The State Department hosted a grand commemoration on the first anniversary of the East Africa bombings. Some of the easier recommendations from the Accountability Review Boards had been farmed out for implementation, and my colleagues had moved on to Kosovo, East Timor, North Korea, Y2K issues, and President Clinton’s impeachment proceedings. A moment was set aside to remember.
Elegantly and carefully staged in the grand Benjamin Franklin Room on the eighth floor of the State Department, the ceremony had uplifting music, high rhetoric, and stilted protocol. Attendance was limited because of space. I was asked to stop sending the names of the people from Nairobi who had been left off the invitation list because I was disrupting the seating arrangement. It felt as if the event were being held for someone other than us. Downstairs in the lobby of the diplomatic entrance, the names of American colleagues lost in the bombing were added to the wall commemorating those who have died on duty. The names of my Kenyan colleagues were on a plaque around the corner from the lobby in an interior courtyard.
No one was happy, but this appeared to be the department’s way of showing it cared. Compensation was just one of the issues that did not go away. Efforts and lawsuits by the families of American victims as well as Kenyan survivors crashed into legal walls. Medical issues persisted. Our most seriously wounded colleagues confronted surgeries and medical events that would go on for years; the department created an Office of Casualty Assistance from need and victims’ frustrations. Months after the attack, many of the families of victims still had not received autopsy reports or much of anything else of satisfaction. The anger I had witnessed from State Department families in January was still simmering.
The department did organize a “family meeting” in May. But instead of simply focusing on the families of August 7, 1998, they included the military families of the soldiers killed in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993. Strange bedfellows brought together by one legal indictment for two different al-Qaeda attacks on Americans, one on a battleground and the other on an urban street corner. Family members of the dead and wounded sat together in a department auditorium listening to a parade of representatives from a variety of U.S. government agencies—from the Internal Revenue Service to the Departments of Labor, Justice, Defense, and State. Rather than feeling assuaged, some of the Nairobi families felt worse, as if they were simply problems to be dealt with and forgotten.
I had other issues to deal with now. I was Guatemala-bound and learning about the consequences of thirty-five years of internal conflict sparked by the U.S.-instigated rebellion in 1954. Decades later, peace accords were finally signed in 1996, strongly supported by the United States, but wartime legacies remained: mistrust, hate, corruption, narcotics, gangs, oligarchs, poverty, and judicial impunity. The challenges were considerable.
I learned that the U.S. embassy in Guatemala City was almost a twin to the old embassy in Nairobi—same vintage, same architecture, same proximity to busy downtown streets, same State Department attitude about relocating: no way; there was no money. The department had asked Congress for only a portion of the funds Admiral Crowe said would be required to make all embassies safe. In response, one U.S. congressman introduced legislation that would force Washington to spend much more. “I don’t want the responsibility falling on the Congress so that if something in the future happens, they can say, ‘You didn’t provide the authorization,’” said Rep. Doug Bereuter (R-NE).1 The legislation came to naught. As I made the requisite courtesy calls on congressional staffers and members, accompanied by an assigned colleague from State’s congressional relations bureau, I was expressly forbidden to mention the word “security.” When I did anyway, my political appointee minder interrupted to advise me: “Ambassador, you are not to talk about this.”
The senior appointees at State in charge of security and overseas buildings did not appear keen to talk about security either. They met with me jointly, opening the conversation with the words, “Pru, why do you keep choosing embassies that don’t have setback?” I took it as a rhetorical question and listened to their proposition: I would not launch complaints, cables, or any reminders of Nairobi for ninety days. They, in the meantime, would initiate efforts to secure the current Guatemala premises satisfactorily, in other words, meeting the State Department’s own regulations. We made a deal, and the U.S. government eventually controlled all three streets and all of the buildings around the embassy. Yes, I learned, we can innovate. It just takes political will and the right policies.
