Announcement of the RAND Center for Health Security

U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy
July 19, 2002 

Chairman Harold Pachios: I’m Harold Pachios, Chairman of U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. To my right and sitting just behind me is Matt Lauer who is the Staff Director of the Commission on Public Diplomacy, and to my left is Walter Roberts who is a former Commission and Senior Consultant to the Commission. We meet here this morning to hear about a very exciting new initiative being undertaken by Rand that I would like, for the benefit of our guests, to just talk briefly about the Commission.

Congress created the Commission in 1948 as a bipartisan, Presidential-appointed commission to oversea many programs of the United States Government, which were designed to inform and influence foreign publics. Without going into a great deal of detail, many of you, and particularly students of contemporary history, will recognize that that effort was quite successful during the many decades of what was known as the Cold War. In fact, you will hear from two veterans of that information era and activity, seated immediately to my left, Walter Roberts and Barry Fulton, in a few minutes.

The Commission, like all organizations, has changed over time, and its emphasis has changed over time. And, of course, the events of September 11 have brought a new urgency to the whole issue of pubic diplomacy.

I would note parenthetically that in the decade between the fall of the Berlin Wall, a little more than a decade, and the events of September 11, many people including many people in this room, felt that public diplomacy should not and ought not to be a very high priority, that, in fact, the Cold War was over, we were in a global communications revolution and there was no shortage of information or understanding about the United States. And now, if one looks at polling done all over the world and examines the attitudes of foreign publics, not just in the Middle East but everywhere in the world, you understand that global television, the exploitation of American popular media and American popular culture has not increased understanding of the American people or American values, and certainly not of American policy. So it has taken on a new importance.

It is critical now, and I think that is generalized recognized throughout the United States. We are busily engaged in these activities. We are delighted that you all are here. I will also add that the eight years that I have been on his Commission, and Walter has been associated with the Commission for a much longer period of time, prior to September 11, I think I remember two or three newspaper articles during all those years which discussed or even identified the notion of public diplomacy.

 Many people worked with the United States Information Agency, but few people understood the ramifications, the extent and really the conduct of public diplomacy. Now hardly a day goes by when one does not hear discussion of it on radio, television or read about it in newspapers and magazines. So we are delighted that you are here and expressing as a world interest in this activity. The Commission, incidentally, is supported by the Department of State. It is located in the Department of State. Its employees are actually employees of the Department of State, but it is an independent commission of seven people – we don’t have seven people now and in fact, the White House, we expect, will be making some nominations and we will be back at full complement in the not too distant future.

I’d like to take a few minutes at the beginning to have Walter Roberts and Barry Fulton talk a little bit about the Public Diplomacy Institute, which is housed at George Washington University. Walter, incidentally, taught Public Diplomacy at GW, and he is a former Foreign Service Officer. Barry is also a Foreign Service Officer. Barry is now Director of George Washington University’s Public Diplomacy Institute. He teaches Public Diplomacy also here at the State Department at the Foreign Service Institute, and he lectures at Yale University where he is a Yale-Simpson Senior Fellow. He is retired from the Foreign Service with a grade of Minister Counselor and served in many diplomatic assignments around the world including Brussels, Rome, Tokyo, Kurachi and Islamabad. He previously served as Associate Director of the United States Information Agency, nominated by President Clinton to that post in 1994, and stayed there three years until he joined the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 1997. Walter, you and Barry can conduct this any way you want. I think what we want to know is a little bit about the work of the Institute and how its role has changed in the last few months.

Advisor Walter Roberts: Absolutely, I will take a few minutes to bring the Commission up to date on the efforts in the private sector regarding public diplomacy. As the Commission knows, some months ago some of our (comments?) formulated over Public Diplomacy Foundation. The name was recently changed to Public Diplomacy Council. The people in charge felt the Foundation was perhaps the wrong name because Foundation is an organization that gives out money, and this organization needs money.

