURITYARCHIVE