Within the period of service of most contemporary chiefs of mission, the inservice training of officers has improved beyond all recognition and interdepartmental cooperation has achieved splendid new departures.

The United States of America faces many decades of peril and challenge in foreign affairs. Despite chronic budgetary colic and spasms and relapses into the cruder forms of isolationism, we show signs of at last accepting the fact and preparing for the long pull.

From administration to administration and from generation to generation the continuity of American foreign relations will be in the hands of the American Foreign Service.

The contributors to this symposium have probed and thumped for the health of this Service. I for one believe, and I think my colleagues would agree, that no country in the world is better served by its diplomats and consuls than the United States of America today.

ADMINISTRATION OF NATIONAL SECURITY

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 1964

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY

STAFFING AND OPERATIONS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS,

Washington, D.C.

[This hearing was held in executive session and subsequently ordered made public by the chairman of the committee.]

The subcommittee met at 9 a.m., pursuant to notice, in room 3112, New Senate Office Building, Senator Henry M. Jackson (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Senators Jackson, Brewster, Javits, and Miller.

Staff members present: Dorothy Fosdick, staff director; Richard S. Page, research assistant; and Laurel A. Engberg, minority consultant. Also present: Robert E. Lee, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations.

OPENING STATEMENT OF THE CHAIRMAN

Senator JACKSON. The committee will come to order.

The Subcommittee on National Security Staffing and Operations continues today its hearings on vital issues in the administration of national security.

As part of our inquiry we have been giving attention to the problems of the modern American ambassador and the support given him from Washington. We have asked a number of our ambassadors when they are back in Washington for consultation to come to our subcommittee and talk to us on the basis of their personal experience.

The subcommittee welcomes today our Ambassador to the Soviet Union, the Honorable Foy D. Kohler. Because of his special knowledge and his present post, we have asked him to discuss with us in particular the role of the American ambassador and the mission he heads in countries behind the Iron Curtain.

Ambassador Kohler, a career Foreign Service officer for over 32 years, holds the rank of Career Minister. He has had a rich and varied experience in serving this country--including assignments abroad in Rumania, Hungary, Greece, Egypt, Turkey, and Moscow, and, at home, as a member of the Policy Planning Staff, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, and Chairman of the Berlin Task Force during a most critical period."

Mr. Ambassador, we are very glad you could be with us today and give us your counsel.

You may proceed in your own way. I understand that you do not have a prepared statement, and you may give your remarks in whatever way is most convenient to you. Then we will have some questions.

STATEMENT OF HON. FOY D. KOHLER, CAREER MINISTER, AMBASSADOR TO THE SOVIET UNION

Ambassador KOHLER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

It is a great pleasure and privilege for me to be with this Subcommittee on National Security Staffing and Operations. We in the Foreign Service have had a high appreciation of your work, and are very conscious of your courtesy in sending to us copies of your studies. I think it has stimulated all of us to think about Foreign Service problems.

As you noted, I have not a prepared statement, for which I apologize, but I am glad that the committee is willing to have an informal discussion, and I hope I will be able to contribute something to your studies.

I might start out, Mr. Chairman, by saying that Embassy Mcscow is a specialized operation and rather different from many of the embassy operations that you have discussed previously. We do not have an AID mission. We do not have a MAAG. We have, in fact, no separate USIA operation.

It is an integrated and very streamlined operation. The staff is relatively small and entirely specialized. We have no substantive officers who do not know the Russian language, and who have not studied Russian history and problems of the area and of the system. A part of this we can do because we do have an effective division of labor with Washington. We do not try to do in Moscow the kind of research that can be just as well done at home. This is for reasons of efficiency. It is also a reflection of the difficulty of the housing situation and living conditions otherwise in Moscow. It is better and cheaper to have work done here that can be done here.

I might, since the setup of our embassy is different from many that you have discussed, give you a brief rundown on it.

Our total staff is 114 American officers and employees. This staff has about 140 dependents who live there. And outside of the official family in Moscow, the community is very small also. We have 17 correspondents there at the present time, and 3 teachers in our AngloAmerican school, and these people have another 20 dependents, so that our total American colony in the Soviet Union is less than 300 people.

As to the breakdown of our organization in the embassy: We have in my own office myself and the Deputy Chief of Mission, who has the rank of Minister, a Staff Aide, and attached to us two security officers, so that out of our total staff, we have five officers and three clerks in my immediate environment.

In the political section, we have eight officers and three clerks. In addition to the Political Counselor, four of these officers are engaged in what we call Soviet external affairs; that is, following relationships between the Soviet Union and third countries and our own interest in the same countries, and three are engaged in following political developments inside the Soviet Union.

