Information Wars. Richard Stengel
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by Russian spies. One assumption seems pretty intuitive: if you drank too much on a foreign trip, you were more likely to be a target of a Russian kompromat operation.
As a nominee, you also needed to be investigated by law enforcement, and for that you were assigned a “special investigator,” who, well, investigated you. The investigator would question your neighbors, your work colleagues, your elementary-school teachers, and ask them if you drink too much, if you use drugs, if you are abusive, if you are trustworthy, and, oh, if you are loyal to the country.
My investigator—let’s call him Mike—was a burly, no-nonsense former cop who seemed to want to get the job done with a minimum of hassle. My introduction to Mike came when he sent me an email telling me that he would be working on my investigation. His first email to me was about a late payment on a J.Crew credit card, and why my balance was past due.
Mike also asked for names of friends and colleagues whom he might contact. But then the investigator can also call people on his own. A few weeks later I got a worried late-night telephone call from a neighbor I hadn’t seen in months.
“Rick, did you do anything wrong?”
“No,” I said. “Why?”
“Because I got a call from law enforcement asking me whether I think you might be a spy or a foreign agent or whether you might be working for a terrorist organization.”
The Confirmation Process
At the time of my nomination, there were already dozens of nominees who had not been scheduled for a vote and dozens more who had gotten through various committees and were waiting for a vote from the Senate. Almost all nominations were voted on by what the Senate called “UC”—unanimous consent. The Senate had to confirm hundreds of political nominees every year, and if it took up each one individually for debate and a vote, it probably wouldn’t have time to get to any other business. “UC” simply meant that if no one objected to or put a hold on your nomination, it would go through via voice vote.
From the moment I was officially nominated, I was assigned a ground-floor office at the State Department. Just beyond the main elevators there are a couple of corridors with nondescript offices reserved for nominees. The idea is that the Senate wouldn’t look kindly on a nominee using her official office before she was confirmed, so you’re meant to make do with a temporary one. Mine was a small, dingy office with a tiny window that overlooked an alley. I wasn’t allowed to see my official office, and I had to be escorted anywhere I needed to go in the Building.
Pretty quickly, I began to suss out the idiosyncrasies of the State Department. I was besieged with emails, memorandums, and reports, and basically every one—every one—was way too long. I don’t mean an extra paragraph or page; I mean 3 to 5 to 10 times too long. There seemed to be some reward mechanism for writing long memos. It was as if people at State were paid by the word. There was also a process for everything, no matter how big or small, that always had to be followed. There was a process for nominees to meet the department, and there was a process for how I had to be escorted to my office. Oftentimes this process wasn’t written down anywhere but was part of a tradition known only by the foreign service.
The main way the department got you ready for confirmation hearings was by holding what were known as “murder boards.” Murder boards are practice runs for the hearing. You are put in a room like the hearing room, seated at a table up front, while a range of State Department officers pretend they are Senators and pepper you with possible questions and then critique your answers. In preparation for my murder board, I was given about a dozen comically large notebooks (we’re talking over 700 pages each) that covered everything from the origins of the Public Affairs Department to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1962.
It was like learning a new language. I’ve already mentioned that every bureau has an initial, but then every regional bureau also has an acronym: there’s EUR (European and Eurasian Affairs), NEA (Near Eastern Affairs), EAP (East Asian and Pacific Affairs), and SCA (South and Central Asian Affairs). On top of that, every functional bureau had an abbreviation: ECA (Educational and Cultural Affairs), INL (International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs), DRL (Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor), and on and on. And then individual programs had acronyms: IVLP (International Visitors Leadership Program), YALI (Young African Leadership Initiative), EUSIR (Fulbright European Union Scholar-in-Residence). People have entire conversations in acronyms, except for the occasional verb to connect the initials.
I struggled with what you might call governmentspeak, or Washingtonese. I had spent most of my life speaking like a journalist. It didn’t occur to me that I would have trouble transitioning to speak like someone in government. (Later I would joke that when I was a journalist, I didn’t know a whole lot and tried to make as much controversy as possible, but now that I’m in government, I know a lot more and try to make as little controversy as possible.) In fact, Washingtonese is a kind of anti-controversy speech. It’s full of euphemisms and indirection and the passive voice. My fallback was always, “Senator, I welcome that question, but I will have to get back to you on that.”
My guidance from H was useful: The hearing is pass/fail; you’re not graded on every question. The key is to give a “perception of readiness.” When you’re on safe ground—benefits to the taxpayer, jobs, prosperity, the flag—don’t hold back. And don’t be afraid to be dull—this is not the time to wheel out your bold proposal on income redistribution. You can use notes—but not too many! And remember the 80-20 rule—let the Senators speak for 80 percent of the time. And absolutely no joking.
I had to learn the structure and history of public diplomacy and the intricacies of the public diplomacy budget; the difference between 0.7 funding and ECE funds (don’t ask). There were 3,540 public diplomacy (PD) and public affairs (PA) positions. There were 189 public affairs offices abroad. Some 50,000 people participated in education-exchange programs in more than 160 countries. About 800,000 international students contributed almost $23 billion to the U.S. economy. And I had to always refer to foreign audiences, because the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (known as Smith-Mundt) still governed how public diplomacy operated, and it prohibited the distribution of State Department–produced material in the physical United States. The law was not only pre-internet; it was pre–color TV.
Each nominee had the option of reading an opening statement, and everyone does so. I worked on mine for a few weeks. I talked about why I cared about public service; mentioned my father, who would have been very proud; and talked a little about my work with Nelson Mandela. When I was happy with my draft, I was instructed to share it with State and H, which would then offer comments and suggestions. This was my first experience of the State “clearance process” and the group culture of the foreign service. H and L (the legal department) had a few factual suggestions. But what I was taken aback by was that foreign service officers I did not know blithely deleted whole paragraphs and added new ones—in my own voice—without even informing me.
By the time the hearing came around, I felt ready. I won’t bore you with my entire written statement, except to note that the theme that I talked about at the top was the theme that would be the overwhelming focus of what I did during my three years at State. And that was the rise of disinformation, how that was facilitated by social media, and what we needed to do about it:
Every day all over the world, there is a great global debate going on. It is about the nature of freedom and fairness, democracy and justice. It is happening in all the traditional ways, in coffee shops and on street corners, but it is also taking place on the new platforms of social media. The reach, the scale, the speed of that debate are like nothing before in history. I have been in that debate all of my life. America has to be in that debate. We need to lead it. And we cannot rest on our laurels. Every minute, there are attacks and misstatements about America and American foreign policy that cannot be left to stand. Social media is a tool that can be used for good or ill. It is a powerful medium for truth, but it is an equally powerful medium for falsehood. My Senator from long ago, the great Pat Moynihan, used to say, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.” Well, today, more and more, people feel entitled to their own