Joint State-USAID Press Briefing Ends In Mutual Incomprehension

Or, better yet, it ended due to the very different interests of the senior officials doing the briefing and the members of the press getting briefed.

This week's 'Special Briefing' was convened to refute a report in Foreign Policy magazine that claimed USAID programs in Iraq have been drastically affected by a recent reduction of embassy personnel there. Read the FP article here: State Department Outlines Dramatic Scale-Down of U.S. Presence in Iraq.

So, State and USAID spun up a couple senior officials to refute that report with facts and figures. But when they met the members of the press in the press correspondents room on December 18, it turned out the members of the press had no idea what it was the senior official were refuting.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Well, good afternoon, everybody, and thank you, , for having us here to correct what [the moderator of the briefing] accurately called “wildly inaccurate” stories out there about Iraq staffing. The story is that there is no story here. We adjust our staffing levels all around the world all the time, depending on circumstances, and it’s no secret that we’ve been concerned about the security situation in Iraq for some time, especially threats from our friends the Iranians and their proxies in Iraq.

-- snip --

SENIOR USAID OFFICIAL: Yeah, let me just add to that. For USAID, we think the current staffing levels are sufficient for the administration of our programs. And if they prove not to be, then we can consider augmenting our staff in-country with TDY support or through requesting new permanent positions. There’s – no staffing level is in stone, and so we’ll be considering them as we move forward. None of our programs have suspended or ceased over the last few months; on the contrary, they continue at pace, and we’re doing a wide range of activities throughout the country. We’re working to strengthen Iraqi governance, civil society, the economy, supporting the recovery of religious and ethnic minorities in the north that were targeted for genocide by ISIS, and we’re well positioned to respond to the needs of a changing political environment in Iraq.

We focus on decentralization and accountability of the state to its citizens for service provision and the election administration. And we support the development of civil society that strengthen engagements between government authorities and Iraqi citizens.

To date, the U.S. Government has programmed over $400 million focused on assisting religious and ethnic minorities, of which USAID had programmed 354 million. And we have obligated over 217 million in FY2018 funds for that end. And I’ll just leave it at that for now.

At that point someone in the press woke up.

QUESTION: Okay. So I missed this – these – whatever it is that you guys are trying to clarify.

QUESTION: Foreign Policy.

MODERATOR: Foreign Policy, is that what you said?

QUESTION: (Inaudible).

QUESTION: I didn’t see it, so I don’t know exactly what it said.

Oh, Foreign Policy, okay, gotcha.

Once they'd woken up to the purpose of the briefing, the members of the press next reflexively denied the truth of what they'd just been told.

QUESTION: But it’s no secret, though, that as the administration contemplates troop drawdowns and things like that, that – both in Iraq and in Afghanistan, the staffing levels of the embassies have gone down, right, or are you saying that that’s not true? Because it seems to me, just having been in both places and having seen what they were like when they were stood up in the Bush – both of them stood up in the Bush administration with the idea that Iraq was going to be the biggest embassy in the world. I mean, it’s nothing. It’s a shadow.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Of what?

QUESTION: The physical – the physical – the idea —

QUESTION: Of what it was and what it (inaudible).

QUESTION: The ambition to have it be the big – the biggest and the most staffed embassy in the world. I mean —

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: It is still the largest embassy in the Middle East, just in terms of U.S. direct hires alone, and that’s what the story was focused on. I’ll let you read the story itself, but as I said, the real story here is that we are making sure that we have got the right staff to do the work in front of them at the time. It’s not 2004, it’s not 2008. If it looked like 2008, this would be a very different staffing discussion right now. But Iraq in 2019 is very different. We had a different set of staff in 2008 compared to what we had in 2013. 2014, we cut right down to the bone as ISIS was 60 miles from the gates of Baghdad. Understandably, we had a different set of staff, again, in 2016 as ISIS was largely beaten back. And now we’ve got a different set of staff to face the challenges that we’ve got in front of us now. But it has nothing to do with military levels – and I’ll defer to DOD for the exact numbers there, but they’re not going down. Their partnership with the Iraqis is just as robust as ever. And so – and we are there, actually, largely in support of their activities as well as USAID’s activities and the things that the State Department is doing.

QUESTION: Well, so, can you give – recognizing, though, all these other circumstances, from its high point of staffing, how – what’s the decrease in the number of staff to now?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: I actually don’t have that number for what it was historically at some point in the past, but what I can say now is that all the sections and agencies believe that this is what they need to get the mission done, no more, no less. And as said, if they do feel that they need more for particular changing circumstances, they go to the ambassador and they ask for TDY support, or if it looks like it’s going to be more long-term, more – filling more permanent positions, because no staffing level, as said, is set in stone anywhere in the world.

I think the difference here is that this is the first time a staffing change has been done that required a notification to Congress, because that’s a new requirement as of —

MODERATOR: Yeah.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: — last year?

MODERATOR: Yeah, very recent.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: So that’s what you’re reading in the Foreign Policy story.

If at first you don't succeed at denying what you were just told, word it a little differently and try again.

QUESTION: Well, I was just wondering, are you disputing the IG report that came out and said that the staffing levels was hurting the mission’s ability to create its mission – to execute its mission? And then it also made reference to having a shortage of USAID officials on the ground for $1.16 billion of aid – about six expatriates. It’s my understanding that there’s maybe been a couple more since then, but that – that was a critical assessment, and it now seems like there’s even fewer following that critical assessment.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: I’m not disputing the report. I’m disputing everybody’s understanding of the report and the lack of context in it. That statement is correct for ordered departure. Ordered departure is not meant to be enough people. It’s not meant to be enough people because you’re only at totally non-essential staff. You’re only at emergency staffing levels. So I would have appreciated it if they had said, “During this temporary ordered departure, of course there are fewer staff than what we need,” but the people who really know how many people are needed to oversee USAID programs is USAID. And even we back here aren’t the experts; it’s the people in the field. So we look to them and we always did from the beginning: “You tell us exactly what you need, and we will do our best to try to make sure that that’s what you’ve got.”

MODERATOR: Do you have anything else to add to that?

SENIOR USAID OFFICIAL: Yeah, I mean, I’d just add that USAID works in hard places around the world and in the region, right, and that’s including places where you can’t have all the people you want on the ground. And look at Libya or look at Yemen, and those are places where USAID is capable of working very, very confidently in very challenging circumstances. Iraq is one of those places, and so we’re confident that we can do what we need to do there with the staffing that we’ve put forward.

And if that doesn't work, just make stuff up.

QUESTION: Yeah. I’d just say that you mentioned that was the case under ordered departure, but under this plan that’s beyond ordered departure, it’s still actually fewer numbers —

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Fewer than ordered departure?

QUESTION: — of personnel than ordered departure.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: That’s not true. That’s not true.

QUESTION: Doesn’t it go from 256 down?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: It’s just not true. I’m not going to talk about the numbers, but it’s not true. It is not below ordered departure at all.

Finally, one of the press got tired of the topic of the briefing and went fishing for something she could use against VP Pence.

MODERATOR: Carol, go ahead.

QUESTION: I just have a quick question on the $400 million in aid to religious minorities. Could you give us a breakdown, like how much for, say, Yezidis, how much for Christians, how much for any other groups? Could you slice and dice that a little bit for us, please?

SENIOR USAID OFFICIAL: Sure. I don’t have a full and accurate picture I can give you right here. I’d refer you to our website, and I can follow up with you as well directly with specific options. But it’s split between Yezidis, Christians, other religious and ethnic minorities (inaudible).

QUESTION: Can you just give us a general sense, though? Have you been doing more with Christians? Because that was a big push for this administration.

SENIOR USAID OFFICIAL: I’d have a hard time saying whether it’s more for one religious minority or another, and we’re not targeting specific people by religion. We’re targeting geographies.

QUESTION: So there isn’t a percentage allocated to each religion?

SENIOR USAID OFFICIAL: No, no, no, no. No, no, no, absolutely not.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: No, it’s geographical, if I may add, because I’ve seen a lot of these projects. And so if you’re looking in Bartella and Karemlesh and areas southwest of Erbil, you can’t say, “Well, sorry, this water can only be drunk by Christians or Yezidis and not Shabaks or anyone else.” I mean —

QUESTION: Well, why not? We used to do that here.

Annnnd, with that last remark the moderator finally banged the gong and ended the show.

MODERATOR: Oh, Jesus. All right. That’s the end. Thank you.