State Department Intake Thoughts...
And a note for my pals at the USDS in the age of the muskrump mismanagement of government.
Not a lot of people know this about me, but for a few years in my early 20s, I worked for the US Department of State in their “Administration/Information Management” group. I was, indeed, a federal worker. So when you hear about leaks from OPM or old Musky sifting through federal employee files for whatever his crew of doge clowns are trolling for, think of me!
If you want to skip to the end and get to my take on the modern musk nonsense really, I’m cool with that. It’s the last bit at the end….
I was brought in as an intern during Clinton/Gore’s federal hiring freeze. (I think I was being paid negative 5$/hour. I was a gs-4 or something, If I drove in and paid for parking, I was making less than I earned as I was so low on the GS totem pole1. After a comically long2 wait to get a TS-SCI3 security clearance. I reported for work at “main state” on C street for my intake and training.
It was pretty interesting! Of course there was the paperwork, signing on to government service, etc. I made my oath to the constitution, as one does. I remember a grand tour of the building, with stops in the American Express travel office4, the library5, the internal passport office6, the cafeteria, the used book store7 and the like.
Those first few weeks, like any new job, we’d attend training sessions. Among those included what was and was not allowed wrt classified materials. Did you know? Leaving a classified document unsecured when you go to the bathroom was a 3 strikes and you're out firing offense. We were all issued these little table toppers that said “No classified materials” so that roaming people who might deposit the odd classified doc on your desk would know to not do that, I guess?
Anyhow, the training folks would go through the various rules and regulations on that sort of thing. There was also a super interesting session on ways that foreign adversaries would attempt to compromise department employees. They would walk through the various approaches foreign intelligence services would attempt8 with employees. They talked about what to do, what not to do, how to deal with when you were approached, who diplomatic security was and what they did for a living, etc.
My first weeks or months concentrated on learning how the department worked. As you might imagine, I focused on how how the IT systems were set up. The differences between the classified9 and non-classified10 systems was literally fascinating. We even had rules on how ‘close’ a classified system could be to a non-classified system. This was not including the ‘tempested’ unix systenms, which had a funny thing in the xwindow manager which would isolate ‘classified’ from ‘unclassified’ windows. Those didn’t really end up cleared by tptb11.
Imagine, if you will, the main state building. 7 stories + a basement level or two. I was on floor four, and the main phone, IT systems/servers and mainframes12 and cafeteria were in the basement level. Every office had the 10base2 cable running to the basement but I know that the wang terminals were plumbed to the wang mainframe.
And since these wang machines were tempest certified terminals, the wires heading to the basement were surrounded by 2 to 3 inches (radius!) of insulation to deter someone tapping/measuring the signals streaming down those twisted pairs. Or at least I think it was the wang terminal protocol over twisted pared ethernet via ipx? I dunno, it’s been a while! These machines were old when I started!13
What’s more, when we toured the data center at the building, we had a huge number of *very* old wang storage systems. They ran hardware I wouldn’t see again until I toured the computer history museum. I remember asking a colleague why we were running these ancient machines.
I remember his response: “Yeah, and they’re not even really being used anymore” but that the national archives had an interpretation of the national records act that all federal communications must be preserved in their original form to properly comply. So the state department had these machines literally sitting there, spinning consuming energy and support engineer time, for archival purposes.
Had the data been long seconded to the Archives? Yes. Yes, of course!14
For me this didn’t drive home not that this was a huge waste of time, or whatever, but that the people who worked at the department took their responsibility to the American people quite seriously.
To a one, I never met a civil servant that I thought was ill intentioned15. I never met anyone who I thought was there to ‘milk the taxpayers’ or whatever nonsense passes for policy making nowadays.
My third or so week at the department, my manager asked me to do a simple thing so I could see how “Buying stuff” at the department worked. He wanted a flatbed scanner for the office, so I should learn the ropes by picking one up for the office.
There was a form, you see. I filled it out and had him sign for it, and then I would put it in an envelope and send it off via the interoffice mail system to start the procurement process.
Remember, I was young, and maybe not the smartest bulb, so instead I took the envelope to the ‘Deliver to’ address on the envelope. I had an employee badge that would work on all but the most secured facilities so , why not?
