UN Undiplomatic Mess Refuses to Go Away

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Where the saga of former Ambassador Peter Galbraith, Kai Eide, and the United Nations continue ...

December 10 | According to Peter Galbraith, he initiated a wrongful dismissal action against the United Nations.

December 11 | The Guardian reported that Kai Eide, the top United Nations official in Afghanistan who was criticised for his handling of allegations of fraud in the country's presidential election, will not be renewing his contract.

December 11 | Inner City Press had this piece: Galbraith Claims Disclosed Oil Interest to UN, Eide Leaked Before Leaving? | “Inner City Press has asked the UN if Galbraith disclosed the oil interest. UN Ethics Officer Robert Benson responded that Galbraith filed a form, but that its contents will not be disclosed, even to the UN's executive 38th floor, apparently. The financial disclosure forms are filed with PriceWaterhouseCoopers. It is unclear who in the UN system vets them for conflicts of interest. […]Still, UN officials have bad mouthed Galbraith both on and off the record. At a press conference at UN headquarters, the number two official of UN Peacekeeping Edmond Mulet said that Galbraith had an ulterior motive which would later be revealed. And a senior UN official from the 38th floor called UN correspondents to make them aware of the Norwegian stories.”

December 14 | Josh Rogin of The Cable interviewed Galbraith | Galbraith: Eide was fired | “Kai Eide, the top U.N. official in Afghanistan, was forcibly removed and did not resign voluntarily as he claims, according to his former deputy and "frenemy," Peter Galbraith. "This was involuntary and inevitable, ever since the end of September," said Galbraith in an interview with The Cable. Relaying information from his discussions with U.N. staff on the ground in Kabul, Galbraith said that U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has made it clear that he wants to announce Eide's successor during January's London conference on Afghanistan.”

December 16 | NYT | U.N. Officials Say American Offered Plan to Replace Karzai | “As widespread fraud in the Afghanistan presidential election was becoming clear three months ago, the No. 2 United Nations official in the country, the American Peter W. Galbraith, proposed enlisting the White House in a plan to replace the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, according to two senior United Nations officials.”

The two senior UN officials were Kai Eide, Norwegian diplomat and the topdog at UNAMA in Kabul who is feuding with Galbraith and Vijay Nambiar, chief of staff to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. According to the report, Nambiar was aware of Mr. Galbraith’s proposal to go to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and later learned of Mr. Karzai’s anger over the episode. Mr. Nambiar said it played a role in Mr. Galbraith’s firing.

December 17 | NYT | Diplomat to Challenge Dismissal by U.N. After Afghan Vote | “Peter W. Galbraith, the American diplomat who was dismissed by the United Nations after exposing voter fraud this fall after the Afghan presidential election, has decided to challenge his dismissal.”

December 18 | From the UN Spokesperson | Spokesperson: “This was circulated quite widely, I believe. The reason Peter Galbraith’s appointment as Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) was terminated was because the Secretary-General determined that such action would be in the interests of the Organization. And then we added, further elaboration would not be appropriate at this time since Mr. Galbraith has chosen to challenge the termination of his appointment. That’s what we said.”December 19: Inner City Press: As UN Dodges Questions on Galbraith, Stonewalling or Whistleblowing? | "I'm sick of Peter Galbraith," a senior UN official told Inner City Press on December 18. "It's over. I don't think we should be commenting on it anymore." Compared to the bloodshed in Afghanistan, the firing of one UN official does seem small. But at times it appears that the "it" being avoided is the indisputably fraudulent election of Hamid Karzai, and the UN's role in it.”

December 21 | Peter Galbraith | Special to Sphere: 'I Never Proposed to Oust Karzai’ | Readers deserve context in order to understand a complex story. In this case, the Times deliberately excluded information that would have presented the accusations in a much different light. The truth is that I never proposed to oust Karzai, but instead tried to resolve a looming constitutional crisis caused by Karzai's maneuvering to stay in office a year beyond the end of his legal term -- without submitting himself to the inconvenience of an election.[…]It strains credulity to believe that I proposed a plot to oust Karzai to a lesser embassy official (as the Times reports) and he never informed his ambassador or Holbrooke. To be clear, I never proposed to oust Karzai to anyone in the U.S. government, and any discussion would have been about the constitutional issues involved in holding a runoff in May 2010. (Note: NYT reported that Galbraith discussed his plan with Frank Ricciardone, the deputy American ambassador in Kabul).[…]Mr. Eide is quoted in the Times as saying President Karzai was "deeply upset" about my supposed plan but fails to disclose how Mr. Karzai would have learned of this very private conversation between Mr. Eide and myself.