In our Economic Section, we have four officers and two clerks. One of these officers is, in effect, a science officer, who follows scientific developments in the Soviet Union and keeps in contact with the Academy of Sciences, and other Soviet scientific institutions.

Working with the Economic Section is the office of our Agricultural Attaché. We have an attaché and an assistant, and they have one clerk.

One of the larger sections is our Cultural Affairs Section. This is an embassy section, but staffed largely by USIA personnel, though we do also have Foreign Service officers working in this section. There we have four officers and four clerks or administrative-type employees.

A specific function in the Soviet Union that is not met everywhere is publications procurement, and we have two officers who devote full time to this function, on behalf not only of the State Department but of all Washington agencies.

The Consular Section has three officers and one clerk.

In the Administrative Section, we have eight officers and three clerks; in Communications, two officers and eight clerks. We have a Marine Guard complement of 10, and an Army Attaché, with 7 officers and 19 enlisted personnel; an Air Attaché, 6 officers and 6 enlisted personnel; a Naval Attaché, 6 officers and 1 personnel.

I may explain that not only is the State Department staff a specialized staff, but, happily, our service attachés are also highly specialized-none come who have not studied Russian and made Russian area studies.

The Army Attaché staff seems larger than the others, but it is because this staff, too, is integrated, and the Army Attaché, who is known as the executive agent, performs all the administration for the three attachés.

We are probably unique also in terms of personnel administration. Just yesterday, I was going over with personnel people in the State Department our forward plans for staffing through 1965, and this is routine. We are planning our turnover at least two years in advance..

Generally speaking, we adhere to a 2-year service rule. In principle, I am for much longer assignments, but Moscow is our only post in Russian-speaking areas, and Moscow experience is invaluable to a lot of people. Consequently, in order to keep a corps developed, we must adhere, generally speaking, to the 2-year rule.

This makes for a considerable turnover in the Embassy, but at the same time that turnover is not as difficult as it would be in many other Embassies, for the reason that we have many repeaters, and try to keep our people reasonably fresh.

The reason for maintaining such a staff is twofold, really. One is that we can contemplate the opening of additional offices in the Soviet Union, consular offices, in the future, and the second is that the demands for Soviet experts are great throughout the world, and having them both experienced in Moscow and in another area is a very valuable combination.

Let me say that generally our staff, I think, is not only streamlined, perhaps overstreamlined in some respects, but fairly well balanced. It could be said, I think, that in terms of the function and

of the production of work and of reporting, the military staffs are perhaps a little disproportionate to the total output of the Embassy. Otherwise, I think there are no real problems here, except the need for a gradual expansion in three main respects: One, in the consular field, because of the very considerable development of tourist travel and of exchanges between the two countries; second, in the Cultural Section of the Embassy, in order to enable us to handle better the many, many exchanges that are now developing; and finally, in the Political Section, in order to enable us to expand our coverage on a global basis and maintain close contact with the expanding diplomatic corps in Moscow.

At the time when I was in Moscow after the war, there were only 20-odd missions there. Now there are over 60. And many of these, of course, represent the new countries of Asia and Africa, as well as an increase in Latin American representation.

I could comment a little further on the nature of the work that we do and will make just a few remarks. However, this might perhaps come out better in questioning from the members of the subcommittee.

I mentioned that we do not try to do any deep research there. We have people who are steeped in Soviet studies, have been for many, many years, and our main effort is to sense the atmosphere, to see as many Russians as we can and have talks with them, and to report the kind of things that are not available in published materials, which can much better be studied in Washington.

We flag the attention of the Department and other agencies to developments there, to moods and attitudes and popular opinions. We sense them and see them. And in this respect, we work very closely with the research area of the Department and other agencies in Washington.

They inform us promptly of their line of thought on given things. We can challenge this and correct it and make policy recommendations on the basis of that.

We have certainly tried to maximize the ways in which we can know more about Soviet society. We do this not only in Moscow, but by a program of constant travel in the Soviet Union, and certainly the greatest instrument that has been developed in this respect is the exchange programs with the Soviet Union. We have just concluded the fourth one now. Each has been for a 2-year period. And in each case we have been able to broaden and to increase these exchanges.

These exchanges are of mutual interest; the Russians send people here, as we send people there. I think it is just as useful one way as the other, from our point of view. When these people come, we try not only to bring them in touch with broad segments of society, but ourselves to accompany them and to have them in as guests at the Embassy residence and things like that. So that today the contacts between Russians, Soviet citizens, and Americans, are infinitely broader than they were in the days when I was there during the Stalin regime.

I think, Mr. Chairman, I will stop here.

Senator JACKSON. You mentioned 114 Americans. How many Russians do you employ?