[Senate Hearing 107-17]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-17
STATE DEPARTMENT REFORM: REVIEWING THE REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT TASK
FORCE COSPONSORED BY THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS AND THE CENTER
FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 28, 2001
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
senate
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
71-539 DTP WASHINGTON : 2001
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
JESSE HELMS, North Carolina, Chairman
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
BILL FRIST, Tennessee RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota
GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia BARBARA BOXER, California
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
BILL NELSON, Florida
Stephen E. Biegun, Staff Director
Edwin K. Hall, Democratic Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Carlucci, Hon. Frank C., chairman, Independent Task Force on
State Department Reform; former Secretary of Defense and
National Security Advisor, Washington, DC...................... 4
Prepared statement........................................... 8
Donilon, Hon. Thomas E., member, Independent Task Force on State
Department Reform; Executive Vice President, Law and Policy,
Fannie Mae; former Assistant Secretary of State for Public
Affairs; State Department Chief of Staff, Washington, DC....... 11
(iii)
STATE DEPARTMENT REFORM: REVIEWING THE REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT TASK
FORCE COSPONSORED BY THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS AND THE CENTER
FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
----------
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2001
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:05 a.m. in
room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. George Allen,
presiding.
Present: Senators Helms, Frist, Chafee, Allen, Brownback,
Biden, Sarbanes, Dodd, and Bill Nelson.
Senator Allen. The committee will please come to order. I
want to welcome everyone this morning and say good morning to
my colleagues on the committee, and it is good to see Secretary
Frank Carlucci here and Hon. Thomas Donilon. We thank you for
being here this morning.
This hearing is on the overall issue of the State
Department reform, in particular the report from the
independent task force studying this matter. It is hard to
imagine a task force with better-credentialed, qualified and
experienced individuals than the two that are before us today,
as we well know.
Frank Carlucci has an extensive background as Secretary of
Defense and National Security Advisor, and is the chair of the
Independent Task Force. Mr. Donilon is a member of the
Independent Task Force on State Department Reform, and also
Executive Vice President of Law and Policy with Fannie Mae,
former Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, and the
State Department Chief of Staff and, most importantly, is a
proud graduate of the University of Virginia for his law
degree.
We are all happy about that, Mr. Chairman, with the
University of Virginia's victory over a team to the south that
still is ranked higher than the Wahoos. Nevertheless, I am
honored to be designated as chair for this hearing, and also
chair of the Foreign Relations subcommittee which deals with
International Operations and Terrorism.
As we all know, the subject matter and the jurisdiction of
that Subcommittee on International Operations and Terrorism
very much cares about the operations of the State Department,
and I look forward to working with members of the full
committee and the subcommittee, and then certainly will listen
very carefully and read carefully the recommendations.
This committee I think will work very closely also with
Secretary Powell in reviewing the necessary reforms for the
Department of State and Foreign Service to make it an agency
that can advance our national interest in an efficient manner
and, as we approach the reauthorization season for the
Department of State, I will certainly bear in mind the views,
and I am sure the committee will as well, of this distinguished
panel today about improving the national security tools of
which, of course, the State Department is an important part.
Chairman Helms and I see today's hearing as an effort to
meet a challenge described by then Secretary-designate Colin
Powell during his confirmation hearing, namely that of carrying
out the international leadership role which our own success has
brought us. At that very hearing, General Powell pointed out
that our State Department and its professionals are on the
front lines of the American engagement, and it is an American
engagement in a rapidly, quickly changing world, with more
demanding and more complex problems that might have been faced
in previous years.
He raised concerns about adequate funding for the State
Department and their personnel, and their facilities, and their
infrastructure. The Independent Task Force actually in many
regards echoes Secretary Powell's concerns and proposed a
strategy called Resources for Reform, including the
implementation of management techniques which are borrowed from
the private sector, which I think is great. In fact, that is
what all government ought to do.
From my experience as Governor of Virginia, such management
policies that rely on quantifiable and disciplined
decisionmaking processes, as well as trying to have clear
measurements of whether somebody is following through on those,
and performance-based measurements are a good idea. It is good
for management of the taxpayers' money, and it makes the
operation the most up-to-date and efficient as possible.
Whether that is the Department of State or any other agency,
and I look forward to working with this committee and the
Secretary in implementing such performance-based management
approaches.
One area where I would like to pay particular attention is
the development of a rational and efficient information
technology and knowledge management program within the
Department of State. I understand that the Department is still
suffering under a woefully antiquated and disjointed
information technology architecture, with systems that cannot
even communicate within the same agency, much less communicate
with Washington and a post in some foreign embassy.
Now, this is pitiful, and we must find a way to bring the
entirety of our foreign policy apparatus into an architecture
which will allow a seamless, near instant, and complete
communications system which is so critical in this information
and, obviously, for proper operations.
For our part, the timing of today's hearing is certainly
appropriate, and timely, in light of the unfolding budget
process and authorizations planning which are now underway in
the State Department, and although we have just at this point
been given the administration's budget blueprint, this
committee is pleased to open a door to the task force's
concerns. We want your insights, your ideas, and your
suggestions.
We welcome you, and look forward to your testimony, and
after Senator Biden's opening statement we will hear first from
Secretary Carlucci, and then Mr. Donilon.
Senator Biden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr.
Secretary, good to see you. It has been a while. I will tell
you, sitting there looking at you, I realize how long I have
been here, and you have had a lot of tough assignment in this
Government over the years, and this may be one of the tougher
ones. Talking about the Gordian Knot in the State Department,
but I want to thank you and my friend--I want to have full
disclosure here, Mr. Chairman. I consider Tom Donilon one of my
closest friends, so if I say nice things about him, it is
because I have to, but Tom, thanks for being here.
The Carlucci report underscores the need to make changes in
the Department both in the institutional and on the financial
front. I do not have any doubt the Department is in need of
institutional reform and improved management, but many of the
State Department's problems, in my view, just hanging around
this place for 28 years, derive from the fact that it is
starved for resources. Compared with other agencies in the
national security world, the Defense and Intelligence Agency,
the Department is clearly the poor cousin. Funding for the 150
function, the international affairs account, is just $20
billion a year, or 1 percent of the Federal budget. We cannot
afford to continue that, and we cannot afford to not do more.
Moreover, in the past, we have afforded more. Spending on
foreign affairs in fiscal 2001 was $23 billion, which is well
below the historic levels. It is 7.6 percent below the average
of the last 20 years, and 37 percent below the peak in the mid-
eighties, so we need to provide more, because the resources are
so badly needed.
In late 1999, the Overseas Presence Advisory Panel reviewed
the state of our national diplomatic infrastructure and found
it badly wanting. I just want to read one paragraph from it. It
says, ``Insecure and decrepit facilities, obsolete information
technologies,'' as pointed out by the acting chairman,
``outdated human resource practices, outmoded management and
fiscal tools, threaten to cripple American overseas presence,
which is perilously close to the point of systems failure.''
This description hardly seems worthy of a great power.
