Washington agencies, it would seem that full control of the content of communications should extend only to telegrams and that no effort should be made to extend such control to informal official correspondence.

In the case of civilian agency representatives over whose activities the chief of the diplomatic mission is given administrative control only, that is, in effect, the right to use the suspensory veto, he will require authority to exercise administrative control over communications in order that he may exercise administrative control over activities. Merely to furnish him with copies of communications already sent could frequently preclude the exercise of such administrative control.

It would be expected that in practice an administrative arrangement would usually be worked out so that little control would in fact be exercised over communications dealing with purely technical and operational matters. The existence of authority to control would assure the carrying out of any arrangement made.

With reference to military communications, particularly in the present emergency, a special situation exists. Full control by the ambassador is for a variety of reasons impracticable in many instances. Nevertheless, the military representatives overseas should generally be held responsible for obtaining policy guidance from the chief of the diplomatic mission; in turn they should keep him fully informed with respect to the content of military communications that might have a bearing on subjects in which he is or might be interested. Military communications dealing with purely operational matters should be handled through military channels. Borderline cases should be treated as dealing with policy matters.

In general, the essence of the entire problem of communications control appears to be that mere physical possession of the facilities should not be utilized as a means for securing or exerting a degree of administrative or substantive control not otherwise recognized and accepted as appropriate. Violations of this obvious principle are almost inevitably detrimental to friendly and cooperative agency relationships. On the other hand, there appears to be general recognition that physical possession of communication facilities may appropriately be used as a means of channeling the flow of information and thereby keeping the diplomatic missions and the Department of State continuously informed, thus facilitating their functions of review and coordination.

Conclusions

1. The necessities of military representation appear to require the assignment of military staffs abroad. The existing organizational

relationships between the military groups and the diplomatic missions at the posts abroad appear for the most part to be stable and satisfactory.

2. Country missions of the Economic Cooperation Administration should be brought into a closer relationship to the diplomatic missions than has obtained in the past, and should be under the authority of the chiefs of diplomatic missions at least to the same extent as the military aid missions. Some variation in pattern from country to country will be necessary and should be accepted; in the case of those countries with respect to which the Economic Cooperation Administration and the Department of State are able to agree, or the President so directs, there should be full consolidation under the ambassador, with transfer of administrative funds accordingly to the Department of State. The Economic Cooperation Administration should continue to be responsible for defending the estimates and authorizing expenditures in detail for personnel engaged in its work abroad, and for nominating any personnel to be appointed for duty abroad on its behalf by the Department of State.

3. Many of the interests of the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor can appropriately be met abroad by personnel who are fully under the permanent jurisdiction of the Department of State; other and more specialized interests should be met by the nomination of qualified individuals for temporary duty abroad under the Department of State with the expectation of eventual return to the nominating agency. The existing arrangements for Treasury attachés appear to be working well, but in the interest of consistency it would seem desirable for those attachés to be nominated to the Department of State for appointment for their periods of duty abroad. In general, we believe that all agencies with specialized requirements for representation abroad should be permitted to detail their own employees for such service, but that ordinarily the process should consist of nominating the employees to the Department of State for temporary appointment during the period of duty abroad. The agencies requiring the specialized work abroad should be responsible for securing the necessary funds and for making such transfers of funds to the Department of State as are necessary to finance appropri ate arrangements.

4. To the extent that there is permanent or temporary integration of other staffs into the diplomatic missions, questions as to the authority and responsibility of the ambassador for supervision and coordination will be largely resolved. Where independent staffs remain, there should be full recognition of the leadership and coordination functions of the ambassador as representative of the President.

5. The problem of communications control likewise will tend to disappear to the extent that there is permanent or temporary integration of other staffs into the diplomatic missions under the administrative authority of the ambassador. But to the extent that the autonomy of agency representatives abroad is deliberately maintained, freedom of communication between the agency, and its representatives is an essential part of that autonomy and should at most be subject to substantive control in the nature of the suspensory veto.

CHAPTER VIII

PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION FOR OVERSEAS CIVILIAN STAFFS

Statement of the Problem

Foreign affairs programs, even those operating under traditional labels, have come to represent essentially new fields of activity for the Government, requiring staffs possessed of high levels of specialization, experience, and motivation. Such staffs are always difficult to recruit. It is equally difficult to retrain and newly motivate existing staffs that have been accustomed to programs of lesser complexity and slower pace. It is especially difficult to recruit and to retain adequate staffs for service abroad in a period of full employment and manpower shortages, when alternative competing opportunities of great attractiveness are available at home to the most desirable prospective employees.

Requirements for overseas positions must almost universally be higher than for comparable jobs in the United States, because almost every staff member must be capable of sharing in the representation of his country and able to work effectively in strange environments, frequently across a language barrier and always across some cultural distance. The number of qualified people who not only meet these special standards but are also willing to undertake a tour of duty overseas is limited. The number of such qualified persons might nevertheless be fully adequate if the method of recruitment were not so unfamiliar to many citizens and so complex that many prospective employees with high qualifications are lost.

The past decade has been characterized by a great expansion of overseas staffs, first during the war period, with a sudden but limited contraction at the end of the war, followed quickly by another expansion resulting from the inauguration of new programs. The new decade begins with the prospect of continuing importance for our overseas programs; even if size of staff is foreseen as leveling off, there is in sight no decrease in urgency, complexity, or difficulty of assignments.

The exigencies of the wartime programs brought a general suspension of many restrictions in the established personnel systems. As noted in chapter II, the end of the war saw the enactment of the Foreign Service Act of 1946, which made limited concessions to some of the new patterns of foreign affairs programs but quite understand

ably did not anticipate the full scope of responsibilities overseas which the United States would assume in the postwar world. As a result, during the past 3 years, the legislation for new programs has brought new exceptions in personnel administration (notably in the Economic Cooperation Administration and the point-4 programs), while strong criticism has been directed at the established systems, especially in the reports of the Hoover Commission.

The crucial role of personnel administration in the new foreign affairs programs is most clearly demonstrated in the establishment and the operations of the Economic Cooperation Administration. One of the important factors in the decision to conduct the foreign economic program through a new agency was the widely held judgment that such an agency, with its accompanying greater freedom in personnel policy, could more quickly and more effectively assemble the kind of staff needed for an action program of great urgency, complexity, and novelty.

The assumption that the United States will continue to maintain overseas large civilian staffs engaged in the execution of urgent, complex, and novel programs of great difficulty poses the central problem of personnel administration in foreign affairs.

The problem is to determine the kind of personnel administration that is needed for the recruitment and retention of the overseas civilian staffs essential to the foreign affairs programs.

BACKGROUND AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The transformation of prewar foreign affairs activities into postwar assignments of greater range and difficulty, and the emergence of large new programs, as noted in the preceding chapters, have meant that the personnel needs of overseas programs have greatly outrun the machinery for personnel administration which was devised for simpler conditions. This lag in the development of personnel policies suited to the greatly increased overseas staffing requirements is the product of a variety of factors: the assumption that these new demands are of an “emergency" character, and overseas activities will soon return to "normalcy"; the related conclusion that the new problems can best be met by extemporized solutions of limited scope; and the more general fact that statutory changes in personnel policies represent difficult and troublesome legislative ventures.

Patterns of overseas personnel administration

The result of the lag has been the growth of a patchwork of personnel administration for overseas staffs, a patchwork composed of