The Public Diplomacy Foundation was founded with the aim of acquainting the American people with the work of public diplomacy which as you, Mr. Chairman, said was not know known very much except by the people who did the job. There were a number of important people who felt that we ought to acquaint the American people with what the Public Diplomacy Foundation was doing. There were and are still a number of organizations in the foreign policy area that deal with foreign policy issues, private organizations like the Council of Foreign Relations, USIA council where they never really showed a great interest in public diplomacy; hence, the Public Diplomacy Foundation was founded. Now of all of this is said to make a new goal. This changed on September 11.

Suddenly, there was a great interest in public diplomacy. I remember a Washington Post article on page one where public diplomacy was the first time mentioned as a front page article but it was in quotation marks. Now, as I said, all of this has changed. The Public Diplomacy Council now is recognized. The Congressional Committees both on the House and the Senate sides have come into contact with us. The Department of State is in contact with the Public Diplomacy Council. The Public Diplomacy Council, and I wrote this down, aims at propagating the professional packaging, the responsible advocacy and the academic study of public diplomacy. Members are many who have worked in the Public Diplomacy section for some time with great distinction, and I might add that the Vice-Chairman of this Commission has recently become a member of the Public Diplomacy Council.

Now the Public Diplomacy Council, having combined with George Washington University and created the Public Diplomacy Institute that you mentioned. A 12-member Board was put in effect and it is composed of six members from the Public Diplomacy Council and six members from George Washington University, three from the School of Media and Public Affairs and three from the School of International Affairs. The Chairman of the Board is a George Washington University Professor, Steve Livingston, and the Executive Director is my good friend, Barry Fulton, and he will take it from here.

Barry Fulton: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to talk about the Public Diplomacy Institute. The Institute is just over a year old. It is chartered as Dr. Roberts described. I will just take two or three minutes to describe what it is we have set up and what it is we are currently doing. We see ourselves and the Institute as an academic institute that can offer advice in working with the Council and faculty at the George Washington University. We have met on several occasions with staff members of the Senate and House. We have been invited, in particular, to respond to questions both from the House and Senate Committees on Foreign Affairs and International Affairs. Legislation on public diplomacy that has been marked up by Hyde and Lantos reflects the input we have given them. We have met with the GAO in an ongoing study.

Members from the Institute have served on recent Defense Science Board on the subject of international information. Our members are teaching at George Washington University -we our housed, of course, at Georgetown - at the Maxwell School of Syracuse and some members have taught in the past at Fletcher School. We respond to press inquiries and there have been major articles last fall in the National Journal. Others have been called primarily out of research that was done with our Institute. We have had calls on articles in a number of other papers in which we have advised LA Times, the Boston Globe among others.

We have sponsored one large conference and a couple of small meetings, a conference on educational exchange with the President of George Washington University and the Hungarian Ambassador. We have had small meetings with representatives from the Foreign Policy Center of Great Britain and from Coventry College, also in Great Britain. Our members have participated in individual projects and published several things in the last year. We had two initiatives under way at the moment. One is a proposal to Islamic Embassies to offer a workshop on Public Diplomacy that was solicited to us from a representative of the Saudi Arabian Embassy.

We developed a plan and we will soon see if, in fact, there are any takers on this. There has also been proposed to us by the State Department interest in developing a mid level course for Public Diplomacy officers returning. Unlike all of the other institutes at George Washington University, our work through this movement for all of our members is pro bona. We do not have a budget. We are all equally paid and compensated which is to say that we are all volunteering our time. At some point in the future, the University insists that we become a proper institute with proper funding. So part of our efforts in the next year will be passing the cup around to institutions in Washington that have funds they would like to share with us.

Harold Pachios: Let me ask you a question. You will be an academic organization with resources people who know a lot about public diplomacy and have a lot of experience. We have asked Foreign Services for training for new Foreign Service officers that has, as I understand it, just an hour course in Public Diplomacy. It is my recollection that it wasn’t ever required before. Is it required now? We have no training essentially in Public Diplomacy.

Walter Roberts: You have to distinguish between USIA and the Department of State. USIA had a three-month-course for Foreign Service Officers beginning their tour of duty as Public Diplomacy specialists.