To be sure, Congress has appropriated increased funds for
the State Department in recent years, but addressing the
Department's infrastructure and security deficiencies is a
long-term and expensive project. I would just note, Senator
Helms and I have been struggling, as has been the
Appropriations Committee, with just dealing with making our
foreign embassies secure, let alone functional, just physically
secure. I mean, we're talking about a significant amount of
money and a significant commitment.
Some 80 percent of our embassies, for example, do not meet
our present security standards. It will take a long time, a lot
of money, and an awful lot of will to replace or renovate all
of these embassies.
So I have reviewed the Carlucci report, and agree with many
of your findings, Mr. Secretary, regarding the deficiencies
that it points out. The Department needs to recapture the lead
role in the executive branch in making foreign policy.
Ambassadors should have greater control of personnel and
financial resources at their post, regardless of the agency
that sent them, and the Department needs more modern computers,
more personnel, better and safer facilities, and the list goes
on.
I would say that I can understand, after having been here a
while, why some Secretaries when they come in essentially go to
that one floor, surround themselves with seven or eight people,
and try to run the operation from there.
I mean, one of the people who I really--I do not know
whether you interviewed him as part of the report, I should
know--Felix Rohatyn, our Ambassador to France, hard-nosed guy,
tough businessman, I thought a hell of an ambassador, spoke the
language, knew the culture, I mean, my Lord, I went to see him
on a matter unrelated to the personnel, or unrelated to the
State Department, and I spent a weekend. He asked me to stay on
another 2 days, or almost 2 days, just for him to let me know
how badly run he thought the management of the State Department
was, as well as the resources.
So I compliment you for being willing to do this, both of
you, and I must say I think we may have delivered to us the
right Secretary of State at the right time, because I think in
order to be able to convince the Congress of the need for
resources we have got the most persuasive guy we could have in
our new Secretary of State, and I would note parenthetically,
Mr. Chairman, I thought he did a pretty good job on this recent
trip, particularly his comments in Europe, which I think are
going to settle a lot of nerves, where he said, we went in
together, we will come out together, and so right now he is
high on my list.
I think you have got a great ally in him, and hopefully us
implementing a significant portion of what you are
recommending. I thank you both for being here, and at some
point, Mr. Chairman--since I am cochairing the hearing on
Colombia downstairs on the second floor. I will be in and out,
so I apologize if that occurs.
Senator Allen. Thank you, Senator Biden. We understand.
There are a lot of things going on at the same time around
here.
We would first like to hear from the gentleman who authored
the Carlucci report. Mr. Carlucci, would you please present
your views to us?
STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK C. CARLUCCI, CHAIR, INDEPENDENT TASK
FORCE ON STATE DEPARTMENT REFORM; AND FORMER SECRETARY OF
DEFENSE AND NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Carlucci. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, distinguished
members of the committee. It is a pleasure to appear before
you, and I commend you for holding an early hearing on this
very important subject. I have written testimony. With your
permission, I will submit it for the record and make some
informal comments, and I will try to be brief.
Senator Biden, Felix Rohatyn was a member of our group.
Senator Biden. Was he? I should have known that.
Mr. Carlucci. He also has had a separate conversation with
Colin Powell about the management of the State Department. He
does feel very strongly, and I have talked at length with Felix
about this. His views are very solid. They are very good.
Senator Biden. I agree with you.
Mr. Carlucci. You have outlined, both you, Mr. Chairman,
and Senator Biden, the problem. It is worth repeating once
again, because it has become a litany. Obsolete
telecommunications facilities, often unsafe and unsecure
working environments, poor congressional relations I would add
to the list, Senator Biden, a dysfunctional personnel system, a
shortage of FSO's, inadequate training, and a lack of
ambassadorial authority over other agencies. One could go on
with additional problems. That is just the start of the list.
It is an institution that is literally crying out for reform,
and the series of blue ribbon panels, including the Kaden
Commission report, and another I chaired, all came to the same
conclusion.
Consequently, when the Council on Foreign Relations and
Center for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS]
approached me to be chairman of this Task Force, I said no. We
do not need another blue ribbon panel. We have had enough blue
ribbon panels. They all came to the same conclusion. They said
no, this is going to be an action-oriented document, we are
going to summarize and synthesize the recommendations of the
blue ribbon panels. That is actually what has been done.
Under the very able drafting of Ian Brzezinski we think we
have provided a road map for the new Secretary to jump-start
the reform process. The report has received a fair amount of
attention, and I credit that to the bipartisan nature of the
group. We had senior people, including people off the Hill of
both political parties, and it was interesting that we came
together very quickly on two conclusions.
One is that the State Department is in an advanced state of
disrepair, and this is, as you pointed out, Senator Biden, to a
large measure a resources problem, but we would argue that it
is not totally. The State Department, and I speak as one who
was a Foreign Service officer for 26 years, has never been able
to manage itself properly. It suffers from long-term
mismanagement. As you pointed out, certain Secretaries take a
look and say, well, I will closet myself and just concentrate
on foreign policy instead of on the management of the
Department.
What is needed, of course, is both resources and reform.
Without the reform, we are not going to get the resources from
the Congress, and without the resources, there are a lot of
things that we are not going to be able to do, hence, the heart
of our report, as you pointed out, Senator Biden, is the
resources for a reform strategy. There are three components to
that strategy. One is Presidential leadership, another is to
clarify the interagency relationships and responsibilities, and
the third is to revitalize the State Department. Let me comment
briefly on each.
Presidential leadership. We think there should be a
Presidential directive declaring reform of our foreign policy
apparatus to be a national security priority, and spelling out
the steps the President expects to take. We would like to see
the President use his podium to educate on the issue. We would
like to see it figure in a major speech to the American people.
Third, we think the President needs to reach out to the
Congress on this issue. In particular, I might say, he needs to
consult with the leadership of this committee, because it has
to be a full partnership. If we are going to reform our foreign
policy institutions, we are going to have to walk hand-in-hand
down the road together.
Second, clarifying interagency roles and responsibilities.
Here, too, we think a Presidential directive is in order,
reaffirming that the Secretary of State is the President's
principal foreign policy advisor, spokesman, and foreign policy
implementer. The same directive could spell out the
coordinating role of the National Security Advisor.
We think the President has to reinforce the authority of
the ambassador. Every President since Kennedy has issued a
letter telling ambassadors they are in charge, but they
frequently are not in charge. We need to find a way to put more
teeth in the Kennedy letter.
The ways I can think of are to give the ambassador more say
over other agency's budgets, the agencies that are involved in
his or her country, to make agencies pay attention to the
ambassador's efficiency report on agency heads who are assigned
to his or her country, and to give the ambassador, absolute
authority to send home immediately people who do not function
as full players on the country team.
Third, we think there should be an integrated national
security budget. Now, we are not trying to tell the Congress
how to organize itself, and the usual rejoinder is, well, the
Congress cannot handle an integrated budget. But surely it
would be useful for the Congress, at least this committee, to
see the tradeoff between State and Defense, as opposed to the
tradeoff between State and Justice and Labor. The President can
display the budget any way he wants, and we think there ought
to be an integrated national security display.
