Episode 5. What Are Effective Public Affairs Strategies & Tactics For Our Military & Our Diplomats?

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy: [00:00:00] From the American Academy of Diplomacy. This is the general and the ambassador. Our podcast brings together senior US diplomats and senior US military leaders in conversations about their partnership to advance American interests overseas. My name is Ambassador Deborah McCarthy and I'm the producer and host of the series. Today I'm really pleased to have Ambassador Michael Hammer and Admiral John Kirby. Ambassador Hammer is currently the acting senior Vice president of the National Defense University. Just before he was deputy commandant of NDU's Eisenhower School. Among his many important positions in his diplomatic career, he was US ambassador to Chile, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, special Assistant to the President and National Security spokesperson at the White House. Admiral John Kirby is currently a CNN military and diplomatic analyst. Among his numerous key assignments in the Navy, he was deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations, the Navy's chief of information. He was also the first military officer to become the Pentagon press secretary. After leaving the Navy, he became the spokesperson for the US State Department and also Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Public Affairs. So gentlemen, welcome to the show. And I wanted to start out with the following. You both are top experts in public affairs and have represented our military and our diplomatic corps. The American people know why we have a military, but they don't always know why we have diplomats. Why do you think one service is better known than the other?

Amb. Hammer: [00:01:46] Well, Deborah, it's great to be here this morning with my good friend, Admiral Kirby. We worked together for several years, and now it's great to share with the American people some perspectives on public affairs and public diplomacy. What I would say again, from the State Department perspective is that it's a challenge for us for a number of reasons, to connect with the American people. The military is fantastic, and almost everyone in the United States has either a relative who has served a close family member, a friend, and so their daily lives are connected in some way to our wonderful men and women in uniform. Beyond that, I would say that the military also has all the really incredible hardware that attracts a lot of eyeballs, whether it's having an aircraft carrier come down and visit while I was ambassador in Chile and see the Ospreys taking off or looking at a Raptor when we were promoting defense sales, that gets a lot of attention. And frankly, there's a lot of connectivity. I'm sure Admiral Kirby can talk about it between the military and Hollywood and the production of movies and so forth. For the State Department, it's kind of hard.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:02:52] And our budget is much smaller.

Amb. Hammer: [00:02:53] Well, it is. And a series about diplomats writing cables or back door negotiations just doesn't catch the excitement. There have been some efforts. I mean, we've seen the series of secretary of state and Madam Secretary and you've seen other efforts. There was a series Fox launched some years ago at about the American embassy in London, but it doesn't quite capture the imagination and the interest in the same way that, again, our military is able to do that. But nonetheless, we have to make the effort to connect with the American people and we have to explain to them why it matters. The work that diplomats do overseas affects their daily lives in terms of their security, in terms of promoting economic prosperity and creating jobs. And I remember working for Secretary Kerry and his first speech, in fact, on foreign policy was done at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:03:41] I remember that. My alma mater.

Amb. Hammer: [00:03:42] There we go. Go wahoos. And he went there expressly for the purpose to make the connection that all foreign policy is domestic policy and we need to do a better job, of course, of explaining it to the American people, why it's relevant and why it's important that diplomats are out there advancing America's interests.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:03:59] And, John, you've represented both.

Adm. Kirby: [00:04:01] I agree with everything that Mike said. The only thing I'd add is there is a fundamental, I think, institutional difference between military public affairs and State Department public affairs and the military. And I grew up as a military PAO. I mean, it's just part of your DNA to get the story out, to advance the narrative, to show Congress and the American people the capabilities that we're putting in the field and in the fleet to defend American interests. So there's already sort of a predisposition to push to be aggressive. I see. When I came over to the State Department, I noticed that public affairs expertise is overwhelming. Everybody there is incredibly competent at what they do. But there's a reticence to get too aggressive and too overt in the messaging aspect because you might undo the very sensitive diplomacy that our ambassadors and our field personnel are doing out there.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:04:48] And that are behind the scenes.