I went to the first stop16 and went through the door to the building. I went to the mail stop on the envelope. I found an office with three or four people in it.
I asked someone if this was the first office for the form.
The fellow said it was17, and that I could put it in the inbox for processing. I asked “Can I wait?”. I remember him looking at me as if I had grown another ear on my forehead, cocking his head as he said , “Uh, lemme see that”.
He opened the envelope, looked at the doc, and started noting stuff down.
“Can you tell me what you’re doing? I’m really interested”, I asked.
“Uh, sure…” , after getting past the surprise at this gangly young person asking what his work was, he was actually super nice showing me what he did. As he wrapped up, he filled the next stop on the envelope and slid the paperwork (it was now three sheets, I think, it would grow at each stop) to the outbox. I asked if I could take it, he just nodded and I would go to the next stop.
I would end up visiting about 5 or 6 offices that day and the next morning, and every person in the chain had a real task… make sure the department was getting a fair price, that we were buying it from an approved vendor, that our department really wanted it and had budget for it, etc..
A week or so later (I didn’t ask for expedited shipping, as that seemed indulgent) the scanner appeared on our administrative desk at the department.
My manager, after some discussion, came to me and asked me if this was the scanner we ordered. I said, “yes, it was” and I swear I remember he called over a few other people to see it. I didn’t understand, and asked “What’s up, is it not ok” ?
“No, its fine. But did you go through the procurement processes like we asked?”
“Yeah, I did!”
“You didn’t use petty cash or anything ,right?”
Dear reader, I was so young I had no clue what petty cash even was. Johnny Cash's wife, Patsy18? I’d later find out they kept some cash in a box to pay for god knows what? Dominos’ pizza? Sandwiches? A coup in Haiti?
“No, I, uh, didn’t know about that?”
“So, how…. We only put this in last week.”
They literally had no idea what was going on. I told the assembled about my adventures on the state department shuttle system, seeing all the buildings, etc.
“You visited every stop on the envelope?”
“Yep.”
“Oh. That's .... insane”
My manager called over the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Information Management19 and invited me to tell him how I got a scanner in a week.
I asked, after all that, “How long does it normally take?”
“Well, we figured we’d see it in three or four months, by February maybe?”, he replied.
Anyhow, as you might imagine I was “the guy who visited every building” to get a scanner for a while. It’s how they introduced me. It was pretty funny.
You might remember earlier in this post, I mentioned I joined the department under the intern rules during the “reinventing infrastructure” initiative under the Clinton white house.
This was a hiring freeze and an effort to reduce the federal footprint. It coincided with the acceleration of the BRAC process with a goal of actually seeing some of the ‘peace dividend’ that the American public so deserved after the cold war.
I remember the folks at the department were worried for their projects, and, for sure, also their jobs, in the wake of the “reinvention” but they were super clear about their mission.
At the time, no in process offers were rescinded, or illegal reapportionment was attempted. There were buyouts, but only after running it through the correct processes to make sure they were legal and real.
The contrast with the Trump administration's approach to cutting couldn’t be more stark.
You might remember that Elon Musk sent his “hardcore mode ” email to many of my friends at Twitter. They could chose to take the ‘buyout’ and ‘resign’ by not signing on to that nonsense. Many would get the oops, we didn’t mean it and please stay! phone calls from their managers, but they knew it was time to go.
To be clear: most never got their severance, and many never had their corporate (Security) credentials revoked until much later. They're still waiting for the court case to see even one thin dime of the ‘buyout/severance’ from musk.
The advice I gave many friends at the time was: “Ship your laptop, badge and any twitter stuff you might have, certified receipt request, etc.” and they should make it clear you wouldn’t be using any access you might still have. So many still had access to the backend systems. The cloud accounts, corporate email, and the rest. It is a testament to the character of these people that no-one simply shut the site down as they left.
To be clear, every layoff in, well any, industry has ‘unforeseen consequences’ and executive staff will commonly build in extra money to cover the worst of the screwups that accompany a big cut.