Richard and I spent the summer in a small furnished apartment in Arlington, Virginia, with two unhappy cats from Kenya while I worked to attain professional proficiency in Spanish, learn everything I could about Guatemalan history and politics, and stuff down the sorrow and anger that stayed with me. I went to a leading military expert on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), who acknowledged that I met some of the criteria. So now what? I was headed for Guatemala City as the U.S. ambassador. What was I going to do? It wasn’t that bad. I would soldier on. The department had made no provision for follow-up attention to bomb survivors. One did not suffer trauma in the Foreign Service; one sucked it up. And we suckers did not complain for fear our careers would suffer from the label “damaged goods.” By the time I was to be sworn in as ambassador, my clenched jaw was throbbing in pain, bad enough to send me to the medical unit. The old-fashioned Foreign Service doctor diagnosed it as TMJ, temporomandibular joint disorder, and prescribed an increase in estrogen and a reduction in stress.
It was a relief to move to Guatemala. The issues were compelling, the language was Spanish, and nothing had anything to do with the bombing. I could compartmentalize my brain, although not my cell memory. On my first day of work we drove into the underground parking lot of the embassy—just like the one in the old embassy Duncan used to drive into—and every cell in my body panicked. My heart raced, and I wanted to flee. Fast.
“It is okay; you are fine. It’s okay; you’re fine. It’s okay; you’re fine,” I repeated until I calmed down and could put a smile on my face. I had Guatemalan and American colleagues from thirteen U.S. government agencies to meet. It was a relief to know that Linda Howard was again going to serve with us as office manager. She understood what others could not.
The embassy had a sizeable representation from the development, law enforcement, and military communities, reflecting the policy issues we faced. The U.S. past in Guatemala was not pretty. We had engineered the coup d’état against a democratically elected president in 1954, the same year we ousted the democratically elected prime minister of Iran. In Iran, the interest was oil. In Guatemala, it was land for the United Fruit Company. The Dulles brothers, who ran the State Department and the CIA, also sat on the board of United Fruit. The land reforms promoted by the new president represented a Communist threat, or so they told Eisenhower. We supported a military takeover of the country and moved in and out of the conflict for decades, supplying and training military and paramilitary operatives who committed atrocities and acts of genocide against the poor and largely rural Mayan communities. With the end of the Cold War came a shift in U.S. policies and an apology from President Clinton for past deeds. A bipartisan Congress committed hundreds of millions of dollars to implement the 1996 Peace Accords. Its reforms were to transform Guatemalan society.
The embassy country team identified four priorities: reinvigorating the stalled peace process, promoting trade and economic development, helping to establish a rule of law, and ensuring assistance and security for all Americans visiting and living in Guatemala. We set milestones for each and went after them. I was a powerful figure as ambassador and an object of interest as only the second woman chief of mission from the United States. The press followed me closely, happy to use my statements about impunity, violence, and labor reforms to stir the political stewpot. American expatriates liked me because I held town meetings around the country. Guatemalan oligarchs were highly suspicious, and the newly elected populist president, Alfonso Portillo, was anxious to curry my favor. His public commitments to the Peace Accords gave us reason to hope, and the country team established ambitious goals.
Richard took a new alias, Don Ricardo, and resumed his functions as Top Spouse. The interviewer for the English-language weekly, Revue, wrote this: “Don Ricardo, as Ambassador Bushnell’s husband has become known in Guatemala, is a strong, warm figure who wears his role of ‘the ambassador’s spouse’ very comfortably. The day I interviewed him, he was about to make his first appearance with the Damas Diplomáticas, who were calling on the new First Lady of Guatemala. He appeared totally unconcerned that he might be the only male dama.” Actually, he loved it. The residence was another white stucco house built as a private home, but larger and more elegant than the Nairobi residence. This one had a grand entrance with a showcase stairway and a massive chandelier. Instead of a small downstairs study, we had a wood-paneled library with hidden bar. The large veranda opened onto a large, flat, rectangular expanse of green that just begged for improvements. We shared the residence and the garden with armed security guards from the Guatemalan police. The walls that surrounded us had guard towers, and I had nine bodyguards who accompanied me in a convoy every time I left the compound. Otherwise, they were installed in the renovated space of the attached garage. I wanted no part of it. I would be fine without them.
