Three Tales from an Unelected Bureaucrat

My experience shows why the federal government struggles to be as efficient as the private sector.

A statue shows former U.S. President George H. W. Bush in front of the U.S. Embassy in Budapest. (Photo by Christian Charisius/picture alliance via Getty Images.)

This article is part of an ongoing project by American Purpose at Persuasion on “The ‘Deep State’ and Its Discontents.” The series aims to analyze the modern administrative state and critique the political right’s radical attempts to dismantle it.

To receive future installments into your inbox—plus more great pieces by American Purpose and Francis Fukuyama’s blog—simply click on “Email preferences” below and make sure you toggle on the buttons for “American Purpose” and “Frankly Fukuyama.”

---

As the cultural attaché at the American Embassy in Hungary at the end of the communist era, 1986-89, my job included administering the Fulbright academic exchange program, which sent both American and Hungarian academicians to the other country for a semester or more of university research or teaching.

A similar academic exchange program was managed by Miklós Vásárhelyi, the head of the Soros Foundation office in Budapest—the brainchild of the Hungarian-American financier and philanthropist George Soros. I watched in amazement as Vásárhelyi worked expeditiously with a staff of three or four people to compile a list of prospective academic exchange grantees. Soros would periodically fly in from New York, look over the list, and approve it in a few minutes. Job completed, everyone went off for a festive lunch or dinner.

My job was not so simple. This was because the Fulbright program was officially sponsored by both the U.S. and Hungarian governments. The process for nominating “Fulbrighters” involved compiling a list of prospective grantees with approvals from the Hungarian professors, their department chairs, the various university administrators, and communist party commissars.

With that list, I had to get approval from my superiors in the embassy, such as the public affairs officer, who was my immediate boss, and then from the Ambassador and his deputy. But there were also the section heads with their “equities” (or interests) in the nominees.

The embassy-approved list was then sent to the liaison office for Hungary at the U.S. Information Agency (USIA, now shuttered and its responsibilities folded into the State Department). At the time, it was responsible for press and cultural programs at U.S. embassies and consulates overseas.

---

---

At the USIA, the nominees had to be approved by the geographic desk or liaison officers as well as the functional bureaus that handled Fulbright exchanges. With their approval, the next step was the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), which coordinated academic exchanges in practice and sent the prospective grantees’ names to the offices of the American universities, where subject-matter experts revised the list. This of course started another round of discussions and approvals at the universities.

The winnowed or altered list of names and affiliations would have to return to the Hungarian universities, which might challenge or appeal any changes to their original proposed exchangees. All of the changes would have to be ironed out in negotiations with the various parties in both countries.

I came to realize that the difference between the Soros and the embassy exchange programs was that one operation was accountable to one person only, but the other was accountable to the American taxpayers. So we in the embassy had to be very careful, open and ready to justify our decisions and actions. Our paper trail had to be available to examination and criticism by many watchdogs and stakeholders along the way, including the American media and public and their elected representatives. That is the slow, cumbersome way of bureaucracy in a democracy, but I don’t know any way around it.

The Arrogance of the Bureaucratic “Elite”

Later in my career, I served as the desk officer at USIA for our embassies in several southeast Asian countries. My job was to keep them informed of official policies while coordinating the domestic portion of their educational and cultural programs.

One day, an American called me to ask for touring information about Bali, the popular resort island in Indonesia. I tried to tell her that I was not a tour company employee and did not have such information. But she insisted that since I worked at the U.S. government’s “information” agency, and handled Indonesia—and that she, as a taxpayer, paid my salary—I was obligated to work for her.

I tried to refer her to a travel agency or her local librarian, but she was pretty adamant and disgruntled with my lack of cooperation and unhelpfulness. Perhaps even my arrogance. I did not mention to her that I was legally forbidden by the Smith-Mundt Act to provide any information to American citizens. This Act dates to 1948, the beginning of the Cold War, and was intended to prevent U.S. government officials at the State Department and USIA from disbursing information perceived as propaganda to the American public.

---

Fear and Loathing in the Nonprofit Sector

---

Given the growing distrust that Americans have for the “administrative state,” I wonder to what extent misunderstandings like this contribute to the hostility they feel for “unelected bureaucrats.” Distrust of the federal government, which was already near a historical low of 16% in 2024 (down from 73% in 1958, per the Pew Research Center), might be especially pronounced for American diplomats, with whom they rarely have personal interactions. They must be on easy street, with their cocktail parties and lavish embassy suites. This may have been the case 50 or 60 years ago, in the era depicted in Mad Men, and perhaps today for some third-world diplomats, who often emerge from the privileged upper classes of their societies. But this is radically different from my experience in today’s meritocratic State Department.

