Testimony of Mr. Daniel F. Geisler President,
American Foreign Service Association (AFSA)

House International Relations Committee Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights

March 12, 1999

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

Thank you for this opportunity to speak before you on an issue of enormous importance to the men and women of America's Foreign Service. For seventy five years, the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) has been the professional association which gives voice to their concerns. For the past twenty five years, AFSA has also functioned as a federal labor union. We represent some 23,000 active duty and retired Foreign Service Officers and Specialists from five government agencies: the State Department, the Agency for International Development, the United States Information Agency, the Foreign Commercial Service of the Department of Commerce, and the United States Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service.

Although we are the Foreign Service, our focus is domestic. We work for America. Our aim is to shape world events in order to enhance the security and prosperity of Americans here at home.

In the aftermath of tragic bombings of our missions in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, AFSA sent to the House International Relations Committee a list of our concerns about security. Since that time, we have followed with great interest the work of the statutorily-mandated Accountability Review Boards under the leadership of Admiral William Crowe. Admiral Crowe's report mirrored our own concerns. With your permission, I would like to elaborate briefly on them this morning.

Our core message is that we must commit ourselves to never again suffer needless loss of life from terrorism and directed violence. But, Mr. Chairman, that does not mean that America should shrink back and cower from terrorists either.

Long-term Commitment to Protecting Lives

Over the years, we have seen our leaders focus their attention on embassy security in the aftermath of a tragedy. We saw it in the 1970's following the losses at Khartoum. We saw it in the 1980's following the losses in Beirut. We see it again today in the wake of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. We were present at Andrews Air Force Base when the flag-draped coffins returned with the remains of Americans who died in the August bombings. As the memory of each new loss fades, attention wanes. Commitment declines. Funding is diverted until a new tragedy ensues. We must break this cycle.

Admiral Crowe's report stated that the losses in East Africa resulted from a collective failure over the past decade to provide the resources needed to protect our people serving abroad. The Clinton Administration and the 106th Congress should correct this failure by committing to a sustained, adequately funded program to reduce the risks we run.

Mr. Chairman, we have grave doubts that this failure will be corrected. Our doubts were heightened by the Administration's grossly inadequate request for funds to build safer embassies. The FY 2000 budget request does not have a single penny for construction funds, even though the State Department had proposed that OMB request $1.4 billion for worldwide security upgrades. Instead, the request calls for a $3 billion advance appropriation, with most of the money to be spent in 2004 and 2005. This is too little, too late. Moreover, these funds would have to come from the current services budget. This would force the State Department to find, for example, some $900 million in an FY 2005 budget of less than $4 billion.

In just the past few months, our counterintelligence forces thwarted plots in Albania, India, and Uganda. CIA Director Tenet testified that such lethal plots are ongoing and global in scope. Administration officials continue to point this out in Congressional testimony, including testimony before this Subcommittee. But their budget request does not match their threat assessment or their rhetoric. Our enemies will not wait until 2005 to attack us. We must not wait until then to defend our people.

We have already received indications of a possible rescission of some of the funds appropriated only five months ago for emergency security measures. Given our experiences in the past, this greatly increases our alarm. It indicates to us a lack of commitment to protecting Americans serving abroad. If our elected leaders will consider cutting recently-appropriated security funds, how much faith can we have in an advance appropriation for the year 2005? The inadequate request from the Administration and the potential rescission from the Congress leads us to conclude that we will soon be faced with impossible choices between keeping people safe and supplying them with the tools they need to do their work. This will perpetuate the collective failure to devote enough resources to protecting Americans serving abroad.

Mounting an Offense

We have heard a good deal of discussion about how to defend our overseas missions. An effective security program also needs a vigorous offensive element. It is not in our American nature to simply hunker down. We must identify terrorists and then cut them off from their sources of funds, transportation and supplies. This requires multilateral and bilateral cooperation. We can't do that from Washington alone. Such a vigorous offense requires an overseas presence

It would be a grave mistake to permanently withdraw our embassies in response to the global terrorist threat. There may be good reasons for closing a U.S. mission. Retreating from terrorism is not one of them. Retreating is admitting defeat. It would be unworthy of America. And it would be counterproductive.

