President Bush was right to express outrage over the remarks made by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., criticizing his foreign policy decisions while he was abroad meeting with some of the world’s most important leaders. Opposition leaders traditionally exercise restraint in criticizing the nation’s chief executive in this area, particularly when he is on foreign soil. Partisanship is supposed to stop at the water’s edge.
However, if Mr. Bush truly is concerned about presenting a foreign policy that is bipartisan, he would do well to examine his State Department. It is a bastion of left-leaning politicos. In fact, a spokesman at State recently confirmed that Mr. Bush is about to nominate one of the worst offenders, Edward “Skip” Gnehm as ambassador to Jordan.
Sources, who served with Gnehm while he was Madeleine Albright’s deputy when she was ambassador to the United Nations, say he often bragged to colleagues at the United States mission in New York City that he was the most “pro-Clinton, pro-Democrat” employee in the State Department. While that may have endeared him to Albright, career employees of any agency of the federal government are not supposed to wear their political affiliations on their sleeves, particularly those employees who are in or connected to Foreign Service.
However, Gnehm’s tactics worked with Albright. When she became Secretary of State, she brought him with her and made him director general of the Foreign Service and Personnel. That’s the top job at the State Department for a career employee.
While Gnehm might be forgiven a little apple polishing to enhance his resume, he backed up his partisan claims with his actions. Consider his role in the case of Linda Shenwick.
Shenwick was our counselor for resource management at the U. S. mission to the U. N. until 1997, when Albright put her on ice, then fired her two days after the 2000 election, as the administration was headed out the door; this can only be viewed as a blatant act of retaliation.
Shenwick was the senior official responsible for analysis of the U.N. budget, and her only crime was that she did her job and refused to play the Clinton game of spin, forget and evade. Shenwick, like Gnehm, was a career State Department employee. She began her career in 1979 during the Carter administration and worked her way up the ladder. She was eminently qualified with degrees in political science and law. In the five years she was in her post at the U.N., her careful attention to detail has helped government officials and elected representatives on both sides of the aisle to press for much needed reforms.
When Albright arrived at the United Nations she viewed criticism of the U.N. as criticism of her. Shenwick was asked to put a lid on anything that might portray the U.N. in a bad light. “We’re trying to build a bridge here,” Albright would say, “and we don’t want Congress coming in and blowing it up.” Albright tried to limit the information Shenwick could give members of Congress at briefings. When that didn’t work, she began to exclude her.
Did Shenwick comply with Albright’s requests? Shenwick said, “I tried to be respectful and did not volunteer information at those hearings that she wished to conceal. However, it was my job to see that the information that was presented was correct and when it wasn’t I spoke up. Also, when congressional staffers would call my office and repeat information they had been given which was wrong, I always gave them the correct figures, which, before Albright, I always had been encouraged to do.”
Shenwick had a reputation at the U.N. as a straight shooter. She had earned not only the respect of her colleagues at the U.S. mission, but the respect of the international personnel as well. They elected her to a seat on the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, ACABQ, which not only was an important position; it helped her acquire even more knowledge of the bizarre U.N. budget process.
However, that important post was lost to the United States when Albright began to retaliate against Shenwick for her honesty. When a law was passed to tie U.S. contributions to the United Nations to reforms, Albright was unhappy, and was said to hold Shenwick directly responsible.
Albright also blamed Shenwick for a hold Sen. Larry Pressler, D-S.D., had placed on the nomination of David Birenbaum for the newly created post of deputy ambassador for U.N. Management and Reform. Pressler didn’t think the post made any sense. Furthermore, he didn’t think Birenbaum had the kind of background that would lead to true reform. It didn’t. Pressler had called Shenwick for information on the budget process, which was his right. When he then used the information he had gathered to make a case against the nomination, there was hell to pay.
Pressler was unsuccessful in derailing the Birenbaum nomination. After Birenbaum’s confirmation, the retaliation began in earnest. It was petty at first. Shenwick was moved from her corner office to a less desirable one down the hall. Members of her staff were reassigned. She was ordered to give detailed accounts of her activities and phone calls, something completely out of line for a member of the prestigious Senior Executive Service.
When Birenbaum relieved her of her authority to assign work to her staff, she went to see Gnehm, who, as senior career officer, was supposed to look out for the interests of the career staff when there were problems with the political appointees.