“You want to fire the Guatemalan policemen with the guns who have the keys to our house?” Don Ricardo asked pointedly. The guards stayed, and I adjusted. Armed men roamed the garden, so I took my exercise inside on our new treadmill.
By the end of 1999, Don Ricardo and I had settled in nicely. The never-ending problems of the bombing were on the other side of the world. A new century had arrived. Fireworks and firecrackers exploded everywhere. At midnight, I was snuggled in bed with a pillow over my head to muffle the sounds of explosions that triggered spasms of startle response, a familiar symptom of PTSD.
Guatemala was tough. The political left and many Mayan communities mistrusted us because of past support for right-wing killers. The political right hated the reforms we supported. Organized crime syndicates in and out of government took issue with our drug interdiction programs, and violent gangs took issue with everyone. I was glad we had kept the bodyguards. I was also glad I had been schooled in the conflicts of the sub-Sahara. I understood macho culture and negotiating with killers. I had dealt with bullies, and I had speeches aplenty about corruption, human rights, and the status of women ready to translate into Spanish. I was familiar with unpopularity, and I had seen large-scale violence and genocide.
We had strong members on the country team who believed we could make a difference, and we created effective strategies to do so. Colleagues also bound up my wounded pride and sent me back into the public arena when the press beat me up for supporting joint military programs against narco-traffickers; for persuading the government to condemn Cuba in the UN Human Rights Commission; for doing business with their democratically elected government, whom the wealthy hated; and for promoting labor and other reforms demanded by my government under the newly elected president, George W. Bush.
Although appointed by the Clinton administration, I now represented Bush. No one could believe that Republicans would actually support changes that touched corporates interests, so the Guatemalan business community decided it must be my idea to make intellectual property rights violations an issue between our two countries. Street vendors demonstrated with expensively printed signs when I noted that Guatemala’s current intellectual property rights legislation did not meet international standards, putting at risk Guatemala’s participation in the new Caribbean trade initiative.
And it surely was my idea, people said, to invent the Bush administration’s policy to insist the Guatemalan government and congress ratify labor agreements signed in 1954—or face removal of trade preferences. Even I was surprised that the Republican White House had issued such instructions, but the howls of protest they provoked among the Guatemalan wealthy business class went way beyond what I had anticipated.
The head of the congress, former dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, called me La Imprudencia, a label that stuck. I was denounced for violating diplomatic protocol by meeting directly with members of Guatemala’s congress; for interfering in domestic affairs; for demanding what surely would mean the economic ruin of the country. Calls to the Guatemalan government to throw me out were followed by letters to the Wall Street Journal and to the White House asking for my recall. At the breakfast table every morning, Don Ricardo advised me to “get over it” when I complained of political cartoons and nasty op-eds in the newspapers.
Such was the cost of getting results. In the Guatemalan congress, intellectual property rights legislation was strengthened and a new labor code passed. Judges confronting impunity, union leaders demanding reforms, and human rights activists uncovering abuses received our public support. Assistance programs helped Mayan people, and law enforcement programs deterred drug and human traffickers at least somewhat. At the trial of the murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi, a human rights icon brutally killed in 1998 after he reported evidence that the military had committed 85 percent of the human rights violations during the thirty-five years of conflict, La Imprudencia was in the audience. The press accused me the next day of having influenced the “guilty” verdict.
In August 2001 large groups of demonstrators appeared in front of the embassy with a huge banner that read “Bushnell Go Home” and burned me in effigy. I was astounded by the adrenalin accompanying my fear that someone would be hurt. I could handle verbal assaults and ugly cartoons, but demonstrations produced spikes of stress that left me empty and exhausted. What if something happened to someone? I was sensitive to my body’s reactions and signs of PTSD. Flashbacks were scary but rare, and nightmares were infrequent. It was the adrenalin peaks of concern about people’s safety and the accompanying waves of sadness that left me hollow. La Imprudencia persevered anyway. I smiled a lot and continued to state our policies in a Spanish that improved with practice.
Don Ricardo and I headed as often as we could to the Mayan highlands for respite. Among the mountains where much of the internal conflict took place and many of our resources landed, we enjoyed the visual delights, artistry, and different cultural worldviews. In Quetzaltenango, Guatemala’s second largest city, I commented to the Mayan mayor about the hope I always experienced among indigenous people despite centuries of oppression and today’s violence and mistrust.
