To the Secretary

by Mary Thompson-Jones

  American diplomats needed all their people skills, along with a good sense of humor. Contact work is rarely as civilized as Gutman’s holiday coffee klatsch with Van Rompuy. The cables suggest there were plenty of characters who reveled in finding new ways to misbehave, along with people whose stories were genuinely inspirational. Some contacts had power, money, and access. Just as often, they had none.

  Contact work encompasses all: the scoundrels and the saints, the artists and the actors, and those who were merely interesting.

  MEET THE SCOUNDRELS

  It is not a revelation to learn that many national figures are underwhelming, but some fall to such low standards that an undercurrent of revulsion seeps into embassy reporting. One such case involved South African minister of health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who made a startling appearance in the headlines of Johannesburg’s Sunday Times: “Manto: A Drunk and a Thief.” A nurse at a hospital in neighboring Botswana accused the minister of stealing a watch from the arm of an anesthetized patient. Tshabalala-Msimang landed in court for stealing hospital supplies and was declared a “prohibited immigrant” and barred from entering Botswana for ten years. A hospital employee quipped, “Everyone here thinks it’s hilarious that she is a health minister in South Africa.” 6

  She presided at the ministry from 1999 to 2008, during which time HIV/AIDS infected more than four million South Africans, and deaths from the disease doubled. Called “Dr. Beetroot” for her stubborn insistence that a diet of vegetables could cure AIDS, she made headlines when she blocked U.S. funding to assist in the distribution of antiretroviral drugs, effectively sentencing many infected South Africans to death.

  Tshabalala-Msimang had personal health problems as well, largely attributed to her alleged alcoholism. She pulled strings to receive a liver transplant that she would not otherwise have qualified for, given her age and condition. Allegedly, she needed the liver because of cirrhosis rather than autoimmune hepatitis, as she claimed. The Sunday Times alleged she drank right up to the transplant and continued drinking following the surgery, something the embassy’s contacts confirmed.

  She came to personify a group of influential Africans known as AIDS deniers, and some critics suggested she be tried for genocide. Others were amazed she outlasted her detractors, but her number one defender was then–South African president Thabo Mbeki, who had spent his early years of political exile in the apartheid era with her, developing a deep bond. She did not leave office until he did. She died of liver failure in December 2009.7

  Yahya Jammeh, president of The Gambia since 1994 (and evidently for life), also ran head on into Western medicine practices and HIV/AIDS, taking on the mantle of traditional healer. “Claiming healing powers, he paid well-publicized, televised visits to Banjul’s principal hospital, visiting patients in their beds, holding the Qur’an over them and rubbing a mysterious elixir over their stomachs. The patients, as shown on the local television news program, invariably responded to Jammeh’s treatment by sitting up and saying they immediately felt better.”

  Embassy officers working in this tiny sliver of a country in West Africa, entirely surrounded by Senegal, grew concerned when Jammeh announced that he would be treating HIV/AIDS and asthma patients on a twice-weekly basis. Claiming to have a cure for HIV/AIDS, “Jammeh gave assurances that patients with the disease would test negative within three days of undergoing his treatment. His patients were to refrain from Western medication while in his care.” The post attributed his newfound interest in healing to a “penchant for erratic and sometimes bizarre behavior.” 8

  Jammeh also made headlines—far beyond The Gambia—for his foreign policy gambits and homophobic tirades. In a two-hour meeting Jammeh called with the ambassador, he opened by saying, “I want your government to know I am not the monster you think I am.” After listening to a lengthy exposition on Gambian foreign policy, the ambassador responded, saying, “perception of [Jammeh] by outside observers could be attributed in large part to some of his more incendiary comments such as those related to human rights workers and ‘cutting off homosexuals’ heads.’” 9

  Jammeh responded, “Yes I did make those comments but did I actually cut off anyone’s head? Have I ever arrested anyone for being gay? No. . . . There are gays here in The Gambia, I know that. But they live in secret and that is fine with me, as long as they go about their business in private we don’t mind.” 10

