WhirledView

Congregations Against Torture

by Cheryl Rofer

I drove past the Santa Fe Unitarian Universalist Church this afternoon, after viewing "Constantine's Sword," which is about Christianity and antisemitism and, I might add, power. The sign in front was covered with a black banner with white letters condemning torture. I commented to my passenger that the antiwar movement of the sixties and early seventies included more church people than the priests and nuns depicted in the movie, and it was about time to see the churches taking a stand on torture.

I was wondering about how much of a movement might be developing, so I checked for news stories. Apparently the movement is among individual congregations, mostly Catholic and mainline Protestant denominations, but including Jewish congregations and a few others for a total of about 300.

The Washington Times is one of the few newspapers bothering to cover this development, at least according to what I find in Google News. Papers in localities where the signs are going up are also covering the news. (Corvallis, Oregon; River City, Iowa; Atlanta)

Here's the Video

by Cheryl Rofer

via Barron YoungSmith and Kevin Drum.

But Kevin, Barron has it, well, not quite right.

It's not "largely irreversible." There are other possible ways to cool the Yongbyon reactor, as was pointed out not totally convincingly in the release of information about that Syrian building the Israelis targeted.

I know, we all like to think of those hyperboloid towers as emblematic of and essential to nuclear plants. But they just run cooling water through them to get rid of the excess heat a power plant produces. They're on coal plants as well, and sometimes industrial plants.

It would be more irreversible to fill the reactor vessel with concrete. That would be irreversible.

And any country can throw the inspectors out, any time. They're just people, not even armed.

But I hate to seem to be coming out on the side of John Bolton.

It's a good thing that this was done, in both practical and symbolic ways. Perhaps even more important that the North Koreans encouraged recording of the event. I've been looking forward to posting the video.

And hey! How about some positive coverage for the Los Alamos National Laboratory? They've been working on the disablement for some time now, the real stuff that can make this irreversible. Even wearing suits in hot summer weather -- that's really a sacrifice for Los Alamos scientists. (6/30 - I see that Jeffrey now says that that's not Kevin Veal in the suit. I don't know Kevin and I don't know who it is in the suit.)

Where have all the public diplomacy specialists gone?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

You have to hand it to the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy for engaging in what must have been a Herculean tooth pulling exercise with the State Department’s normally secretive Human Resources Division in an endeavor to determine what has happened to America’s public diplomacy specialists since 1999 when much of the U.S. Information Agency was slurped up by State. This is the subject of the Commission’s most recent report. It has a terrific title “Getting the People Part Right” and is the first report I’ve seen on the topic. It raises many of the right questions. Now almost ten years since 1999, this report, its approach and the resultant findings (and more) are badly needed.

Alarming

Anyone interested in learning about how the vast majority of civilian professionals tasked with tending America’s image abroad are being treated at Foggy Bottom and in US Embassies abroad should read this 45 page report. It is well written, organized and thought provoking. It explores recruiting, hiring, training, bureaucratic structures, institutional cultures as well as career advancement and the ever important question of impact - all in non-jargon laden terms.

In short, despite all the Bush administration’s rhetoric about the importance of public diplomacy and Condi Rice’s maxim that “we all do public diplomacy,” the State Department has too often neglected the very people who are tasked to “do public diplomacy.” Moreover, it has failed to provide the additional training necessary to enable Ambassadors or other high level embassy officials to “do” even a smiggen of public diplomacy right either.

It’s not for no reason that many public diplomacy specialists who could leave, left at the first opportunity or planned to leave as soon as possible after the consolidation announcement in fall 1997. And it’s also not for no reason that the US military has subsequently inserted its own information operations specialists into US Embassies abroad – presumably to pick up the slack in human capital missing from State.

State’s “Red-haired step children”

In my experience, far too often too few State Department officers ever understood how to use public diplomacy staff, programs and funding effectively. When I joined the Foreign Service in 1970, public diplomacy specialists were derisively labeled “red haired step children” by State. It’s clear that this part of the equation has not changed.

Unfortunately, this latest public diplomacy report demonstrates that public diplomacy officers remain State’s red-haired step-children. Despite the fact that the Department couldn’t wait to get its hands on USIA (in particular its budget) in its Greater State Department expansionary days under then Secretary Madeleine Albright who had made a devil’s pact with then Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Jesse Helms to sell out USIA, the public diplomacy specialty remains among the two most popular among new recruits. But unless things change quickly, the reality is that if these newly minted public diplomacy diplomats want to get ahead they need to shift into some other field and rapidly.

