Spend Now for Safe Embassies

The State Department’s annual report on global terrorism again identifies a number of Middle Eastern countries, along with North Korea and Cuba, as havens for terrorists, but it also finds that South Asia has become a major staging point for terrorist activities. Pakistan is cited for supporting groups that promote violence in the Kashmir region, while Afghanistan, most of which is controlled by the militant Islamic group Taliban, is accused of shielding numerous terrorist groups.

Among them are the followers of Osama bin Laden, identified by Washington as the man behind the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Those attacks prompted an urgent review of security at overseas missions that revealed alarming flaws, most of which still are not fixed.

The General Accounting Office recently warned Congress that the State Department is at least a year behind schedule in efforts to improve security at most of its foreign posts. Two boards appointed to investigate the East African embassy bombings pointed to “a collective failure by the executive and legislative branches . . . over the past decade to provide adequate resources to reduce the vulnerability of U.S. diplomatic missions.”

The embassy attacks led to an emergency appropriation of $1.4 billion to improve security at diplomatic posts. The investigating boards recommended spending that amount each year for the next 10 years for protection, including a building program to relocate facilities like those in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, that abut busy public streets.

But this year the Clinton administration and Congress provided only a miserly $300 million for construction. Even next year’s request for a little over $1 billion falls short of projected needs.

The demonstrated vulnerability of U.S. overseas missions should have surprised no one. In the mid-1980s, a special commission proposed improved security standards for diplomatic posts. As of 1999--13 years after those recommendations were made--two-thirds of U.S. embassies still didn’t meet the proposed standards. The State Department has been forced to temporarily close scores of insecure embassies and consulates.

Meanwhile, the department reports, the number of threats to U.S. overseas posts has soared. Quite simply the United States can’t afford not to spend what’s needed to improve security at its overseas missions. Neither can it tolerate the legislative and bureaucratic inertia that is slowing that effort.