  Jammeh’s views on the subject eventually grew more negative. In a 2013 speech before the UN, he decried “homosexuality in all its forms and manifestations which, though very evil, antihuman, as well as anti-Allah, is being promoted as a human right by some powers.” 11

  RUDENESS ON A GLOBAL SCALE

  Latvia, a Baltic state admired for its environmentalism, offered an example of one of the most uncouth, obscene, and vulgar politicians ever to hold office. Gundars Berzins, seen by the embassy as the second most influential person in the Latvian People’s Party, served as the country’s minister of finance from 2000 to 2002, and then as minister of health from 2004 to 2007. The embassy found, to its consternation, that it had become a target for his criticism. He accused the former ambassador of “squeezing Latvians like lemons.” With growing dismay, the embassy watched as a series of interviews he granted to a daily newspaper became sharply anti-American, “full of rude, often obscene statements aimed at various high officials. He accused the Latvian intelligence chief of visiting the embassy two-three times a week and compared him to a kitchen maid for the ambassador.”

  When the minister of foreign affairs resigned and left Berzins’s party, he scoffed, “The little boy should go change his wet pampers, put on the new ones and then come out to the public and reveal his true views on restitution to the Jewish community (adding some anti-Semitism to go with anti-Americanism). . . .

  “Berzins did not even spare President Valdis Zatlers, comparing him to a carpet that just lays there which one can urinate or even defecate on. (Comment: The president is reported to have had a colorful reaction in his own right.)” 12

  If there is a common theme among the scoundrels, it is a lack of self-awareness and common sense. A case in point is Kumari Mayawati, an Indian politician who served four terms as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. The embassy described a pattern of almost unbelievable abuses of power and vicious reprisals.

  One journalist related a story in which a state minister was forced to do sit-ups in front of her as penance for not first asking permission to call on Uttar Pradesh’s governor. “When she needed new sandals, her private jet flew empty to Mumbai to retrieve her preferred brand. She employed nine cooks (two as food tasters) and she constructed a private road from her residence to her office to enhance her security.” 13

  Things took a more serious turn when Mayawati, long accustomed to throwing birthday parties for herself as a means of acquiring cash gifts, was accused of murdering a district engineer. Mayawati stalwarts visited the hapless engineer and demanded a birthday tribute to the governor. The engineer either refused or did not have the funds. He was tortured and killed in his home. His wife, locked in a bathroom by the assailants, heard her husband’s pleas for mercy as he was killed.14

  Excesses with the trappings of office were a recurring theme in reporting cables. Few Americans will have heard of President Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan. In office since 1992, Rahmon made a seamless transition from Soviet-era collective farm apparatchik to head of state, and he celebrated his third inauguration with a presidential medallion encrusted with jewels, along with a new Bentley. Tajikistan is one of the poorest of the former Soviet Socialist Republics. It is also one of the most corrupt, ranking near the bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.

  But Tajikistan has geopolitical significance, lying next to Afghanistan. The United States has great interest in security cooperation, and Tajikistan granted unrestricted overflight rights for air transport supply flights into Afghanistan. It also occupies a key n
ode in the Northern Distribution Network ground transit—both of which are essential for supplying U.S. troops in landlocked Afghanistan. This geostrategic importance goes some way toward explaining why U.S. embassy representatives would sit dutifully through Rahmon’s lengthy and costly inauguration for a third term that in no way celebrated a democratic transition of power. In fact, they had little choice since inaugurations are routinely a command performance for the diplomatic corps for almost all nations. They did, however, try to give a flavor of the event to Washington readers: “Rahmon’s speech emphasized that inauguration day is a holiday for the people of Tajikistan and he invited his guests to ‘celebrate like civilized white people’ (Comment: no comment). As the party went on, and on, the president took to the stage and began to sing. At this point, the television camera stopped filming.” 15

  Racist comments from heads of state are not confined to out-of-the-way countries. Thorbjørn Jagland, a leading Norwegian politician—former president of the parliament, former prime minister, former head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee—also served as foreign minister, where he famously complained on national television about the onerous aspects of his job, “having to go around meeting Bongo from the Congo.” 16 That gaff—and a few others—were not enough to block his election in 2009 as secretary general of the Council of Europe, a forty-seven-member body focusing on legal standards, human rights, and rule of law.