“That is because everyone knows that one day this country will be Mayan again. They tried to kill us, but we are still here,” the mayor said. “It will not happen in my lifetime, and it will not happen in my children’s lifetime, but it will happen one day, and my work is to help in the preparation.” I admired his perspective and patience.
We used the residence for musical evenings, inviting people who despised one another and many who did not like me. The protocol made it easy on everyone: give greetings in the receiving line, get a drink and finger food, find a café table, and listen to jazz, marimba, opera, or Broadway. The talent was often Guatemalan. Have another drink and then go home. Follow-up could result in a private lunch on the veranda between a human rights advocate and a military official or a discreet meeting among other adversaries. Outreach like this helped redeem my good standing, and so did our sponsored productions of West Side Story, Once upon an Island, and Grease, with all-Guatemalan casts and off-Broadway producers. There is more than one way to implement policies, and this was by far the most fun.
A year into our Guatemala assignment I was invited to speak at the Oklahoma City National Memorial as part of the opening celebration of their museum and memorial. Did I really want to revisit my experience with an act of terrorism in the detail required to come up with a decent speech? Wasn’t it better to just move on like everyone else seemed to have done? On the other hand, a team of Oklahoma City mental health practitioners had made the journey to Nairobi to help when we needed them, and what better audience to hear our story? I decided I did not want to pretend the bombing had never happened.
I had no idea if I would have anything in common with the audience of survivors, first responders, loved ones of those who had died, and members of the community at large. Before a large audience in a city new to me, I described what happened to us on August 7, 1998, and how we had reacted. I ended to a standing ovation, and I learned why later. Our stories connected. When a ton of explosives in the back of a truck blew up the Murrah Federal Building and killed 168 people in 1995 in Oklahoma City, survivors rushed back in to help colleagues. Like us, first responders shared an initial reluctance to cede their place to other rescuers. Many who came to help in the aftermath created more chaos than assistance. The media brought turmoil, and survivors experienced the same frustration with the “Have you found closure?” question. The bombing raised profound questions of meaning and faith, and this demanded resilience from pioneering spirits to journey forward. Surviving family members carried anguish and anger, and some survivors showed evidence of disabling injuries and chronic pain. People felt the same pressure we had to “get on with it,” while supervisors and managers faced the similar challenges of reconstructing their operations. Like us, no one appreciated being considered damaged goods. Like us, the community took the lead in healing its wounds.
Of course, there were differences, too. Oklahoma City was the first terrorist event of this dimension on U.S. soil. Congress passed victims’ rights legislation and millions of dollars for security upgrades in federal buildings in the United States. As a security precaution, Pennsylvania Avenue and other streets around the White House were permanently closed. Meanwhile, U.S. embassies remained vulnerable overseas. Not mine, however. Washington colleagues engaged in creative thinking: we purchased two buildings adjacent to the embassy and found ways to safeguard the streets. We could remain in an urban area and feel safe.
Al-Qaeda made its way back onto the front page a few months after our trip when, on October 12, 2000, it blew up the USS Cole, killing seventeen sailors and injuring thirty-nine more. The FBI and the military briefly investigated, Congress held a hearing, and the media moved on.
In January 2001 I was called to testify in the case of USA v. Usama bin Laden. The assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Patrick Fitzgerald, had issued an indictment against twenty-one people for the bombings of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and four of them were on trial:
Wadih el-Hage, the Lebanese American administrative head of the al-Qaeda branch in Nairobi, was charged with perjury. Twice he had lied to a grand jury, both before and after the bombings. Had el-Hage told the truth in 1997, the prosecution alleged, the bombings would never have taken place.
Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, who lived on the coast of Kenya, was charged with participating in mass murder and helping to construct the bombs that went into the trucks in both Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-Owhali, who hurled the stun grenade outside the embassy in Nairobi just before his companion detonated the truckload of explosives, was also charged with participating in mass murder.
