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USIA’S TOP GUNS
NOV 29, 2005 - 10:33PM PST
by Alvin Snyder

Karen Hughes is America's Top Gun communicator. But how will her job performance be rated 25 or even 50 years from now by her team in the State Department, elsewhere around the world and in the many politico-history books that will be written about her? Of course it's too early to tell, as she is just finding her way as the new undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. But does she have the qualities that helped raise some former directors of the defunct U.S. Information Agency to legendary status? There were more than a dozen USIA directors during the agency's almost half-century existence before it disbanded in 1999. Worldcasting asked professionals who served under some of them who was their favorite and why. This is not a run at nostalgia, but rather an attempt to focus on the very real problem of communicating America's story abroad and to examine what type of person it will take to fix the problems. More than six years have passed since the effort has had a powerful figure that was not only himself great, but also inspired others to greatness. The common thread among employees' memories of their directors is that the most revered leaders had an uncanny ability to make young and low-ranking USIA officials feel like integral cogs in the public diplomacy mission. Ambassador Jock Shirley, a veteran counselor to USIA directors, told Worldcasting the director he knew best was Jim Keogh, who is "no longer a young man now, but as spry as ever." Director Keogh had previously been the chief White House speechwriter for President Nixon and the executive editor of Time magazine. Jock Shirley, a USIA icon himself, believes "Jim Keogh's successes lay in his clear understanding of [three things]: USIA's role in the Cold War as it was being contested during his tenure, how best to use our skills in the struggle to contain and weaken the Soviet Union, and the strengths and weaknesses of the men and women of USIA and how to put those strengths to efficient use." Shirley continued, "Jim Keogh knew that a smoothly functioning Washington bureaucracy was the sine qua non for success in the field, but he knew also that it was the men and women scattered around the world on whom our usefulness ultimately depended. To them he devoted his greatest focus, traveling to every corner of the globe, visiting every major post in the world, and getting to know hundreds of our colleagues, from senior public affairs officers to junior trainees." Shirley observed after hundreds of hours with Keogh that the director's "insights into our operations were incisive, and his memory for people and judgment on where and how to assign them, phenomenal." But what Shirley remembers best was the warmth and affection Jim Keogh and his wife, Verna, showed to the USIA support staff. "Wherever they went morale soared. After long days of meetings, inspections, not-always-easy conversations with this or that ambassador or PAO [Public Affairs Officer], Jim and…... FULL TEXT
 
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