Permanently closing down an American embassy would create new opportunities for terrorists to flourish by giving them a haven where we cannot monitor their actions. It would cut us off from contacts with foreign law enforcement agencies. It would limit our ability to influence foreign government leaders. Pulling out our embassies would abandon private American citizens living abroad and severely curtail our capacity to advise and protect them. It would prevent us from serving American business abroad. In the war against international terror, our overseas missions serve as America's forward deployment. We cannot deploy without risk, but risk must not keep us from deploying.

Coping with Risk

We must decide where we have interests that warrant an overseas presence, and then take measures to reduce the risk to the people who establish that presence. The Administration has said repeatedly that there are no 100% guarantees of safety. In the Foreign Service, we've always known and accepted this.

Last August, I sent a worldwide message to Foreign Service people serving in the field asking them what they perceived as the threats to their safety. Many people were indeed very concerned about setback and truck bombs. But just as many were concerned about more common safety issues such as violent crime and residential fires. Many are concerned about traditional risks abroad, such as civil unrest, kidnapping, targeted assassination, and natural disasters. Quite a few are concerned about emerging threats, such as chemical and biological attacks. Foreign Service employees have also expressed concern that in hardening our chanceries, we may transfer risk to softer targets, such as homes and private U.S. facilities.

We are willing to cope with these risks, as we always have in the past. We have no desire to cower in our embassies, or to abandon our posts. We recognize that well-designed chanceries with adequate setback will save lives, but will not eliminate all risks. Although we prefer accessible missions to hardened fortresses on urban perimeters, we recognize and support the need to balance accessibility and safety.

Investing in People As Well As Buildings

Achieving this balance requires more than investing in chanceries and guarding their perimeters. It requires complementary investments to reduce risks to soft targets and to increase the skills of the people we are protecting. Unfortunately, these are the first items to be cut when budgets tighten. That undermines any investment we make in new buildings.

The State Department used to field teams to conduct two day emergency response simulations in the field, to train people to deal with various disasters. These were cut from the budget. They are now being replaced by four-hour desk-top exercise which are unlikely to be as effective as the multi-day simulations. If employees in Nairobi had been trained to duck and cover rather than run to a window when they heard a grenade blast, we could have suffered fewer casualties. Training saves lives. The Nairobi blast also showed why locally-hired guard staff require training and professional supervision. These personnel not only defend the perimeter of an embassy, they also protect soft targets such as homes, schools and warehouses. Like training and residential security programs, they are among the first to go in a budget cut.

Senior Management Attention

A sustained program to upgrade buildings and equipment and to invest in people will only produce results if security becomes a genuine priority for top management of the foreign affairs agencies. When senior managers waive security criteria or cut security funding, they send a strong message to the field that security doesn't matter. The field responds to what senior managers do. When their actions make it clear that security is a second-order issue, they undercut our security professionals' day-to-day efforts to keep people safe. Although we have opened 40 new overseas posts in this decade, the State Department cut its Regional Security Officer positions by 10%. That, Mr. Chairman, says more to the people in the field about security's importance than any policy directive ever could.

Absorptive Capacity of the State Department

Like Congress, the Foreign Service does not want to simply throw money at security this year. We do want to break the cycle of interest and indifference, and replace it with sustained attention and adequate funding. Last October's emergency supplemental appropriation funded an overdue expansion of the Diplomatic Security Bureau. But it did little to strengthen the Foreign Buildings Office, which is not staffed to administer another substantial infusion of funds. The State Department testified that FBO consulted the private sector, GSA, and the Army Corps of Engineers, among others, on implementing last year's emergency supplemental security program. State should explore expanding the use of other federal expertise, as well as using private sector engineering and project management services, to speed up a building program.

For U.S. embassies where FBO already has design and site acquisition work underway, Congress should appropriate full construction funding this year so that work can proceed. This will free up staff resources for future years when demands increase.

Conclusion

Mr. Chairman, when Admiral Crowe released his report in January, Secretary of State Albright publicly accepted her share of responsibility for the collective failure to devote adequate resources to security. The Foreign Service applauded her for this, because we took it as a sign of commitment to correct that failure. The decisions the Congress and the Administration make this year on embassy security will have profound effects on American diplomacy for years to come. The Foreign Service cares deeply about that. We also care very deeply about our people. We ask, Mr. Chairman, that you help break the cycle of attention and neglect that places them in needless danger.

Thank you.