The ‘politics of personal accountability’

(Washington, D.C.): There is a lot of talk at the moment about the “politics of personal destruction.” This is, of course, the euphemism President Clinton uses to curry public sympathy in the face of well-founded charges against him of moral turpitude and professional mis- or malfeasance. Mr. Clinton’s use of this tactic is especially ironic since one has to go back to Richard Nixon, and perhaps before, to find a President who has permitted his subordinates and friends to engage in what might be called genocidal acts of personal destruction against his critics.

Unfortunately, there is another phenomenon that may prove even more destructive to the Nation over the longer term. This might be called the Clinton Administration’s “politics of personal unaccountability.”

The principle at work here seems to be that no one is personally accountable for serious errors made by them or on their watch. To be sure, senior Clinton Administration officials sometimes say they “accept responsibility” for bad decisions or failed policies. But no one ever accepts responsibility in the way accountable officials the world over do: By resigning.

Madeleine Albright’s ‘Responsibility’

The most recent case in point is Madeleine Albright. Her tenure as Secretary of State has been almost unblemished by success. This is certainly true if one defines success as durable accomplishments consistent with the long-term interests of the United States — as opposed to photo opportunities and ephemeral (if not counterproductive) international “breakthroughs.” ¹

On Friday, Mrs. Albright received the results of a scathing report by a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Crowe, who chaired two Assessment Boards charged with performing post mortems on last year’s embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The Crowe assessment sharply critiqued what it called an “institutional failure of the Department of State and embassies under its direction to recognize threats posed by transnational terrorism and vehicle bombs.”

Secretary Albright responded by telling a press conference that: “The boards…identif[ied] a collective failure by the Executive and Legislative Branches of our government over the past decade to provide adequate resources to reduce the vulnerability of US diplomatic missions. The reports suggest that responsibility for this failure must be shared broadly, including by the Secretary of State; and I accept that. It reminds us all that no matter how much we care, no matter how much we do, we can always do more when the lives of our people are on the line.” (Emphasis added.)

The problem is evident in Mrs. Albright’s response to a specific recommendation by the Crowe boards, namely that the State Department must invest an extra $1.4 billion over the next ten years to redress this institutional failure concerning the vulnerability of U.S. embassies and their personnel: “We will continually have to make difficult and inherently subjective decisions about how best to use the resources we have and about how to reconcile security imperatives with our need to do business overseas.” Reduced to its essence, she seems to be saying that she’ll go along with enhancing physical security if she thinks it affordable in terms of dollars and other priorities, like doing “business overseas.”

The New York Times Blows the Whistle

As it happens, an in-depth report published the next day on the front page of the New York Times suggests that Mrs. Albright’s judgment in such matters is not to be trusted. For example, the article by James Risen and Benjamin Weiser documents in excruciating detail how senior State Department officials — including Madeleine Albright herself — repeatedly ignored or rejected appeals by the U.S. Ambassador to Kenya, Prudence Bushnell, for enhancements to the physical security of her mission.

The Times report makes clear that Amb. Bushnell had plenty of reason for concern: “…While none of the warnings gathered by American intelligence in the year before the bombings pointed to a particular act of terrorism on a particular day, the United States had growing indications that the embassy was a target of terrorist plots and that terrorists hostile to American interests were active in Kenya.” Among the terrorist organizations known to be operating in Kenya were operatives associated with Osama bin Laden, the fanatic believed responsible for the mass murder of U.S. servicemen when a truck bomb destroyed the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia. ²

According to the New York Times, when Amb. Bushnell’s efforts to prevent her embassy from suffering a similar fate (which began shortly after her arrival in Nairobi in 1996) were “not seriously considered” in allocations of State Department construction funds, she appealed out-of-channels directly to the Secretary of State. The Times reports that in two separate cables, sent in April and May 1998, the Ambassador pleaded for Mrs. Albright to “cite [Embassy] Nairobi’s vulnerability to Congress in seeking more funds for security.” She got nowhere.

In fact, the Times discloses that “Ms. Bushnell’s increasingly insistent demands for a new embassy were so far out of step with the State Department’s plans that officials at headquarters were beginning to see her as a nuisance who was obsessed with security, according to an official familiar with the matter.” Admiral Crowe seemed to be speaking of that official view when he declared on Friday that “What is most troubling is the failure of the U.S. government to take the necessary steps to prevent such tragedies through an unwillingness to give sustained priority and funding to security improvements.”

The Bottom Line

The truth is that, while many bear some responsibility for the needless deaths of American diplomatic personnel in Kenya (and Tanzania), the person who must ultimately be held accountable for the failure to heed repeated intelligence warnings and the appeals of an exposed ambassador — and the larger failure to give security the priority it deserves — is the Secretary of State.

In order for Madeleine Albright’s avowed commitment to “accept responsibility” for the failure of leadership that might have deterred or thwarted bin Laden’s attack on Embassy Nairobi to have meaning, it must be accompanied by her resignation. Such a step would not only send a bracing message that the politics of personal unaccountability is coming to an end; it would also improve the prospects for the competent management of U.S. foreign policy.

¹ See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled Sauce For The Goose: Madeleine Albright’s Lies About Iraq Make Her Another Candidate For Resignation, Impeachment (No. 98-D 153, 27 August 1998), Clinton Legacy Watch # 29: From Pax Americana To ‘Pack Up, Americans’ (No. 98-D 144, 10 August 1998), Restoration Watch # 10: Consolidation of Power by Primakov Marks the End of the Line for Reform in Russia (No. 98-D 161, 11 September 1998), and Clinton, Albright Pursue Delusory Arms Control Response To South Asian Nuclear Tests; Center’s Gaffney Offers Alternative (No. 98-D 98, 4 June 1998).

² For more on bin Laden, see C.W.C. Watch #4: Sudanese Factory Episode Illuminates Why Chemical Weapons Cannot be Effectively, Verifiably Banned (No. 98-D 149, 24 August 1998) and Clinton Legacy Watch # 31: Will This Damaged Presidency Be Able to Mount, Sustain Needed Anti-Terror Campaign? (No. 98-D 148, 21 August 1998).