The third component is to move immediately to revitalize
the State Department. The State Department badly needs a chief
operating officer. For far too long, the budget and policy
functions have been bifurcated, and should he be confirmed by
this committee, I think Rich Armitage would be an ideal chief
operating officer. Rich worked for me in the Pentagon. He is
absolutely superb.
The State Department needs to reshape its human resources
programs, and I had a conversation with the State Department
this morning on this. They are moving on such things as spousal
assignments, but there are a whole host of other problems to be
addressed. Recruitment takes far too long, a couple of years to
get somebody on board.
Training is inadequate. They do not have sufficient people
to rotate into training programs. The up-and-out system has had
the unintended effect of forcing out some of the better people.
The grievance mechanism, based on legislation passed by the
Congress many years ago, is very inflexible for what should be
a fast-moving agency, and we need to find ways to bring in more
specialists.
To do this, the Foreign Service Reserve System could be
revitalized. It used to work pretty well. Of course, in our
overseas establishment we have to right-size. That does not
automatically mean cutting. We need to find new concepts for
our embassies. Felix Rohatyn is a staunch advocate of this.
Third, the State Department culture needs to change. This
is probably the most controversial recommendation of the Task
Force. Back when I went into the Foreign Service, the emphasis
was on government-to-government relations. Today, the
interaction has to be with all of the elements of society, with
the educational institutions, the health institutions, the
church, the press, the politicians, the economists, and the
businessmen.
The embassy has to be able to reach out, interact with
these elements of society, and analyze the society as a
totality. We also have to do a lot better at public diplomacy.
Senator Helms, you were responsible for bringing the USIA into
the State Department, and hopefully that will improve the
public diplomacy component.
The press says, hurrah, when you talk about a more open
State Department. The State Department Foreign Service officers
tend to be a little defensive. They say, well, we are changing
and, indeed, they are, but our argument is, it needs to change
faster.
Then there is the question of infrastructure, particularly
telecommunications. That is, in my judgment at least, a simple
question of money. The report that I chaired a while back
recommended a $400 million telecommunications fund. I had had a
telecom company that I happened to chair take a look at it, and
they came up with a figure. It was scaled back to a pilot
program, I am told, here on the Hill. I would argue that the
State Department ought to go big. We know enough about
telecommunications to know that we can let a master contract,
modernize the system, and do it effectively and efficiently. It
badly needs to be done.
Security goes without saying. I am sure this committee will
support the security upgrades that are needed, but the State
Department is not very good at real estate. The foreign
buildings operation is a bureaucratic institution. The Kaden
Commission came up with the idea of an overseas facilities
authority, a federally chartered agency that would be able to
employ private sector techniques that have been so successful
in the real estate area. I happen to think that is a very good
idea. The idea, by the way, came, I am told, from our current
Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neill.
Finally, the State Department needs to upgrade its
congressional relations. For far too long, that has not been a
choice assignment. The Secretary needs to find ways to induce
better people to go into congressional relations, and
congressional relations needs to see itself as a facilitator of
information, not as a funnel through which all information must
pass. I can remember the days when all of us in the State
Department were up on the Hill. For some reason, that has all
changed, and it is a more constricted environment.
We have conveyed our report to the Secretary of State. In
fact, we had the first appointment after his swearing in. That
was symbolically important. He indicated that he was going to
take the report very seriously. He obviously could not be
expected to endorse everything in it at that time, but he
indicated that he intended to follow the general thrust.
So far, he has made all the right moves. I know he can
count on your support. As I think you, Senator Biden,
suggested--I guess it was you, Mr. Chairman, we might be at the
right moment. We have a recognized need. We have a Secretary of
State with managerial experience who intends to manage, and he
has made that clear.
The other day I was in a meeting with him, and somebody
said, well, I have a personnel problem, who do I go to. He
said, you go to me. I am the chief personnel officer of this
Department. Well, that is unusual for a Secretary of State to
say.
He has also got the stature, I believe, to command
attention, both on the Hill and in the public. I sensed from
this committee, and I testified in the House the other day,
that there is great receptivity here for supporting the kinds
of things that need to be done. I know he looks forward to
working with you on the management of the State Department.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Carlucci follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Frank C. Carlucci
Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me to appear before your
Committee in my capacity as chairman of an independent Task Force which
recently issued its report on State Department reform.
Allow me to commend you for making State Department reform the
subject of one of your Committee's first hearings in the 107th
Congress. Few bureaucracies are in greater need of renovation than the
Department of State. Indeed, the facts reviewed in our Task Force
report make this point all too clearly.
The Department's human resource policies are dysfunctional.
They have generated a severe crisis in morale among State
Department employees and serious workforce shortfalls,
including a deficit of some 700 Foreign Service Officers (FSOs)
or nearly 15 percent of FSO requirements.
The Department's communications and information management
infrastructure is outdated. Ninety-two percent of overseas
posts are equipped with obsolete classified networks, some of
which have no classified connectivity with the rest of the U.S.
government. Unclassified systems also are antiquated and
inadequate.
Many Department of State facilities at home and overseas are
shabby and insecure. They frequently do not meet Occupational
Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards. Nearly 25
percent of all posts are seriously overcrowded. Moreover, 88
percent of all embassies do not fulfill established security
standards, and many require major security upgrades.
Ambassadors deployed overseas lack the authority necessary
to coordinate and oversee the resources and personnel deployed
to their missions by other agencies and departments.
Policymaking and budget management within the Department are
bifurcated.
The Department's professional culture remains predisposed
against public outreach and engagement, thus undercutting its
effectiveness at public diplomacy, an increasingly important
priority of foreign policy.
This condition--I am tempted to say ``state of affairs''--is not
only a disservice to the high-caliber men and women of the Foreign
Service and Civil Service who serve their country under the Department
of State. It also handicaps the ability of the United States to shape
and respond to the opportunities and growing challenges of the 21st
century. If this deterioration continues, our ability to use statecraft
to avoid, manage, and resolve crises and to deter aggression will
decline, increasing the likelihood that America will have to use
military force to protect our interests abroad.
In short, reversing this decline must be a top national security
priority.
Before I address the key elements of the reform action plan
articulated by our report, allow me to underscore three key aspects of
our Task Force.
First, this initiative was sponsored jointly by the Council on
Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Center for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS). I am particularly grateful to Les Gelb and Paula
Dobriansky of the CFR and CSIS' John Hamre. They not only provided us
with much needed organizational support, they are the ones who
generated this Task Force and asked me to serve as its chairman. They
also brought to our effort their considerable experience and insight
into the making of U.S. national security policy.
Second, the mandate of the Task Force was clear from the outset.
There have been a plentitude of blue ribbon panels and commissions that
have examined the institutional problems besetting the Department of
State. Our intent was not to reinvent the findings and recommendations
of these outstanding studies, but to synthesize them into an action
plan of concrete steps. Our hope is that this report will assist the
new administration jump start the revitalization of the State
Department and, thus, of its role in U.S. national security policy.