Adm. Kirby: [00:04:49] Absolutely. I can't tell you how many staff meetings that I would go to and I'd hear about some Foreign Service officer and some country in Africa or South America that were doing just great things out there. And I'd want to tell that story. I'd want to have an opening statement for the podium and I'd get, no, no, no, you can't do that. Because if you talk about it now before it's all cooked and done, you might undo it. Or we want the local leader. We want the elected president of the country to. Take credit for this or that. So it was amazing to me how hard our Foreign Service officers and our ambassadors work out in the field and very little credit. And it seems like that very little credit is sort of part and parcel of the job.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:05:27] Well, as you told in your capacity as spokesperson over at the Pentagon, how did you make the public understand what our military does exactly through stories? What techniques did you use?

Adm. Kirby: [00:05:37] So it's really about content having great imagery, whether it's still or video. And we have an incredible talented cadre of mostly enlisted content providers. These are mass communication specialists or journalists, photographers that are out in the field and they're just creating all this content. So it's very compelling and very easy to push. Oftentimes it didn't take me doing much of anything other than posting an image, posting video or being engaged in social media. It's all right there. Plus, I mean, look, operations military operations are by design, by default, if you will. They're action oriented, right? Something is going somewhere. Something is shooting something. And that itself sends a message. The capabilities and what you're doing with them sends a message, leaving the pace. Not a lot to talk about. All you have to do is be able to accurately describe the capabilities.

Amb. Hammer: [00:06:26] From the State Department perspective. Foreign Service. What we have is the stories. And I think John is very accurate in describing how reticent we are to get out there and really talk about our successes, but to appeal to the American people and the public in general. If you can tell the back story of how a negotiation took place, how you achieve the result after it's achieved. The problem, as John has alluded to, is that while there's an ongoing negotiation, they need to be done behind closed doors because usually in a negotiation you're going to have some compromise, you're going to have some giving of your own position to achieve something that's even greater or better for both parties. What we try to do as State Department, we have a hometown diplomats program. We try to send our diplomats to go out and talk about real life stories, how they have made an impact. For example, I was involved in a child custody case. A lot of times, of course, you have to respect the privacy of the family. But once it's realized, I mean, the ability to be serving a consulate overseas, in that case, I was in Reykjavik, Iceland, and to reunite a mother with her daughter who had been abducted is incredibly touching. But that's the good that we do. And we help American citizens all around the world now. We respect their privacy. But when the story can be told, I think it's important that we get out there and explain. And then people begin to understand that there's a real value and purpose to what our embassies and diplomats do all around the world.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:07:47] And as spokespersons, I mean, you're constantly reacting to what's out there in the 24 hour cycle. I mean, how do you go about balancing shaping the news versus just reacting?

Adm. Kirby: [00:07:56] You got to do both. I remember listening to a four star admiral once try to describe the difference between strategic communications and public affairs by showing two graphs. One graph was the stock market over the course of a year, and the other was the stock market over the course of a day. And he said, you know, the one over the year strategic Communications public affairs is over the course of the day. And I fundamentally disagree with that. I think good public affairs has to be both. And so every day you go to the podium at the State Department, you have an opportunity to shape the story. You have an opportunity to drive a story. Now, that doesn't mean that what you say in your opening statement, the press corps is going to pick up on, But you do have an ability to speak to people somewhere else in the world and explain why the United States feels the way it does or has a policy the way it is about their part of the world and whatever their issues are facing. And then, yes, you have to react. I do want to say one thing about reactivity. I didn't hear this so much at the State Department, but at the Pentagon, where senior military commanders sort of excoriate public affairs for being too reactive. You guys are too much in the trenches. You're too driven by the daily headlines or the crush of social media. And I say that's bunk. You want your public affairs specialist to be reactive, to be responsive, to be in the moment, especially now the way social media has almost taken over, the way news is consumed.

Amb. Hammer: [00:09:13] I would agree entirely. I mean, I think as public affairs officers and policy makers, you have to be in the story from the get go because otherwise it's going to be shaped by others. And so you have to be trying to form the narrative and getting the facts out. And unfortunately, in Washington, I think it occurs all around the world. You are reactive because the press of events all around the world is going to drive the day in many regards because the press is wanting to know about the latest crisis, the latest coup, the latest earthquake. And so it is a real challenge. But you can never, as John points out, lose sight of the long term objective. What is the story? What is the narrative? What is the United States doing?

