Words of Wisdom from a Senior Foreign Service Officer: Jack Harrod on USIA and Public Diplomacy

Jack Harrod, a distinguished USIA senior official, has kindly authorized me to post his below comments:

(1) Among the reasons noted for USIA's demise, there are two that I think were critical, namely the stress on "reinventing government" by the Clinton/Gore administration, which seemed to put a priority on demonstrating new "paradigms" even when they may not have been necessary (and which to me predestined the "consolidation" of USIA into the State Dept. no matter what the actual arguments -- change is good, per se), and also the lack of firm leadership within USIA itself to defend the agency's mission. Here I must be subjective, but my impression is that Dr. Joseph D. Duffey, the director at that time, did not understand or subscribe to the basic raison d'etre of USIA and therefore did not argue as effectively as he could/should have for its continued existence......

(2) The end of the Cold War was also a major factor, but nuanced by the assumption that the Soviet Union and Communism were the only reasons USIA existed in the first place. Public diplomacy, of course, should not be dependent upon a specific "opponent" but should be a positive expression of American values and interests no matter what the external environment. The fall of the Berlin Wall was not/not the "end of history". If Islamic fundamentalism or international terrorism disappeared tomorrow, that would not be a reason to do away with PD.

(3) Former Congressman Lee Hamilton has commented that public diplomacy is akin to the relationship of politicians with their constituencies. That, as the Brits would say, is spot on. In 1982-83, I had a 16-month Congressional Fellowship from the American Political Science Association and worked for (now former) Republican Congressman Jim Leach (also a former FSO) and Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman. As I wrote in a report for APSA, my two trips to New Mexico while I worked for Bingaman (unfortunately, I didn't get to Iowa while I was with Leach) were uncannily like my USIA work overseas -- meeting with media, educators, and civic organizations to talk about issues, the one difference being that I was explaining Sen. Bingaman's positions rather than USG positions. Should we recruit more PD people from Capitol Hill?

(4) Among the characteristics that are indicated/required for public diplomacy specialists, I would also stress management skills and programming expertise. USIA officers (or public diplomacy specialists now) were distinguished from their State colleagues by the need to supervise FSN staffs and arrange public programs, while their political officer colleagues wrote reports. My experience tells me that somebody who has some management and programming background has a leg up when it comes to public diplomacy. Give me somebody who has actually "done" something rather than somebody who has just studied it (I write this as somebody who had just studied it before I joined USIA).

(5) It occurs to me (since I arranged a couple of them when I was the USIA area director for Western Europe and Canada) that Embassy internships for promising public diplomacy candidates could be possible at overseas posts WITHOUT security clearances since a lot of public diplomacy work does not require access to classified information and an intern could be given similar status to an FSN. My experience could be out of date, to the extent that PD functions have been dragged kicking and screaming behind fortified walls. But then if you're behind fortified walls, it isn't really PD. One of my first experiences as an Embassy spokesman 30 years ago got me into hot water because the talking points I was using were classified. Think about that -- how can you have classified "talking" points?