In D.C. with Pacific McGeorge: Antonia Badway
August 4, 2005 As I was walking to work this morning, I was again amazed that I was here, in D.C., walking to work at the U.S. Department of State. My walk from the Metro is an incredible one - look to the left and I have a spectacular view of the Washington Monument, straight ahead is the Lincoln Memorial and to my right is the Kennedy Center and the Watergate. Not to mention the fact that my destination every morning is THE STATE DEPARTMENT! It is truly a humbling way to start off your day, but an amazingly inspiring one as well. Last Thursday, while the rest of my office went to play softball in the State Dept. vs. USAID game, I stayed behind to draft a press release regarding Radovan Karadzic's wife calling for him to surrender to International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague. Karadzic is one of the two worst indictees of the ICTY that still remains a fugitive. I left the office around 8pm and was back here at 7:45am the next morning working on press guidance in case the press asked any questions about the statement. As long of a night as that was, along with a somewhat early morning, it was an absolute high to hear the State Department Press Secretary Sean McCormack read my words at the beginning of the Daily Press Briefing last Friday. One of the benefits of being in D.C. for this internship is that the internship can truly be your life and if you take the opportunities thrown at you and tackle the tough assignments -- staying late if need be -- you end up getting soooo much more out of the summer. This week the Ambassador is on official travel in the Middle East and will not be returning until Monday morning. I am sorry not to have a chance to thank him in person for providing me with this incredible work experience, but with any luck he will grace our campus with his presence again this year as he did last and update the Pacific McGeorge community on the state of war crimes internationally. The work pace has been a bit slower this week due to his absence, and I have spent the majority of my time finishing my projects and preparing notes for other staff members. As I sort through my files, I am amazed at the breadth of the work I have done in just 10 weeks and the amount I have learned, not just about war crime issues, but also about inter-agency interactions and government in general. I know it has been 10 weeks because my calendar tells me that next week is the MPRE and the following Monday classes begin, but this summer has flown by in my mind. I am so grateful to have had this opportunity to peer inside the realm of government agencies. I will definitely miss the people in my office and D.C. in general. Now I just have to start looking for a way to get here permanently! ;-) July 28, 2005 As I predicted on Monday, this has indeed been a busy week in the Office of War Crime Issues. The Ambassador leaves tomorrow for a week, and on top of regular tasks, I have been drafting country clearance cables and helping finalize travel plans. The great thing is, everything you work on in this office is extremely current and the issues therefore extremely exciting to be working on. In addition there are always the perks of attending events and getting tours otherwise not accessible to the general public. Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure to attend the swearing in of the new Ambassador to Afghanistan. The ceremony took place on the 8th floor of the Main State Department building in the diplomatic reception rooms. The rooms are gorgeous and are decorated with donated American antiques, making them a favorite place for events such as this. Last time I visited the rooms was for a ceremony for the inaugural class of Powell Fellows, an event at which both past Secretary of State Colin Powell and current Secretary of State Rice spoke. Since this time was a swearing in, Secretary Rice introduced the new Ambassador, did the honors of swearing him in, and then handed the podium over to the new Ambassador for his remarks. With this position being so key in our current nation-building efforts in the middle east, as well as our war on terror, the event was attended by Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England as well as USAID Director Andrew Natsios. Sipping champagne in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms while witnessing a new Ambassador being sworn into office by the Secretary of State is a rather nice break to a hectic day in the office :-) With hours yet to go in my day, I am off to the Secretary's office to drop off a Note from the Ambassador I drafted this morning. Who knows - maybe I will have another Condi sighting ;-) July 25, 2005 My week here in D.C. began very early this morning - registration for 3rd years began at midnight California time, but here in D.C. that equals 3 AM. Being the kind of person that shows up at the airport 3 hours before my flight just in case, I wanted to make sure I registered right when it opened up just in case there was a rush for classes. Unfortunately, I wake up at 5:45, so there was not much sleeping done last night :-) Housing in D.C. is quite pricey and very hard to find due to the mad rush for housing that comes with the onslaught of summer interns. For this reason, I decided to stay at American University's dorms: re-living the college experience minus the roommate. AU is a rather small campus settled up by the Tenleytown metro stop in Northwest D.C. (right by the Maryland border). There is a shuttle that runs from AU to the metro stop, taking about 10 minutes. Every morning I catch the 7am shuttle (the first one of the day), which puts me on the metro at about 7:15. I take the red line down to Metro Center, where I transfer to the blue/orange line, which I take 3 more stops to Foggy Bottom/George Washington University metro