Amb. McCarthy: [00:09:50] What are our objectives?

Amb. Hammer: [00:09:50] Correct, and our goals overall? What is it we're trying to advance? And you create that sort of vision and you make sure everybody understands it. And then when something comes up, you try to fit whatever event into your policy direction and explain the broader context. We understand we all live in a very compressed environment in terms of attention span, but you have to continue. He nervously hit the same kinds of ideas of what you're trying to promote if you're promoting democracy, human rights, economic prosperity. But inevitably you're going to be consumed by the crisis of the day. That's the reality. And you need to, I think, as John pointed out, react as quickly as possible getting your facts right, getting out there and making sure people understand what is happening and not just responding to whatever is out there.

Adm. Kirby: [00:10:35] And that's why I think that the daily press briefing at State Department is so important. When I came over from the Pentagon, we were briefing twice a week and I asked them, why do we have to do this every day? Do I really have to get up there? And there was uniform pushback, not just from my staff, but from the State Department press corps, like, no, you need it every day. So I gave it a try, you know, for a few months. And then I began to realize, to Mike's point, that Daily Briefing gives you a chance to play both strategy and tactics all at once. You can advance your narrative. You can advance your policy. You can speak for the secretary and sometimes for the president, but also force yourself to be responsive to whatever's happening in the moment.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:11:14] Well, both of you have represented, you know, the White House Joint chiefs, secretary of defense, secretary of state. What were your toughest moments in these jobs?

Adm. Kirby: [00:11:23] For me, it was whenever particularly at the Pentagon, whenever we lost men and women in military operations, whether it's an accident, a plane crash, or, as we've seen so many recently or in combat, and on those days when there were momentous losses, to go to that podium and have to talk about, that was very difficult because you know that there are families out there that are grieving, that it's the worst possible day for them. And it's going to be the first of many really hard days going forward. And to try to put that into context is never.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:11:55] Easy and is they're privately grieving. It's publicly being discussed. I suppose for some of them, that would be very difficult, too.

Adm. Kirby: [00:12:02] Yeah, I mean, you have to acknowledge the loss, of course, and you have to acknowledge what you're doing to investigate and to get to the bottom of it and to move forward. And to some degree, sometimes when it happens in Iraq or Afghanistan or you were also forced in many ways to defend the strategy and the operations that you were conducting. You know, you have to find that proper balance and never forget that there are families out there just experiencing the worst possible news and grief and always be respectful of that and putting that first.

Amb. Hammer: [00:12:31] Just related to that, just to expand, because John and I both worked on this, I remember being at the White House and the National Security Council when the Haiti earthquake hit in January 2010, and then the scope and magnitude of that disaster and needing to quite quickly follow the president's directive that this needed to be a whole of government approach.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:12:51] And we had a massive response, absolutely.

Amb. Hammer: [00:12:54] But it was immediate and comprehensive, and I had not experienced that firsthand in that way. You know, the president appointed then the administrator for the United States Agency for International Development, Raj Shah, to be the lead working with our commanders down in Southcom, General Keane. And we immediately deployed from the White House. In fact, I know that John went down I went down a few weeks later to again, try to help in terms of also the public affairs effort to coordinate, to set up a joint information center where the interagency could cooperate and talk about the work that, of course, our fabulous military was doing with the USS Comfort being deployed. But then what USAID, the Agency for International Development, was doing, HHS was sending doctors and helping out. Dhs was helping with paroling of orphans, bringing them to the United States and of course, the international coordination that needed to take place. It was a pretty overwhelming effort and it was 24 over seven for weeks, and that was tough. But at the end of the day, you felt, here is America standing up the American people through their donations, supporting Haitian people. There was the Clinton Bush texting of requests, right?

Amb. McCarthy: [00:13:59] Yes, I do recall that.