What should be the requirements for public diplomacy specialists?

There’s much to-ing and fro-ing and tut-tutting in the report with respect to lack of specialized recruitment and training for public diplomacy officers. I don’t doubt that it is real. But I wonder: what sorts of people would make good public diplomacy officers as opposed to, say, political officers? Is there really that much of a qualitative difference?

Senators McCain and Obama: How Will they Vote on the Wheelchair Bill?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

While Obama and McCain play to the crowd on the oil price crunch, Congress is playing games with Medicare.

On the one hand, we have Republican politicians shouting that we can’t afford Medicare, much less universal health care, which many Democrats more or less support, while clinging to various coy and complex reservations. I include Obama in this flirtation with meeting American’s health needs, because he has not, to my mind, been sufficiently comprehensive in his goals or clear in his assertions. McCain is essentially for total health care privatization, which definitely won’t help to raise America’s life expectancy stats to a respectable level.

On the other hand, Congressional leaders of BOTH parties, it seems, have voted to undercut efforts to halt Medicare over payments for medical devices. It seems that an elderly or post-operative person who is a little wobbly can buy an ordinary walker in a big box store for half what it would cost Medicare to provide the same item.

How can this be? Simple. Current procurement policies for Medicare don’t require suppliers to bid competitively on contracts to supply such devices. This bit of federal assistance, a brazen subsidy to the private sector of the sort that "Conservatives" are addicted to, was going to be eliminated by Congressional reformers.

But then the industry got to work on our representatives and presto!!!! More of our tax dollars funneled—approximately $1,000,000,000—to the undeserving. That’s big business bed-manufacturers, not beggars. The system isn’t being milked by illegal immigrants, it seems. It’s being bilked by the free enterprise types who typically hate competition. It's so inefficient.

Inang Bayan’s New Clothes – A Book Review Essay

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Shhh. This delightful children’s book may – or may not - be off-limits to Americans. So let’s pretend you didn’t hear about it from me. But it’s a best seller in the Philippines.

I first learned about Inang Bayan’s New Clothes from one of the few informative articles I’ve come across of late in State the State Department’s in-house magazine so I sent out feelers to see if I could obtain a copy.

Don’t ask how I got it but I did.

That’s best kept part of my “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy – because of an outdated law known as Smith-Mundt that restricts Americans’ access to learning what our taxpayers’ dollars are supporting overseas. Thanks to the Internet, however, you can at least see American Ambassador Kristie Kenney on the US Embassy’s webpage reading from the book to a group of Filipino girls in 2006 when it first appeared. It then took over a year for the story to appear in State – but better late than never.

Suffice it to say that I’ll bet you never dreamed that US government money would help finance a story about two Filipino girls – Feliza and Nurhana, one Christian and the other Muslim – who live in Mindanao, work in a dress shop after school and despite their families’ religious differences are best of friends.

The purpose of this book is to promote inter-communal understanding – and it is clearly aimed at Filipino girls. It is full of pretty clothes, lovely pictures, and paper dolls to dress. In so doing, it shows the multi-ethnic heritage of Filipinos and it also depicts how it is possible – two girls at a time - to play a part in overcoming the devastating religious cleavage that has bedeviled the southern-most part of the archipelago for years. The name Inang Bayan means the Philippine Motherland or Spirit. It dates back - at least - to the early 1900s. Inang Bayan is also known as the "first muse" of Philippine poets.

In short, this little paperback book with cut-outable inserts is a winner.

Its authors – Tony Perez and Agnes Caballa - are veteran Filipino public diplomacy staff at the US Embassy in Manila and its illustrator is Frances Alcaraz, a illustrator and Ateneo de Manila University professor. Perez is an award winning author in his own right and Caballa is a television script writer, lyricist and stage director, as well as co-editor of the magazine Muslim Life in the Philippines. The book was published by Anvil, a major Filipino publishing house, and its publication and production was financed by the U.S. government. Inang Bayan’s New Clothes is, apparently, still in print – or perhaps back in print because it is so popular. But don't expect to find it on Amazon. The text is in both Cebuano (the language of Mindanao) and English.

