AFSA Protest Letter to Secretary Rice

October 24, 2006

The Honorable Condoleezza Rice
Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520

Dear Madam Secretary:

I am writing today with a sense of deep sadness to express AFSA’s dismay at the recent, unfathomable decision by the Department of State -- in violation of the Department’s own regulations, its negotiated agreements with AFSA, and the guidelines in the Foreign Service Act -- to assign a mid-level Civil Servant from Under Secretary Hughes’ office to fill the recently established Senior Foreign Service position as chief of the Department’s highly-touted new Public Diplomacy Rapid Response team in Brussels, which is meant to serve as the “hub” for our media outreach efforts throughout Europe on Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terrorism. The creation of this important position and the manner in which it was assigned were processes that minimized employees’ awareness of its existence and excluded many senior Foreign Service Officers who have extensive career experience in public diplomacy in Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia.

As you know, the Foreign Service Act of 1980, bolstered by the Foreign Affairs Manual and subsequent administrative case precedents, makes it clear that only in truly exceptional instances should Foreign Service positions overseas be filled by non-Foreign Service personnel. In such rare cases, you or your designee justify this anomaly by executing a Certificate of Need that explains why the Department was unable to find a qualified FS employee and what unique qualifications the non-FS employee has to warrant assigning someone from outside the FS. In this Brussels PD case, there are many highly qualified senior Foreign Service Officers with appropriate experience, far exceeding that of the non-FS person brought in, who might have jumped at the chance to take this key position in Brussels -- if they had been made aware of its existence and given the opportunity to bid on the position. At a time when the Department is asking our members to devote a greater part of their careers to service in more difficult hardship and danger-pay posts – and when the global repositioning exercise is shrinking the number of positions at more comfortable European posts – it is incomprehensible why the Department would deny this senior Brussels opportunity to career Foreign Service Officers. This position might well have been a perfect fit and an ideal onward assignment for a veteran FSO coming out of an unaccompanied tour of duty in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia.

I regret to tell you, Madam Secretary, that the Department did not even follow its own standard practices to find a Foreign Service Officer for a newly created, immediate vacancy. During your tenure as Secretary, the Department has sent out 119 formal calls via cable for volunteers for 193 priority positions. Many of these positions came open unexpectedly after the normal assignment cycle had run its course and needed to be filled urgently. Yet the Department made no such call to fill this Brussels PD position. Its refusal to issue such an announcement sends the message to our members worldwide that either it was a low-priority position (and thus one in which a non-Foreign Service employee would never be considered), or that the assignment process was manipulated so that the possible attention of unwanted applicants would be minimized. In either case, AFSA decries the failure of the Department to follow its own rules, its negotiated agreements with us, and its abuse of the assignment powers the Foreign Service Act provides you.

Moreover, other important rules were disregarded. The Senior Assignments Division did not "cede" the position, as must be done before a senior level job becomes available to a non-senior officer for assignment. And particularly egregiously, the Department did not execute, as required in advance of such an assignment, the 'Certificate of Need" discussed above until well after the fact and only after AFSA expressed its deep displeasure over the way this position had been handled. The cursory, minimalist nature of the Department’s efforts to find a Foreign Service officer feed our conclusion that this was a "pre-cooked" deal done in contravention of the Department’s own rules and standard practices.

Madam Secretary, over and above the inexplicable abuse outlined above, what AFSA finds so incomprehensible about this assignment is that it goes such a long way in directly undermining the message that you have been so determined to send about the need for service discipline and your call for sacrifice. In his recent "The Future is Now" cable to the field, the Director General called for the Foreign Service "to renew our commitment . . . to the principle of Service need." I can reiterate to you what you already know for yourself, that the Foreign Service is meeting this call. In your cable to all FS personnel sent last week, you asserted that "our assignment process must be fair to all employees." I must tell you that the Foreign Service also expects this same discipline on the part of State Department management in terms of following its own rules and resisting attempts to give special treatment and preferred onward assignments to staff members of senior Department officials, be they career officers or political appointees. This assignment is devastating for morale and is both an abuse of the Department’s authority and an affront to the Foreign Service. It creates a cynicism that only certain employees will be subject to Service discipline while others will be able to thumb their noses at it – and at them.

Madam Secretary, as you know, AFSA has long cooperated with the Department to develop and operate an open, transparent system in which qualified Civil Service employees can serve overseas. Formally designated "hard-to-fill" positions become available after a months-long process in which exhaustive efforts are made to find qualified Foreign Service applicants. Separately from the hard-to-fill program, we also work with HR to minimize vacancies at unaccompanied posts through Civil Service excursion tours. It has long been, and it remains, AFSA’s view that the Department’s Foreign and Civil Servants are all foreign policy professionals and part of the same team. But how these assignments are made, and why they are made, are issues crucial to the effective functioning of the carefully balanced system the Department has enjoyed until now. Unfortunately, this assignment compromises the integrity of both the FS assignment process and the "hard-to-fill" and unaccompanied posts programs.

One recent example of the good faith that AFSA has shown in cooperating on this sensitive issue, one that we have discussed before, is the recent case of a Civil Service officer being assigned to the high-profile, much sought-after Foreign Service position of DCM in Baghdad. Baghdad is our largest embassy in the world, the Ambassador there is a political appointee, and the DCM plays a number of roles of vital importance to both the huge FS contingent in Iraq and our foreign policy interests, roles that only a Senior Foreign Service Officer can fulfill. You assured me that you believed the combination of the imperatives of the administration’s highest foreign policy priority and the truly exceptional circumstances that existed in Iraq justified that exceptional assignment. On that basis, AFSA set aside its concerns and accepted your decision without protest or appeal. I would ask that you contrast those circumstances with this Brussels PD assignment, where not a single one of those special circumstances or policy imperatives exist.

For all of these reasons it is my somber duty to inform you that AFSA has concluded that it must defend the Foreign Service and the integrity of the Foreign Service Act and our negotiated agreements. The AFSA Governing Board thus has voted unanimously to initiate an institutional grievance to undo this assignment, which has now been formally filed.

Finally, Madam Secretary, even though all assignments are made in your name, we are not sure that you were aware of this issue before receiving this letter. If that is the case, it is an issue that we believe warrants your personal attention.

Respectfully yours,

J. Anthony Holmes
AFSA President