Third, if the Task Force fulfilled its mandate, it was in no small
part due to its composition. Our group is bipartisan in character. Its
members include those who served at the highest levels in both
Democratic and Republican Administrations and on both sides of the
aisle in Congress. And, our Task Force includes those who served on
more than several of the important blue ribbon commissions whose
conclusions were the starting point for our endeavor.
Mr. Chairman, past efforts to repair the machinery of American
foreign policy included initiatives by previous Secretaries of State,
numerous high-level task forces, and legislation passed by Congress.
However, they have been often received by the State Department and
other agencies with grudging enthusiasm at best. More often than not,
such initiatives encountered strong bureaucratic resistance.
As a result, reform efforts have amounted to a series of half-
hearted, selective, and ultimately insufficient half-steps. The
deterioration of America's foreign policy apparatus continues on a
downward spiral that must be reversed. Indeed, Congress has, with
justification, become skeptical of appropriating resources for the
Department of State, which has been burdened with an image of being
fundamentally flawed and wasteful, if not irreparable. However, without
resources, reversing the decline of the nation's foreign policy
machinery becomes increasingly unattainable.
How to break this downward spiral was the key question on the minds
of the members of my Task Force, and our answer, the Task Force report,
is presented in the form of two memoranda, one to the President and one
to the Secretary of State. Since effective reform will require the
partnership of both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, I am confident that
the elements of these memoranda are equally relevant to this committee
and its responsibilities over America's foreign policy.
The heart of our report is a ``resources-for-reform'' action plan.
The action plan recognizes that while resources will be necessary for
reform, reform will be necessary to obtain those resources from
Congress. The Task Force report asserts that if Congress is convinced
that fundamental reform is underway, it will provide the resources
required to modernize and revitalize the foreign policy apparatus.
Mr. Chairman, it is my hope that you will agree with that
assertion.
The core components of the ``resources-for-reform'' action plan
are: (1) the establishment of a strong Presidential mandate for reform;
(2) a clear tasking of responsibilities and authorities among the
principal national security departments; and (3) concrete steps that
can be initiated immediately to renew the Department of State.
Allow me to review each of these elements briefly.
presidential mandate
First, establishing a Presidential mandate for reform. The Task
Force firmly believes that attention and commitment from not only the
Secretary of State, but also personally from the President himself, is
the imperative impulse for State Department renewal.
The requisite presidential mandate for reform will require the
following:
First, a presidential directive (or directives) should be
promulgated that declares reform of the Department of State to be a
national security priority. It should articulate a comprehensive plan
to reform the Department and its role in national security affairs. (In
a moment, I will explain in a bit more detail what should be the
content of this directive.)
Second, the President should also use his ``bully pulpit'' to
publicly reinforce the reform mandate. Toward this end, the Task Force
urges that renewing the Department of State should be one of the themes
of his first address to the nation.
Third, the President should personally engage Congress to foster a
partnership in this reform. He should personally meet with the
Congressional committees that have jurisdiction over the State
Department in order to explain to them the ``resources for reform''
action plan.
Presidential directives, use of the President's first national
address, and a partnership with Congress would provide much needed
political and bureaucratic leverage for the Secretary of State and his
efforts to drive the reform effort to a successful completion.
clarifying interagency relationships and responsiblities
The second element of the Task Force's action plan is the
establishment of a sound organizational structure for the coordination
of government agencies and departments responsible for national
security policy. Toward this end, the Task Force calls for Presidential
guidance that:
reasserts the Secretary of State's role as the President's
principal advisor and spokesman on foreign affairs and the
leading role of the Department of State in the implementation
of U.S. foreign policy;
strengthens the coordinating authorities that ambassadors
exercise over officials from other departments and agencies
serving at their embassies;
and, initiates the annual presentation of an integrated
national security budget. (This document should define and
explain the linkages and trade-offs between the different
instruments of diplomacy, intelligence, defense, and
international economics and the budgetary decisions upon which
national security policy ultimately rests.)
reforming the department of state
The third element of the Task Force's action plan are concrete
reforms to overcome the Department's institutional disarray and
dilapidated infrastructure. I will review them briefly:
First, a key priority must be the re-centralization of the
Department's budget and management authorities and their reintegration
with the Department's policy-making process. The Secretary should
conduct himself as State's Chief Executive Officer. He should empower
his Deputy Secretary to act as the Department's Chief Operating Officer
with line authority over its finances, administration, and human
resources.
In other words, the Deputy Secretary should return to his original
role as the Department's top manager.
Second, there is no greater imperative for the Department of State
than correcting its dysfunctional human resources practices. As I
mentioned earlier, they have generated a serious morale crisis. The
Task Force endorsed the recommendations of the Overseas Presence
Advisory Panel which called for improvements in the selection and
recruitment of personnel, expanded professional development
opportunities with an emphasis on leadership training, and enhancing
the quality of life the Department provides its employees and their
families.
Third, among the most challenging priorities identified in our
report is the need to transform the State Department's culture into one
that emphasizes and embraces public outreach and engagement as a core
function of diplomacy and statecraft. Today, the Department's
professional culture remains predisposed to ``information policing''
rather than ``information providing.'' In the information age--an age
of increasingly open societies--effective diplomacy requires not only
explaining America's positions and views to foreign governments, but
also to their citizens.
Fourth, it is common knowledge that State Department facilities,
both at home and overseas, are dilapidated and insecure. Fixing these
problems, including a much needed modernization of State's
communications and information equipment, will not only require
additional resources, but also significant reform of how the U.S.
Government manages the buildings and infrastructure supporting its
foreign policy operations.
For example, the highly inefficient Office of Foreign Buildings
Operations should be eliminated. Its functions should be transferred to
an ``Overseas Facilities Authority'' established as a federally charted
government operation. The Department of State needs to get out of the
business of building and renting office space. And, OFA provides an
effective means to inject a high degree of privitization and
professionalization into the management of U.S. overseas
infrastructure.
Finally, the Secretary of State needs to engage Congress more
rationally and with greater energy. Our Task Force suggests steps to
upgrade the Department's Legislative Affairs Bureau. It also urges the
Secretary to commit himself to meet informally on a monthly basis with
the Chairmen of Congressional Committees with jurisdiction over foreign
policy and to instruct his subordinates down to the Deputy Assistant
Secretary level to do the same with relevant Subcommittee Chairmen, key
legislators, and Congressional staff.
These are not all the specific recommendations presented in the
Task Force report, but I hope they convey the Task Force's focus on
concrete recommendations that are immediately actionable.
The Task Force believes that the determined execution of the
``resources for reform'' action plan will immediately boost State
Department morale, revitalize the Department's central role in the
making and implementation of national security policy, and provide a
sound foundation for a genuine partnership with Congress in this reform
endeavor.
Mr. Chairman, the recent change in administrations here in
Washington provides an ideal time jump start the process of State
Department reform. The new President and his Secretary of State have a
clean slate that can be used to effectively force the implementation of
difficult decisions and departures from long-standing practices. And,
we have in Colin Powell a Secretary of State determined to renew his
Department.