stop. From there, my office is about 6 to 7 blocks. This walk wasn't so bad the first few days of the summer, but when it starts pouring rain or when it is 94 degrees plus humidity making it feel like 101 - it is a loooong walk! The trick is to wear flip-flops and a tshirt, carrying your dress shoes, blouse and suit jacket, and to make a quick bathroom detour to cool off and change before entering the office. At first I was concerned I would look unprofessional entering the building in the morning, but then you notice everyone else around you is doing the same thing, so there is nothing to worry about :-) Last week a group of us McGeorge students got together with Jodi Else, our Washington D.C. coordinator, for a happy hour and dinner at a great Mexican restaurant a few blocks away from the Capital. Besides being a great resource and advocate for us when applying for D.C. positions, Jodi plans various events during the summer to gather us together to relax, catch up and have fun. When it comes to food, D.C. has good EVERYTHING! However, being a true Californian, I cannot express how wonderful it was to get some good Mexican and catch up with everyone! As I enter my last two weeks in the office, I am starting to wrap up loose ends on various projects I have been working on over the summer. This next week, the Ambassador will be traveling abroad in his official capacity, so in addition to our current tasks, the office will be working on drafting press guidance, writing country clearance cables to the embassies he will be visiting, arranging meetings for his trip, and updating any in-house information related to the visit. So all in all, it looks to be a very busy and very humid week here in D.C. :-) July 18, 2005 As the countdown begins on my last three weeks here in D.C., I am constantly amazed at what an incredible summer this has been here at the Department of State in the Office of War Crime Issues. My first day at State was an intern orientation, where we were debriefed on security issues and the different levels of classified information. My job required me to pass Secret security clearance (for those unfamiliar with clearance, there is Secret and Top Secret, both of which require a TON of paperwork and a background check), so this was an important debriefing as I would have access to the classified computer network at State and be working on classified documents. It sounds really cool - and believe me it is - however it leaves you with no writing sample at the end of the summer due to the fact that most of what I have worked on wont be declassified until 2015 or later :-) On my second day of work, I reported to my office - the Office of War Crime Issues, led by Ambassador-at-Large for War Crime Issues, Pierre-Richard Prosper. (For more on the office go to www.state.gov/s/wci) The office is the lead policy office on the issue of war crimes, which includes more than just issues of genocide - in fact we work with Guantanamo issues regularly. Our acronym within State is S/WCI, which means we report directly to the Secretary of State rather than an Assistant Secretary. The office is the smallest within the Department, with only seven permanent positions in the office. This has been a challenge and a blessing, as it means interns get thrown right into the middle of things because there is always more work than staff. I have written action memos for the Secretary of State, information memos for the Deputy Secretary of Defense and other international figures, helped coordinated Public Benefit Special Parole cases, attended various working group meetings on behalf of the office, picked up visas at the Afghanistan Embassy, attended a small meeting of the European Union at the Luxemborg Embassy, and organized meetings of the Rewards for Justice Committee. The Rewards for Justice program is a really interesting program set up to pay rewards to informants whose information leads to the arrest and transfer of people indicted by the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, as well as the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The biggest writing skill I have picked up at State is - be concise! Memos to the Secretary of State are limited to one page in length, which means your suggested action, explanation of why you are making the suggestion, and other background information, must all fit into about one paragraph. Fun stuff when you start with 50 pages of material :-) Before I sign off for the day - my best memory of Day #2 on the job - our office had an information memo to give to the Secretary, which means you can walk it straight to her office, which is coincidentally also on the 7th floor - or maybe our office is coincidentally on the 7th floor since she is the Secretary after all - anyways, I digress: I accompanied Andy, a Special Assistant in our office, to deliver the memo to the Secretary. Right before we turned onto "Mahogany Row" (the nickname for her corridor of the 7th floor due to the immediate sense of sophistication and elegance that comes over you due to the change in decor when you turn into her corridor), Secretary Rice comes out of a side door with about 4 people. She is exactly as she looks on TV - perhaps even a bit taller than she appears on TV...anyways, I am in such awe and have this huge grin on my face that Andy has to nod his head to the side to remind me to move over so I don't walk straight into her. As we turned the corner into Mahogany Row to go to her office and drop off the memo, I still had the huge grin on my face and I don't think it left my face until about 3 hours later. Maybe I am a dork, or maybe it was just that cool, but passing the Secretary a few feet away from you, a number of times during the summer no less, its pretty darn cool in my book and will be something I never forget. |
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