Now you might ask why the US government would invest in a children’s book of this sort. It’s not, after all, about promoting the US image abroad. But in the event you’ve forgotten, in 2002 the US sent a small number of troops to the Philippines to help the Philippine armed forces cope with Mindanao-based Muslim insurgents including those with ties to Al Qaeda. As far as I can tell, the insurgents as well as Philippine and US troops are still there and the government’s long-standing insurgency problem has yet to be resolved for numerous reasons.

Yet Inang Bayan’s New Clothes is, at the very least, a tiny – delightful - step in the right direction.

Guess What? American Muslims Aren’t That Different

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I always sit up and pay attention when another Pew survey is announced, and the report that was covered in my morning NYT on June 24 had to do with religion in the U.S.

A major survey by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that most Americans have a non-dogmatic approach to faith. A majority of those who are affiliated with a religion, for instance, do not believe their religion is the only way to salvation. And almost the same number believes that there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their religion. This openness to a range of religious viewpoints is in line with the great diversity of religious affiliation, belief and practice that exists in the United States, as documented in a survey of more than 35,000 Americans that comprehensively examines the country’s religious landscape

Religion is a hot political topic these days. The wall of separation between church and state is under assault, and the administration has declared war on radical Islam. So I was very eager to read this article which declared that a “survey of religion in U.S. finds a broad tolerance for other faiths.”

The tabulations that followed included nine categories: Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Unaffiliated. But where were the Muslims? Was it possible that the Pew people had neglected to include Muslims?

Or was it that data involving Muslims was simply ignored by the reporter, whose name showed her to be of high caste Bengali Hindu descent. Was this a snub that went back to the ancestral culture in Indian West Bengal?

OK. Reporters are human. But where was the editor? Surely an editor would have noticed that Muslims were absent from the story submitted by the reporter. Except, it seems, the editor didn’t, unless the Pew people had been very very negligent.

So, naturally, I went on line. I found, to my great relief, that the Pew people had not failed to include Muslims in this very important tabulation (though the consolidated data comes from different studies).

Above all (and this is of major political importance) it seems that Muslims in America aren’t statistically all that different from any other Americans in the essence of their theology or the resulting political implications.

Thus, under the category “Many Paths to God,” it appears that 56% of American Muslims agree that “many religions can lead to eternal life.” Mormans rank only 39% on this item and Jehovah’s Witnesses lag at 16%. Nobody who can tolerate other roads to god is likely to throw bombs, so we should certainly be reassured that a solid majority of Muslims are very tolerant indeed. (And most of the rest aren’t fanatical or suicidal, just as most evangelicals wouldn't bomb an abortion clinic.)

Even more interesting as a perspective on American Islam was the category which involved “Conception of God.” This choice had to do with whether one believes that god is “a person” one can have a “relationship” with or that god is “an impersonal force.” Some 42% of Muslims saw God as an impersonal force. That’s more than the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox Christians—and nearly as many as the Jews, who stand at 50% in this category. Now I ask you, if someone thinks of God as an impersonal force, is that person likely to support or go on a violent jihad? I think not.

The third category category reported in the NYT had to do with the comparative value of “ensuring peace" through “diplomacy or military strength." Some 84% of Muslims prefer diplomacy. Catholics come in at 64%, Protestants at 55% and Mormons at a mere 49%. What does that say about the supposedly violent inclinations of Muslims as a whole? Totally demolished.

It’s often said in political commentary today that violent Islam is espoused by those who feel their values are threatened by America’s popular culture or by those who are dissatisfied with their lives or opportunities. The Pew poll shows that American Muslims are no more worried than other Americans about whether “Hollywood threatens my values” and they are equally satisfied with their lives. So American Muslims aren’t disproportionately alienated either.

Perhaps we are over the worst human rights abuses which followed the destruction of the World Trade towers, but simplistically negative ideas about Muslims and Islam are still all too prevalent. This Pew study should go a long way toward inoculating non-Muslim Americans against such prejudice.

Head’s Up! More US Visa Problems Loom on the Horizon

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Last year the problem was passports. Looks like, if the June 23, 2008 Wall Street Journal story “Security Changes Are Likely to Create Visa Backlog” is right, visas – at least for citizens from as many as 27 countries - could be next.