On the Monday following President Bush's inauguration, I visited
Colin Powell and formally presented to him our Task Force report. I
emphasize the word formally because I know that he personally kept
abreast of the Task Force's deliberations and the evolution of this
document. In our meeting, Secretary Powell expressed appreciation for
the Task Force's focus on actions that could be implemented with
dispatch, because, as he said repeatedly during our meeting, that is
exactly how he intends to act.
Mr. Chairman, I urge you and your colleagues to give him your full
support. Thank you.
The Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I have to go to another
meeting. One point, if I could--and thank you both for coming,
and I want to read everything you have said over and over
again. Are you familiar with Felix Rohatyn, the Ambassador to
France?
Mr. Carlucci. Yes. He was a member of our group.
The Chairman. Well then, I am sure you know what he did as
an experiment in France, sort of like a bank has teller
windows. He said, the people were all concentrated right there
in Paris, and people in the rest of the country did not know,
and do you think that is a good idea?
Mr. Carlucci. I think it is an excellent idea to get people
out, and there are a lot of functions in these large embassies,
voucher processing and other things that could be done back in
Washington. They could even be contracted out.
The Chairman. Of course, the cost is no greater, and when
you have the fax machine and all the rest of it you have got
half of it lit, and it makes an important point with people in
the community, in this city and that city, and the other city,
but I thank you very much. It is good to see both of you again,
and thank you for helping us on this hearing.
Mr. Carlucci. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Allen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Donilon.
STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS E. DONILON, MEMBER, INDEPENDENT TASK
FORCE ON STATE DEPARTMENT REFORM; EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT--LAW
AND POLICY, FANNIE MAE; AND FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE
FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS, STATE DEPARTMENT CHIEF OF STAFF,
WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Donilon. Mr. Chairman, Senator Helms, Senator Biden,
members of the committee, my name is Tom Donilon. I appear as a
proud graduate of the University of Virginia Law School. I will
underscore that again.
Senator Biden. Graduate school doesn't count for the
basketball team. I keep trying to claim Syracuse basketball
over Delaware. It does not work.
Mr. Donilon. We are not fair weather alums at Virginia,
Senator.
I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you as a
member of Secretary Carlucci's Task Force. I am privileged to
be at the same table with him today.
I also appear as a former senior official of the State
Department who cares deeply about the men and women of the
Department who believes that its functioning as a first class
and effective organization is essential to our national
security and believes the Department is in very serious need of
reform and resources, as Senator Allen, you and the other
members of the committee, and Secretary Carlucci have outlined,
but in the words of the Task Force, ``the deterioration of
America's foreign policy apparatus is now in a downward spiral
that must be reversed.''
Our report is a call to action to reverse that downward
spiral and a challenge to the President to make revitalization
of our foreign policy tools a top national security priority,
and it challenges the Congress to provide the necessary
resources to do so.
I want to compliment Secretary Carlucci for spearheading
this thoroughly bipartisan effort and the committee for
considering reform and resource issues so early in your agenda.
I also note the great work of Ian Brzezinski as the project
coordinator for our group.
These issues are not unfamiliar to the members of this
committee. Senator Helms and Senator Biden have been working on
efficiency and reorganization issues with the State Department
for a long time, but there is a lot more to be done.
We have never demanded more from the Department. If one
consensus has emerged as a core principle of United States
foreign policy since the end of the cold war, it is the
continuing imperative of international leaders and the United
States' international leadership and engagement and, indeed, it
is the central lesson of the last century, and the requirements
of this leadership, Senator Allen, as you indicated, have
become increasingly complex and demanding and, at the same time
we are making unprecedented demands on our policy structures
and people, we are asking them to do it from a deteriorating
platform around the world.
As Secretary Carlucci said, and I will just say a couple of
informal things because he has covered the report fairly
comprehensively, as Secretary Carlucci said, the task force
undertook to review and synthesize the best work and
recommendations of a number of recent studies on the condition,
role, and future of the State Department, and these prior
reports are listed and their findings are summarized in the
appendices to the report.
I want to draw the committee's attention, though, to two of
these reports, because I think they are quite important. The
first is the report of the Accountability and Review Boards on
the August 1998 Embassy Bombings in Africa, where some 220
people were killed, including a dozen Americans, and over 4,000
people were injured.
The second report is--it has been referenced a couple of
times, the Kaden report. I do that for two reasons. No. 1, the
membership of these committees was superb, Admiral Crowe, the
former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and later Ambassador to the
United Kingdom chaired the Accountability Boards, and the
overseas advisory panel was chaired by a preeminent member of
the bar and had, as Secretary Carlucci alluded to, significant
participation by the private sector.
Jack Welch, chairman of GE, Paul O'Neill, then at Alcoa,
now Secretary of the Treasury, were active members of this
panel, and I point to these reports because I think they put us
on notice, they put the committee on notice and they put the
executive branch on notice with respect to the crisis in the
physical condition and the security of our U.S. posts abroad.
Senator Biden quoted from the Advisory Panel on Overseas
Presence: ``the United States overseas presence which has
provided the central underpinnings of U.S. foreign policy for
many decades is in a near state of crisis.''
Admiral Crowe noted in his transmittal letter to Secretary
Albright after the bombings in Africa in August 1998: ``a
collective failure by several administrations and Congresses
over the past decade to invest adequately in efforts and
resources to reduce the vulnerability of U.S. diplomatic
missions around the world.'' He called it a collective failure
of both the Congress and several administrations.
As I have said, I point to these reports because they put
us on notice that a decade of failure to invest on a sustained
basis in overseas infrastructure and security have placed us in
a perilous condition, and failure to address this condition I
believe is a failure to address central a national security
concern.
Let me underscore three quick points from the report. The
first is the focus on management, as Senator Biden alluded to,
and this is really key. At the State Department, at the highest
levels, management is the easiest thing to slip to the bottom
of the list.
The State Department essentially is a policy organization.
Policy development and policy execution is the glamorous aspect
of being at the State Department. It is what gets rewarded. It
is what gets noticed. Management is not glamorous. Management
is hard work. It does not get noticed, it does not get rewarded
the way it should, and I know from my own experience at the
State Department, when you are at the highest levels there,
that is the easiest thing to slip into the background of your
day-to-day activities.
We make a couple of specific recommendations in the
independent task force report which I think are absolutely
critical, and I will just underscore one, and that is, as
Secretary Carlucci said, that the Deputy Secretary of State
essentially serve as chief operating officer of the State
Department. There have been different models over the years
there, but many times the Deputy Secretary of State has had
nothing to do with the administration of the Department.
Underneath the Deputy Secretary of State, I would
centralize budget, finance, administration, and human
resources, and make the Deputy Secretary of State responsible
to the building and to this committee for running the
Department, and as the report says, this should be a person who
relishes running a large organization, that is a special
person, someone who really finds management rewarding day-in
and day-out.
In the Appropriations bill last year there was passed a
bill that indicated there should be a second Deputy Secretary
of State for Management and Resources. Our report recommends
against that, and I think with good reason. I think that just
duplicates the problem. You would again put management over to
the side, as opposed to bringing management to the center.
I would instruct the Department, and again I do this with
some hesitation, because I am sensitive to allowing the
Secretary of State to construct the Department any way that he
or she sees fit, but I would instruct the Department from here,
or tell the Department that it is the committee's
recommendation and expectation that the Deputy Secretary of
State be the chief operating officer of the Department.
