STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

Things that I know are true, part I

US Ambassadors Whom were Allowed To Be Killed By The US State Department “Spike” Dubs; Francis E. Melroy Jr; Arnold L. Raphel. 

  The blogs that I have been writing have a certain repetitive theme. US military and civilians die in the service of our country and then their deaths are retold in a light that negates the serious indictment of their superiors’ negligence and incompetence resulting in their deaths. The real perpetrators of the crime and cover up of Christopher Stevens death are the Sec State Hillary Clinton, Generals Dempsey and Allan, Ambassador Rice and of course the “Choir boys” in the White House –Brannon, Donilon, and Biden.  And of course, POTUS Obama.

  But this story of negligent murder by the US government is not a new story…. 

State Department negligence and incompetence is part of the US State Department’s history as long as I have been a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Nixon, Ford, Carter and Bush Sr and on the Policy Planning Staff.

To make the historical record extremely clear I was never a Foreign Service Officer [FSO]. But I was extremely proud to work with them and help them guide their respective careers to satisfying FSO appointments both overseas and domestically.

Most of my time as DAS for Management was helping to develop new organizations within the State Department that would assist the FSOs and their families to improve their stressful peripatetic life-style. So I helped to create the Regional Psychiatric Program; the Family Liaison Office; the Mandatory Hostage Survival Program, etc.

  You get the idea. I wasn’t there to ‘gun sling’ anyone out of their job but I was given a mandate by Under Secretary Lawrence Eagleburger [a sadly missed friend and an incredible FSO] who believed that a psychiatrist trained in International Relations with overseas experience could be helpful the State Department in general and in improving the quality of the FSOs lifestyle at home and abroad.

  But as one of the first Hostage Negotiators to exist in the government [before it was a business or an entertainment franchise], I was also given the obligation of overseeing the Directors of the Office of Combating Terrorism. Since the Nixon Administration I had overseen two FSOs who had been directors of the office. 

  Under the Carter administration, I was given the same authority to oversee and fire the Director of the OCT under Secretary of State Cyrus Vance [a highly underrated man and his incredibly elegant Under Secretary Ben Reed]. It was then that I happen to witness the “Assassination of Ambassador Anthony “Spike” Dubs”, our very accomplished Ambassador to Afghanistan.

Ambassador Dubs had a very successful FSO with a very distinguished prior history of having served in the US Navy and graduated Georgetown University where he was subsequently recruited into the Foreign Service.  As a career diplomat he had been posted to Germany, Liberia, Canada, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. 

On December 14, 1979, Dubs, then Ambassador to Afghanistan [it’s amazing how history repeats itself], was kidnapped by four armed militants of the Setami Milli Party disguised as police men. The kidnappers demanded the release of Badruddin Bahes, the imprisoned leader of their political party [sound familiar?]. The government of Hafizullah Amin denied holding Bahes and therefore refused to negotiate with the militants in spite of US embassy demands. At the time, Dubs was held at the Kabul Hotel [now called Kabul Serena Hotel] in room 117. 

 While I and the Director of the Office to Combat Terrorism were in the ‘Op Center’,  negotiating with the Soviet advisors who along with Afghan security forces had swarmed the hallway of the hotel and surrounded the rooftops waiting for instructions as to what to do next. 

  I had asked the Soviet chief negotiator, a KGB operative, to hold off any assaults till our Sec State could convince the Afghan Government to consider the possibility of an alternative solution and place pressure on the Afghan government to engage in negotiations with the kidnappers. It looked as if this was becoming increasingly possible, thanks to the efforts of the Sec State and others who asked me to play for more time with the Soviets.

  In the Op Center, I informed the Director to make certain that “under no condition was he to order” the Soviet advisors or the Afghans security to ‘barge into the room‘ and ‘try to free Dubs’. If this were to occur it was clear to both me and the Sec State that Dubs would die in a haze of bullits. 

Unfortunately, the Director panicked at a moment when I had to leave the Op Center and when I returned I heard our Director personally ‘order the assault’ on the Room 117 with the clear understanding that Dubs would eventually die in the crossfire.

 I reprimanded that Director. He fled. I ordered that the Sec State fire him for incompetence, insubordination and ‘negligent homicide’. I recorded the events as they transpire in the Official Op Center log at 12:40 PM, ten minutes after the death of Dubs.

The Director fled from the Op Center and then as I went to present him with his notice of dismissal, he pleaded with me as child, craving for his mother’s breast milk, to allow him and remain in his position as Director. That was totally unacceptable to me and the Sec State. The Director, even whispered to me that ‘we Catholics’ should stick together in a WASP environment’. 

Unfortunately for the Ambassador I was neither Catholic nor WASP.  I was simply a professional Crisis Manager, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, who could not accept the death of an Ambassador by the negligent, incompetence and fear of an inexperienced crisis manager or FSO.