This story which I found in the WSJ print edition is based on a May 22, 2008 General Accountability Office (GAO) report to Congress entitled “State Department Should Plan for Potentially Significant Staffing and Facilities Shortfalls Caused by Changes in the Visa Waiver Program.”

Where have all the plans and planners gone?

The bottom line is that State hasn’t done the planning - because the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t yet produced the plans upon which State’s planning should be based. So how can State begin to gear up for an increased work load in posts abroad when it doesn’t know what to gear up for? Yet if GAO can come up with estimates for a worst case scenario, State should be able to do so too. And if the worst case scenario turns out to be the ticket, expect a huge visa backlog at US Consulates in Western Europe, New Zealand and Australia as well as three Asian countries beginning as soon as January 12, 2009.

The Worst Case Scenario

Actually, according to the GAO, if the Visa Waiver Program were eliminated (the bureaucratic worst case scenario), State Department staff would need to be increased by about 540 new Foreign Service Officers ($185-201 million annually) and 1,350 local Foreign Service national staff ($168 million to $190 million annually) as well as additional management and support positions ($447 million to $486 million annually). Now State is already 1,000-2,000 Foreign Service positions short and I have to question how it would increase and train staff all that quickly. So much - by the way - for Condi’s transformational diplomacy because all of these new positions would be in wealthy countries.

The good news is that visa fees should off-set these additional staffing costs. The bad news is that State says it would need about 45 new facilities which the GAO estimates would cost approximately $3.8 billion to $5.7 billion. Given the cookie-cutter fortress Embassy design now in vogue, I have to wonder where these facilities would be built and how the average would-be tourist could even access them for a visa interview – but that’s another question for another post.

I’m not going to go into more of the details now, but if you’re among the curious here’s the link to the 58 page GAO report on the potential impact of ESTA (the Electronic System for Travel Authorization) that is making this potential mess possible. The travelers from countries most likely to be hit the worst are those that are already part of the Visa Waiver Program: much of Western Europe, Japan, Brunei and Singapore. Needless to say this is all part of increased border control laws enacted in the wake of 9/11 and the terrorist bombings in Europe.

Most likely scenario

But what if DHS comes up with something in between elimination of the Visa Waiver Program and the system that exists now? DHS can and does, after all, refuse people admittance at the border – and presumably would continue to do so. Yet the most likely scenario is to allow people from VWP countries to apply for visas voluntarily at US Consulates abroad. This includes electronic screening from a US data base of suspects - and we know how reliable that is). Otherwise, intending visitors take their chances with a potentially unpleasant DHS experience at the border. How many intending visitors would choose that option is an open question.

According to GAO, however, neither State nor DHS has “attempted to estimate demand” and State has not “attempted to estimate additional resources that would be needed to manage demand, and what additional visa fees would be received.”

Hmmm, and all of this is supposed to go into effect January 12, 2009? Although DHS – with its inimitable lack of foresight and planning - plans to jump the gun and “launch the program in August.” Whatever that means. (Registration, according to the WSJ, however, will be mandatory in January.)

Even with the weak dollar, one has to wonder whether tourist travel to the US is really worth it. One doesn’t have to wonder, however, why America’s reputation abroad is at an all time low.

Science Selections

by Cheryl Rofer

Science magazine frequently has good stuff in it, but it’s available on the internet by subscription only. So I pull pages out of the dead-tree version to make posts from. Sometimes Science's Eureakalert has short versions on line. Here are a few recent goodies.

The Lusi mud volcano on Indonesia’s Java Island is still going strong, despite the various attempts to stop it. (Last WhirledView post here.) Geologists disagree as to where the mud is coming from and what caused the volcano. Indonesian courts have ruled the volcano a natural disaster, absolving the drilling company Lapindo Brantas of responsibility. The mud has covered 750 hectares and has destroyed the homes of 30,000 people. (13 June)

Since I last googled that subject, a couple of new articles on the mud volcano have shown up. The photo is from Reuters, via The Guardian. You can see the scale of it from the trucks and earthmovers that are building the dams. Time Magazine reports here. Lots of satellite images from the National University of Singapore here.