Second, physical security and infrastructure. We have
discussed that here. The Department's overseas physical
presence is dilapidated, ill-equipped, and secure, and the
result of many years of inadequate resources have to be
addressed. Admiral Crowe set forth in the Accountability Board
Report a plan, a decade-long plan for renewing the physical
infrastructure and ensuring security of our embassies abroad.
My strong recommendation to this committee demand from the
State Department a multi-year, decade-long plan that you work
closely with them on implementing it, and that it be fully
funded over the course of the decade. Not to do so will put us
back in the same place where we were when Admiral Crowe made
his recommendations.
It is very interesting, if you read his transmittal letter
to Secretary Albright in January 1999, he indicates that many
of the recommendations that he is making here were
recommendations that were made by Admiral Inman after the
Beirut Embassy bombings, and what happened is, you have a
tragedy, you have a report, the money goes up, the attention
gets focused, and then it slips away, until you have another
tragedy and another report, and another increase in funding,
and then it slips away.
I would really encourage this committee to demand that the
State Department have a plan to implement physical security,
physical infrastructure improvements over the next decade at
the State Department, and that we not fall into that same
pattern again of a lot of attention and then it slipping away.
It is going to take sustained attention in order to get this
done.
Third and last, communications. Senator Allen, you
mentioned that no American company of any scope that I know of
would ever operate the way the State Department operates today.
You have situations where people in the same building cannot
send an e-mail to someone in an office next door. Again, no
American corporation would operate this way.
American corporations, as you know from the state you come
from, have spent an enormous amount of resources over the last
6, 7, 10 years in investing in IT [information technology], and
we should--again, I would recommend to this committee that it
demand a plan from the State Department as to how it is going
to, on the unclassified portion of the Department first, ensure
that you have at least off-the-shelf capabilities of e-mail,
and Internet access, and then move on over the course of
several years to bringing up to speed the classified systems.
I think--Secretary Carlucci chaired the Simpson report, the
Simpson report which indicated that it would cost $400 million
to accomplish both these goals. It is a small amount of money
to pay in the context of IT investment in the United States
today.
Finally, Senator Biden, I believe that you are absolutely
correct that the stars are aligned here, potentially. We have a
Secretary of State of great stature and experience, who has
made appropriate funding and sound management of the Department
a top priority. We have the largest surpluses projected in the
history of our country.
We are now talking about--we are having a serious national
discussion about a very large tax cut. We have the leadership,
we have the opportunity, and we have the resources to turn the
State Department into a first-class organization, and I think a
failure to do so would be a failure to pursue an important
national security concern.
Thank you.
Senator Allen. Thank you both very much. We very much
appreciate listening to your remarks, your enthusiasm, and your
insight. Since we budgeted an hour for this hearing, I would
say we limit comments and questions to 5 minutes, if that is OK
with the committee. I just want to followup and then go to
Senator Biden, and we will go as members are in and out.
As far as the information technology aspects of it, and any
aspect of government, and I know you both, especially Secretary
Carlucci has been in the private sector. One thing that is
important for continued support for funding of any project or
any mission is some way of measuring performance and that is
probably a very difficult thing to do in the Department of
State. It is not like the Department of Commerce, or the
Department of Transportation, or Justice, and Crime rates and
investment rates, jobs being created, or welfare rolls going
down, or those sorts of things.
But to the extent that you could, it would be great, and I
think this would be very helpful for getting that sustained
funding that there is a strategic plan, and even if you just
put it into the area of information technology, a strategic
plan, here is what needs to be done to coordinate these--it is
really--their IT departments are over 40 different agencies
being developed, but here is the plan, here is the cost, and
here are the guidelines, and here are the measurements, and as
it goes over the years you see a quantifiable, measurable,
somehow measurable difference in it.
So my question to you all, whichever one of you gentlemen
want to answer this, as far as performance basing this, and
their IT systems, which are developed over 40 agencies, do you
believe that the CIO, the chief information officer at the
State Department, has the budget authority and the managerial
control necessary to actually effectively coordinate this
modernization?
Mr. Carlucci. I will let Tom, whose experience is more
recent than mine, answer that in more detail. My initial
reaction to your question is no. That is why we need a chief
operating officer. You need somebody who can bring together
both budget and programs and traditionally, as Tom indicated,
the program people have run the State Department.
I came up through the political side. That was always the
choice cone. We rose faster than anybody else. Management was
not given a premium, so you have got to bring resources and
management together if we are going to have an effective IT
program. I think the idea that you set forth of benchmarking it
so you can measure the progress is the way it ought to go.
Mr. Donilon. Mr. Chairman, I think it can be scaled. There
is a challenge, and it is because you have numerous agencies at
each of these posts, a couple of dozen agencies at some posts.
I think I would recommend the following: No. 1, that the
President instruct all agencies with operations abroad that
they have to work with the chief information officer, whoever
that is at the State Department, to develop in a set period of
time, say 24 months, an integrated IT system at posts abroad.
No. 2, that there be a schedule for bringing on a set
number of posts per year, that there be a list of off-the-shelf
products, specific products that you want folks to have at
embassies--again, it does not have to be exotic. As you know,
the state of--you know, I work for a company where it is not
imaginable that you could operate without being able to
communicate instantaneously with your colleagues day-in and
day-out.
So a Presidential instruction, develop an ability for
agencies to talk to each other at posts, have a schedule as to
when each of the posts should be online, have a set list of
off-the-rack products, and complete it in a set amount of time
for the unclassified portion of the traffic, and then move over
the next period of 24 or 36 months to the classified portion. I
think it is eminently doable, and affordable.
Senator Allen. You actually think the $400 million is a
correct figure?
Mr. Carlucci. Let me comment on that.
Senator Allen. I believe you can spend more money more
quickly and waste it as well if you do not do it right, and if
you say--whatever that figure is had better be accurate.
Mr. Carlucci. There are various estimates. It is a ball
park figure. We did not do any kind of scientific survey. I
think a survey would need to be done. The estimates range
anywhere from $200 to $400 million. I can tell you, coming from
the Pentagon, whatever it is, it is a small amount of money.
Mr. Donilon. That does not go unnoticed at the State
Department. I think, Senator, as I said at the beginning, I
would demand a plan of the State Department.
I agree with you, you can make a lot of mistakes in the IT
world and you can get off-track, particularly in a culture that
is not precise in terms of business practices, but I think you
need to get a plan from the Department over a set of years,
showing you exactly what they are going to do year-in and year-
out, who is going to do it, and how much it costs, and
encourage them to report to you every quarter or twice a year
to show you what the progress is and to put up a chart saying,
this is how far we have gotten, but I agree with Secretary
Carlucci, I think you need to demand a comprehensive approach
and a plan before you fund it, but then go ahead, oversee it,
interact and fund it.
Mr. Carlucci. I think there is a role for the National
Security Council here as well in bringing other agencies into
line, but State can take the lead.
Senator Allen. Thank you both very much. Senator Biden.
