Video Transcript

Frank Almaguer—Example of Excellence:

Highlight

I was informed that I would be nominated to be ambassador in early October 1998.  Two weeks later, Honduras was hit by the worst hurricane ever recorded in Central America in the 20th century, Hurricane Mitch.  The devastation was absolute.  95% of the bridges of the country disappeared overnight, the city of Tegucigalpa was flooded.  Human casualties were enormous, though not as high as one would’ve anticipated given the devastation.  The international community responded fairly quickly with emergency aid.  But a commitment was made by the international community – led by the United States, but including the Europeans, the Japanese, the World Bank, the IDB, and others – to help reconstruct, not only reconstruct, but take this as an opportunity to transform Honduras.  So when I landed in Honduras as the newly minted U.S. Ambassador, I quickly found that my experiences in the USAID arena, plus the leadership that comes naturally with the role of ambassador, led me to assume a major role in guiding the reconstruction and transformation effort in Honduras.  I must say this was unique for all of the players.  Number one, not only did we have to coordinate all of the various U.S. entities that were engaged – and we’re talking almost a billion dollars worth of U.S. assistance – but also over a billion and a half dollars from the variety of international actors who are engaged.  And again bringing them all to be partners and to work together rather than in isolation, I think was one of the most fascinating challenges that I’ve ever experienced.  And obviously being ambassador gave me a bit of a “bully pulpit,” if you will.  And then thirdly, engaging the Honduran government in this process, because to some degree they were a bit concerned that the foreign community was coming in and determining what would be good for them – write them out of the decision making process.  Quite the contrary.  We wanted them very much involved, because if this is going to be a transformation, not just a reconstruction, you have to work very closely with the Honduran authorities.  And so I found that a significant portion of my time, particularly the first year and a half as ambassador, was dedicated to this effort.  And I must say I think it was a very successful effort.

Low point

The Administrator of USAID asked me to become the Director of Personnel, in effect the deputy general of the USAID Foreign Service.  It was clearly a wonderful assignment, a wonderful opportunity, and I enjoyed most aspects of it.  However, in 1996, as a result of a major reduction in the foreign aid appropriations, USAID was forced to engage in a reduction in force, and it fell upon me to manage a “RIF.”  And I think over those months, in which we were trying to carry out such a RIF, and the human impact it would have and the institutional impact it would have.  And it was a tremendous burden.  In the end, two hundred USAID employees were let go – 100 from the Foreign Service and 100 from the Civil Service.  While I was pleased at the methodology that we used to carry it out, and that we were transparent and followed guidance that we had laid out for the employees quite clearly.  Number 1, it was very painful.  People who had successful careers were all of a sudden being told that “unfortunately we can no longer continue to employ your services.”  It was devastating.  I personally saw to it that I called every one of the Foreign Service employees overseas to let them know before they got the word officially.  And then we engaged in an effort to place them in other assignments.  Many if not most, wound up in some kind of post-USAID career that was satisfying to them.  But it left a lingering scar at USAID that in my opinion has not allowed USAID to fully recover from this process.  And while I was involved, and to some degree, I am proud of the contribution that I made to a process, it was a process I wish we had never had to carry out.

Vignette

One of the biggest differences for many people who experience the State side of the foreign affairs business is that State manages, or used to manage, relatively small sums of money related to the operation of an embassy – whereas in the case of USAID, chances are that the typical AID officer is managing millions of dollars in one programmatic activity or another.  Most of my career, I was more the manager than the project or the technical executioner.  Nevertheless, in the capacity of the manager I had to learn not only the skills of managing the multiple millions of resources, but also ensuring that we could account to the overseers, not just on the executive side, but also the legislative branch and be able to measure results – which continues to be one of the greatest challenges facing USAID, in part because development is a long term process. 

In the case of Panama, for example, where I served early in my career as a Deputy Mission Director, one of our clear objectives was, one, development of their  capacity to manage the Canal and the Canal area.  Secondly, to help protect the forest cover that surrounds the Canal.  Why?  Because the Panama Canal depends on fresh water.  When the Panamanians assumed sovereignty over the area they faced a great deal of pressure from its population to move into fairly virgin land adjacent to the Canal.  We had to work with the Panamanians to show them the benefits of retaining the area around the Canal as relatively untapped, unused land to protect the watershed.  So, many of the projects that we developed were on the one hand projects to protect the watershed, but on the other hand, housing projects and other activities in the urban areas to discourage the population from migrating to this new zone in Panama.  And it was exciting, because it linked development with a real U.S. foreign policy objective.

Reflection

There have been many changes.  The first thing that comes to mind is the obvious aspect of quick communication from anywhere in the world.  It used to be that Foreign Service Officers would go overseas – from the ambassador down to the various agencies – and would have true autonomy.  And periodically you would send reports back to Washington and get guidance accordingly.  Towards the tail end of my career, telephones and particularly e-mail just transformed the autonomy in the field to the point where almost every activity, every action, would require some kind of cross check with headquarters.  This is particularly true for Latin America, where we’re in the same time zone as America.  I’m assuming that our colleagues in India and other parts of Asia had an easier time of dealing with Washington, because of the time change.  That’s one element of it.  The second element, related to communication, is the fact that, whatever happens in any one of our countries is instantly known by a CNN – the CNN effect – which puts us in a more complex position of having to articulate for the Washington consumers the more in-depth analysis of the issue that’s making headlines through the public media.  The third element that comes to mind is that when I first went overseas, you had State Department as the overwhelming presence at any one post.  Depending on the nature of the country, and obviously the countries that I went to tended to be developing countries, you had a fairly large USAID mission, a significant Peace Corps presence and then maybe a small scattering of other federal agencies.  By the time I became ambassador, by the time I left Honduras, we had 22 federal agencies, each one of them claiming a piece of the foreign affairs action.  And one of the biggest challenges facing an ambassador today is not just simply exercising his role or her role, as the President’s representative, but giving guidance to a variety of federal agencies, many of which are not used to this concept of an ambassador who represents the President, and who, therefore, must guide the policy of each and every agency in the country.  What I discovered is that one had to do a lot of diplomatic interventions, and diplomacy exchanges, not with just the local officials, but also with headquarters of the so many federal agencies back in Washington.