Amb. Hammer: [00:14:00] You know, I think it was the first time that that had been done. And it was really phenomenal to see the response when the Haitian people needed it most. And again, devastating to see the destruction having gone down to Port au Prince. And it was hard to even comprehend the level of devastation and suffering. But there was the United States of America trying to do something about it.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:14:22] Well, the messaging was really good. I remember I was posted in Greece and the Greeks wanted to do something. They were following the US lead and all the information that was coming out helped us guide them on how they could contribute and not waste resources or move in the wrong direction. So it was very, very helpful. Well, I wanted to move a little bit to an important topic, which is about ethics and credibility. You both were chief spokespersons. You obviously had to protect classified information and not get ahead of the national decision making process and yet deliver the facts and the truth. How did you manage that?

Adm. Kirby: [00:14:55] Well, it's always a bit of a balance, although Mike, I'm sure would agree. I mean, one guiding principle always for a spokesman is you don't ever lie. Now, there's lots of times when you know information you can't divulge and you can tell that to the press, hey, yes, I know the answer. I can't tell you. And here's why. But you can never just outright deliver a falsehood. And I can tell you, in the time I was at both podiums, I never was never asked, I was never pushed. It was never even suggested that I do anything other than give as complete a picture as possible, understanding that in many cases that was going to be incomplete, but as complete as possible. But we're just like anybody else in government service. You take an oath and to be a spokesman at the level that Mike and I were, you've got to have a clearance. Top secret clearance. And I don't know about Mike, but I got an Intel briefing every single day at the Pentagon and at the State Department just so I knew where my right and left boundaries were. How far could I go? And I can't tell you how many times I would ask the Intel briefer again at both institutions. Can I say this? What if I get this question? Can I go that far? And it was terrific guidance to sort of keep me on track. But it's a balance you have to strike every day.

Amb. Hammer: [00:16:05] No, I would agree with everything John said. I just wanted to refer to a quote by Edward R Murrow, a renowned journalist who also was the first director of the United States Information Agency. And he put it, I think, very well. He said, quote, American traditions and the American ethic require us to be truthful. But the most important reason is that truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive, we must be believable. To be believable, we must be credible. To be credible, we must be truthful. It is as simple as that.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:16:42] Oh, that's very well said. Excellent. Excellent. We've embedded media in occasion in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Have we ever embedded our own people in media organizations so they learn new techniques, but also how news is made in the private sector to be able to help us be better at what we do in the public sector.

Amb. Hammer: [00:17:06] Well, first of all, I would say that we are always trying to adapt and respond to the environment that we're in. I remember being an assistant secretary at public affairs at the State Department. We launched our first ever foreign language Twitter feeds. And we were

Amb. McCarthy: [00:17:20] I remember when you did those.

Amb. Hammer: [00:17:22] And you need to be where the conversation is at. And, of course, it was very foreign for diplomats to be tweeting and being on Facebook and YouTube and using whatever media. But it was critical in terms of our reach to particularly younger people, influencers, you needed to be part of the conversation. And it's changing almost our diplomatic culture because we tend to be pretty reserved and not be out there. And I think it's worked to our advantage. I remember being invited by the Italian Foreign Ministry and others asking us, What's that secret sauce you're using? Because you've introduced a new element into diplomacy, which the social media component that was effective. But I think it's actually a very good idea that what you're proposing we don't really have a program which allows our diplomats to spend a year on a detail, perhaps with a news organization, to see it from the inside and to bring back some ideas. Now, we have had former journalists serve alongside with our colleagues in the field as political appointees. We've had in Afghanistan. We had David Ensor and Eileen Conner came out and worked there. But that's not the same thing. Or, of course, now you have Heather Newhart, who came from Fox and is the State Department spokesperson. So she gets it and brings really great value added to the department. But as career people, you don't get that kind of exposure. I actually think you've hit on something that would be actually very helpful.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:18:36] And our diplomats have languages. In other words, we could tweet in various languages because we have languages.