Senator Biden. Thank you. In your report, Mr. Secretary,
you point out 700 Foreign Service positions need to be filled.
Why are they empty?
Mr. Carlucci. Well, part of the reason is the recruitment
process. If you have got delays of 1 to 2 years in coming on
board, it is very hard for a young person to sustain himself or
herself. We have talked to some of the people at our Foreign
Service schools. At Georgetown Foreign Service School the
students are not electing to go into the Foreign Service. They
are discouraged. They are moving into other areas.
Whether it is the financial attractiveness of those other
areas or not, I cannot say, but I think in part because the
State Department is not viewed as a place where one can have a
rewarding career anymore. Since we came out with this report I
have had two or three potential applicants come to see me to
say, well, should I do this or shouldn't I, I have been
accepted, I am really in a dilemma, if it is not well-managed,
can I expect a good career path. I think it is a chicken-and-
egg question here. We are not getting the best and the
brightest, as we used to do.
Senator Biden. Tom.
Mr. Donilon. I think it is a matter, it needs to be fully
funded, No. 1. No. 2, there needs to be a big recruitment
effort. It is a problem faced all across the government in
terms of recruitment for talent, particularly given the fact
that, as Secretary Carlucci said, the financial compensation
gaps are widening, in terms of the gap between the private-
public sector, but also there needs to be a pitch. There needs
to be shown a career path that makes sense, training that makes
sense.
At the Pentagon, Mark Grossman, the Director of the Foreign
Service, told me yesterday that at the Pentagon at any given
time some 15 percent of the personnel are on training, and that
is because they have enough officers and enlisted people to be
able to do that. They are so stretched at the State Department
those opportunities are not there.
And last, I think it does need leadership. It needs
recruitment, and the personnel system needs attention from the
top of the State Department, as it does in any large
organization.
Senator Biden. One last question. I have been spending, and
I suspect most of my colleagues have, and Secretary Carlucci,
your experience at Defense, I have been spending a great deal
of time on quality of life issues for the military. I mean, it
has amazed me, quite frankly, how much time I spend.
I would have thought--I am not on that committee, but
because of Dover Air Force Base in Delaware I have become over
the years so deeply involved with their interests and needs,
and then getting very involved in what is going on in the
Balkans, and actually being onsite eight or nine times, and the
more I have dealt with the military, the last 6 or 8 years, I
mean, the single biggest thing that comes through is quality of
life, literally just what barracks you sleep in, what the food
is like, just simple, basic things, is there a day care center,
and one of the things that I am finding is that as I focused on
that, more than I ever intended to, the results are pretty
dramatic. You get a pretty big bang for the buck back,
according to the commanding officers.
For example, over in the Balkans, I mean, Fort Bondsteel,
you have been over there, I mean, I am telling you, it is--they
did it right. They did it right. They paid attention to the
quality of life, the food is incredible--I mean, my son, who is
assigned to Pristina for 6 months to a year with the Justice
Department, I was going to be over there, I said, do you mind
coming to Bondsteel? He said, hell, no, I will meet you there,
can we stay overnight. I mean, literally, not figuratively.
State Department guys, the folks there with the U.N. assigned
missions, they want to get to Bondsteel. They want to go with
the military. I mean, literally, not figuratively.
The places where they are living, there is no heat, there
is no--I mean, and so I guess what I am driving at is, it seems
to me that, as I in the years, as many as I have been doing
this, a long time, been to embassies all around the world, the
quality of life is abysmal in some of these places. I mean,
literally abysmal. I do not know why anybody would do it.
Now, when there was still a lot of cachet in being in
Moscow, which is always abysmal being in Moscow, you said,
well, it is Moscow, you know. It is an important post. I am
here because, as policy people that was a career path. I mean,
you are not going to go very far. The first 20 years of my
career here, in the State Department, if you did not go through
Moscow somehow, it was not going to happen.
But by and large, across the world, 70 percent of the
places I have been, the quality of life, I mean, is really
lousy, and one of the things that I focused on is the way in
which spouses of State Department personnel assigned abroad are
so significantly limited in what they can do and not do.
Is there any attention--I know this is sort of a hobby
horse of mine--any attention paid to spouses, and by the way, I
have long thought that spouses of ambassadors should get paid.
I really mean that, because they perform--I am not joking. I
sincerely mean it. They have a major function in most
embassies.
But at any rate, that is my question.
Mr. Carlucci. Senator Biden, I can remember the days when
we had to include an evaluation of the spouses in the
efficiency report. That was done away with for good and sound
reasons, but it underscores the point you make that they are
full partners. This is one of the things Mark Grossman has
worked on as Director General, and I hope the new Director
General, whoever that might be, will pick up the ball.
In fact, I talked to Grant Green this morning. He said they
are pursuing vigorously a spousal assignment policy, so that
the spouses, if they want to work, can have an opportunity to
work at the post. I found in my experience that has a very big
morale effect.
Senator Biden. It sure does, and today, much more than when
you and I started, you know, most of the spouses attracted to
the people who are in the State Department, which are generally
pretty bright people, academically fairly ambitious, are pretty
ambitious and qualified people themselves, so it is not like we
are asking somebody to tag along. You have doctors, lawyers,
professionals--I think that complicates it a lot.
But at any rate, I appreciate the report. I hope this time
we actually do something. I hope we actually stick to it and
follow through on your recommendations. I cannot think of
anything that I have any disagreement with in terms of the
recommendations made.
But anyway, thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Allen. Thank you, Senator Biden. You have a record
that he has found nothing to disagree with you on. That is
amazing.
Senator Sarbanes.
Senator Sarbanes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I
want to thank Secretary Carlucci and Tom Donilon and all of
their colleagues on the panel for a fine piece of work. I think
this has the prospects of making a very important contribution,
and I particularly appreciate your taking all the other studies
and seeking to synthesize them into an action program that is
exactly what is needed.
We do not really need another comparable kind of study.
They have been done over and over again, and by some extremely
competent and dedicated people, and so I am hopeful this will
make a major impact.
I have two or three questions, though, I want to put first
of all. I am a little concerned by the, if you do the reform,
you will get the resources mantra, and the assumption that is
the only way Congress will provide the resources. We should do
the reform, but in my mind we need to give some resources very
fast, probably ahead of the reform.
In fact, some of the reforms, in my view, are really almost
conditional on getting the resources. It is almost the other
way around. If you want to implement these reforms, you need
the resources. Embassy security ought not to wait on reforms,
in my opinion. The information systems ought not to wait on the
reforms, other than the reform is needed to set up an
appropriate structure to implement the information systems, so
I just add that as a sort of caveat to what you have said.
I do not want to get into the situation--I have seen it
happen before--where the Department is sort of being held
hostage to getting the resources because they have not
completely carried through this sort of wide, sweeping reform
agenda, and the people up here are still holding out on them
because they have not done yet this further thing, and so
forth, and particularly in view of this perspective that I
have, that you need some lead resources to help achieve the
reforms. Could you comment on that?
