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Reply to Newt Gingrich on NPR
Ambassador (retired) Thomas Boyatt
President, Foreign Affairs Council
Former President, American Foreign Service Association

Former House Speaker Gingrich's attack on the Department of State on NPR on June 24, echoing similar comments in the most recent Foreign Policy magazine, is way off the mark.

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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich does not seem to understand the foreign-policy making process. U.S. diplomats, particularly Ambassadors, are responsible for reporting to Washington developments in the countries to which they are assigned. They recommend policies they believe will serve the national interests of the United States. Washington decision makers, including the President and Secretary of State, must synthesize that input with other information at their disposal and then determine how best to proceed. Instructions go to posts, policy is implemented, feedback is again reported, and the policy process continues. Key to the entire undertaking is honest, unvarnished advice.

Unfortunately, Mr. Gingrich appears to view foreign policy assessment by U.S. diplomats as disloyalty to the President when those assessments differ from Mr. Gingrich's own views. He has cited as an example a State Department Bureau of Intelligence report stating that "liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve in Iraq" and that "electoral democracy…could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements". Who, besides Mr. Gingrich, would question the honesty of those warnings?

The world is a difficult and complicated place that does not always respond well to policies and grand designs. Danger to the United States lurks everywhere and it is the responsibility of our diplomats at home and abroad to frankly and fully inform the political leadership of their views based upon decades of training and experience.

Such honesty is not always welcome. Often the messenger has been shot. In the 1940s, the State Department's China experts, known as "China Hands," were bounced from the Foreign Service amidst great shame because of their frank appraisals that the Chinese Communists would defeat the Nationalists in the struggle for China. In the 1950s, the State Department was under constant attack by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Those confusing honest disagreement with disloyalty have always damaged the best interests of the United States.

In calling for "complete reform" at the State Department, Mr. Gingrich ignores the substantial, even historic, progress made on revitalizing the department by Secretary of State Colin Powell. As detailed in March by the independent Foreign Affairs Council, the State Department's resources, staffing, training, morale, and even its corporate culture are in dramatically better shape than they were just two years ago.

Much, of course, remains to be done. Reform of the State Department and U.S. Foreign Service is, and should be, an on-going process. What is not acceptable, however, is the wholesale destruction that Mr. Gingrich appears to have in mind.