Over the Wires: In the Coop


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AL LAMEN'S IN THE COOP

(By Jeff Jamison)

Judging by his first directive, new State Department Undersecretary for Management Vern Kaufman will make shaking down employees as much a priority as shaking up the system. In a recent memo obtained by us here in the Coop, Kaufman states his intention to claim government bonus perks from "frequent-purchaser" clubs, using the same principle that applies to frequent flyer miles accrued while on government travel. The memo notes that Department employees will be under a heavy burden to prove that bonus perks -- everything from hotel stays to pizzas -- were earned through strictly personal purchases. A staff aide to Kaufman states, "At a post like Tokyo, where costs are sky-high and frequent-purchaser clubs legion, dollar savings could easily be in the hundreds of thousands." No word yet on whether Embassy employees and suppliers will accept payment in haircuts and Subway sandwiches . . .

Meanwhile, something of a real-life Truman Show is being played out at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute, where a recently hired Foreign Service Officer has been pursuing a simulated career over the past six months. The officer, whose name is being withheld by the State Department, has gone through orientation and training, not as the educational exercises they're intended to be, but as a real Foreign Service assignment. "Our first inkling came during the off-site embassy simulation that's part of our A-100 orientation program," our sources inform. "[The officer] demanded upgrades in embassy security and tried to line up a new assignment with the visiting Secretary of State [a role played by a senior Department officer]."

"We downplayed this at first as eccentricity and were actually heartened by [the officer's] enthusiasm," our source continued, "but the alarms really started to go off during the consular training course, when [the officer] insisted on drawing up duty officer schedules and plans for a visa fraud investigation." Now that same officer has moved on to wandering the halls of FSI's language departments, delivering demarches to unsuspecting language instructors who are taken by the officer to be host country officials of various foreign governments.

"It's been touch and go with the Russian instructors through the whole Chechnya mess," said our source, "but we're taking steps to minimize the disruption and to ease the officer back into a normal life," said our source. The same official denied reports that State would use this case to deflect criticisms, both in the Department and on Capitol Hill, that its training is unrealistic and irrelevant to actual foreign service work.

Jeff Jamison is currently on assignment at a 3-person outpost in Nagoya, Japan, about as far "out of the loop" as you can get, and scheduled to transfer this summer to Washington, into the heart of the loop. He is not looking forward to the culture shock.