“You have one more test to pass.”

That’s what then–secretary of state George Shultz would tell newly appointed diplomats after they had finished the obligatory grip-and-grin. The guest in his office would look puzzled, and Shultz would instruct him or her, “You have to go over to the globe on my desk and identify your country.” Invariably, the statesman would point to New Zealand or Egypt or some other nation, to which Shultz would reply, “No, point to your country,” reminding him where his true loyalties lie.

“Originally,” Shultz says, “I thought of it as something fun.” But when it took several years for someone actually to spin the globe around and point to the United States, the exercise became a potent—and telling—display of the underlying problem of the State Department. Foggy Bottom’s inverted priorities—believing that the job of the diplomatic corps is to represent a foreign country’s interests in America, not America’s interests in the foreign country—can be seen in any number of examples, from easy visas to child abduction cases.

By its own admission, State lobbied against the rather mild Syria Accountability Act in part because Syria and its neighbors would not like the sanctions bill. The intent might not have been to represent Syria’s interests—State’s standard line is that sanctioning countries hurts “relations”—but the effect is that it did. Saudi Arabia was able to enjoy Visa Express even after September 11 because State believed that ending the program would harm “relations” with the House of Saud. And State does little to help left-behind American parents recover their children abducted to foreign lands because exerting real pressure—in the minds of State officials—would make it more difficult to get other “favors” from the foreign governments.

FIXING STATE—TO THE EXTENT IT’S POSSIBLE

“I’m sorry.”

Then-U.S. ambassador to Jordan, William Burns, had heard some disturbing news, and he rushed to make an apology. A Jordanian citizen, Ishaq Farhan, had received a visa from the State Department, only to be turned back by U.S. customs officials as he tried to enter the country to give a speech at a conference for the American Muslims for Jerusalem in Santa Clara, California. Burns personally assured Farhan that he was sorry for any inconvenience the incident caused.

Farhan was head of the fundamentalist group Islamic Action Front (IAF) and had possible ties to terrorism. Not sketchy, far-fetched ties, either. A fax threatening possible terrorist action against the United States came from his office fax machine, which is why he was added to the terrorism watch list in 1999 and his visa (issued in 1998) was revoked.

On November 10, 1996, the American embassy in Amman, Jordan, received the following fax from IAF demanding the release of a Hamas leader, Dr. Musa Abu Marzook.

We demand that you immediately release Dr. Musa Abu Marzook and urge you not to hand him over to the Zionist enemy. We warn you that if you do not release Dr. Musa Abu Marzook, and if you hand him over to the Jews, we will turn the ground upside down over your heads in Amman, Jerusalem, and the rest of the Arab countries and you will lament your dead just as we did to you in Lebanon in 1982 when we destroyed the Marine House with a booby-trapped car, and there are plenty of cars in our country. You also still remember the oil tanker with which we blew up your soldiers in Saudi Arabia.

Granted, this might not constitute sufficient evidence for a criminal conviction in a court of law—but then the question of whether someone qualifies for a visa is not one for which the U.S. has to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Since the incident happened in May 2000—more than a year before September 11—State still had the power to “correct” matters. The suspected terrorist, who had told the Jordan Times in 1998, “The resistance of the enemy Israel is a right and legitimate jihad holy war,” had his visa reinstated, giving him an open door to come to the United States. Continued...