Harold Pachios: What happened after we got rid of USIA?

Walter Roberts: That is now extinguished, and everything is now forwarded into the Foreign Service Institute and Barry knows a great deal more about what goes on than I do.

Harold Pachios: We used to get three months training. What do they get now that we have consolidated in the State Department.

Barry Fulton: There is a general course for all new Foreign Service officers, and you mentioned one-hour training. That probably comes from the story that is told, but in that general course there is a one-hour introduction in Public Diplomacy. That is not a training course per se. That is a general introduction of this is what Public Diplomacy is. There is a three-week training crash course offered by the Foreign Service Institute to officers who are going out on a public diplomacy assignment. It is not offered to new officers who are coming in. It is not required of all officers. All officers who have a chance to take it who are going on a public diplomacy assignment certainly try to take it but it is not available to everybody.

Harold Pachios: It is hard for me to understand how we can have this situation. In my travels around the world, I have met some people at the Embassy PAO’s who are very good at what they do, many of them naturals. We have two retired Foreign Service officers over here who are very good at it. Bob Hunter has been in this business a long time and he knows that some of them aren’t very good – and they get no training.

We keep talking about the importance of it but we don’t accord to it for this activity of sufficient importance to have highly trained people in this area. We don’t do recruiting. I remember two or three years ago having a discussion with Mike Grossman when he was Director General of the Foreign Service, and he said, "Do you know how much the State Department spends on annual budget for recruiting Foreign Service officers?" I said, no, but I know that probably the Coast Guard might spend five million. Maybe they spend ten million at the State Department. He said, "try seventy-five thousand dollars".

Now I hope that has changed, but if we are going to have an effective Public Diplomacy component in our Foreign Policy apparatus, I don’t understand it. So, that leads me to say, why doesn’t the Institute come to Under Secretary Beers and say, together perhaps we can help beef up this training component for Foreign Service officers going into the Public Diplomacy cone and maybe get paid money for doing something worthwhile.

Barry Fulton: We have made such a proposal and they will be responding to it. We don’t know what they will say but we know they will respond.

Harold Pachios: It only took me five minutes to ask that simple question. Thank you for the answer.

Walter Roberts: We haven’t quite finished it yet, but this is a basic outline of the course of the focus to Public Diplomacy Council, Public Diplomacy which I

Harold Pachios: These are very good, Walter, and thank you for this. It says, "Donations are Tax Deductible".

Thank you very much for briefing us on that, and I would be interested in seeing how we progress on this State Department training activity.

We are very pleased to have with us representatives of Rand who are here to discuss with us a new initiative, and one that I think is not only timely, but critically important. Public diplomacy has to take different forms. It is just not going on the radio or getting speakers or exchange programs. It is more than that. And one of the things that I think Americans have done very well over the years is to recognize the plight of people all over the world, and to try to alleviate pain through aid packages and other American-sponsored activities that recognize the plight of people who are oppressed, who don’t get proper medical care, who don’t eat well, who are unsafe in their homes and on the street. It is something I think Americans have done better than any other group of people in the history of the world. That is something that those who design public diplomacy programs need to pay more attention to. Recently, we met with senior staff at AID to discuss this very issue. The folks from Rand are here to talk about something that I think fits perfectly into that category of trying to get people around the world to recognize American values and recognize that we do care about the plight of people in the Middle East, in Africa, in Asia and all over the world.

I am very happy to introduce the representatives from Rand beginning with Dr. Kenneth Shine. Dr. Shine is a leading authority on International Health issues and is the new Director of the Rand Center for Domestic and International Health Security, which he will describe for you. Before joining Rand, Dr. Shine spent ten years as President of the Institute of Medicine which is part of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington. Dr. Shine has worked in the past with Palestinian, Israeli, Jordanian and Egyptian scientists and physicians on joint projects in health in the Middle East and for well over a decade. He recently chaired a meeting of American and Iranian scientists and physicians on Ethics in Science and Medicine which will lead to additional projects involving scientists and physicians from the United States and Iran. This is cutting edge stuff.