Recently, my spouse asked me what I would have done if I were working for the Fed and got one of these emails from Musk. The way my career has grown, I probably would have been out January 19th with the new administration coming in as I would be an appointee and not a civil servant. That said, I don’t think that Musk would ever, not ever, follow through on any severance or buyouts, or at least he wouldn’t care in the slightest to do a layoff ‘right’ at the fed.
Simply put, he is not a man of his word. His character lacks substance.
My advice to the federal employees would be, simply, get with your union guy or an employment lawyer asap. Of course, the idea that every civil servant has access to a good employment lawyer is laughable. I think back to when I was a gs-4 at the department, I guess I would take the buyout that would never ever come, because, what the hell else would I do? I guess I’d go back to the service desk at Circuit City or sell books and software at the Tyson’s Corner Walden’s and continue my life in retail while getting my degree.
The way that the Trump administration, through Elon Musk, has undertaken this process has been breathtaking in its extreme lack of care for the people of the federal government. For that matter, it’s astonishing how this is impacting the American people20.
Yes, I know that in their isolationist zeal Trump and Musk don’t care about the long term damage they are doing to the American people or to America's position overseas. The consequences of dismantling America's place in the world will be long lasting, expensive, long term and extensive.
Donald Trump might actually lose us bases overseas not through a thoughtful process like BRAC, but because allies who formerly allowed our presence will be if anything incentivized to see us exit their territory.
To be pithy about it: Our foreign policy shouldn’t be structured on “What countries host a trump international hotel and golf course”. I literally don’t have the energy21 to go further on this post.
I’d like to wrap this very long post up with a note to those who have recently left the USDS as it transmogrified in the body horror that is DOGE:
You did remarkable work. As an American citizen I was so grateful and proud of the work you did and I’m not alone. You should be very proud of the work you did to make America a better place. You were, every single one of you, some of the best civil servants America has had the fortune to have working on its behalf. Thank you.
I rode the metro quite a bit! Orange line homies say hello?
I had never been out of the country and I was in my early 20s! My clearance took about a year and culminated in a interview with a fellow in a fedora and trench coat in a 6x6 room in Rosslyn, Virginia. I swear I’m not making this up.
Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information. IT workers were exposed to a lot of data systems, so they wanted high level clearance for us all. This is actually fairly appropriate. I could see everything.
Many of my cohort were foreign service officers/assigned to embassies overseas so they’d be using the travel section more than I would.
I’d spend a fair amount of time there, it was pretty incredible. They had filled in one of the buildings atriums with stacks of half height floors with books and books and books. I would roam the stacks ad read the original treaties the settlers would cut with various tribes, you know, after lunch.
This was incredible. It’s one of the things I miss about working there. So many great books.
To be clear, this would be extremely relevant on my second trip to China.
Wang terminals running Vax/VMS!
Windows PCs running windows 95 or 3.1 on 10base2 networks if I remember correctly.
The powers that be, or in my case dipso: Diplomatic Security. They were actually super neat people.
What, it was the 90s! Mainframes littered DC!
I also used a next machine, but that is a different post! One of those phat magnesium cubes.
This waste of time and money was later found to be , well, silly, and if the data had be verifiably archived then it would be okay to shut down the old servers and run them over with a tank, or chop them up in a shredder or something.
This is not to say that there wasn’t or isn’t a need for a better, more efficient government. Jen Phalka said it way better than I could in her post: https://substack.com/home/post/p-155248022, Go read it!
I think it was in Ballston Commons, which is a hilariously named neighborhood in Virginia.
I remember him being *extremely* nattily dressed. He was an incredible fashion plate. We’d end up having pizza for lunch often. He was so cool. 3 piece suit. Sweet tie, pocket square, etc…
I love Patsy Clyne, the queen of Winchester, Virginia, and her hit ‘crazy’ to this day haunts me. I’m listening to it as I type this.
The capitalization seems extreme, but there were a lot of titles at the department, this was a pretty senior guy.
And let's not get into the horror that is USAID closing its doors across the globe.
I have a bad cold, imagine how much worse it would be if I hadn’t had the flu shot last year… .oh wait, I guess we’ll find out next year what that’s like.