Khalfan Khamis Mohamed was charged with providing the logistical support necessary to carry out the attack on the embassy in Dar es Salaam.
The trial began with a range of conspiracy charges, and the prosecution spent days putting al-Qaeda insiders and other experts on the stand to tell the story. Bin Laden ran an international network of terrorist groups capable of carrying out attacks even in the face of operational failures. He managed al-Qaeda through a shura council of advisors, which he headed. He had an international financial system to move money and used state-of-the-art technology to issue orders. He had operated with impunity for five years from Sudan, where the government had given him special privileges. He had interacted with the government of Iran, and its proxy military organization, Hezbollah, had trained al-Qaeda operatives to blow up buildings. Bin Laden had personally chosen the embassy in Nairobi as a target because it was accessible, it housed the U.S. embassy to Sudan, and it was headed by a female ambassador whose death would provoke more media attention.
Bin Laden was connected to the attack on U.S. soldiers in Somalia in 1993, an attempted purchase of chemical weapons in 1994, the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1995, and the bombings of the two U.S. embassies in 1998. Al-Qaeda cells were still operative in Brooklyn, New York; Orlando, Florida; Dallas, Texas; Santa Clara, California; Columbia, Missouri; and Herndon, Virginia.
In a large, frigid file room at the rear of a New York City federal courthouse, the survivors of the East Africa bombings who were summoned as witnesses waited for days for their turn to testify about the attack itself. Most had received only hours’ notice to get their lives in order before they were whisked to the bitter cold of the Big Apple. They were provided with donated heavier clothing at the airport by a solicitous Witness Task Force, but gratitude was morphing into frustration as day after day passed in the dreary storeroom. The tension was contagious.
I was lucky. I was only coming from Guatemala, less than a day’s trip away, and Richard was with me. I had to wait only three gray days, but it proved to be plenty of time to relive events, absorb lingering anger, and witness the pain many still experienced.
I heard nothing from the State Department until late at night before the morning I was to testify. At first I thought someone had actually remembered and wanted to wish me well as the first witness in this phase of the trial. No, the lawyer was calling to remind me that under no condition was I to reveal classified information in court. I almost threw the phone across the room. By the time I was called to the stand the next day, I was mentally fatigued and physically tense.
Judge Leonard Sand dominated the crowded, wood-paneled courtroom in a black judicial robe. Gray computer monitors, their cables snaking across the floor, almost hid the jury—all but their faces, which looked alert and interested. The four dark-haired, bearded defendants in traditional Muslim garb of neutral shades sat facing the judge, surrounded by lawyers in their traditional garb of dark suits. Everything about the place appeared sober. The jury looked serious, the judge imposing, and the defendants bored. Behind the brown-slatted bar that separated the gallery from the rest of the courtroom, spectators, journalists, and some families of al-Qaeda’s victims quietly observed this case of mass murder.
The prosecution and defense attorneys asked me open-ended questions with deference. Then a defense attorney asked about the many antennae on the roof of the old embassy, and Judge Sand snapped, “Don’t answer that.” The lawyer tried to rephrase the question, and Sand interrupted. “Counsels, in my chamber.” Just like on TV.
For the next few minutes and forever, I faced some of our murderers, who were staring intently at their computer monitors. Al-Owhali, who had thrown the grenade that brought so many thousands to their windows, continued to pick his teeth, as he had been doing while I spoke. I was delighted to be dismissed from the stand shortly after the judge returned.
Former colleagues and neighbors from Nairobi followed me as witnesses. George Mimba had found himself buried under bodies, Sammy Nganga under piles of stone rubble. Frank Pressley had lost part of his jaw and a large section of his shoulder. Moses Kinyua and Elijah Mutie Mue would wear disfiguring facial scars forever. Tobias Otieno, Peninah Mutioho, and Caroline Ngugi were blinded. Father John Kiongo Kariuki had seen his brother and niece blown up.