December 21: Gerard Russell Former British and United Nations Diplomat | Afghanistan's Elections: How Dr. House Can help: “UN internal division between Kai Eide and Peter Galbraith being still in the news, though, it's impossible for me to forget it. (I am also reminded of it every time I look at my bank balance, since my unhappiness with that process and its aftermath led me to resign from the UN before I started to receive a stipend from Harvard. And as the poet Juvenal said, integrity is all very well, but it doesn't pay your bills.) I am happy to pass over the Eide-Galbraith story, which was an unpleasant enough experience at the time without my re-living it here. But the fact that Galbraith has been the only person to have lost his job as a result of the fraud in those elections -- this is not about past history. It's about over $200 million in donor funds that were, in part, misused. This was an Afghan election, an exercise which was rightly led by Afghans (even if the Electoral Commission's head was appointed by one of the candidates, which was always an obvious flaw in the process). But it was also a donor-funded project, and donors have the right -- even the duty -- to verify that taxpayers' money was well spent." (Um, ‘xcuse me, side quiz -- where was SIGAR on this?).

Mr. Galbraith reportedly said that he has begun UN legal proceedings not to get his job back - but to get justice.

Well, this is bound to be a painful experience for the United Nations going into the new year. Who's running this show from the 38th floor, anyways? They may not realize this yet, but every time their officials disses Peter Galbraith, readers and viewers are also reminded of that inglorious Afghanistan election conducted under UNAMA’s watch.I wonder if there's anyone out there who'll get out of this meze fight with a clean shirt?

Diplomat in One Very Hot Oven

Senior Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin testified at a House of Commons committee in mid November that he warned the Canadian government and military officials that Afghan detainees being turned over by Canadian soldiers were being tortured.

“[O]ur actions were counter to our own stated policies. In April 2007, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said publicly that “Canadian military officials don't send individuals off to be tortured.” That was indeed our official policy. But behind the military's wall of secrecy, that, unfortunately, is exactly what we were doing.”

A longer excerpt from his testimony is in The Globe and Mail website here.

The push back came quickly, of course. The Globe and Mail reported two days later that “The Harper government devoted the day to a public-relations counteroffensive against Mr. Colvin through phone calls and e-mails to reporters, as well as Mr. MacKay’s attacks. It painted the career diplomat’s testimony as groundless and “ridiculous” and suggested his reports of torture ultimately stem from Taliban propaganda.”

"We are being asked to accept testimony from people who throw acid in the faces of schoolchildren and who blow up buses of civilians in their own country," Defense Minister Peter MacKay reportedly told the Commons on November 19.

Today, several somebodies finally came forward to defend Mr. Colvin. Steven Chase and Campbell Clark reports that twenty-three former ambassadors are speaking out against the Harper government's attacks on the diplomat’s credibility, saying that Ottawa's response to his Afghan detainee abuse testimony threatens to cast a chill over Canada's foreign service. More from the report:

The ex-heads of Canadian diplomatic missions say in a letter released to the media that they're worried the treatment of Mr. Colvin will discourage diplomats from reporting frankly to Ottawa from their foreign postings.

"The Colvin affair risks creating a climate in which officers may be more inclined to report what they believe headquarters wants to hear, rather than facts and perceptions deemed unpalatable," the ex-ambassadors say.

"A fundamental requirement of a foreign service officer is that he or she report on a given situation as observed or understood," the former heads of mission said. "It is only in this way that any government can draw conclusions knowledgeably and make its considered decisions, even if at variance with the reports received."

Read the whole thing here.

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• Harper rejects Afghan detainee inquiry (nationalpost.com)
• MacKay casts doubt on ex-diplomat's torture allegations (ctv.ca)

Your job or your blog, er op-ed

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Newsweek’s Declassified blog had an item on December 3 about a top Congressional Research Service (CRS) official who was “fired from his job after publishing a newspaper op-ed criticizing the Obama administration's recent decision about bringing Guantánamo detainees to trial.”

The blog post says in part:

“But another CRS official (who asked not to be identified because of the issue's sensitivity) confirms Davis's firing and says it reflects persistent tensions between Mulhollan and some members of his staff over how far they can go in making public comments or publishing articles that might prove controversial with members of Congress. Another CRS researcher got into a similar dispute and was transferred to another job after publishing a newspaper op-ed criticizing congressional oversight of the Iraq War, the official notes.”