We at the Commission are absolutely delighted to be associated with Rand in assisting them in announcing this new initiative. We think it is one of the more creative ideas and activities that we have come across in the field of Public Diplomacy, certainly in the last several years. We want to be associated with it and we are very interested to hear Dr. Shine’s explanation of how this program would work. He is accompanied by Dr. C. Ross Anthony who is a senior economist at Rand, and by my old friend Bob Hunter who was recently U.S. Ambassador to NATO and the principal architect of the new NATO with its proposed president here in town, probably an old friend of yours, so I think it is very timely that you are here, Bob. Bob is a senior advisor at Rand in Washington and a member of the Rand Europe Advisory Board. He is an Associate at Harvard’s Belfort Center for Science and International Affairs, and Chairman of the Council for Community of Democracies. From 1998 to 2001, he served on the Secretary of Defense’s Policy Board and was Vice-Chairman of the Atlantic Treaty Association. He has had a long and distinguished career in Washington and around the world in service to the United States. Ambassador Hunter many of you are familiar with because he has written more books, articles and treatises that perhaps anyone else, at least that I know of, in the City of Washington. We are delighted, Bob, that you are at Rand and are associated with this initiative. Dr. Shine, would you take over and tell us about this?

Dr. Ken Shine: Mr. Chairman, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and meet with your commission. What I intend to do is to give you a brief overview of both the Center and issues related to health and foreign policy. My colleagues will briefly describe some specific aspects of that which we think might be of interest to you.

For over fifty years, Rand has been a major advisor to government and to the private sector with regard to a whole variety of issues. What is not generally known is that although Rand has a reputation in terms of advice and military issues that half of Rand is related to non-military activities. A quarter of Rand is diverted to health; in fact, Rand has been the leader in programs of understanding the quality of health care in America and in dealing with issues such as patient’s safety, etc. Through 1972 in the aftermath of the Munich massacre, Rand began programming anti-terrorism. And if you look at the dozen or so experts in this world on terrorism, at least five of them were at Rand so there is a thirty-year-history of people who really know a good deal about terrorism and who include, for example, Arabic speakers who have been very active in the Middle East and understanding Islamic interests, issues, and things of that sort. Rand also has served as the staffer, if you will, for the Commission, a commission established three and one-half years ago under the Chairmanship of then Governor of Virginia, Jim Gilmore. I had the privilege of sitting on that commission which was a commission designed to look at national programs with regard to terrorism, and particularly the role of local responders. So it was not surprising after 9/11 that Rand mobilized very rapidly to try to deal with a very broad number of issues around terrorism. There are on the order of 50 to 100 important projects going on at Rand for the Department of Defense, for the Department of Health and Human Services, for local communities, the District of Columbia, issues such as how to close to workers and people on the Hill perceive the outbreak of Anthrax, the various ways it was handled, etc. It became clear that in terms of health that Rand had extraordinary expertise, not only in health itself but also in communications… (Break in transcript) 

 Dr. C. Ross Anthony They don’t quite understand the opportunities that are there, and also I would say it is a vital opportunity to teach them how health can be used as a public diplomacy tool. Finally, we are involved in project work. We mentioned AIJ(?) which runs the partnership models at the International Health Alliance group. We plan to partner with them and work with AID, HIV and other areas.

I think this is an important model for us to be involved in because we provide the analysis, the evaluation and develop tools for doing this, not only with them but around the world. I would like to digress a second because I think it is an interesting model I think you should consider in terms of public diplomacy. Later this month they are having a conference at which ten ministers of health are coming from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. They have thirteen media people that are also coming to that conference which has actually been paid for has actually been paid for by HOA to be here but they are very intimately involved and a lot of press will take place. They had a lot of good stories about the partnership program, about actually the values that we believe in here and lots of foreign media and domestic media. And I would says they have been much more successful than certainly I was when I was at AID doing similar projects.

