Ten Things I Learned At The Retirement Seminar

#1 - It's good to have income

#2 - It's good to be healthy

#3 - After 20 or so years in, your pension will have a cash-equivalent present value of around $1 million. Seriously.

#4 - The Thrift Savings Plan is the best thing to come out of Congress since Joe 'Double Barrel' Biden

#5 - There are all sorts of ways to minimize post-retirement taxation

#6 - There are also all sorts of ways to maximize inheritances to children

#7 - For example, financial gifts are not income and therefore not taxable to the recipient
  
#8 - I will postpone retirement for a few years longer than I'd been thinking (see #1)   

#9 - When I finally go, I think I'll use my lifetime federal fellowship to pursue a Ph.D

and,

#10 - Judging by the hundreds of people in the seminar, State will need a lot of new hires in a few years.


I'm not kidding about the hundreds of people. The sheer size of the crowd came as a shock. What's more, I think that over the years I may have worked for, or worked with, traveled with, or just met in passing, about half of them.

It was exactly the way I imagine a 30th High School reunion would be. There were some people I wanted to see and catch up with, a few I knew better than to start a conversation with, and many that I dodged because, while I sort of remembered them, I could not recall their names and wanted to avoid an awkward "oh, hi, how are you ... whoever you are ... and how have you been since we met in ... wherever it was?" moment.

One last retirement thing. After a few days of absorbing financial planning advice, I think that "Revocable Trust" would make an excellent title for my memoirs.

Happy Washington's Birthday (Four Days Early)

Happy Washington's Birthday, as the federal holiday that was established for this day by law is officially known (and not so-called 'President's Day,' thank you very much), and which this year falls four days ahead of George Washington's actual birthday on February 22.

The federal government does not commemorate the birthday of our first President on the anniversary of his birth because Congress, back in 1968, fixed most federal holidays on Mondays. They did that in order to increase government efficiency create three-day weekends and reduce administrative expenses inspire government employees to take leave on Federal Fridays.

Okay. I appreciate having a Monday off as much as the next federal worker. But I still plan to commemorate the occasion with a cannon salute on the 22nd, the way Americans did it back in the day. I would go totally Old School and add a bonfire and fire works, except that would be asking too much of the watered-down modern day patriotism of my local Fairfax County authorities.

I Plan to Sequester Myself Near a River

I suppose I should be concerned by this panic-inducing headline in the WaPo's Federal Diary: Furloughs likely would exceed 1 million; feds feel ‘undervalued, unappreciated’!!! It all sounds very dire, and needs a lot of exclamation points.

I've seen the official Department notice, so I know the possibility of unpaid furloughs is quite real. And yet, it rolls off me like water off a duck's back brown trout. Preferably a trout in the Rose River, certainly in a river somewhere in the Shenandoah Valley.  

Ever since I enrolled in the Department's retirement seminar I have adopted a whole new laid-back vibe. I won't actually retire for a few more years, and I won't stop working even after that, but the mere act of planning for retirement has me feeling downright giddy. Undervalued and unappreciated? Speak for yourself, WaPo. Personally, I'm feeling pretty good.

Spending a couple weeks fishing sounds like a great alternative to the daily grind. My fellow feds have my sympathy, and I know that furloughs will cause real hardships and disruptions to families. But at least I won't be contributing to the misery.

New Leadership For DS

Yeah, I'm happy!

I hear that there were some other high-level comings and goings today at the State Department, but the one I've been waiting for finally became official this afternoon when the DS website was updated:

Gregory B. Starr was sworn in February 1, 2013 as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security and Director of the Diplomatic Security Service. Mr. Starr also will serve as acting Assistant Secretary until further notice.

So the leadership vacuum that existed after the departure last December of Assistant Secretary Boswell and the top two levels of DSS officials below him has now ended. And in what is probably the best possible way, by bringing back the exceptionally well-regarded officer who had previously been the P/DAS and acting Assistant Secretary of State for DS from October 2007 to July 2008 before becoming the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security, a position he vacated last month.