Caroline Gichuru described being blown from her chair and blinded by blood, stumbling toward the daylight that had replaced the concrete exterior wall of her office. Only loud warnings from shocked onlookers stopped her from tumbling into the concrete wreckage two stories below. Marine Sgt. Daniel Briehl testified to falling down an elevator shaft and going to the hospital; he left out the fact that he had returned to the old embassy, ignoring his injuries, to rescue others, an act that won him the Purple Heart. Horrifying testimonies in and of themselves, they represented only a tiny sample of the stories and injuries that more than 5,000 Kenyans could describe. The last of these witnesses, Dr. Gretchen McCoy, described the bloody chaos outside the embassy and the desperate efforts to help the wounded at a local hospital. The litany of horrors ended when the names of the 224 Kenyans and Tanzanians killed by the bombings were read into the record.
Before I left the courthouse, Patrick Fitzgerald invited Richard and me to meet his boss, Mary Jo White. In her office, the two launched into a strange and abstract apology that “the wall” had prevented them from doing more before the bombing took place. I had no idea what they were talking about and lamely suggested that they review their procedures. Even Richard, a criminal defense and civil rights attorney before Foreign Service days, did not understand.
That night, all of us witnesses were given a special night tour of the Statue of Liberty. The boat ride was icy cold, the view of the Twin Towers and other landmarks crystal clear. It felt extraordinary to share this with other survivors. New York City looked pristine and innocent, untouched by the evil that had changed so many lives so far away. I returned to Guatemala’s sunshine with relief.
In August Richard and I flew to Nairobi for the opening of the August 7th Memorial Park on the corner of Moi and Haile Selassie Avenues. Was this really the site of the old embassy chancery—it seemed so green, even peaceful. The brown concrete box that was our workplace was gone, and so was the seven-story Ufundi House next door. The high-rise Cooperative Bank Building that I thought would become my tomb looked the same, only spiffier, with new windows and scrubbed walls courtesy of the U.S. government.
Then I heard a tinny voice screeching hymns into a scratchy microphone on the corner close to the train station. For two years I had heard that same voice from my office every day around noon, and for a second I was transported. The violent fireball had not consumed us; life was normal; I was back in 1998 explaining to the foreign minister that the White House had agreed to a “pull-aside”—a short, informal conversation—between President Moi and President Clinton at an upcoming regional meeting. No, I remembered saying, a pull-aside had nothing to do with a swimming pool; it was Washington-speak for an informal meeting.
Then I was back in the park. It looked good. Walking paths swished around green plots of scrawny plants that would bloom gorgeously once they took root. They led to a large, curved wall on which the names of the dead had been etched next to an inscription: “May the innocent victims of this tragic event rest in the knowledge that it has strengthened our resolve to work for a world in which man is able to live alongside his brother in peace.” The park and its small museum seemed modest in comparison with the Oklahoma City memorial, I thought, but that was okay. Our park honored the dead with equal sincerity.
On August 7, 2001, the park was dedicated in front of family members of the dead and five hundred invited guests. On the other side of the entrance turnstiles, thousands of people jostled to get closer to the site, just as they had on the day of the bombing. Dignitaries spoke, and when we finally stopped, the crowds surged forward, snapping off the brand-new turnstiles as they poured through the narrow gate openings, trapping some of the visitors. No one was out of control or necessarily ill-intentioned, but for a moment the crowds appeared as ominous as they had three years earlier. In a private ceremony at the U.S. ambassador’s residence, Kenyan colleagues spoke of their remembrances. Like mine they were very real. I was happy that I did not run into anyone who asked if I had come to closure. None of us had. We had had a trial and we had a memorial park, but nothing was over yet.
When we returned to Guatemala, the “Bushnell Go Home” demonstrations were beginning to subside, and we got back to business. On September 11, 2001, we were having breakfast when the phone rang. It was our regional security officer. “Ambassador, turn on the TV,” she ordered. “The bastards are doing it to us again.” Richard and I shared the horror of the rest of the world as we watched the second plane go into the World Trade Center towers.
The attacks rocked Guatemala. If the United States was not safe, what country was? We had seemed invulnerable, and now . . . we were not. Cards and flowers poured into the residence and embassy. One man delivered his bouquet personally to our protocol assistant. “Tell the ambassador I was at the demonstration against her. That was work. This is personal. I am very sorry.” I went on live radio to discuss in Spanish what I had learned in Kenya about talking to children about disastrous events. It was a linguistic milestone for me.