Harold Pachios: It’s always much easier when you are six miles from . . .

Dr. C. Ross Anthony: But why is that? I think it is an interesting question we need to address ourselves, and I’m sure you have spent a lot of time talking to them. I tried to list a few reasons I thought I throw out very quickly. One is address the felt needs of a community. If the community is engaged, the press is engaged and it works. There is line of their goals with community goals with national government goals and U.S. Government goals all at the same time. It is something the average person has got to understand. As Dr. Shine pointed out, people understand what they are shown and helping people is mutual to cultures, religions, politics. It is something that actually resonates.

I think what is most important here is the kind of arming of the voluntary nature of the program. They see a one-on-one. They see a real American, actually from small towns often times, giving of their time really on a one on one and that actually works giving back and forth, getting to know each other. That is our strength in America and we ought to use it in the public diplomacy theatre, also. They do a good job. There is a lot of follow up synergism where they actually get back together so it is not just an isolated program. People start to talk in a larger atmosphere and finally they are very supportive of a public diplomacy agenda and making that part of their program. I would say that AID to be more successful, I was there, and needs to incorporate that more often in the programs than they do today.

I guess I would finally like to say in conclusion is that I believe health offers a tremendous opportunity for engagement around the world in ways that not only promotes our foreign policy interests but also can make a real contribution to the world. So, I’m excited about being involved in the new Center and we are offering a lot of things. I think the opportunities are unlimited.

Harold Pachios: Can I just ask a question here. Is there an inventory or a list of all of these private programs. For instance, I know a doctor in Portland that started a program in Port au Prince and there are constantly two or three doctors from Portland, Maine in Port au Prince working in these clinics year around.

Dr. C. Ross Anthony: That’s a very good question. That is something that needs to be done and is another thing on our list of agendas to do. In fact, there is no comprehensive list worldwide of what people are doing. There are some lists, primarily in government programs that, I understand, is at the World Bank. But, in fact, we don’t know about these things and it would be good to do that. So, that is one of the things we are hoping to do.

Harold Pachios: Perhaps the Commission could do this sometimes, but first a lunch in which you folks, particularly, could be present, somebody from the Peace Corps, somebody from AID, somebody from Charlotte Bere’s operation here and just so we could all sit down and talk about this.

C. Ross Anthony: That would be very nice. I want to emphasize that AOHA’s partnerships that they started with were partnerships between medical schools and hospitals, particularly in Eastern Europe and the United States. Those are staffed by volunteers. These are all staffs that move back and forth pro bona. They have now grown to much more expanded activity of community to community activities and that is what has really been a very powerful addition. AID plays a role in support of that and deserves credit. So, again, we are looking at partnering with them as they do some new initiatives to do the evaluation component of it. In answer to the question Barry raises, this is a good example of that kind of a joint activity.

Harold Pachios: Unless you have other questions, I’d just like to introduce the man who came in late, the Chairman of the Commission, Charles (Chuck) Dolan of Virginia. Welcome!

Dr. C. Ross Anthony: First of all, I’d like to apologize – I’m going to have to leave in a couple of minutes to catch a plane, and I’m going to turn it over to Ambassador Roberts.

Ambassador Robert Hunter: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor to be here. I thank you very much for your very generous remarks about me. I very much admire your own personal leadership for an awful long time – so I say thirty plus years.

And what you have done and what you have planned for this particular commission, which is not one of the great spotlight commissions but one I think is extremely important. You folks were important before 9/11. I have served now for the better part of a decade and it goes all the way back to Harry Coniff. I think your role has taken on immensely more important tasks since 9/11 as helping us to understand, particularly other people in the outside world, to understand what America is about is one of the great deficiencies we have now in public diplomacy which you yourself said has gone from being a backroom boy to being right, front and center.

In fact, today your meeting is on the seventh floor, not on the first floor. That’s where its merit is. You know Pearl Harbor and 9/11 have sometimes been compared. Pearl Harbor, I think as much as anything hated America’s sense of isolation from the outside world. We tried to revert to that a bit after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. I think we kind of established this as a non-isolated country. 9/11, I hope will go down as a moment in which we Americans finally came to understand that we have no hopes for insulation.

