State Dept. Seminar Offers Advice on Safely Living Abroad : Diplomats Class Assignment: Survive Terrorism

In its campaign against terrorism, the State Department is telling American diplomats to leave behind “your Rambo T-shirts and red, white and blue jogging suits” and take a cautious approach to living and working abroad.

“It’s a sign of the times that I spend my first full day at the State Department attending a seminar on terrorism,” said Margaret M. Heckler, the former secretary of health and human services who is headed to Ireland as U.S. ambassador.

Heckler was one of 50 people attending the department’s seminar on “Coping with Violence Abroad” last week. The one-day seminar teaches U.S. officials and their spouses how to avoid terrorists and what to do if they are attacked or taken hostage.

The course has been beefed up to cope with increasingly frequent and bloody attacks on Americans abroad. Further improvements are planned to face the growing threat, and to counter criticism from diplomats.

In the first 175 years of U.S. history, not one American diplomat was killed for political reasons. In the last 20 years, 70, including six ambassadors, have died at the hands of political assassins, according to U. Alexis Johnson, a former ambassador.

Carol A. Madison, who was a public affairs officer in the U.S. Embassy in Beirut 1983-84 when it was bombed twice, doesn’t think the State Department course takes the right direction.

“I found it largely inadequate for preparing foreign service personnel for the stresses--both physical and psychological--that are part of living with terrorism,” Madison wrote in the Foreign Service Journal, a magazine for diplomats.

Madison called the seminar “counterproductive because, by raising fears and then demonstrating techniques that only experts can perform to avoid terrorist attacks, it is apt to make people feel they are helpless to deal with the entire subject of terrorism and security.”

Must Walk Tightrope

Her criticism highlights the tightrope diplomats must walk abroad: To be effective, they must have as much contact as possible with local people and officials; to be safe they often must live and work in heavily guarded buildings and present as small a target as possible.

“We are not trying to create a paramilitary corps; our mission is diplomacy,” said Arnie Campbell, the Foreign Service Institute official who coordinates the training seminar. He and other officials acknowledged that much of Madison’s criticism was justified, and has helped them reshape the program.

In addition to the one-day session in Rosslyn, Va., just across the Potomac River from Washington, foreign service officers get a one-day orientation at their overseas posts, including a briefing on local terrorist groups in the area and steps to cut the risk.

State Department officials plan to expand the Rosslyn session to two days, to include more speakers and new movies on handling the psychological strains of terrorism.

The Rosslyn session began with an up-to-date briefing on terrorism, touching on the attacks in the Rome and Vienna airports, followed by a discussion of elementary steps to detect surveillance, deal with street crime or home burglary. It included a lecture on fire safety, and a detailed speech on how diplomats should organize their financial and business lives to prepare for possible evacuation from their posts or other risks.

Closed to outsiders was a classified portion of the seminar, a lecture by a psychologist on how to behave if taken hostage, and a briefing on bombs.

Heckler described the seminar as “sobering.”

“I think of it as an awareness session, making a more suspicious person,” she said. She was intrigued by a film on “offensive driving,” which demonstrated techniques of ramming a car through a terrorist roadblock.

Other tips ranged from the basic to the bizarre. Phyllis Habib told the diplomats to prepare a will and designate a guardian for their children. Special Agent Mary Grigg offered more exotic fare.

“If you are stuck in traffic and someone throws a Molotov cocktail, keep the windows shut and get out of the area as soon as possible. Despite what you have seen on television, the car will not blow up unless you open the windows,” she said.

“At some posts, they throw rats or snakes into your car, you jump out, and they leave with a new car.”

The key to avoiding danger, she said, is to vary daily routine and keep a low profile.

‘Dress Like Locals’

“Dress like the locals. Save your Rambo T-shirts and red, white and blue jogging suits for the Marine ball,” she said, warning diplomats against fancy clothes, jewelry or cars that might attract attention.

The seminars started in 1976. Additionally, the State Department has asked Congress for $3.2 billion over five years to “harden” embassies and other overseas facilities against terrorism, and is sending mobile teams to high-risk areas to teach diplomats further ways to protect themselves.

Although the measures may help safeguard U.S. diplomats and their families, they have also isolated them from the local populations.

Stevenson McIlvaine, taking the course before his assignment this June to the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania, said the new precautions “make it much harder for someone like me, a political officer, to be as open as I want to be, for example, having local people to my home or going out with them.”