However, it soon became clear that he would not look into Shenwick’s complaints. In 1999, Matthew Rees, writing for the Weekly Standard, reported that Gnehm told her matter-of-factly, “What do you expect after what you did at Birenbaum’s hearings? This is payback.”
Instead of serving as a check and balance to Albright’s poor management decisions, Gnehm encouraged them and ultimately became her hatchet man. In 1995, after Albright refused to re-nominate Shenwick to the ACABQ, Gnehm leaked information to the media that she was a Republican and that she was not re-nominated because of her “political leanings.”
When Shenwick confronted him, Gnehm admitted it should not have been done and said he would talk to the press secretary. Shenwick said, “He had never asked my party affiliation, and I never volunteered it. He just assumed that I was a conservative Republican because I gave information to Republican staffers as well as Democrats when they called with questions on the U.N. budget. I always tried to treat everyone the same, without regard to party affiliation. That was my job.”
I do not know Shenwick’s party affiliation, but I do know that she is honest and that we need more honest people at all levels of our government who are unwilling to lie or bend the truth when it is politically expedient. We need more people like Shenwick who always put the interests of the taxpayers of this country first and let the chips fall where they may.
The chips at the U.S. mission to the U.N. and the State Department under Albright fell on Shenwick with a lot of help from Skip Gnehm, in one of the most vindictive and political campaigns ever orchestrated against a dedicated public servant at that agency.
Gnehm suggested that Albright bring Herbert Gelber, a former Foreign Service officer, out of retirement and give him the job of babysitting Shenwick. Gelber predictably wrote up an “unsatisfactory” job evaluation which, according to law, mandated that she be transferred to another position. This action was unprecedented, as no member of the senior executive service at the State Department had ever received this rating.
Shenwick fought back and filed a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel despite being warned by one of Albright’s senior officials that, if she did so, they would break her “financially and professionally.” The State Department was forced to forward the charges against Shenwick to the Office of Special Counsel in order to justify her “unsatisfactory” rating and prove that the attacks against her were not political. When the charges proved to be false, they made up new ones.
Meanwhile, Skip Gnehm, from his new post as director general of the Foreign Service and Personnel at the Albright State Department, authorized a plan to speed her departure, one that would have cost the taxpayers $2.5 million dollars. In 1999, Albright contacted then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and offered to transfer that tidy sum to his agency over the next five years if he would “create” a phony job for her.
On April 13, 1999, she was offered a position as “senior program adviser” at the environmental measurements’ lab in Manhattan, which just happened to be near Shenwick’s residence, if she would drop her case. It seemed a perfect solution: Shenwick would have this important title and cushy position and Albright would have extracted her “pound of flesh” and would be rid of her. However, there were a few problems:
- The job was unnecessary.
- She was completely unqualified.
- It was unethical and illegal.
To her credit Shenwick did not take the bait. She stood her ground.
Gnehm then attempted to transfer Shenwick from her important post at the mission to a job managing the State Department warehouse which ships furniture to the offices of diplomats abroad. This too was illegal while there was an ongoing investigation and a stay agreement. Skip Gnehm gave the order to lock Linda Shenwick out of her office, post a guard in front of her door and change the combination to her safe. Also, it was Gnehm who made the decision to terminate her pay in June of 1999.
Shenwick has not been without supporters on Capitol Hill. In 1999, Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., led the effort in the House of Representatives to pass a resolution supporting her complaint against the State Department. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, put a hold on several key Clinton appointees and currently is leading the charge in the Upper Chamber to have her returned to her job as soon as the new U.S. ambassador to the U.N. is at his post. Not one member of Congress has jumped on the anti-Shenwick bandwagon. The public-interest law firm Judicial Watch now has taken her case and the odds are good that she will be reinstated soon.
While Skip Gnehm has compiled an impressive resume at the State Department, Mr. Bush should be made aware that it often was done in an overt political manner. In fact, his last post likely was obtained because he was willing to shirk his responsibility to protect a career employee.
Meanwhile, it also should be remembered what his actions have cost Linda Shenwick. She has been in a state of suspended animation for more than two years, working part-time jobs and trying to keep on top of her six-figure legal bills. Also, she has had to endure character attacks on her personal as well as her professional life.
If Bush truly wants politics to stop at the water’s edge, he will not nominate Skip Gnehm as an ambassador. He will not send him to Jordan or anywhere else.
Perhaps that job at the State Department warehouse is still open?