Amb. Hammer: [00:18:41] Oh, absolutely. But it's understanding sort of how the news is made and produced. And we don't have that insight. We learn it from our perspective, from the government perspective. And we may not be as effective as we could be. But the point here is we have to constantly be learning and realizing that we can't just stay put. You can't just have the daily briefing. You've got to be out there very aggressively because the news is happening all the time and you need to fill that space with content. And what better way to do it than to be engaged. And of course, we have tremendous professionals all around the world that can do that.

Adm. Kirby: [00:19:17] Just a couple of points I would add. We don't do that in the military. We don't take military public affairs officers and give them internships, if you will, with media organizations. It was something I was trying to get done before.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:19:29] I think I read that someplace.

Adm. Kirby: [00:19:30] I did work on that before I retired, but I wasn't able to get it across the goal line before my time ran out. And there was some bureaucratic institutional resistance to doing that inside the military as well. But it is a great idea and it should be pursued. The other thing that I tried to do when I was in Mike's old job as assistant secretary of state was to do cross-pollination between military public affairs officers and State Department, really. And we were getting close to conclusion that is great where we would in fact, I need to check and think they might still be working on trying to get this done where you could take 1 or 2 press officers from state and put them over in the Pentagon press shop and vice versa for six months. I mean, they're all getting paid the same. They're all government. They all got clearances. Just a chance to kind of bridge that gap a little bit. The other thing that bothers me, though, to your point in sort of your question in reverse, is I am worried about the military and media relationship right now. You talked about embedding and the embedding program in Iraq and Afghanistan was enormously successful for the media, but also for the military.

Adm. Kirby: [00:20:30] And out of it not only came more contextual stories about what we were doing on the ground and we didn't like them all, that's for sure. But they were more contextual because reporters were with the troops and they had access and they could see what was going on in real time. But also we forged relationships and you ended up seeing one and two and three star generals and admirals now with personal relationships with prominent reporters who also were advancing up their own little chains of command and beginning more responsibilities. And that made for better contextual stories after the fact and good, healthy relationships between leaders and the press. And those are all breaking down right now. I am very concerned about transparency at the Pentagon. There is no embedding program anymore for it's over for troops. No, there's none. We don't have enough boots on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan to facilitate it, because to embed, you've got to have a certain infrastructure built up to support them. And all that's gone now. And I fear that the healthy relationships and they were healthy for the most part are now starting to fray. And that's not good for us.

Amb. Hammer: [00:21:31] Let me go back to a point that John made and a plug for the National Defense University, where I'm currently on detail. We have there the rising leaders, both from our military but also our civilian State Department, USAID, Department of Homeland Defense. And what we've done actually, just very recently, we had a seminar group of our senior public affairs officers do a kind of a workshop with our Pentagon colleagues, with somebody from the FBI to compare notes. And so we are doing that. I mean, John is absolutely right. We need to be more in sync. And that's the future. The future is a whole of government, interagency understanding each other's cultures, understanding our strengths and weaknesses and complementing each other, because that's the best way to advance American foreign policy and national security. And so we are doing it today. I'm proud to be encouraging it. And again, it's something that requires an all hands on deck effort. And whether John was doing it stayed in the Pentagon or our successors. Now, hopefully they will continue to do that.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:22:25] Well, speaking of successors, you've had amazing careers in the public affairs and public service, and I wanted to ask you how you decided to go into public affairs and what would you recommend to someone contemplating doing the same, whether in our military or our diplomatic service?

Adm. Kirby: [00:22:43] For me, it was the best decision I never made. I was teaching at the Naval Academy after my first sea tour and I wanted to stay in the Navy, but I didn't want to keep doing what I was doing, which is in the Navy called Surface Warfare, where you deploy aboard ships. I met a friend there. We are still friends, likewise had come off sea duty, didn't want to keep doing that, but didn't want to leave the Navy. So in the Navy, just like elsewhere, you have various skill sets you can transfer into. We didn't know which one we wanted to do, so we got a paper plate. We drew with a marker, eight pieces of pie on the plate and each piece of pie. We wrote the name of a different skill set. We call them communities in the Navy. So there was intelligence, there was cryptology, codebreaking, there was supply corps, there was public affairs. We even had a little slice of pie for the Coast Guard because back then, a young naval officer could transfer from the Navy to the Coast Guard. Then we went to the clinic at the Naval Academy and we got a tongue depressor. We drew an arrow on it. We stuck it to the paper plate with a thumbtack. And every day for two weeks we would spin it and it would land on something else and we would laugh and joke because it was basically we were making fun of ourselves for how indecisive we were about what we wanted to do with the rest of our lives. One day after a couple of weeks, we shook hands over a cup of coffee and said, Today is the day and we spun it and we both became public affairs officers.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:24:00] So you both landed in the same spot?

