Bureaucracy Abroad

A basic law of bureaucracy is that any problem can be solved merely by adding more manpower. But it just does not work, says retired Ambassador Ellis O. Briggs, 63, who somehow never acquired a bureaucratic mentality in his nearly four decades in the U.S. Foreign Service. "Many of our diplomatic missions could perform twice as effectively with half the personnel now infesting the premises," he told a surprised--and appreciative--Senate subcommittee.

Briggs was not talking about State Department personnel, he explained, but about "the tremendous proliferation of American civilian personnel from other agencies of our Government. This is not to denigrate the individuals concerned, or to, imply that they are all drones. Some are, and some others are interested primarily in garnishing the PX way of life with diplomatic immunities. In the main, however, they are good and patriotic Americans. But there are far too many of them. Their presence bewilders our foreign friends. Their activities are rarely coordinated. Their operations are costly, and without congressional insistence practically no project ever gets finished."

Leapfrog Across the Acropolis. Also among the superfluous, he said, are the large numbers of military personnel. In his last post, that of Ambassador to Greece, Briggs recalled, there were 70 sailors, soldiers and airmen attached to the embassy. "Had I been able to deploy them for three hours every morning in full-dress uniform, playing leapfrog across the Acropolis, that would have made as much sense as most of the attache duties they solemnly declared they were engaged in."

When he was in Czechoslovakia, he said, he got State Department approval to reduce the embassy staff from 80 to 40, yet in six months the bureaucratic resistance of Washington agencies kept him from removing more than two. But the Czech government, harassing the embassy, actually helped by declaring all but 13 Americans persona non grata. "For 30 months thereafter I ran the American embassy in Prague with twelve individuals. It was the most efficient embassy I ever had." He had a deputy who "used to drive the Communists crazy by talking Eskimo over the telephone on a tapped line," a first secretary who doubled as economist and "still had time to draft Voice of America broadcasts," an officer "who ran a truck to Nuremberg every two weeks for supplies," one consul, one vice-consul, one code clerk, three secretaries, and a military establishment consisting of "an Air Force colonel and an Army colonel who competed unhappily for the assistance of one sergeant."

Like the Olive. Briggs also complained that ambassadors are rotated too often, that only one U.S. ambassador has been at his present post for as long as five years. Briggs served at 17 posts in his 37 years. "I don't regard that as a good way to run a railroad, although it provided an extraordinarily stimulating career." He objected to the appointment of noncareer men as ambassadors, contending: "The nonprofessional appointment is usually made for the benefit of the appointee rather than for the benefit of the country."

Nor is it really important, in Briggs's view, for the ambassador to be well liked in the country to which he is sent. "Popularity for an ambassador is like the olive in a martini. It is all right if you like olives, but it displaces some of the gin."

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