  Jagland was not alone. In an election campaign speech, North Rhine–Westphalia’s minister-president Jürgen Rüttgers said that Romanian workers are not punctual and not able to get the job done as well as German workers. That was bait for Social Democratic Party chancellor candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who said Rüttgers’s remark played perfectly into the hands of the “right wing mob.” 17

  But transgressions such as these pale against the lengthy rap sheet of Nicaraguan political player Daniel Ortega, whose long-running feud with the United States dates back to 1979. As one of the leaders of the Sandinista revolution and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), the political party that overthrew the corrupt Somoza regime, Ortega was infamous during the Reagan years for leading his country toward socialism. Nicaraguan military support for a similarly motivated revolution in El Salvador led the United States to give aid to the Contras rebel groups, probably cementing the foundation for a difficult relationship ever after. Ortega ruled Nicaragua for a generation, from 1979 to 1990. He spent sixteen years out of power and then returned for a second act in 2007—albeit with only 38 percent of the vote—and has been at the helm ever since.

  One might think such a long-standing relationship would lead to few surprises. On the contrary, the reporting revealed a U.S. fascination with Ortega, tempered by consternation as the embassy tried to make sense of the motives behind his quixotic actions.

  On the foreign policy front, Ortega had an odd penchant for backing losers. His gadfly approach led to a meeting with former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, support for former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and near-instant recognition of the breakaway states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Eurasia. In his own backyard, his tight relationships with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez and support for leftist regimes elsewhere in the hemisphere burnished his anti-U.S. credentials.

  The embassy cried foul when, in 2009, Ortega used the courts to overturn a constitutional provision that limited him to a single term. The U.S. ambassador’s speech at the American Chamber of Commerce denouncing this move spurred an angry mob to attack the embassy, “spray-painting anti-U.S. and pro-Sandinista graffiti on the embassy’s security fence, breaking lights and security cameras, defacing consulate signs, and breaking a window. . . Demonstrators waved FSLN party flags and held signs calling for ‘Death to the Yanquis, Death to Empire’ . . . Local police made little effort to control the demonstrations and in some cases facilitated the arrival of protestors.” 18 Ortega’s move to force constitutional change through the courts worked out well for him. He was reelected in 2011 with 62 percent of the vote and remains in charge at this writing.

  Despite tensions in the relationship, the two countries continued to interact. A ceremony marking the thirtieth anniversary of the Nicaraguan army led to an Ortega rant against imperialism and an affront to military protocol.

  In his most belligerent and openly anti-U.S. speech in months, President Daniel Ortega launched into a nearly hour-long tirade on the evils of U.S. imperialism . . . In a direct insult to the Marine Corps Marching Platoon [one of many foreign military units invited to take part in the ceremonies], baking in over 100 degree temperatures throughout the harangue, Ortega pointed to the Marines and said, ‘you young soldiers . . . you are not responsible.’ . . . He could not resist a final insult—giving only a perfunctory salute to the Marines as they paraded past along with cadets and marching teams from other countries, which got a much longer and more formal salute.19

  Ortega further exasperated the U.S. by criticizing its assistance to earthquake-stricken Haiti, calling the efforts a military invasion and suggesting they were a subterfuge aimed at installing a military base in the country.20 When the ambassador protested this mischaracterization, the foreign minister was ready with rhetorical questions. If there was no invasion planned, then why were there so many troops? Why weren’t they under the control of the United Nations? The ambassador retorted that Ortega’s assertions were absurd and so offensive that Secretary of State Clinton mentioned them at the State Department’s annual meeting of Western Hemisphere chiefs of mission.