Mr. Carlucci. We deliberated considerably on that very
point, and we were careful to avoid any kind of a contract or
bargain, because one is not dependent totally on the other. We
did not set priorities. We did not say one ought to go before
the other. In fact, the State Department is already moving on
some reforms. As you point out, resources are absolutely
essential for telecom upgrades and for embassy security, and so
we want to see them moving hand-in-hand, but we never thought
one was totally dependent on the other.
Senator Sarbanes. I think that is important. I think we
need to have you on the record in that regard, so we do not
have a situation up here where people are holding back from
giving the resources because you say, quote, ``the reform
agenda has not been completed.''
Mr. Donilon. Senator Sarbanes, I filed an additional view
to the Task Force, but with that as its major theme.
Senator Sarbanes. I apologize to you. It was all I could do
to handle the report. I did not get to the additional comments.
Mr. Donilon. For the record, I will say, though, to get
this on the record, reform is necessary at the State
Department, but a lot of the deficits, deficiencies we
identified in the course of the Independent Task Force report,
and in the previous reports on the results of resource
starvation, and there is a current and urgent need for some
real baseline increases for specific challenges.
Senator Sarbanes. Mr. Chairman, I have two more questions I
want to put. One is, I will save what I regard as the most
important one till the end. The second one is, you say the
Secretary of State should be the President's principal foreign
policy advisor. The NSC ought not to have an operational role,
as I understand the report.
You talk about the rivalry and duplication between the
State Department and the NSC, and yet you recommend that the
NSC create a new strategic planning office for long-term
planning. Would not this proposed office be a rival of the
State Department Policy Planning office and, in effect,
undercut what you are trying to achieve?
Mr. Carlucci. Senator Sarbanes, we see it as supportive. Do
not forget that the National Security Council includes the
Secretary of State. We tend to think of the National Security
Council staff as autonomous, and it really is not. It is a
staff arm of the National Security Council. Any kind of
strategic planning is going to have to take a broad outlook.
You cannot just plan for foreign policy in isolation from
national security policy. National security policy has to be an
integrated policy developed with input from the Department of
Defense, the CIA, the Justice Department, whatever other
departments might be involved. You move from there to your
foreign policy strategy, but foreign policy strategy has to fit
into a context. Hence we think there should be a long-term
strategy of planning organization as part of the National
Security Council staff.
Senator Sarbanes. Mr. Chairman, if you would indulge me to
put the final question.
Senator Allen. Go ahead, Senator Sarbanes.
Senator Sarbanes. I want to talk about the chief operating
officer and linking that with the Deputy Secretary of State. I
think we need a chief operating officer, obviously. I guess I
have some concern about whether it should be the Deputy
Secretary of State, and let me outline what those concerns are.
First of all, it would seem to me that you have the
question of whether the chief operating officer is going to be
a career person who has worked up through the ranks of the
Department and knows it intimately, and so forth, or whether
you are going to bring in someone from outside to manage the
Department.
Now, you can bring in some good managers, but they always
have to get up to speed in terms of the Department, so that is
the first sort of question I have, and second, the Deputy
Secretary of State has outside functions, so to speak, being
Acting Secretary when the Secretary is on travel, so he has
this public face that the Deputy Secretary has to exercise, so
I am just wondering whether--I mean, you rejected the notion of
the Deputy Secretary, an additional Deputy Secretary, as I
understand, as the chief operating officer and said, well, that
would put it out of the loop. It is not clear to me why that
would put it out of the loop.
And of course, if you had two Deputy Secretaries, then that
one could be a career person. He could be like the top civil
servant in other foreign ministries around the world. Did you
wrestle with that? I would like to hear your thinking.
Mr. Carlucci. We did have some discussion around that
point. Most of us on the Task Force felt that the dual deputy
system was a very awkward system. I have seldom seen dual
deputy systems work. In fact, I abolished one when I went into
the NSC in the wake of the Iran-Contra affair, because it
institutionalizes competition between the deputies.
Whether it should be somebody with experience in the
Foreign Service, or business experience, or foreign policy
experience, ideally the individual would encompass all three. I
think the proposed incumbent for that job, Rich Armitage, does
have the necessary qualifications. He understands bureaucracy.
He is not a Foreign Service officer, but he is a graduate
of the Naval Academy, he served in the military, served in
senior positions in the Pentagon, and it has worked in the
Pentagon model. The Deputy Secretary of Defense is in effect,
the chief operating officer of the Pentagon. So I think you
have got the right individual, and I know General Powell has
great faith in Rich Armitage.
Senator Sarbanes. Tom, do you want to add to that?
Mr. Donilon. I think a dual Deputy Secretary of State would
be duplicative of the Secretary for Management, and what we are
trying to get to is a real centralization at the top of budget
finance administration, human resources, and placing a big
priority on it, and I think having a Deputy Secretary of
State--and I have wrestled with that.
I had some hesitation about it, with a predilection toward
allowing the Secretary of State to pick his or her team. I
think the management problems are so severe that a chief
operating officer at the top of the place, who is--I would
recommend an outsider coming in is necessary to bring energy,
to bring management policy together from the top, and to make
it a priority.
So I understand your concerns, but I think at the end of
the day I think the problems are so severe that it needs to be
done this way.
Senator Sarbanes. Mr. Chairman, thank you, and I thank
Senator Nelson for your indulgence, and again I want to thank
Secretary Carlucci and Tom Donilon for their contribution. We
appreciate it very much.
Senator Allen. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Nelson.
Senator Nelson. Just a quick question. Thank you for
coming. Thank you for your work. Thank you for your public
service. This past weekend, I spent the weekend with the CINC
of the Southern Command, and with a lot of the State Department
personnel in Colombia, and I was impressed with both.
Last year, the Washington Post did a series of articles
about the influence of the CINC's, so should we be concerned
about their foreign policy role, and is there sufficient
coordination with the State Department?
Mr. Carlucci. Obviously, we have to be concerned that there
be sufficient coordination. My experience has been that the
CINC's are quite willing to take policy guidance. One of the
task forces, or one of the blue ribbon panels, I forgot which
one, recommended upgrading the political advisors to the
CINC's. We have had some very talented people as political
advisors to the CINC's. I know Wes Clark had Mike Durkee, and
he depended heavily on Mike Durkee.
So if a CINC is a good CINC, and the political advisor is a
good political advisor, it will work, but you cannot build a
system that bad people will not disrupt, so I think the
emphasis really has to be on quality on both sides.
Senator Nelson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Allen. Well, thank you both, both witnesses for
your insight, and all of the work you have put into this, and
we very much appreciate it.
Mr. Carlucci. Mr. Chairman, may I make a closing comment?
Senator Allen. Sure.
Mr. Carlucci. This would not have been possible if it had
not been for Ian Brzezinski, who pulled it all together. He did
the drafting, and he did a marvelous job. I would like to give
him full credit.
Senator Allen. Good work, Ian. There are members who are
not here and, if you would, please indulge those members. They
may want to submit some questions in writing to you, and if
that would be permitted, we would certainly appreciate it.
Mr. Carlucci. We would be happy to do that.
Senator Allen. Thank you both very much. The hearing is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the committee adjourned.]
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