Imagery from the LANDSAT satellites is being made available free on the internet. The data are of the whole world, in multiple spectral ranges. All newly acquired data will be made available, and the archives are being opened up during the rest of this year. This will be invaluable for following all sorts of changes over time: vegetation cover, city growth, bodies of water, probably Lusi as well. NASA LANDSAT site, USGS LANDSAT site (23 May)

Who’s got the biggest carbon footprint in America? If you guessed those car-crazy Californians, you’re wrong. The biggest carbon emissions per capita are all in the eastern part of the country. This report, from Brookings, tells why. And it makes some policy suggestions to lessen our carbon dioxide emissions. (13 June)

Deserts may be taking up some of that carbon dioxide. Measurements in western China and Nevada suggest that desert soils account for some of the good luck we’ve had so far, with more carbon dioxide disappearing than scientists have expected. It’s not clear whether the carbon dioxide is going into the soil itself or living communities that form crusts on the surface. I’ll suggest that in just a couple of years, watering some of the soils in my yard has produced some underground cementation. But I can’t say whether that’s calcium carbonate, let alone whether it’s from the air or it’s being dissolved and reprecipitated. But it’s the kind of thing you might see if moistened alkaline desert soils are taking up carbon dioxide. (13 June)

Where’s the Failure?

by CKR

David Ignatius must have taken an airplane trip recently. The airlines are in a downward spiral, he tells us. And one of the giants of the industry, Robert Crandall, former head of American Airlines, recently gave a speech outlining why he thinks the airlines should be re-regulated. He’s been opposed to deregulation all along, and some of his more dour predictions have come true.

Crandall makes a number of specific suggestions, but it’s his bigger points that are really important. He talks about goals for the aviation industry and goals for the country. He says we’re lacking goals. But, more precisely, we have allowed a set of ideology-driven fanatics to determine the goals for the country.

The goals we currently are working under are:

1) To maximize the “free market.” This means removing regulatory requirements and privatizing government functions.

2) To increase US hegemony through military power.

It’s becoming clear that these goals are doing far more harm than good, the disaster of airline deregulation being only one of many: crumbling infrastructure, Blackwater, lack of health care for too many citizens, alienation of our allies, and the list goes on.

Ignatius takes quick note of these ills and blames them on Washington gridlock. But he’s wrong. There is a specific ideology that insists on removing regulation, the devil take the hindmost. It is called conservatism, and Peter Scoblic has shown how it has undermined national security.

Some time around when the airlines were deregulated, politics became more of a popularity contest. Television showed us the five o’clock shadow, and politicans learned to be pretty and vague and attractiveness as a beer-drinking partner was added to the promise of a chicken in every pot or a Hummer in every driveway. The preparation for this sort of political career does not include the backbone to develop and stand by policies. It also allowed ideologues to put on a pretty face and promise lower taxes and ponies for everyone.

Crandall observes that we have neither a transportation policy nor an energy policy. Of course not! That’s not why these members of Congress were elected. Politicians proferring energy policies raising gasoline taxes or gas mileage or moving toward solar or nuclear power would have been beaten by those strong-chinned fellows offering the opportunity for every man to be a millionaire by the magic of unfettered free enterprise. Or offering their attractiveness as beer-drinking companions.

We like cheap airline fares, but not the increasingly crummy and cramped cabins. We like cheap gasoline until something happens and it’s not cheap any more. We like easy politicians, not the policy wonks. We don’t like recognizing that the cheap fares give us the cramped cabins or that reducing taxes reduces our ability to respond to changing conditions.

Presidential leadership would help. Like a leader who gave us a long-term energy plan on September 12, 2001, not just a demand for a quick fix by July 4. Like a leader who could recognize that American business depends on convenient, safe transportation, up-to-date infrastructure, and affordable health care. Like a leader who would put those things into enactable legislation, not just talk about them. And Congressional leaders could pitch in some leadership, too.

The United States used to be good at solving problems. These days, we don't seem up to the job.

That’s what Crandall said. I think that we can solve the problems if we focus our attention. We need leadership, and we need intelligent followership too. Here’s hoping voters recognize that in the November elections.

Update: Looks like some other folks were thinking similarly this weekend.

Cleaning Up the Shenanigans and Reinstituting The Golden Rule

By Patricia H. Kushlis

A year ago, the little known U.S. Office of the Special Counsel, created to protect whistle-blowers, ruled against the State Department in a civil service hiring case in which the OSC charged that the Department had clearly violated the Prohibited Personnel Practices law. The term used in the OSC press release announcing the decision referred to State Department “shenanigans.” The Department was ordered to cut them out.

But has it?

I now understand that outside investigators are looking into allegations that current and past senior officials in the Department’s Division of Human Resources (HR) have tampered with the results of Foreign Service promotion panels (apparently State has been dodging requests from Congress for such an investigation for several years). If so, this is likely to be just one more example of the Department’s continuing mismanagement of its single most precious resource: its cadre of highly skilled professional diplomats who represent America’s interests abroad. But the Department’s administrative record over the past several years – from last year’s breakdown in passport services and its highly publicized and needlessly embarrassing approach to Iraq assignments to the disastrous Embassy Baghdad construction project – makes this oldest and once-upon-a time flagship department of the U.S. government resemble a decaying hulk.

Has something gone wrong with State’s corporate culture? How and why have things been allowed to spin so far out of control? And what will it take to repair the listing Ship of State?

Let’s begin with Human Resources: HR knows how to look after its own.

In my two previous posts on Foreign Service Ambassadorial assignments, I stressed that Human Resources has done outstandingly well in taking care of its own – especially in contrast with its handling of State’s war zone vets. What is particularly striking is that not one Ambassadorial assignment has been made for any career officer who has served in either Afghanistan or Iraq and HR. What is also striking is that proportionally more Ambassadorial assignments have gone to individuals serving in HR or who had recently served in HR than those who have served in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Since far more senior officers have served in both of these large posts since 2001 (in the case of Afghanistan) and 2003 (in the case of Iraq) than in HR, something is wrong with this picture.

Here’s how I reached my conclusions.

I compared the nominees who had had recent (previous one to two tours) in HR* to those with recent Iraq** and/or Afghanistan experience.*** In my first post, I did not count Afghanistan veterans – although they appear to have fared far worse than Iraq vets. I did, however, count Afghanistan service in my second post. In my first post, I also included two officers who had served TDY in Iraq and two others who had served on the Iraq desk because I assumed, in the latter case, the desk officers had traveled frequently in and out of the country at the time – dangerous duty in and of itself.

I relied on publicly available data from the following websites: State, the White House and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Since not all of the information on the three sites agreed 100 percent, I cross-checked the nominees biographies among those three websites. State may quibble around the margins, but the fact remains the trend is obvious, overwhelming and, frankly, appalling.

I suspect – but do not have the figures to prove – that the pool of eligible senior officers in Iraq and Afghanistan combined is several times greater than the number of eligible officers in HR at any given moment. First, because there are so many people of all grades including the Senior Foreign Service - assigned to those two posts. And second because Iraq and Afghanistan positions turn over annually due to the high personal danger whereas a far larger percentage of jobs in HR would normally turn over every two-three years.

Scandal Ridden State

Over the past 18 months, the State Department has been rocked by administrative and personnel scandals. The first to break concerned its cavalier attitude towards personnel returning from war zones with PTSD – a story that first appeared in USA Today May 2007 but only after Iraq vet Rachel Schneller went public due to lack of departmental support for help overcoming her trauma. Schneller, by the way, just received the American Foreign Service Association’s constructive dissent award for her efforts in battling the Department on behalf of others returning with similar afflictions. Then came the denouement of Inspector General Howard “Cookie” Krongard who “resigned” in disgrace in December 2007 but not before 20 of his 27 investigators had quit and two had gone to Waxman’s oversight Committee on the Hill to ask for an investigation.

This was followed by the dismissal of the head of Diplomatic Security over the Blackwater contracting affair and the resignation of General Williams who had overseen the disastrous Embassy Baghdad construction effort. Thankfully, Henrietta Fore – the Under Secretary for Management who had overall responsibility for all these problems – was kicked upstairs. Unfortunately, she also went off to head USAID, an agency with major problems of its own. Finally, there was the March retirement of Consular Affairs Bureau chief Maura Harty who had reined over last spring and summer’s passport issuance (or actually non-issuance) fiasco and the far more serious alleged used of passport data to perpetrate credit card fraud.

To Top It Off: Visas for Sex?