  Just when it seemed impossible for the relationship to decay further, the embassy was caught off guard by Ortega’s capacity to mount a charm offensive when it suited his purposes. Small but significant changes in behavior led to a meeting in which “Ortega apologized for the attack on the Embassy, noting that he had personally intervened with the Chief of Police to ensure the Embassy (eventually) had protection from anti-riot units (and for the ambassador himself on the following day). When the ambassador noted concern over the fact that senior FSLN leaders were seen urging on the violent protestors, Ortega somewhat sheepishly acknowledged that at times even he cannot control his own people.”

  The embassy speculated on a number of motives for Ortega’s nice-guy act. “In our experience, Ortega’s charm offensives are . . . short lived and insincere. Perhaps in the face of his less than successful foreign policy to diversify his donor base . . . he simply seeks reassurance that we plan to stay on here. We will. And hope that this new beginning does not end in disappointment, again.” 21

  Despite the love-hate relationship, an American presence was expected at Ortega’s inauguration and return to power in January 2007. Embassy Managua described an event that “projected an odd image of disorder, amateurism, and unceremonious conduct, where populism trumped protocol, and security was virtually non-existent.” The reporting cable excerpts, describing alternating moments of tedium and hilarity, hint at the risks of keeping VIPs unoccupied for lengthy periods.

  The American delegation did not have its meeting with the president-elect until 10 p.m. the evening before the inauguration. The day itself was punctuated with other lengthy delays. The late arrival of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela left heads of state, royalty, ministers, and other dignitaries waiting nearly two hours in the sun and gave new meaning to the term jockeying for position.

  The U.S. delegation was unable to take their seats since the Palestinian delegation was already sitting in them, having been displaced from their own seats by the Central American delegations. By the time Chávez arrived, the seating had turned into a free-for-all, with people taking matters into their own hands, grabbing chairs and moving them at will, blocking aisles and walkways.

  As the crowd of the unseated grew, many strained for a glimpse of the (non)proceedings, which acquired the feel of a football rally.

  Embassy officers, along with ambassadors and assorted European colleagues who were previously displaced from their seats, stood on the sidelines, alongs
ide a ragtag crowd of Salvadoran guests waving red and black Faribundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) flags and cheering for Ortega. Interspersed among the FMLN and the diplomats were Venezuelans sporting radios and orchestrating the cheering for their leader.

  People got testy in the hot sun, and it was duly noted that Crown Prince Felipe of Spain drew noticeably louder applause than Ortega. Many delegation leaders, including Presidents Uribe of Colombia and Calderón of Mexico were noticeably not amused . . . The erratic management led several to complain this would be their last inauguration.

  When Chávez finally arrived, Ortega further delayed proceedings by ushering the leader around and introducing him to the delegations. Chávez obliged by insulting U.S. delegation head Michael Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services, on the subject of infant mortality.

  The long wait was rewarded with a lengthy sermon by Nicaraguan Cardinal Obando y Bravo, “ironically preaching on morality, ethics, and the evils of corruption while convicted embezzler [and former president Arnoldo] Aleman beamed in his seat of honor . . . The festivities also featured musical miscues, lapses in formal procedures . . . a gun salute that was ill timed and interrupted one of the speakers, followed by the lighting of a larger-than-life neon image of FSLN icon Augusto Sandino.” (Aleman’s conviction was overturned two years later by the Nicaraguan Supreme Court; all four justices who voted to overturn had ties to Aleman’s political party.)

  With careful understatement, the embassy noted one of the “more entertaining components” was the commemorative medal ceremony to honor the delegation heads, set to the tune of a classic Nicaraguan folk song.