IDEAS FOR YOUR FOREIGN SERVICE ASSOCIATION SPEECH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01720R000600050008-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 29, 2004
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: March 24, 1970
• Content Type: MF

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24 March 1970
SUBJECT: Ideas For Your Foreign Service Association Speech
1. In between Laos, Cambodia and other matters of recent
concern, I have been musing about ideas that might profitably be
incorporated in your forthcoming informal session with the State
Department officers in the Foreign Service Association. It seems
to me there are four themes that it would be helpful to get across
and that would lend themselves to treatment in precisely this sort
of context.
2. The first is the obvious one of demonstrating that the
Agency -- along with the Foreign Service Officer corps -- works for
the US Government and that none of our officers have horns, a tail,
or cloven hooves. In the Vietnam field, I have developed very close
associations over the years with a wide number of FSO's of practically
all grades; but I still get brought up short from time to time on
encountering the notion that the Agency and its officers are suspect as
agents of dark and sinister powers who operate outside the framework
or control of the rest of the US Government establishment.
3. Secondly, it might be useful to make sure your audience
is aware of the fact that our activities and operations in any given
country are always known to the Ambassador and either approved by
him, or commented on to Washington by him, before the fact. This is
true worldwide, even though individual Ambassadcors differ in the extent
to which they take their Political Counsellors, or their Political Sections,
into their confidence. Again, this is a very old chestnut but it is, none-
theless, a point worth making with a light but emphatic touch to this
particular audience.
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4. The third point is a little trickier. I have a lot of admiration
for many FSO's I have known and worked with in various incarnations.
Almost all of them, however, either display or at least are susceptible
to one basic flaw of judgment or perspective, namely, that FSO's --
particularly Political Counsellors, DCM's and Ambassadors -- seem
inherently inclined to think of themselves as the advocates of the
government to which they are accredited rather than the USG's
dispassionate, objective representatives to it or interpreters of it
and its actions. To cite but one example, over the years -- particularly
in the late '50's and early '60's -- correspondence between our
Embassies in Saigon and Phnom Penh read as if it could have been
easily drafted by, respectively, the Foreign Offices of the GVN and
the RKG. In Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, the Philippines and Saigon I have
almost uniformly found most of my FSO acquaintances or colleagues
strongly inclined to take the host government's leadership and its
policies -- and, for that matter, its overt administrative structure --
more or less at face value. I do not think I have ever read a State
Department cable or despatch bluntly saying, in effect, that "the
President/Prime Minister/Foreign Minister told me such-and-such
yesterday but, of course, the gentleman in question is very careless
with the truth and was obviously grinding an axe in this particular case.
5. I will not belabor this point but I think a skillfully contrived
plea for detachment, objectivity and even a little skeptical cynicism in
Foreign Service analysis and reporting might be a most useful thing to
slip into your remarks.
6. Finally, there is a related point of considerable importance.
Many of our Foreign Service colleagues -- particularly at the DCM and
Ambassadorial level -- seem incorrigibly prone to confuse the concept
properly labelled "influence" with another concept properly labelled
"cordiality" or "good fellowship, " but for which "influence" is a misnomer.
If an Ambassador has, or thinks he has, warm personal rapport with the
local Numero Una 25X1
that is fine, but such rapport -- even if it actually exists outside the
mind of the reporting officer -- is not necessarily "influence. " Nor
is the existence of "influence" really demonstrated by the tendering of
private invitations to the Ambassador and his wife, a uniform ability
to reach Numero Uno on the phone or even the ability to arrange
appointments with him on short notice. The defining or distinguishing
characteristic of true "influence" is the ability to get someone to do
(not just promise) something he had not thought of doing or is himself
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disinclined to do. "Influence" so gossamer as to be jeopardized by
an attempt to exercise it is a myth or fiction. From an epistemological
point of view, statements such as "I cannot ask the President of
Thaibodia to do such-and-such because levying such a request would
jeopardize/damage/diminish/reduce our influence over him" are
logically meaningless nonsense. (What such a statement often really
means is "I don't want to put this pitch to the President because he
might be offended and not greet me/my wife so warmly at the next
diplomatic reception/ invite my wife and me to the next private shadow
play at Bogor, etc. ") This is a rather delicate notion, but if you
could weave it into your remarks I think it would be useful to do so.
25X1
George A. Carver, Jr.
Special Assistant for Vietnamese Affairs
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CAL