For in the outside world whether we lead it or not is a major question, but we are totally engaged now in ways that a lot of people never really thought about it their daily lives until it was brought home to them quite dramatically. This is like the effects of globalization. We all have focused a great extent on positive aspects. We are also getting to see its negative aspects.

It is a neutral commodity, the kinds of technological changes, trade, travel, the cyber world is something that does not have either a positive or a negative but can go both directions. It is one of the determinations we are going to have to make as we try to be a responsible leader in the world is to help emphasize the positive and not the negative. We are re-defining security. It is not just the kind of military security that we saw in the past but recognition that the politics, economics, the diplomacy and the military are all part of the same package. In fact, this is not something really new. As early as the Marshall Plan to the creation of NATO, later the creation of the European Community, now the European Union, the Organization of Economic Cooperation which then became an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, understood that since the end of the Second World War the symbiotic quality of all these elements. I think they are being brought home to us even more since 9/11 than we appreciated during the Cold War.

Our health has now become a critical element. It is not just the opportunities, though I have ascribed to them myself as you have throughout your career, we also have the negatives, the most important of which is bioterrorism. The anthrax scare may have been homegrown but it doesn’t mean it is the last, especially things that can come abroad and has within Homeland Security made the issue of bioterrorism an absolutely central element. There are other aspects, as well, that come from our globalization. Disease that can come to our shore much more readily than before. And not necessarily directly....shows up in Canada but can just very easily come down here. We have had a near crisis in the health system in Alexandria and Fairfax County with this thing we thought we have licked in this country called tuberculosis.

Malaria is becoming drug-resistant. It is part of our foreign policy to see that these things are conquered or contained well before they come to our shores in a way we have not thought of before. Also, there are lots of places in the world now where Americans can’t travel. People from the so-called developed world can’t or don’t travel. Just as people in the "developing world" can’t go to various places because of the diseases to which one can be exposed. It is not just HIV, which has become the one we are paying the greatest attention to.

There are a whole series of other disease and health-related circumstances, which are, ironically, at a time of expanded travel opportunities and are having a restrictive impact. As Dr. Shine pointed out, the impact in individual societies, not just through the intrinsic human dimension, but also in terms of stability. There being a hotbed for support for terrorism, and in terms of instability within regions and in terms of the incapacity that so many societies have of doing those things that could bring them constructively into the outside world.

So it is both a challenge for us and an opportunity, as the two previous speakers have said. Now we all went through the Cold War. I am going to introduce what may sound like a self-interested idea, but obviously if we are going to make this a central part of our policy, we have to start with a self interest and then broaden it to those things that have a humanitarian concern. During the Cold War, we talked about the competition for hearts and minds. To a great extent in societies that were threatened by communism, but in some other societies, it is a peripheral activity that the struggle for hearts and minds is now at the center of America’s position on the world including the global war on terrorism. We need to see it that way and not as a secondary phenomenon.

This, as you have already asked in your questions, changes the way we have to do and foreign policy in this country. It begins with leadership, leadership in the White House by whoever happens to be President. It is neutral as to political party, something that is fundamentally challenging to us. We need to have a call not just through the State Department but at the National Security Council level. There needs to be in the National Security Council crises and also the economic policy process, people who take the development questions seriously and people to take this whole range of health considerations seriously.

I used to argue when I worked in the Florida White House that there needed to be somebody who sat in the corner of the situation whose one job at the end of a NEC meeting or just about any topic was to ask one question: What about the allies. They have somebody who sits in those meetings, whether it comes out of the office of technology policy, science advisor or some new position who is going to ask the questions: What is the impact on this whole range of globalization developments including its impact on ...

