Diplomatic conscience

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The posthumous award given to humanitarian diplomat Hiram "Harry" Bingham is part of a 34-year-old American Foreign Service Association tradition of recognizing "constructive dissent" by members of the diplomatic corps. Award winners are those "who have demonstrated the courage to challenge the system from within, no matter the issue or the consequences of their actions."

The annual awards ceremony, however, is only part of a generation-old State Department effort to open up channels of communication with employees who disagree with official policy. Since 1971, Foreign Service officers have been allowed to use the department's "Dissent Channel" to make their case directly to the secretary of state and other senior officials. No other major agency within the federal government allows its personnel to make their views heard — without retaliation or restriction — through such direct access to high-ranking policymakers.

Thirty-one years ago the Foreign Affairs Manual, holy writ for U.S. diplomats, was revised to give Foreign Service officers the explicit freedom to dissent. Since that time, the Dissent Channel has been used some 250 times. The dissenting opinions sometimes have been expressed using embassy telegrams, at other times by messages sent directly to the secretary of state or by appending a footnote on interagency intelligence assessments. Once the channel has been used, the secretary of state or other senior policymakers have to provide a prompt written response to the dissenting cable or opinion that includes an honest assessment of whether the views expressed by the staff member deserve to be incorporated into U.S. policy. If it is determined that they do not, the response must include a refutation of the dissent expressed.

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Read this Insight Magazine article if you don't know about Harry Bingham. I stumbled across it during some family history research (not related, as far as I know). It's quite revealing as regards U.S. official position on the Jews in Nazi Germany, and the efforts of one diplomat to rescue several hundreds of them at risk to his career and life.

I hadn't even heard of the "Dissent Channel", and I wonder how open it is today.

We are sorely short on Harry Binghams these days (although the article says there were three dozen dissenting messages following the 9/11 attacks), so maybe we don't need it any more. Or maybe it's just there to placate the dissenters.