In the spring of 2002, the country team decided to go after one of the most powerful men in Guatemala, a member of “the Brotherhood,” popularly known as the “dark forces.” Gen. Ortega Menaldo was the former head of military intelligence and a current Portillo advisor. We suspected him of crimes sufficient to warrant voiding his visa to the United States. We got the evidence, made the case, and secured the department’s approval to stamp “VOID” over his U.S. visa. It was headline news. As the government of Alfonso Portillo proved increasingly incompetent and corrupt, we reduced our expectations, and I began speaking more frequently and publicly about government corruption. Over tea on the residence veranda toward the end of my tour, I even confronted President Portillo. I told him that we were aware that his private secretary was considered his bagman. I had to ask my embassy colleague how to say “bagman” in Spanish. Portillo got the message.
“So,” he said, “I suppose you think I am stealing?”
“What else can I think, Mr. President?”
He said nothing. Portillo would eventually spend time in a U.S. prison for money laundering and returned to Guatemala in 2015 still a hero to many. For the remainder of my tour, he acted as if I had never spoken.
By the time I left Guatemala, the shift in media coverage left me feeling somewhat redeemed. When Richard and I arrived at Reagan National Airport on our final flight through Atlanta, we found our checked luggage missing. He later received his; I did not. In my suitcase I had packed all of my jewelry, my work clothes, and documents too important to send ahead. It was the first time I had consigned valuables to checked bags, because we were carrying our two Kenyan cats as our hand luggage. I lost an international collection of irreplaceable jewelry and our medical records. Was it retribution for pulling a visa? If so, it was worth it.
Don Ricardo turned back into Richard, and I turned back into an ordinary American woman. It was not easy. I had wondered before we left Guatemala what I would miss the most after six years of serving as an ambassador. Certainly not the armed escorts and men with guns stalking my garden; not even the fine house, terrific staff, or fully armored BMW—those came with a price. I missed my persona and the respect it brought. Now, like every other American woman regardless of age, I was called “girl,” “gal,” or “guy” and treated accordingly. In the State Department, I was not to be called at all. As I sought onward assignments after Guatemala, it became clear how deeply I had annoyed people in management.
“So, Pru wants to return from Glamourland,” said a human resources colleague at the start of a conversation about a job. I had forgotten about the photographs in Vanity Fair and Glamour, but others clearly had not.
“Why did you leak to the media that you had written to the secretary before the bombing?” asked another, evidently never wondering if that the rumor could be false. No one gave me direct feedback, but I felt I had embarrassed the department. I could understand anger when it came from Kenyans; I could not understand the chill when it came from career colleagues. The folks in management were not interested in supporting me, so I did my own job hunting, securing an assignment as dean of the School of Leadership and Management back at the Foreign Service Institute. It was perfect for me. I was back into training with supportive bosses, talented teams, and many leadership lessons.
In 2001 the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported the state of the State Department in a letter to newly inaugurated President George W. Bush: “The apparatus of U.S. foreign policy making and implementation that you have inherited is in a state of serious disrepair. The Department of State suffers from long-term mismanagement, antiquated equipment, and dilapidated and insecure facilities.” The memorandum noted:
Dysfunctional human resource policies resulting in workforce shortfalls, including a deficit of nearly 15 percent of Foreign Service officers.
Outdated communications and information management infrastructure, including obsolete classified networks in 92 percent of overseas posts.
Shabby and insecure facilities all over the world that frequently do not meet Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards. Serious overcrowding in nearly 25 percent of all posts, and substandard security in 88 percent of all embassies.
Inadequate authority for ambassadors to coordinate and oversee the other agencies and departments.
Bifurcated policymaking and budget management.
A professional culture predisposed against public outreach and engagement, undermining its public diplomacy effectiveness and its coordination with Congress and other agencies.2
Secretary of State Colin Powell vowed to do something about this. The Diplomatic Readiness program he proposed included a massive overseas construction program and a welcome purge of antiquated computers. Powell also made leadership training mandatory for all midlevel and newly promoted senior executives in the Foreign Service and Civil Service.