Greg Starr joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1980, and served as Regional Security Officer (RSO) in Israel, Tunisia, Senegal and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as in various senior headquarters assignments.

He is the obvious choice to bring DSS through a rough period of reconstruction and change. If he isn't appointed the permanent Assistant Secretary right away, I will be very surprised.

Ankara's Security Upgrades Prevented Greater Loss

Security door blown out of concrete wall

The New York Times had good coverage of today's tragic attack in Ankara which took the life of one of the embassy's local guards:

News photographs of the explosion site showed extensive damage to a squat one-story building just inside the compound where visitors are checked by security guards and an X-ray machine. Turkish news media said preliminary investigations by security officials said the bomber might have detonated a suicide belt prematurely as he was going through security controls. NTV, a private television broadcaster, said embassy security cameras had shown the assailant entering and panicking as he walked through an X-ray machine.

The other fatality in the blast was identified as Mustafa Akarsu, 47, one of the Turkish security guards at the embassy.

That "squat one-story building" is shown in the photo above. Notice that the building's heavy steel security door was blown partly out of the surrounding concrete wall by the force of the blast, and that the adjacent security windows are damaged but still intact. That tells the story - the hardened building in which visitors are screened contained the bomb blast, preventing what would most likely have been greater loss of life and injuries to embassy employees and visitors.

The State Department spokeswoman noted just that in her remarks quoted in the WaPo:

“The level of security protection at our facility in Ankara ensured that there were not significantly more deaths and injuries than there could have been,” Nuland told reporters in Washington.

“This is one of the compounds where we have been making steady security upgrades over the last decade,” Nuland said. “And in fact, the attack was at one of the exterior compound access sites. So it was far from the main building, and it was a result of the way that was hardened that we only lost the one local security guard. And in fact, there were other security guards inside the building behind the glass who were only shaken up by this.”

It will be no consolation to the family and friends of Mustafa Akarsu, but the Department can take some satisfaction from knowing that its security upgrades minimized the damage today.

Most Eyebrow-Raising Headline Of the Week

  

"Iran unveils new finger amputating machine for punishing thieves"

A Little Bit Of History Repeating

Consumer Notice: This post is certified 100% free of Matters of Official Concern that are not referenced from publicly available sources of information.

I've just been reading the last chapter in the Diplomatic Security Service's institutional history, which covers the period from the end of the Cold War to the restructuring of DSS into its current organizational form. If anyone in Washington is looking for some perspective on the present, post-Benghazi, crisis in overseas security, I highly recommend reading up on those olden days.

Nothing going on now in response to the Benghazi attack is new, not by any means. Deep cuts in security budgets, reduction of MSG Detachments, tenant agencies considering relocating outside of diplomatic premises in order to get adequate security? Terrorist attacks, review boards,  interagency security assessment teams? Battles with Congress and the Administration over appropriations for new overseas security programs and personnel? We have been there before, most recently in the 1990s.

Reading the history, it's striking how things never really change much. The Assistant Secretary for DS during most of the '90s was none other than Eric J. Boswell, then on his first time around in DS. He found his bureau's budget had been cut back so far that staff shortages left DS “unable to meet our most critical requirements.” Things had gotten so bad by early 1997 that Boswell told the Acting Under Secretary of State for Management that “asking this Bureau to take further reductions … is irresponsible and inconsistent with the intent of Congress.”

And who was the Under Secretary for Management back in that bygone era? Why, Patrick F. Kennedy, of course. Hasn't he always been? At least, I'm having a hard time remembering the last time anyone else held that job.

Back then, as again today, we had some tenant agencies who looked at State's sparse security budget and wondered if they couldn't find more secure facilities if they struck out on their own.

