by Jonathan Rickert
Visits by CODELs, or Congressional delegations, long have been an inescapable fact of life for US missions overseas. And serving as “control officer” for legislative visitors is a rite of passage for many Foreign Service officers stationed abroad.
There are two main categories of CODEL. First are the boondoggles, during which the Congresspeople visit only developed countries and spend more time on tourism and shopping than anything else. We had more than our fair share of those in London. Then there are what I would call “substantive” CODELs, which visit countries that often are not garden spots and look into issues that are of serious concern to the US, such as human rights abuses and drug trafficking. These are rarer but can be helpful to the posts visited in promoting our foreign policy objectives.
A very few CODELs have a third purpose, providing an opportunity for a senator or representative seeking higher office to raise his or her profile, at home and abroad. Among several experiences that I had over the years as a CODEL control officer, two stand out. Both involved Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy; one had all the earmarks of a boondoggle, while the other seemed to have a profile-raising objective.
London
The first occurred in early May 1966, when I was serving at Embassy London as a very junior Foreign Service officer on my first overseas assignment. Kennedy, Senator John Tunney, and a group of prominent members from the House of Representatives came to the United Kingdom for several days to attend a Ditchley Foundation conference. These unofficial gatherings brought together US and UK legislators for informal discussions on issues of common interest. For obvious reasons, they were very popular with the American participants.
As it turned out, I had fairly limited contact with the senator as his control officer, though it was a thrill for me just to be dealing with such a famous public figure. The gracious British hosts filled the visitors’ daytime hours with meetings and social events, while the rest of their time was unprogrammed. Kennedy and his sidekick Tunney elected to spend their evenings on the town, precisely where and how I do not know. My only responsibility was to provide them with an embassy car and driver for as long as needed. The two senators were out and about until very early in the morning for four evenings or so—the driver had to report to me the hours he worked.
Bucharest
Fast forward to 1974, when Senator Kennedy was planning a mid-April visit to Romania with his wife Joan as part of a multi-country tour of Europe. It was widely rumored at the time that he was considering a run for the White House. As the junior political officer at Embassy Bucharest, I was assigned as the senator’s control officer for what we and the Romanians considered to be an important visit.
James King, who later headed the Office of Personnel Management, was the senator’s “advance man.” Arriving almost a week before Kennedy, King had overall responsibility on the American side for all the arrangements, including security. Large, outgoing, and with a very informal manner, King knew nothing about Romania, but was an absolutely topflight professional in his own fields of expertise.
To initiate preparations for the senator’s impending visit, King and I called on the Foreign Ministry’s chief of protocol, Mircea Andrei, and a representative of the North American affairs directorate, Teodor Ditulescu, who was to serve as interpreter. King arrived at the Foreign Ministry in his “work clothes”—a red and black checkered flannel lumberjack shirt, blue jeans, well-worn brown leather work boots, and a light parka with Velcro fasteners on the sleeves, which he opened and closed with a loud ripping sound as he spoke.
By contrast, the very formal protocol chief was clad according to the Romanian diplomatic mode of the time—dark business suit, white shirt, conservative tie, and black shoes. When the two met, there were immediate signs of bemusement on the Romanians’ faces, since King apparently did not fit their image of how the senior aide to a prominent US senator should appear. And when King began to speak in his jargon-filled, New England accented English, the bemusement quickly turned to incomprehension. After struggling briefly to provide English-to-Romanian translations, Ditulescu turned to me with a look that said, “he’s all yours.”
As I struggled over the next hour to put King’s words into reasonable Romanian approximations, I could see the Romanian officials’ bewilderment gradually turning into appreciation, since he really did know his business and had thought through every possible detail. Despite the somewhat inauspicious beginning, each soon gained a new respect and better understanding for how the other operated and began to make the necessary adjustments. “East” really did meet “West” that day, and both ended up working well together to produce a visit that was logistically flawless and met the requirements of all concerned.
Senator Kennedy’s April 15-16 visit itself was jampacked, with both official and informal events. After an official greeting at the airport and settling in briefly at the government-provided guest house, the senator and foreign policy aide Robert Hunter repaired to a pre-arranged gathering of mostly young people, who eagerly crowded around them, at Carul cu Bere, a well-known Bucharest pub (founded in 1897). A lively discussion ensued, for which I served as informal interpreter.
Three senior Romanian officials then hosted Kennedy for dinner at Hanul lui Manuc, Bucharest’s oldest inn.
The next day Senator Kennedy visited an open-air produce market at Piata Unirea and dropped in at the American Library before leaving for a four-and-a-half-hour session, including a meal, with President Ceausescu. The control officer was not included in that part of the program. Shortly after leaving the Presidential Palace, the senator and Mrs. Kennedy departed by plane for Belgrade. Though the visit itself had gone smoothly, the departure was a different story. Mrs. Kennedy had somehow managed to lose her passport at some point during her stay—she had a separate program from her husband.
While the Romanians, of course, allowed her to leave without a passport (there was no time for the consular section to issue her a replacement), we had to make frantic calls to our Embassy in Belgrade to arrange for her to be admitted there without a travel document. The Yugoslavs graciously accommodated the unusual situation, and the Kennedys were able to proceed with their travels as planned.
What to make of Senator Kennedy’s visit? While conducting substantive discussions with the Romanian government, it seems clear that he was seeking to polish his image as a consequential international statesman as well. Thanks to his highly competent advance man, and some embassy assistance, that is exactly what he did. It was not easy for me to get a sense of Kennedy, the man, during these visits. He came across as guarded and much more interested in the embassy and its personnel as sources of logistics than of information. We at the embassy would have liked, of course, to have been called upon in both capacities.
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.