 I then flew out for the next 24 hours to Kabul, Afghanistan to bring back the body of Spike Dubs for his funeral.  I went back to check the official Op Center Log and none of my notations concerning the events of that night were evident. Clearly the record had been erased to cover the negligence of the Director.

  A few months later, both I and Cyrus Vance,  both resigned on President Jimmy Carter for his incompetent handling of the Iran Hostage Siege. 

Then I wrote an article for the Washington Post, delineating the situation and what had happened, never naming the director in order to make sure that the lessons of one incompetent Ambassador who had killed another US Ambassador was not a personal indictment that the public couldn’t handle; but rather I had hoped that the State Department would investigate the ‘murder’ and rectify their policies and training programs. 

But how naïve, I was. 

  I was interviewed in my private psychiatric office by “Inspector General” officials ‘examining the nature of my public charges and their veracity’. 

  Needless to say, I knew this was a less than useless exercise.

  But the reason, I am writing this particular story in detail is to illustrate to you, my dear readers, how the State Department went to great lengths to cover up the misdeeds of the Director and then went so far as to promote him upward to levels of responsibility for which he was not clearly capable of. 

So as I came back at two different times in both the Reagan Administration and then the Bush Sr tenureship as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, I discovered the following way that the State Department had covered up the ‘negligent murder of Ambassador Spike Dubs by Ambassador Anthony C. E, Quainton’.

“Tony” as I called the Director, who had committed the crime, and had erased any traces of his cowardly deed and had coerced or ‘convinced’ the State Department system to promote him to even more senior positions.

Tony, a slight, whiny, haltering figure of a boy/man, who reminded me of an effete Oxfordian wannabe Lawrence of Arabia,  rewrote the history of the Dubs assassination as ‘Dubs died in a crossfire’ in both the official history of the State Department and even in the KGB Archives. 

Sidebar:   Please read, if you have the time and patience,  the 1990 Soviet KGP Archives by Visily Mitrokhin  who discusses the  evidence presented by KGB Advisor Sergei Batrukhin . 

Believe me, Tony Quainton had previously been a Soviet Expert.

  The point of the Spike Dubs Assassination by Ambassador Anthony C.E, Quainton is the extensive degree that the US State Department will go to protect  ‘one of it’s own’ when he/she commits a crime.  The reason is very simple. The State Department sees itself as infallible and cannot and will not even admit it’s failure in  delineating a false foreign policy –witness Iraq and Afghanistan--- nor admit to the inexperience or incompetency of any of it’s FSO’s despite the fact that he/she were never capable of handling a specific crisis. 

Specifically see how far the State Department is willing to cover up the ‘murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens’. It has confabulated lies, distorted realities and contorted itself into a self-investigation that will knowingly reveal nothing. 

  So I present the first case of Ambassador Tony Quaiton who had clearly been negligent, cowardly and incompetent in that particular ‘assassination of Spike Dubs’. But let me show you how far he had been promoted as a result of his incompetency [in this case the Peter Principle is on steroids]. 

 Ambassador Anthony C.E, Quainton:

Became Ambassador To Nicaragua under President Reagan. Then appointed Ambassador to Kuwait. Then he became the Deputy Inspector General of the State Department. 

He went on to become Ambassador to Peru then nominated as Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security [this position requires the detailing of Regional Security Officers to protect an Ambassador—the very absence of RSOs was an issue in the Steven’s death].
Then President Clinton, who had gone to Oxford,  where Tony had attended in 1958-59 as Marshall Scholar, appointed Tony as the Director General Of the Foreign Service. 

  Eventually academia confirmed him as a Distinguished Diplomat-in-Residence at the School Of International Service at American University in Washington DC. 

  So, my dear, readers, as Agatha Christa would write: ”Crime does pay!” 

Especially in the State Department! Only there can an incompetent, ineffectual, dastardly, professional go from a ‘cowardly murder of another Ambassador’ to the position where he can oversee the appointment and behavior of all the US Ambassadors.

Only in America!!!! 

Thank God for Mediocrity!| 

What would we do for our politicians, generals, legislators, intelligence officers and general ineffectual government servants without our collective mediocrity and it’s concomitant companions—lies, silence, stonewalling , betrayal, deceit, distortion, and false narratives.

No recent “American hero’ can exist without the collective collusion of fear, mediocrity and the need to create a false, clean, hopeful narrative. In short—an American Fairy Tale filled with good guys, bad guys and self –righteous morality.

American History, especially in the White House, the State Department, the Defense Department and the Intelligence agencies, must have these Elmer Gantrys and P.T. Barnums. These are the ‘heroes’ (or villians) that would eventually be ‘eliminated’ in order to create the ‘necessary historical palatable narrative’ that can be passed on from generation to generation—without question or hesitation. 

Keep reading, I have much more to say on what I know about a Secretary of State who was directly responsible for an Ambassador’s death.  Goodnight for now.