The Department of Defense became highly critical of the cuts to DS. With many military attachés and other military personnel working in U.S. embassies across the globe, the Department of Defense complained that the Department of State “unilaterally” decided to set aside physical security standards when it opened new embassies in the former Soviet republics, the former Yugoslav republics, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Also, Department of Defense officials disliked the fact that the Department of State had withdrawn Marine Security Guard (MSG) units from several posts, and had not assigned MSG detachments to many of the new embassies. The Department of Defense made clear to the Department of State that it was considering three options: “weigh[ing] the risk of operating in less than secure facilities, choosing not to locate in the host country, or, with DOS approval, constructing a DOD facility.” - History of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security of the United States Department of State, page 345

After the 1998 embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the Department sent out interagency security assessment teams to look at selected high-threat posts and make urgent security upgrade recommendations. Sound familiar?

The assessment effort was extensive, with each team led by a DS officer and including members from DOD and several other agencies, as well as a specialist from State's Foreign Buildings Operations office. The teams visited 27 posts over the course of about one month and made many good actionable recommendations, including the immediate relocation of operations in Qatar and Dushanbe. But their most significant product was this observation:

In summarizing the ESATs’ [Embassy Security Assessment Teams] findings to Under Secretary Cohen, DS officials confessed that most of the 27 embassies required replacement facilities and that there were limits to what the United States could do to improve existing facilities.

I think that is the truest thing I have ever heard, or will ever hear, from all the interagency security assessment teams past and future. And I like the honest 'bucket of cold water' effect of confessing that we are stuck with the embassy facilities we have until they get replaced. I wonder if anyone will ever say something similarly candid to the Benghazi ARB follow-up bodies that the Department is forming now?

Bottom line: you can harden or reinforce an existing building up to its physical limits, but no further. If you want to ensure an office building can withstand a sustained ground attack, or a Nairobi-sized truck bomb, there is no substitute for constructing one expressly for that purpose. Even applying loads of money, assuming we have it, will not change that reality.

The Crowe ARB report on the Dar and Nairobi attacks was published in an unclassified version, and Admiral Crowe proceeded to light a fire under Congress and the Administration, resulting in an unprecedented level of new overseas security funding:

For its intensified effort, DS received the necessary money from Congress and support from senior Clinton Administration officials. Supplemental funding from Congress not only funded the Surveillance Detection Program and security upgrades at U.S. embassies, it also enabled DS to hire 200 new Special Agents ... 34 new technical security specialists, and 20 new couriers. The hires expanded DS by one-third, and the Bureau numbered more than 1,000. It also increased DS’s presence at overseas posts from 270 people to more than 400 ... The Department reinvigorated the long understaffed Mobile Training Teams and advised all Chiefs of Mission to “personally participate” in as many training sessions as possible. In his 1999 State of the Union message, President Clinton declared diplomatic security a national priority, and asked the nation to give U.S. diplomats the “support, the safest possible workplaces, and the resources they need so that America can lead.” - History of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security of the United States Department of State, page 355

The biggest of the Crowe Commission's recommendations was a new security-based construction program that targets the most vulnerable embassy facilities for expedited replacement:

The Crowe Commission’s proposal for a capital building program for the Department of State reflected Washington’s new appreciation of the terrorist threat. The Commission estimated that the sustained building program for new U.S. embassies would require $1 billion per year for 10 years, and an additional $400 million per year for security upgrades and new security personnel. The Clinton Administration had already asked for $3 billion over 5 years to rebuild embassies overseas, but budget caps prevented the Department from asking for more. Secretary Albright also tried to convince a hostile Congress to lock in a commitment for the five-year building program. Admiral Crowe now criticized Congress and the Department of State. He said that the Department was being “intimidated by Congress,” and he warned Congress not to appear as if it was “putting money in front of lives on the priority list.” By the summer of 1999, the Clinton Administration increased its request for FY 2000 by another $264 million, and by $150 million a year for the following 4 years. In an attempt to demonstrate the national commitment to security that the Crowe Commission had called for, Congress approved $1.4 billion for embassy security in 2000, more than what the Clinton Administration had requested. - History of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security of the United States Department of State, page 359

Well played, Admiral Crowe, well played.

And you, Ambassador Pickering, did you see how he did that? First taunt the Administration into asking for more resources than it had planned to do, then threaten Congress with political blackmail if they withhold anything, and in the end they'll appropriate even more new construction money than the $2.4 billion you recommended in your ARB report. Sweet!