Remarks at the Excellence in Government Conference

Thank you for your kind introduction, Patricia [McGinnis]. It’s a pleasure to be here with so many outstanding federal government leaders dedicated to improving the way we serve our country.

Today I thought I might share a few thoughts with you on the challenges I faced in my last two government assignments. Then I’d like to reserve time for some comments on how I see those experiences reflected in my new responsibilities at the Department of State.

As I discuss establishing our Embassy in Iraq in 2004 and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2005, I would like to interweave four recurrent themes. Let’s call them the “Four P’s”: People, Purpose, Procedures, and the Public.

By people, I mean, in the first instance, the key colleagues who form the leadership cadre of any large enterprise. By purpose, I mean being clear about why you are undertaking a given leadership mission and what you plan to accomplish. By procedures, I mean, very broadly, the way in which you organize and employ your resources whether they be human, financial, or technical. By the public, I am thinking of the Congress, which is the tribune of the people in our form of government. I also am thinking of the vast array of non-governmental resources our general public can contribute to national objectives.

In the case of Iraq, a great deal of procedural thought already had been given to establishing our new embassy by the time I was nominated as ambassador. This freed me to concentrate on what I usually make my first priority: recruiting a talented team to help me. The danger and difficulty of an assignment to Iraq at the time did not, I must say, make it any more challenging than usual to attract some very senior colleagues.

In fact, the importance of what we were trying to do clearly outweighed any disincentive that one ambassador might feel about stepping down to assist another ambassador in his work. All tolled, I believe we had five ambassadors on duty—six, if you count me—on the day we inaugurated our embassy in Baghdad on June 28, 2004.

For me there’s nothing more important than knowing that I am surrounded by experienced colleagues who are prepared to take responsibility for their words, their deeds, and their staffs. If there’s a trick in attracting people like that to your side, I would say it’s pretty simple: make a personal pitch for help; let people know that you really want them with you.

Now, if people and procedures were largely in hand by the time I arrived in Iraq, what about purpose? How could we be most helpful to the newly sovereign Iraq and the Iraqi people?

To address this question, I initiated two strategic reviews. First, I wanted to look at how we were doing vis-à-vis the $18.4 billion reconstruction and economic development package Congress had appropriated for Iraq. Second, I wanted to correlate that review with a second review, conducted jointly with General George Casey, wherein we commissioned a team to answer a fundamental question: Who is Iraq’s enemy, and how, in a counterinsurgency, could we most effectively help Iraq defeat that enemy?

The first review led me to one basic recommendation: we needed to reprogram some $3.4 billion of the reconstruction funds to speed up and improve training, equipping, and deploying Iraqi Security Forces. The second review led General Casey and me to issue a Joint Mission Statement to everyone under our respective commands. Together, we affirmed the unity of our military, political, diplomatic, and economic efforts, and we called for the full and complete coordination of all elements of US national power in support of the Iraqi Interim Government. Our primary purpose was to protect and advance the development of Iraq’s democratic political process and institutions, including national consultations, elections, and writing a constitution.

In issuing our Joint Mission Statement and in reprogramming such a large sum of money, General Casey and I were directing our colleagues to adapt, procedurally, to our sense of purpose. We were offering strategic guidance, if you will. In my experience, that’s harder to do than making tactical decisions. It takes more time, the stakes are bigger, and the uncertainties greater, but strategic direction can only be determined at the top.

Now, where did the public come in? First and foremost, we received a steady stream of Congressional delegations. I think that’s good. It’s always a plus when Congress takes an interest in Executive Branch work, particularly under such difficult, risky circumstances. Second, we could not mount or sustain our efforts to support the Iraqi people without non-governmental contractors. No government, not even ours, can succeed without strong ties to the industrial, service, and humanitarian elements embedded in our economies and societies.

After the successful Iraqi election on January 30, 2005, the President asked me to serve as the first Director of National Intelligence and implement the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. Procedurally, this really was a bit of a blank slate. The new Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not have an office, an organization chart, a budget, or even its own dedicated computer system. In fact, I was still in Iraq when three people in whom I reposed a great deal of trust held the first meeting to begin thinking about how to put the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on its feet.

