The Foreign Service Journal, December 2015

46 DECEMBER 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL CS: There aren’t a lot of foreign correspondents left overseas. It’s really a shame. I’ve always found my relationships with reporters to be mutually beneficial and professionally enriching. How important were your relationships with American and other diplomats? RCL: Depends on the place. In places like London and Paris, where information is open and local officials are available, there’s no reason for diplomats to act as middlemen between journalists and their sources. We can get everything we need from government officials, business people, etc., the same way we do here—with a phone call or a lunch. In more authoritarian places, where information is limited or guarded, correspondents get their info where they find it, and often check with diplomats. Or if a journalist is parachuting into a place where he doesn’t live, embassies are excellent sources of background briefings, to bring the correspondent up to date fast. A note here: this doesn’t necessarily mean getting a brief- ing from the U.S. embassy. I often found American diplomats too much on message, loath to give any facts or opinions that violated the current line of U.S. foreign policy. Generally, the British or Germans were best and most professional. But wher- ever I was, if I didn’t know the territory, I always made a point of calling at the embassies of neighboring countries. Generally, these countries hated each other, so sent their best diplomats to keep an eye on their neighbors. What they said was tainted, of course, and couldn’t be used without verification; but you do pick up a lot of gossip that way. If I may say so, the decline in the number of U.S. correspondents abroad handicaps American foreign policy. As I mentioned, diplomats and correspondents often cover the same story. Sometimes these stories conflict (just as two correspondents covering the same story might file conflicting or differing stories, with different facts and different emphases). I suspect diplomats hate it when HQ responds to a cable by quoting a conflicting article in The New York Times . But the Times guy might be right. Sometimes, the embassies get it right, and sometimes (Vietnam, Iraq) they don’t. But if there are no correspondents on the scene, who’s to know? CS: To be fair to my colleagues from Saigon and Baghdad, sometimes people aren’t that interested in what we have to say. Our official Dissent Channel came about to give officers in Saigon a way to get “the rest of the story” to the senior folks at State. I completely agree with you on the importance of journalists in educating the American people on what’s going on around the Continued from page 43