"The director has a paranoid fear that somebody somewhere is going to say something" that draws criticism from members of Congress, says the CRS official. "The director is very strict about us giving out our personal views or taking a position on issues."

I have the links below on the items that reportedly got Morris Davis canned:

Here is Morris Davis’ November 10, 2009 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal: Justice and Guantanamo Bay.

Read his WaPo letter to the editor here on Michael Mukasey for publicly criticizing Holder for trying any detainees at all in federal court.

Neither piece mentions his association with the CRS. Read the rest of Top Congressional Researcher on Afghanistan Fired here.

If the director indeed has a healthy “paranoid fear that somebody somewhere is going to say something--" well, hey! don’t you think that’s a rather nice coincidence? Maybe he ought to have a powwow with the folks in Foggy Bottom responsible for the disappearance of Madam le Consul’s blog. Maybe they can share their “best practices” on transparency and open.gov without attracting too much media attention?

And if they're smart – let's say they are, they could sweep it all under the “matters of official concern” rug, so no insider would even dare blog or speak about it above that nice Madison rug. Then everybody can sleep snug as a bug at night.

Related Items:

• Declassified Blog: Top Congressional Researcher on Afghanistan Fired
• Secrecy News: CRS Fires a Division Chief

The AFSA Challenge: Prove This Theory Wrong

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Francesca Kelly in the latest issue of AFSANews writes:

On June 18, AFSA honored seven members of the Foreign Service community for their extraordinary work in the field, including three who were honored for their constructive dissent. These individuals serve as an inspiration to all members of the Foreign Service.

However, two AFSA constructive dissent awards were not given out at the ceremony: the Herter Award for a senior FSO, and the Harriman Award for an entry-level officer. Why not? Because there was not a single nomination in either of these two categories. In trying to determine the reason for this, one AFSA staffer astutely postulated: “The entry-level officers are too junior to rock the boat, and the senior FSOs don’t want to jeopardize their position of power.” This may well be true.

And once we started thinking about it, we wanted to find out. So AFSA is offering a challenge to the FS community worldwide: Prove this theory wrong.

Of course, before anyone can pick up the AFSA challenge, somebody has to pick up the dissent challenge. As Ambassador Ed Peck writes: “The basic criterion for winning an AFSA dissent award is clear: you must take up the cudgels, but strictly within the system. Resigning eliminates any element of risk, and going public takes the issue outside the system. Either action therefore removes eligibility for an award.”

Read A Challenge to Honor Dissent, FSJ November 2009, p.51, online edition.

Related Items:

• AFSA Awards Page
• 2 FAM 070 Dissent Channel | PDF

Related Post: Wanted: Patron Saint for Dissenting Diplomats

PRT Officer Matthew Hoh Resigns Over Afghan War

WaPo's Karen DeYoung just broke the story on the resignation of Foreign Service Officer and former Marine Captain, Matthew Hoh, over the war in Afghanistan.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Matthew Hoh joined the Foreign Service in March 2009 as a Political Officer. He previously served as a Combat Engineer Company Commander for the US Marine Corps Reserve (March 2006 — June 2007), worked briefly in the Iraq Policy and Operations Group at Bearing Point, was Regional Programs Coordinator for the US Department of the Army (May 2004 — June 2005) and served as Action Officer and Writer at the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, US Marine Corps from November 2002 — April 2004. He graduated from Tufts University in 1995. Read Matthew Hoh’s Resignation Letter (PDF).

Somebody has already posted his resignation letter in Scribd, so I'm embedding it below.

Updated: 10/28:Post title updatedRelated Item:The State Dept on Matthew Hoh…and the Art of the Benevolent Push Back Matthew Hoh first US official to resign over Afghan War

Dissent Channel: USAID/Pakistan Program

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This Pakistani woman is using a sewing machinethat was provided by USAIDPhoto USAID/Pakistan

Ken Dilanian of USA TODAY (October 12, 2009) has a piece on possibly the first, and certainly the first publicly reported dissent on the USAID program in Pakistan. He writes:

“Special representative Richard Holbrooke's bid to rapidly shift U.S. aid from American contractors to local Pakistani organizations will "seriously compromise" the effort to stabilize Pakistan, a U.S. diplomat says in a "dissent channel" message to senior State Department officials.”

