Video Transcript

Deputy Chief of Mission—Thomas D. Boyatt

I enjoyed being a DCM more than any other post I had in the Foreign Service.  I enjoyed it more than being an ambassador, and I was an ambassador twice and I was charge once, so I spent a lot of time as the chief of mission.  But being DCM was the most fun.  And the reason was, when you are DCM you are still one of the troops.  When you become an ambassador, kind of a steel wall falls down.  Nobody just drops in to see you.  It’s very hard to have a bull session when you are the ambassador.  So from a human point of view I liked being DCM better.  With respect to the position of the DCM in an embassy, there is a lot of truth to the adage that the DCM does what the ambassador tells him to do.  But generally there’s a division of responsibilities which nine times out of 10 involves the DCM being responsible, like the executive officer in a military organization, for the running of the organization.  So that all of the sort of routine things happen efficiently, quietly and effectively, so that the old man doesn’t have to worry about them, and can get on with what he has to do, which usually involves stratospheric-level contacts with heads of state, and with senior people back in Washington.  So often the way it breaks down is the ambassador deals with policy and the DCM deals with everything else.  But there are a lot of ambassadors, in particular the current ambassadors, and particularly in more recent times, who involve the DCMs a lot in the policy aspects of things, so that the DCM becomes the alter-ego of the ambassador, not just on the organization and management side but on the policy side as well.

The DCM has to protect the ambassador from a lot of ugly stuff.  Embassies are like small towns, and if you have medium or large size embassies, you have that many human beings there, there are going to be bad things that happen – ugly, messy things.  And it’s the DCM’s job if possible to resolve all of that in a way that generates the least damage.  It’s not always possible, but often it is.  Somebody just quietly gets transferred.  The person who makes that happen is the DCM.