“My boss should take this course.” That was a comment I heard at every grade level, mid to senior. Other favorites: “They won’t let us.” “We can’t do that.” “No one understands us.” “Congress likes the military better than us.” “We have no constituents.” And worst of all, “You can’t measure diplomacy, so why set goals?” Creating positive change through teams focused on shared goals might work in the field, but in the policy establishment of Washington, the practice of leadership was anathema, no matter how eloquently the secretary waxed. It was not that anyone was against it; it was just not done. And while Secretary Powell urged people not to “be afraid to be the skunk at the picnic,” the message had little reinforcement. The Washington policy group planning to invade Iraq was small, secretive, and intolerant of any discussion about the merits of their proposed policies. “Do what you are told” was the order of the day, and everyone was getting in line. At the leadership seminars, speaker after senior career speaker also reminded people that Washington makes policy while the field just implements it, so do what you are told.
On the day that the United States invaded Iraq, I was taken aback to find Secretary Powell’s chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, coming to the session of a capstone seminar that dealt with policy dissent. “What are you doing here?” I asked with a smile. “Spying,” he cheerfully announced. I led the discussion of the range of options available for respectful dissent—from doing nothing to resigning—using Rwanda as the case study. Wilkerson gave me a passing grade, but I found the episode chilling.
I was just as frustrated by the disinterest in security issues among career colleagues just as our political leaders were declaring a global war on terrorism. At the Leadership and Management School, we conducted the first-ever statistically valid survey of crises confronting overseas employees. It proved the Foreign Service was a dangerous lifestyle. When I briefed the results at senior staff meetings around the department, they would wish me “good luck on your project” as if the dangers overseas had nothing to do with them. Like discussions of leadership, they enjoyed the topic well enough, but they were making policy. Their imperative was to get invited to the high-level meetings on their issues of choice. So good luck on your project.
As to the global war on terrorism, I was horrified. My government had chosen to ignore the al-Qaeda attacks in 1998 as too insignificant to review or change much of anything, and now, having failed to protect the homeland, it was going to war with Iraq and Afghanistan. My fellow American citizens and I were to go shopping as fearful, nonparticipant onlookers. Strategically, I saw the advantages of the war metaphor—it simplified our approach; it was politically and emotionally expedient; it permitted emergency measures; and it centralized command and control in the hands of a few. From my experience, it was also going to make the problem worse. The more people we killed in other countries, the more people in other countries would mistrust us, even hate us. To make war against what was a centuries’ old political tactic was downright kooky. What does success look like? No one asked me for my opinion, and I kept my mouth shut.
Instead I talked about leadership at every opportunity. I started telling and retelling the story of Nairobi complete with lessons learned. I redesigned the two-week mandatory seminar for ambassadors before they departed for their posts and inserted those lessons. I joined a leadership roundtable of midlevel colleagues brainstorming ways to bring leadership into the Foreign Service culture. I did this for three years.
In 2004 Secretary Condoleezza Rice replaced Colin Powell. Leadership was out; “transformational diplomacy” was in. Another team, another policy priority. We invited one of her inner circle to speak with senior staff at the Foreign Service Institute to define the term, and he responded, “I cannot tell you what transformational diplomacy is, but I can tell you that the Foreign Service can’t do it.” Oh, great, I thought. It was going to be that kind of political appointee crowd.
Time to go, I decided. The fit with the State Department and the Foreign Service was no longer a good one. With immense pride and no tears, I accepted the American flag handed to me at my retirement ceremony, the survivor flag from my office in Nairobi. I gave it to Richard. He beamed.
U.S. government foreign policies had mapped my life for forty years as a child, an adolescent, and later as a Foreign Service officer. From now on, Richard and I alone would determine where we lived, how long we stayed, with whom we would be friends, what we would say, and what we would do with our lives. U.S. foreign policies would no longer dominate—or so I thought. On my last day as a government employee, I found myself clutching tightly to my State Department identity badge before I handed it over to the human resources person. My final act was to ask a security guard to let me out of the building.