by Jonathan Rickert
Most US diplomats who have served as consular officers at any point in their careers likely have tales to tell about unusual visa applicants, American citizens in distress, or other memorable professional encounters with the public. Although I was engaged in consular work for less than three years in London and Bucharest during the 1960s and 1970s, I had several such unforgettable experiences.
London: Embassy Funds or the Oldest Profession
Over a weekend in London, while I was serving for the first time as consular duty officer, a young American woman telephoned, claiming that she had lost (spent?) all of her money and demanding, rather peremptorily, that the embassy provide the necessary funds to pay for her return flight to the US. Having rejected all other proffered forms of assistance, such as contacting her husband or other family members, she claimed that without money from the embassy she would be forced to resort to prostitution to get the cash she needed. And it would be our fault! We never heard from her again after politely declining her request and can only hope that she found a less extreme means of obtaining a ticket home.
Bucharest: Psychic Rockets, Poisoned Bread, and A Purloined Wallet
In communist Romania, few ordinary citizens received passports for foreign travel, and the militia (police) barred entry to the consulate to many who just were seeking information about travel or immigration to the US. We had the impression, however, that the authorities were more than willing to allow access to troubled people without passports (perhaps they had a more twisted sense of humor than we gave them credit for). And there were quite a number of such people.
I recall one apparently delusional person telling me that he was able to launch rockets solely with psychic power. If only we would help him to get a passport and issue him a visa, he was prepared to demonstrate this skill, in person, at the Pentagon. Asked to provide evidence for his “invention,” he replied that all would be revealed only after he had arrived safely in the US. We invited him to return for further discussion once he had a passport – – needless to say, he never came back.
On another occasion a young couple came in to see me. He was a US citizen of Romanian/Hungarian origin, while she was an ethnic Hungarian Romanian citizen. He indicated that they wished to get married and settle in the US, though it was clear that they barely knew each other – – I suspected that it was to be some sort of arranged marriage, since the young woman came from the same Transylvanian village from which the man’s parents had emigrated.
The overriding immediate problem was that the two were unable to communicate with each other – – he spoke only English, while she knew only Hungarian and Romanian. That put me, as a Romanian speaker, in the awkward position of serving as their interpreter. Though I tried my best to fill that role, the couple apparently were unable to work things out between them, or the Romanian authorities would not allow her to leave, since she never returned for an immigrant visa.
Another passportless man with a haunted look in his eyes told me that “they” were trying to poison him by putting radioactive substances in his bread. Only by emigrating to America could he hope to escape “their” nefarious plots against him. Since we could provide neither a passport nor antidote to “radioactive poisoning,” we were unable to do any more than lend him a sympathetic ear. In another case, an embarrassed middle-aged American man, who said that his wallet had been stolen by a prostitute after they had spent the night together at a prominent local hotel, wanted us to get his wallet and money back for him, but without involving the Romanian authorities or anyone at the hotel. Lots of luck with that!
Bucharest: The Mathematician’s Calculations Didn’t Add Up
Perhaps my most memorable consular experience occurred in 1975, when I was sent on TDY from Vienna, where I was stationed, to Bucharest to fill in for a medically evacuated consular officer. Having disembarked from my Austrian Airlines flight at Bucharest’s Otopeni International Airport and passed through passport control on the afternoon of July 24, I was immediately greeted by the airline’s local representative, Peter Canisius, with whom I was well acquainted from my recent tour of duty in Romania. After a brief exchange of pleasantries and once he had ascertained the purpose of my visit, he said he had a problem with which he needed my immediate help.
An apparently unbalanced US citizen, who said he wanted to settle permanently in Romania, had arrived on the same flight as mine. The Romanian authorities would not allow him to enter their country officially, and the gentleman in question adamantly refused to get back on the plane, which was returning shortly to Vienna. The American had dug in his heels, and angry words had been exchanged. What could I do, Canisius asked, to end the standoff and get my compatriot to leave. I agreed to try.
Although I often dealt with troubled people as a consular officer, I claim no special knowledge or expertise in that area. One thing I have learned, however, is that in such situations it usually is a good idea to hear the other person out as patiently as possible, without necessarily expressing agreement with what they are saying, but without directly contradicting or arguing with them either. Try to be, or at least pretend to be, as sympathetic as possible toward the other person’s perspective, no matter how warped or unrealistic it may be. And that is what I did in this case.
The gentleman in question, an assistant mathematics professor at a university in New York City, was intelligent, articulate, and clearly around the bend. He told me that wherever he went in the world, the ubiquitous “they” had been pursuing him with some sort of death ray. He had ascertained that Romania was the only place on earth where he would be beyond “their” reach. He therefore was determined to settle there permanently and wanted my help make it happen.
After listening to his story and making sympathetic noises about his quandary, I explained calmly to him that to become a legal resident in Romania, or in the United States for that matter, a foreigner required an immigrant visa. Such visas could only be issued abroad. Therefore, he needed to return to Vienna and apply for an immigrant visa at the Romanian embassy there.
While I do not know exactly what convinced my compatriot to get back on the plane to Vienna, that is exactly what he did, without any further muss or fuss and much to the relief of Mr. Canisius. For my part, I went directly to our embassy to call the consular section in Vienna to inform them of the imminent arrival there of a “problem case,” news they were none too pleased to receive, especially on a Friday evening. Nevertheless, in addition to doing the right thing, I also had followed the first (unofficial) rule for dealing with serious consular problems — do whatever is necessary to get them promptly out of your consular district!
Retired Senior Foreign Service officer Jonathan B. Rickert spent over 35 years of his career in London, Moscow, Vienna, Port of Spain, Sofia, and Bucharest (twice), as well as in Washington. His last two overseas assignments were as deputy chief of mission in Bulgaria and Romania. Mr. Rickert holds a B.A. degree in history from Princeton University and an M.A. in international relations from the George Washington University.