We have now seen the inter-relationship between health and development. If we don’t get that right, we might as well abolish the USAID. Unless they are able to get it right and ought to get it right, these things aren’t going to happen. We have some pretty good support for this idea just as there is much stronger support for what you are doing directly in public diplomacy. We have a pretty senior individual in the government who on March 22 called for immediate compact for global development, called for increase and assistance over a three-year-period of five billion dollars which is a 50% increase, funds going to the new millennium challenge account.

Among other things, in spite of the fight against AIDS, but also this individual said healthy and educated citizens are the agents of development. So we need more organizations that invest in better health care, that is schools and broader immunization. That was the President of American States. And two days later when he was down in Monterey at that International Conference, he said we would fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror. And when nations respect their people, markets invest in better quality education. Every dollar raised, every dollar of invested capital is used more effectively.

Presidential leadership, I regret to say however, that the money going into it is still grossly inadequate. We are going to need in our budgetary processes through OMB and driven by the National Security Council, I think a National Security budget, which is greater than that of State, the so-called O Account which looks at these things together and recognizes if our national security is well in our humanitarian responses, we are going to have to have a lot more money for doing these things.

We need to bring back the related activities to the center of our concerns creating a global partnership with other countries, as well as that may sit, and essentially the European. We need a new strategic partnership with the European unit and in the military sense to recognizing the great depositories of money, talent, resources and concern. We are, as Dr. Bazinsky said at the launch of his chair last night, if you get the United States and European union together on things like this, we are indeed omnipotent in bringing about certain kinds of results. And that’s a large public diplomacy. We are, I think, your partners in health. You are the ones with the megaphone. We are the ones who can help provide you some of the material. It is a partnership. In fact, it is a key challenge to the United States right now. Some people says but the problem is turning that power into a lasting influence. And we do that by creating institutions, activities, partnerships added to processes getting people together so that the American ideal and American power are married in a way that people see this as positive rather than negative. This was brought out as you yourself said by the attitude of the American people in recent USAID opinion polls. (unable to understand this) Do you approve or disapprove? 33% are in favor of it. Then you get to, "What about building good will towards the United States by providing food and medical assistance to people in poor countries?" Those in favor are .8% of the American people. We’ve got the people behind you. You have the President behind you; we have a partnership with you. That’s go carry on your good work. Thank you.

Harold Pachios: We appreciate very much your coming here and discussing this with us. This is a great hope. You can do this without being connected to the activities of the U.S. Government in the Public Diplomacy field, but we hope and I see you hope – which is why you are here – that there will be a connection and I think that is what needs to be worked on. Some way in which we can translate what you are doing and all the resources you have into people in various parts of the globe understanding this outer dimension of American.

You know, they see things from the Peace Corps but this is another dimension. You’re right. Health. I worked for Lyndon Johnson and he had something. He talked about education, all the education that young people could take if they had the resources – if the government would make sure that they could get that education. And health care in eliminating childhood diseases. True populism. And populism appeals to people in this country. It was great political rhetoric and one of them he tried to deliver. It was good for politics. People responded to it. And they will respond just as well to those notions of education, health care and eliminating childhood diseases and making sure there is not infant mortality and getting all the education they can take. They will respond to the very same thing in Palestinian territory, in South Africa, in China and everywhere in the world in exactly the same way that people in Utah, New Hampshire and Texas responded to it. Absolutely the same. So that’s why what you are doing is very important and I would like to ask you to think about over time how we can be helpful in marrying you folks with the U.S. Government.

I just wanted to touch on the Ambassador’s comments about public diplomacy are not some new found because he won’t remember this, but several years ago when I just a junior member of this commission, when he traveled from Brussels he spent over an hour reading to me and talking about how important public diplomacy was, and I appreciated that meeting.

Harold Pachios: He even took the time to get on the phone from Brussels and participate in our meeting one time by telephone. Thirty-two years ago, he was the one who told me who was following us around.

Ambassador Robert Hunter: Mr. Chairman, I think you can understand why I am enthusiastic about this center because given the quality of the individuals, you have only met a couple of them, we have a lot of committee people who want to help in this area and indeed we are looking forward to further interactions to get some of these things accomplished.