Video Transcript

Ambassador—Thomas R. Pickering

An ambassador of course represents the President to the leader of a foreign country.  And in that regard he is responsible for all U.S. government relations with the entire government of a foreign country.  And he must speak for the United States publicly and privately.  And he must report on what is happening in that country, and what the foreign government says to him.  A critically important part of the ambassador’s role is to provide his advice to the U.S. Government on policy and changes in policy that are necessary.  But he must also become the mayor of the American community in an informal way, administer and run the embassy – including sometimes up to 30 U.S. Government departments and agencies represented in the embassy.  Make sure all of their work is coordinated, and make sure in fact that he pays personal attention to both the internal problems in operating an embassy, the management issues, whether they are questions of personnel, the foreign employees of the embassy who are critically important to our success, the living conditions of the employees, to all sorts of issues that have to do with what is currently on the plate with the foreign government.  So I dealt with everything from, in Russia the rent we paid for the ambassador’s residence, which had become a problem, to critically large issues, like writing President Clinton a short telegram before he came on a visit, to say, “Mr. President, your visit is important for the following three reasons.  Please keep these in mind.  And (obviously) here are the ways in which those particular issues, from our perspective out here, ought to be addressed.” You don’t write the President very often as an ambassador, but the few times that you do have to be done in precisely the right way.  And of course the ambassador personally, and through a staff, large or small, must keep all of Washington officially informed about what is happening in the country.  And those are the highlights.  There are many, many other facets of the job.