To those three people I began adding a roster of senior officials much as I had done for our embassy in Iraq. Again, I found that some of the very best, most accomplished, and senior people in government and the private sector are risk-takers at heart. They will leap into the unknown the same way they did in their twenties. That’s why they’re so good at what they do: meaningful challenges motivate them.

By the time I was able to return to Washington, our senior line-up was just about set and we had a make-shift approach to functioning in about a dozen different office suites around the greater Washington area.

This meant that my senior colleagues and I could deepen our understanding of the underlying purposes of the Reform Act. Within a few months of opening shop, we also had the 70 plus recommendation’s of the President’s Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction chaired by Judge Silberman and Senator Robb to help steer us. So a public law and a President’s commission report helped us enormously. But they also laid out a bundle of work. By one count we were charged with implementing over 100 substantive statutory requirements and WMD Commission recommendations.

Clearly we needed a strategy for accomplishing such a task, and I felt that we needed a strategy that could be shared with the public. I seized on a single word—“integration”—and asked my new colleagues how that concept could be developed into an unclassified National Intelligence Strategy, prioritizing missions and capabilities, and correlating them across the sixteen agencies of the Intelligence Community. We spent six months developing our strategy, but they were six months well spent. The biggest challenge was to determine how we could bring together the three dimensions of intelligence: foreign, military, and domestic.

From the National Intelligence Strategy, we developed an organizational structure, a business plan, an IT plan, a personnel plan, and so on. Ultimately, as you all know, budget plays a large if not decisive role in governmental affairs, so we had to work through three budget cycles to align intelligence priorities and capabilities with financial resources.

All the while, the public, in the form of our oversight committees, expert outside commentators, and a large array of contractors, were liberal in giving us advice. Many counseled us to move faster. But as my then Deputy and now CIA Director Mike Hayden liked to say, it’s tricky redesigning and rebuilding a jet aircraft while you’re flying it. You can do it fast, or you can do it right. Doing it right offers a better chance of survival. I know you heard from DNI McConnell yesterday. I’m sure his presentation gave you a good update on what it means to keep making sure we get intelligence reform right.

In my new job as Deputy Secretary of State, I find many familiar themes in Secretary Rice’s emphasis on transformational diplomacy. Under her leadership, the Department of State is moving its people out onto the frontiers of the 21^st century. In fact, you could say we began that effort when we established our new embassy in Iraq. We need our diplomatic personnel on the front lines of change, tackling challenges in new states, burgeoning regions of economic growth, and areas where diplomacy can help build stability and prevent or resolve conflict. Our purpose is clear: Diplomacy, as Secretary Rice says, needs to be a proactive, transformational endeavor, and I would add that it needs to be an integrating endeavor.

At home, as I found in the Intelligence Community, we need to draw all players to the table in supporting a common national security and foreign policy agenda. We also need to reach out to the private and non-governmental sectors and define areas of mutual interest that may lead to common success. Abroad, we need to facilitate functional linkages between our government, our public, and the governments and publics of states in transition. Such states are not always enveloped in conflict, but there is usually a good deal of uncertainty associated with their emergence on the world scene. Think of the questions we all have about China, India, Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia, and the states of Central Asia. Where are they heading? How can we best engage with them? These are questions that may have some very good answers, but we will not arrive at them if our diplomats are not out there maximizing America’s engagement with the world.

Based on my recent experiences, I feel very much at home with the Secretary’s substantive approach to transformational diplomacy and am lending it my full support. We live in times that demand innovation and integration. It’s up to us to recognize and respond to that fact. Yes, there are risks in our fast-evolving world. These risks, however, do not outweigh the advantages and benefits that transformational diplomacy will generate for our national security, our economy, and our role in defending our democratic values around the world.

Thank you very much, and I’m happy to answer of a few of your questions.