Pakistan's government also has complained about the use of U.S. companies to run aid programs, and USA TODAY reported Oct. 2 that Holbrooke has been moving to overhaul the aid regime so that more of the money goes to the Pakistani government and local organizations.

The problem — according to the memo by C. Stuart Callison, an economist with the U.S. Agency for International Development — is that Holbrooke is canceling successful programs run by U.S. contractors and preparing to bypass them by giving large sums to local organizations with shaky financial track records.

Dr. C. Stuart Callison is a Sr. Development Economist in USAID’s Bureau for Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade, Office of Economic Growth.

Read the whole thing here.

Related Items:

• USAID economist's memo through the Dissent Channel
• 2 FAM 070: Dissent Channel | PDF
• Wanted: Patron Saint for Dissenting Diplomats

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• Pakistan Aid: Is Development Money Being Well Spent? (time.com)

February 27: AFSA Dissent Awards Deadline

The most recent AFSAnet reminds the FS community that this Friday, February 27, is the deadline for nominations for AFSA's prestigious constructive dissent and exemplary performance awards. The announcement says:

“In recent years, AFSA has often not received qualifying nominations in all available categories. Despite that fact, we are convinced that Foreign Service members continue to practice constructive dissent. But what we sometimes have is a shortage of colleagues who recognize those acts of dissent and take the time to nominate them for an AFSA award. Thus, we encourage all members to think about colleagues who have taken a stand over the past year and nominate them for one of these prestigious awards. Now is the time to honor those who have the professional courage and integrity to speak out forthrightly, using appropriate channels, by taking a stand for what they believe is right; by confronting the status quo; by asking tough questions; by offering alternative solutions; and by giving the best possible counsel that we are trained to give.

Winners receive a $2,500 cash prize and are honored at a ceremony in June at the State Department which is typically attended by the Secretary or Deputy Secretary of State. But no one can win unless someone nominates them. Details on nomination procedures and guidelines can be found [at the AFSA awards page or] in the December issue of AFSA's Foreign Service Journal.”

Four dissent awards are offered:

• The Tex Harris Award for a Foreign Service Specialist
• The Harriman Award for a junior officer (FS 6-FS 4)
• The Rivkin Award for a mid-career officer (FS 3-FS 1)
• The Herter Award for a member of the Senior Foreign Service
(FE OC-FE CA)

Diplomatic spouses/partners with constructive dissent in mind can fogetaboutit. The official dissent channel is open only to employees with dissenting opinions on “substantive foreign policy issues” not spouses/partners, even those impacted by substantive policy issues, e.g. management policy on MOHs. Thus, there’s no AFSA award for spouses unless they fall into either of the following:

The M. Juanita Guess Award is conferred on a Community Liaison Officer who has demonstrated outstanding leadership, dedication, initiative or imagination in assisting the families of Americans serving at an overseas post.

The Avis Bohlen Award honors the accomplishments of a family member of a Foreign Service employee whose relations with the American and foreign communities at post have done the most to advance the interests of the United States.


Go nominate somebody, please.

Related Post:
Wanted: Patron Saint for Dissenting Diplomats

Related Items:

• AFSA Awards Page
• 2 FAM 070 Dissent Channel (PDF)
  

Wanted: Patron Saint for Dissenting Diplomats

Retired Ambassador Edward Marks recently wrote about communication and dissent in the February 2009 issue of the Foreign Service Journal:

“The dissent awards program, now in its 40th year, is unique in the U.S. government—yet few know about it outside our own community. When I described the program to military colleagues at the U.S. Pacific Command a few years ago, they were astonished, remarking that there was no chance such a program could exist among Defense Department employees or probably any other federal agency. The dissent program counters every cliché about “striped-pants diplomats” and deserves to be much better known.”

He suggested that AFSA seek out “patrons” for the dissent program proposing that if the incumbent Secretary of State is not interested, past secretaries might be or the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, might help give it the appropriate prominence it deserves. The ranking member of the SFRC as patron may not be a bad idea, except that I am reminded of my late buddy, Jesse Helms; then it’s not such a good idea. The Secretary of State as patron, not necessarily Hillary -- reminds me of something else.

Almost 40 years ago this year, Archer Blood was our top diplomat in Bangladesh. He was the Consul General to Dhaka, East Pakistan and was famous for sending the strongly-worded dissent telegram protesting against the atrocities committed in the Bangladesh Liberation War. [See Dissent From U.S. Policy Toward East Pakistan Cable (PDF); Selective Genocide Cable (PDF)]

Below is the transcript of the conversation between then Secretary of State William P. Rogers (55^th) and the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, Henry Kissinger (who later became our 56^th Secretary of State) on that dissent telegram from our diplomats in Dhaka.

Washington, April 6, 1971, 9:35 a.m.
(extracted from the FRUS, South Asia Crisis, 1971, pp 45-48)

~ ~ ~

R: I wanted to talk about that goddam message from our people in Dacca. Did you see it?

K: No.

R: It’s miserable. They bitched about our policy and have given it lots of distribution so it will probably leak. It’s inexcusable.

K: And it will probably get to Ted Kennedy.

R: I am sure it will.

K: Somebody gives him cables. I have had him call me about them.

R: It’s a terrible telegram. Couldn’t be worse—says we failed to defend American lives and are morally bankrupt.

K: Blood did that?

R: Quite a few of them signed it. You know we are doing everything we can about it. Trying to get the telegrams back as many as we can. We are going to get a message back to them.

K: I am going in these [next] two days to keep it from the President until he has given his speech.

R: If you can keep it from him I will appreciate it. In the first place I think we have made a good choice.

K: The Chinese haven’t said anything.

R: They talk about condemning atrocities. There are pictures of the East Pakistanis murdering people.

K: Yes. There was one of an East Pakistani holding a head. Do you remember when they said there were 1000 bodies and they had the graves and then we couldn’t find 20?

R: To me it is outrageous they would send this.

K: Unless it hits the wires I will hold it. I will not forward it.

R: We should get our answers out at the same time the stories come out.

K: I will not pass it on.

~ ~ ~

Ted Kennedy and the wires, there you go. There are guardians and there are guardians.

This happened a long time ago, 38 years this April to be exact. Mr. Blood received the Christian A. Herter Award in 1971 (one of the AFSA dissent awards) for "extraordinary accomplishment involving initiative, integrity, intellectual courage and creative dissent," but his career suffered. "I paid a price for my dissent. But I had no choice," he told The Post in 1982. "The line between right and wrong was just too clear-cut" (WaPo, 2004)

Although Blood was scheduled for another 18 month tour in Dhaka, President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recalled him from that position and reassigned him to Personnel -- since his opposition went against their hopes of using the support of West Pakistan for diplomatic openings to China and to counter the power of the Soviet Union.

When Archer Blood passed away in 2004, Joe Galloway wrote:

When Archer K. Blood died last month, in retirement in Colorado, there was family, a few old friends and an entire nation to mourn his passing, but the nation that grieved for him was not his own. It was Bangladesh […] His death made headlines in Bangladesh, the nation that emerged in 1971 as Blood predicted. A delegation of Bengalis attended his memorial service in Fort Collins, Colorado. His wife, Margaret, has been swamped with mail from Bangladesh.

The Foreign Affairs Manual (2 FAM 072) states that “The value of the Dissent Channel depends not only on its unimpeded availability but also on its appropriate use. It is a serious policy channel reserved only for consideration of responsible dissenting and alternative views on substantive foreign policy issues that cannot be communicated in a full and timely manner through regular operating channels or procedures (e.g., when the inability to resolve concrete differences of opinion on substantive foreign policy issues has prevented such views from being reported).”

No, I think the real value of the dissent channel is how seriously the message is responsibly considered up in the 7^th Floor. But I don't expect the DOS lawyers to include that in the Foreign Affairs Manual.

I supposed somebody would point out that this was from another era, and our current diplomats are not penalized like Mr. Blood for their dissenting views.

But as late as 2005, AFSA indicated that its annual dissent awards are in danger of becoming a thing of the past and feared that constructive dissent may be disappearing from the landscape of the Foreign Service. These awards, according to Steve Kashkett, were created to encourage those willing to speak out forthrightly, in appropriate channels, to express alternative points of view on policy matters, have attracted a dwindling number of nominees over the past few years. To put this in perspective, he points to the numbers: “In 1977, the Executive Secretariat logged in some 32 Dissent Channel messages. By contrast, in 2005, you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of Foreign Service professionals who have sent in a Dissent Channel message.”

You think the numbers will get better in the next four years?

Related Items:

• AFSA Awards Page
• 2 FAM 070 Dissent Channel (PDF)