Adm. Kirby: [00:24:02] Well, yeah. We decided that whatever it landed on, we'd go together, do together. And so that's how we became public affairs officers.

Speaker4: [00:24:08] That's awesome.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:24:10] Okay, Mike, how did you get into this?

Speaker4: [00:24:12] It was.

Amb. Hammer: [00:24:12] Happenstance. Not quite the same way that John ended up in public affairs, but I came into the Foreign Service as a political officer, but I had always kind of dreamt of landing at the National Security Council. And this is kind of an odd way to get there, but I used to volunteer to do just about everything. So when Secretary Baker, who I just saw just a week ago, landed in Copenhagen, I ended up doing motorcades and luggage. And one thing led to another. I ended up doing advance work for presidential visits, so I was in.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:24:38] Well, that's fun work.

Amb. Hammer: [00:24:40] It was Tremendously fun. But I was in Vancouver for an APEC summit. Then President Clinton came off the plane. Glyn Davies, who was the exec at the White House, who was our current ambassador in Thailand, came on the bus and said, Hey, Mike, the president of United States wants to go out to dinner. Can you help arrange it? Well, I talked to the the Canadian local staff. I could have said, look, I don't do restaurant reservations, but I did. I helped out. To make a long story short, the president went out, had a good time, and about a year later, Glenn was at the White House and I faxed him. I know. Who would have thunk? That's how you did?

Speaker4: [00:25:08] Well, that's how we did it then.

Amb. Hammer: [00:25:10] And I wanted a policy job in the. Director. And he said, Well, Mike, I'm sorry, we don't have anything, but I think you would fit into one of our public affairs jobs. And I thought, Oh my goodness, I've never done public affairs, and went home, talked to my wife, Margaret. We were in Iceland with our kids serving there. And she said, Go for it. You can do it.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:25:27] Yay for spouses that push us in the right direction.

Amb. Hammer: [00:25:29] I couldn't have done it without her encouragement. I was terrified. I landed at the White House and I guess I wasn't that good a political officer. But things went a little bit better doing public affairs. And frankly, I'm completely sold that it's not just dividing the two in terms of policy and public affairs. They need to be merged more and more. And that's what I've seen through the course of my career. To be effective on the policy making side, you need to understand how to present our policies effectively. And on the public affairs side, you need to understand the policy side of things. And so the more that we incorporate both into our daily work, the better off we'll be. And frankly, if you reach a senior level, you need to be able to do a public affairs. You will be called upon to be on TV. There will be crisis and you don't want that very first time to be a huge earthquake in Haiti When you have to go up to Mike's or COO or something that has happened. And so I think we need to have more multifunctionality and allow for people to have tours in public affairs. Others do policy tours and then prepare our future leaders even better. In fact, that's part of the education they get in a way when they're at the National Defense University as well.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:26:35] Well, thank you for educating our future leaders and thank you both for not only superbly representing your country in public sector, but also you're doing amazing work in the private sector. And I think also that cross fertilization is important as we go ahead. My guest today were Admiral John Kirby and Ambassador Mike Hammer. The program, the general and the ambassador is a project of the American Academy of Diplomacy and the Una Chapman Cox Foundation. You can find us on all podcast sites. We urge listeners to send us feedback and suggestions for future episodes. You can reach us at General.Ambassador.podcast@gmail.com and our website is GeneralAmbassadorPodcast.Org. Thank you so much for listening.