When Senator Collins states she holds Ambassador Rice responsible for the bombings in 1998 when she was Assistant Secretary of African Affairs, it is like saying the current Assistant Secretary of African Affairs should be held responsible for the attacks in Benghazi.
The lack of security of the consulates across Africa has a long history. Much of it is due to lack of funding and it is the Republicans with the most significant insults to the funding issue and the poor security to our consulates. At least that is according to a highly regarded former ambassador.
The African continent has been a victim of one kind of rebel group or another for decades, since guns were invented. So, the reality violence against American embassies and consulates becomes reality is not new to our State Department.
The one person with a great deal of credibility who spoke to the lack of security in Nairobi was Ambassador Bushnell. She has an extensive career in foreign relations. She fought for the stability of Rwanda before the genocide and continued to fight to stop it once it began. She was in Kenya when the dual bombing took place. It was her point of view the embassy was not secure, but, as noted below that was nothing the USA concerned itself with.
JGH: There seems to be such a fine line (click here) between the incredible
need for personal diplomacy and the safety of Foreign Service officers. How can it be defined?
PB: It comes down to defining what we, as a country, stand for.
I have not seen that defined either by the current administration or by
our presidential candidates. The lack of an articulation of the values
on which we base our foreign policy makes it difficult to rationalize
decisions, including the security risks. I do not think that fighting terrorists is a value; it may be an imperative, but that is different. If it is
a world at peace we are seeking, then we would likely be creating a
different range of policies and strategies. For example, if the U.S.
seriously articulated the value of peace in the world, we could create
a range of strategies to have diplomats promote peacemakers, rather
than relying so heavily on our military to train warriors, as we are
doing now. Without a definition of what we stand for as a country, it
is hard to create coherent policies or correctly balance the need for
safety and outreach in a way people can understand.
JGH: Have we learned anything, as a country or as a State
Department, in the decade since the bombing?
PB: As an organization, we have learned a lot. I think Aug. 7,
1998, was the State Department’s 9/11. I know that ambassadors
and employees are far less likely to complain about security restrictions. One of the differences that the East Africa bombings created was a shift in attitude about the responsibility of department leadership —
from the idea that our leadership doesn’t owe us anything because we
choose to be at a post, to: By God, they do owe us something because
we have seen colleagues die and we could die, too.
As a country, unfortunately, we didn’t really pay any attention to
the bombings in East Africa. That changed, of course, on Sept. 11,
2001.
Former Ambassador Bushnell also has an extensive oral history of her life online. The excerpts regarding her life as Ambassador at the time of the dual bombings is below:
Q: When it's done by faxes and e-mail, yeah. (click here)
BUSHNELL: Right. You may remember Newt Gingrich and the Congress closed the federal government a couple of times. Agencies were starved of funding across the board. Needless to say, there was no money for security. Funding provided in the aftermath of the bombing of our embassy in Beirut in the '80 that created new building standards for embassies and brought in greater numbers of diplomatic security officer dried up.
As an answer to lack of funding, State Department stopped talking about need. For example, when we had inadequate staff to fill positions, State eliminated the positions, so we no longer can talk about the need. If there's no money for security, then let's not talk about security needs. The fact of increasing concern at the embassy about crime and violence was irrelevant in Washington. So was the condition of our building....
...I had learned before I got to Nairobi that the Foreign Buildings Operation, now Overseas Building Operations, was planning to a $4-7 million renovation of this building that was unsafe and much too small for us. Having spent three years in African Affairs dealing with an assortment of disasters, I thought it was dumb to invest more capital in a building that would never be considered safe. There just was no way to protect the building. I suggested that FBO sell the building and pool the proceeds with the money proposed for the renovations to buy a new site. Washington's response was somewhere between "are you nuts?! and get out of the way, the renovation train has already left the station."
Q: Did your security office or the apparatus in charge of that back in Washington pay any attention to the problem?
BUSHNELL: Our security officer, for whom I had a great deal of respect, understood the issue, as did the entire Country Team.
Q: Now, just to get a little feel for this, had any incidents happened, like the Khobar towers, or was that later?
BUSHNELL: The terrorist attack on Khobar Towers had already occurred but terrorism was virtually unknown in Kenya.
Q: Again, we're setting the stage. Did Osama Bin Laden or al Qaeda or the Taliban or anything like that cross your radar much?
BUSHNELL: I think I mentioned before that Nairobi was a favorite spot for a number of characters and groups. As ambassador I was told there was also an al Qaeda cell in Nairobi and that interested the intel community in Washington. Bin Laden at the time was considered a terrorist financier, not an activist, at least so far as I was told. I had been told in Washington that we wanted to disrupt his activities, which seemed pretty sensible and benign to me. I was not told that a special unit had been established to watch bin Laden's activities, nor that there was a secret indictment against him because of his hand in shooting down the black hawk helicopter. I was aware that a "walk in" had warned us in December 1997 that the embassy may be bombed but I was assured that the guy had done the same thing a number of times to other embassies in Africa and that he was considered "a flake."...
Senator Collins really should be ashamed for her roll in this scandal. Collins knows the reality of our foreign service and if she doesn't then she should not be speaking so freely. Not every US embassy was secured with $1.3 billion as was spent in Iraq.
The Republicans are 'running game' on the President. They are also trying to distract from the fiscal changes the President wants to make to protect 98 percent of the country from increased costs to their paychecks as of midnight on New Years Eve.
