TDY in the Abode of Peace Part 2: Game Day

"This is not a normal visit."

We kept hearing that refrain from mid-level officers over and over again as plans changed every day. In the beginning, Embassy Bandar had put everything in place for a presidential delegation with huge support needs. White House early advance was on the ground. Transportation hired over 100 cars and vans and local drivers. Secret Service was scoping out the sites. Eight days out, the control officers for the President's VIP entourage got down to work on our principals' schedules.

Except looming over our heads the whole time was the government shutdown. Would POTUS really still come? Thanks to good stewardship of multi-year funds, most of the Department of State was able to keep working during the shutdown. We had work to do and were ready to do it. But five days out, right as I'd finished a walk-through of the guest palace, the word came that POTUS had indeed cancelled. Deflation and disappointment spread through the whole team. 

Now we were in a holding pattern, waiting in place to see what kind of arrangements the Secretary of State and his team would need. Since the VIP I was preparing for also cancelled, there were about two days of trying to find ways to be useful. Need to double check the driver spreadsheet? On it. Paper to shred? Please, I'd be so happy to. Seriously.

Two days before the visit, I was re-assigned to the team organizing a round table discussion between Secretary Kerry and 25 youth leaders from the ten ASEAN nations. This wasn't my first choice assignment - it seemed like a side event, while all the excitement would be at the summits where 20 world leaders would be rubbing shoulders. But I was so wrong. The students were thrilled to meet our Secretary, and he was genuinely interested in them. It was truly inspiring.

The event itself lasted one hour but needed a team of four officers and days and days of preparation. Some of what it took to pull it off smoothly:

• Pasting directional signs all over a school building 
•  Hours of rearranging furniture for the perfect media shot (final result: see above)
• Bomb-sniffing dogs for site security
• Authoritative manner to tell media what they can and cannot do
• Dress rehearsal with students practicing passing around the mic
• At least 4 walk-throughs (15:00 S arrives. 15:02 S photo with school principal/VIPs to hold room. 15:05 VIPS enter auditorium. 15:12 S enters auditorium.)

 

Once Secretary Kerry arrived, the whole event happened very quickly. Some of the Southeast Asian news agencies stuck around afterward to interview the students, who were excited again to share about their projects and community work.

 The day before, the U.S. Ambassador to ASEAN had also come to speak with the students about activism. He shared his personal experiences as a student activist in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam era and encouraged them not to be afraid of seemingly insurmountable forces. Secretary Kerry also talked about the 1960s and 1970s, but from the perspective of one who volunteered to go to war and came back with personal experience of foreign policy decisions. Two men on different sides a generation ago but who serve together in government now. That's the sort of thing that, despite the current mess in Washington, still makes our political system shine brightly.