The Inspector Finds Malfeasance

At the end of my Foreign Service career, I served as an inspector for the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG). This entire operation, along with the inspectors general at sixteen other U.S. departments and agencies, have since been laid off by order of President Trump.

OIG inspectors like me, usually with many years of accumulated expertise, followed a schedule of periodic visits to both domestic State Department bureaus and overseas missions (mostly embassies) to examine or review their plans, budgets, programs, procedures, leadership, and relations among personnel. The inspectors are guided by the Foreign Service Manual, the official rulebook on how to conduct foreign policy operations.

In my inspections of public affairs sections, only rarely were large sums of funding involved, such as the annual roughly $6 billion budget of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, which I also inspected. But I did find that, for example, the public affairs officer (PAO) in Madagascar had spent close to $800,000 on equipment and related costs for a proposed new American Center, a venue for U.S. government programs and education, in a mall in the capital of Antananarivo. Because of the in-country culture of corruption, and the poor management of the shopping center, this Center was very unlikely to get off the ground, and the equipment was likely to be left to rust or sold at bargain prices.

---

Keeping at It

---

It’s reasonable to ask if the PAO and his supervisors were disciplined as a result of my critical report. But it is first necessary to ask what he did wrong, and why. The PAO was assigned to the position with a personal rank lower than what the position called for. He had been an over-achiever with a good professional reputation. Also, due to staff drawdowns at the State Department, there were no more qualified applicants for the job. This officer was emulating senior PAOs in other countries, who had won plaudits for creating successful American Centers in shopping malls.

But Madagascar was not Switzerland. The PAO, due to inexperience and insufficient training, was not sensitive to the risks in his country. He was ambitious, and in a professional culture of fierce competition, could have been seen as a slacker without bold plans, and that could have slowed promotions in his career.

But why didn’t the PAO’s senior regional and Washington supervisors spot the future train wreck? After all, they are the extra layers of bureaucracy that are paid to prevent trouble like this. The African regional programs supervisor might have suspected something was amiss, but Madagascar’s relatively small library and public centers operation were hardly a priority among some 40-plus operations on the continent. The geographic bureau supervisor struggled with sensitive issues of political-military policy, famine, and epidemics, not marginal issues in Madagascar.

In any case, my report cited their failures of oversight as well as the malfeasance of the PAO, and proposed remedial actions. None of the officers liked the report, but they respected my work, and did not protest it. The PAO’s reputation and career likely suffered as a result of my report. The two senior officers retired within a year or two. It then became the role of OIG compliance officers, following up about a year later, to ensure that the embassy had recovered as much as possible of the funding allocated for the American Center equipment and construction.

To be clear, despite the malfeasance, no corruption (such as personal profit or intention to deceive) was involved in this case. If it had been, as an OIG inspector, my job would have been to refer the matter to the OIG investigators, who would have pursued possible criminal activity.

Public Perceptions vs. My Own Experience

I believe that the public perception of my work is often quite different from these experiences. Many hard-working Americans think of government workers as paper-pushers who take long breaks or naps during work hours. At least this is what my friends tell me. With some justification, they cite the expansion of the federal workforce. But this has not been the case with the State Department’s public affairs operations.

For example, in Japan, there were about 50 American Centers in the postwar period, with large staffs producing motion pictures exclusively for the Japanese public, as well as hosting programs such as concerts and seminars. When I served as the director of the Tokyo American Center until 2005, I had a staff of 11, including four librarians in our research library for Japanese people to learn about America.

Today, there are only five so-called American Spaces left. Even the Tokyo American Center is gone. Except for an American Center in Fukuoka, the nationwide grid of Centers has shrunk to four American Spaces in Okinawa, each consisting of a bookcase in public libraries, and no American staff to host programs or represent our country.

Additionally, the secretaries and clerical staff of all American embassy sections have been greatly reduced. Almost all officers up to section heads do their own scheduling and travel planning on their desk computers. Due to the threats of malware and hackers, everyone is required to study for and pass unforgiving annual tests on cyber-security. So, work demands have become more cumbersome and complicated. Yet the substantive work has not been reduced, but rather piled on as a result of the many rounds of reductions in force (RIFs) once known, with some irony, as “right-sizing.”

While the bureaucratic approach can seem confusing or counterintuitive compared with a quick decision followed by a celebratory lunch, I hope my sharing these experiences will give context for why the Foreign Service functions the way it does. A democracy demands accountability—which itself requires the necessary evil of bureaucracy.

Ken Moskowitz is adjunct professor of political science and communications at Temple University Japan. He served for 30 years as a foreign service officer in Washington, Budapest, Tokyo, Kyiv, and Sofia.

---

Follow Persuasion on X, LinkedIn, and YouTube to keep up with our latest articles, podcasts, and events, as well as updates from excellent writers across our network.

And, to receive pieces like this in your inbox and support our work, subscribe below: