By Patricia H. Kushlis
In case you missed Nick Kralev’s exclusive in the Washington Times September 16, 2009 on the suppression of negative reporting from US Embassies abroad, it is well worth reading. The story came out of a litany of complaints by an unnamed disgruntled US Foreign Service Officer who is resigning or has resigned after three tours of duty. If this were just one individual’s lament about the state of working for State that would be one thing. But it’s not.
According to Kralev, “more than a dozen diplomats serving in
Most of the comments on Kralev’s article with the exception of one by an ex-FSO were insipid, ignorant and/or unrelated – unfortunately par for the course for WT commenters. But Kralev raises a serious issue that administrations regardless of party need to address. Kralev’s, by the way, is the kind of report that the Washington Post should publish but rarely does.
State Department cables are signed off by the highest ranking person at an Embassy at the time – usually an Ambassador or his or her deputy.
I always thought it was a good thing that the heads of USIA,
USAID and other non-State agencies signed off on their own cables or those
ancient things called airgrams that went by snail-mail - aka the diplomatic pouch
- and arrived two weeks to a month later.
They escaped the bottleneck at an Embassy's top - crucial for timeliness since
most USIA communications were purely operational and often required tight
deadlines or to tell a story, report an incident in greater detail and without what used to be called "cablese."
If we thought we needed an Ambassador’s approval before sending out a cable because of the contents – we would get it. If not, our cables did not languish in his or her in-box waiting for him or her to appear several hours or days later to place initials on paper.
Other ways information gets back to Washington
The importance of rapid transmission of unvarnished information is one of the reasons USIA’s unclassified daily media reaction reports sent in from Embassies abroad through a separate USIS channel (not cleared or likely even read by the Ambassador) were so important - as were the CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) translations of foreign media broadcasts. Media reaction, survey research and foreign broadcast translations helped round out the picture of what was happening in a country or region for use by analysts and policy makers back home.
Skewed, feel good reporting can result in bad policy decisions: it's happened for decades
But let’s get this straight: skewed, feel-good reporting from an Embassy too often helps to produce skewed, bad analysis that can result in skewed and hence bad policy decisions.
While the Bush administration fit the entire world into a black-white “with us or agin us” paradigm – and skewed reporting would have best fit into that Manichean, super-secretive view, the Obama administration recognizes the nuances – the shades of gray which allow for greater flexibility in pursuing international affairs goals. The new administration should also, therefore, recognize the imperative of transmission of unvarnished information whether or not it is favorable to a particular country, its leaders or even in support of US policies.
Negative consequences can last for a very long time: the Greek case
The Bush 43 administration was far from the first to
encourage slanted Embassy reporting. My
first Embassy experience in
There was plenty of anti-Americanism in
Had the Ambassador (and the Nixon administration) permitted
unvarnished reporting, the
In no one's best interest
I told Nick when he asked me that I thought the censorship at American Embassies stems from a stultified bureaucracy and a State Department afraid to rock the boat for a variety of reasons – some good, others not. But that there had always been legal ways around the system if one looked (for them) and (finding them) was the hallmark of a good bureaucrat. Those possibilities include e-mail, letters, telephone calls and simply briefing trusted journalists on deep background.
Should this have to happen? No. It's in no one's best interest. But until attitudes and instructions change at the top, it will.