Confessions of a Flack
Backstage at the Embassy
“Success has many fathers,” said JFK after the Bay of Pigs debacle, “but failure is an orphan.”
That’s true only some of the time. Often failure is assigned to a single parent: the flack. You hear it all the time: there was a “communications mix-up,” a “messaging issue.” We need to do better getting the word out.
I heard that in Hollywood, when a movie does badly, the first ones fired are the publicists. It’s easier to blame those responsible for promotion than suggest that the film was bad, the release was poorly timed, or the stars had no chemistry. Firing the PR provides a therapeutic bang-and-blame, allowing everyone else to save face and move on.
But there’s more than scapegoating afoot. Many principals think that they’d do a better job at getting good press than the flack does. If they had the time, they could turn the narrative around or run a campaign that would get the institution’s name up in lights. The speech would have landed, and the policy would have achieved such buy-in that the foreign ministry wouldn’t, now, be calling in the ambassador for a reprimand. The principal’s only mistake was delegating the work to the flack, who fucked it up. Left unsaid, but implied, is that the principal didn’t have the time to do the publicity because they were doing the important work, the substance.
There was a period, in the George W. Bush Administration, when many people in the State Department, political appointees and those outside the public diplomacy cone, would say, “Everyone is a public affairs officer.” Depending on the context, they could have meant two things. First, that any officer, no matter what their cone, could be a persuasive advocate for US government positions with host-country citizens who did not work at a government ministry or in the military. Or that anyone could inflict reputational damage on the embassy, and by extension on the US government itself, and, beyond that, the nation as a whole.
Both these points were obvious and had been true forever, which made me think something else was going on. After all, you never heard that “everyone is a political officer,” even though many of us wrote reporting cables and met with government officials. What we did hear, constantly, was the Department failed, consistently, to get its message out to the wider public. If people understood what we did and how they benefited, we would become, somehow, beloved.
Often the problem is that the lipstick we’ve been tasked with drawing on a pig isn’t fooling anyone. Once, when I was working in a country whose economy depended on tourism, I was surprised to see, on the noon TV news bulletin, that the US government had deemed the country’s main airport highly vulnerable to terrorist attack. This warning would result in thousands of American tourists canceling trips and a consequent drop in the host country’s tax revenues. Shortly after I saw this, even before I was able to get more details, the ambassador’s secretary called.
“He needs to see you right away,” she said blandly. It was bad when she spoke in a monotone like this. It was how she conveyed urgency.
Sure enough, he was enraged, though only about the media coverage, not the announcement itself. I stared at the purple geode on his desk, dissociating as he went on and on about how I had mishandled this. It was beside the point that no one had told me this decision was coming, nor did it matter that even if they had it would’ve been impossible to make the news seem like a good thing. If you are a country where tourism is your top earner and the US government puts your main airport on a list of the world’s most dangerous – well, there’s no way that’s going to smell good. He needed a punching bag, a safe one, and I was there. Word got out that was I falling down on the job.
Shortly after this, an American expat living in town called to ask if I was OK.
“Sure, why?”
“I ran into one of your colleagues. I told him I knew you and he said, ‘Oh, Todd? Yeah, he’s the ambassador’s bitch.’ So naturally I was concerned.”
I called my colleague and asked him to be more discreet about my exact function in the embassy. “It’s true, but not everyone needs to know.”
Other times, the flack is expected to turn water into wine, to elicit public interest in something unremarkable. Perhaps there is a joint military exercise with the host country or a visit by a Special Envoy for something. These are barely news: The exercise is an annual affair, and the details are quasi-secret, while the envoy rarely has anything new to announce. There’s no hook.
During our training at the US Information Agency, we learned “there’s no sizzle without the steak,” as in a story needs to have some inherent interest to generate any buzz. The State Department training course must have skipped that module, or it had been conveniently forgotten by senior officials on their decades-long climb up the ladder. By the time they hit the ambassador level, or were in striking distance, most of them had absorbed the belief that nearly anything we did was newsworthy because we were doing it. This is the logic of celebrity, of course, and of empire.
Providing no check to this mindset, for the most part, is the host country’s designated America Whisperer. Most countries have one. That official, usually at the foreign ministry, knows how to talk to US diplomats, to keep the tone “constructive,” “encouraging,” except in cases where he’s been tasked with registering his government’s displeasure. Even in those cases, he might affect a learned helplessness. This person, who is usually male and always speaks fluent English, has often served at his country’s embassy in Washington. He knows to avoid the unadorned “no,” understands that such a response will result in his being labeled “unhelpful” by the Americans who speak with his superiors.
Once, when tasked with promoting something forgettable, I suggested to the ambassador that we apply the reciprocal test. Would this item be news if Japan were doing it? If Russia were? If the host country itself were holding a similar program in the US, would the Washington Post bite? If the Post did write it up, would he, the ambassador, read the story, standing at the island in his kitchen in Chevy Chase on a Sunday morning. (I leaned deep into the creative visualization.) I got along well with this ambassador, and was being sincere, two things I thought, erroneously, would prevent him from lighting into me. He said this was a ridiculous exercise and told me to go do my job.
* * * * *
The relationship between flacks and their supervisors, indeed with all their colleagues, is complex. As I said before, there’s an element of condescension, a sense that the flack is a bit of a lightweight, concerned only with registering impressions and allergic to substance. The work of the flack is seen as a necessary but at root unserious. It’s hair and make-up, but for policy.
Being considered lightweight, however, does not equate to being perceived as harmless. This is because of the flack’s liminal position; in an organization that values secrecy, the flack is the one talking to the media. The flack is perceived as half-in, half-out, if not yet compromised then potentially so. Even when relations are collegial, a natural reticence remains. The flack is the first one pitched overboard when the need-to-know basis kicks in. You can go now, the principal has often told me in the middle of a meeting. We just have a few things to catch up on here. That last part is usually delivered pleasantly, the way you say I’ll let you go to someone you want to get off the phone. I didn’t have a problem with this, as sometimes I want to know as little as possible to avoid being charged with leaking.
This existence on the margins gives the flack power. Like the jester or court astrologer, they can say things others cannot, can directly criticize an idea, if only on the grounds of bad optics. The flack can leverage the horror that most people, especially authority figures, have of becoming an object of ridicule, a rezili. Challenging a proposal based on how it will be perceived, rather than on its merits, is a safer and often more successful way to turn off a bad idea. I have to say, I don’t love the idea of the ambassador going on a reality show while we are renegotiating the status of forces agreement. The cartoonists will have a field day.
You aren’t just allowed to brush the dandruff off the ambassador’s lapels before his interview, you’re expected to. You look tired, I told one ambassador while he was taping a TV interview. Let’s stop rolling, get you some concealer. I concede it may, culturally, be easier for women and gay men to say this type of thing. Fortunately, there are a lot of us in the field.
At most embassies where I was the press officer, I did the daily media summary, and there was often harsh criticism of the US, which I’d deliver in the C–3PO voice I had perfected, decades earlier, as a supermarket cashier. The modulated, borderline anesthetized tone would keep tensions down, reduce the chances of the messenger – me – being shot. Sometimes there was criticism of the ambassador personally, which, unless I was feeling self-destructive that day, I brought up privately with his deputy, so they could deliver the message.
Most deputy chiefs of mission hate being in this position, where I’ve tagged them and now they’re it. Now they have to be the one bearing bad news. Usually the deputy chief of mission is gunning for an ambassadorship and allergic to anything that might diminish those chances. They might decide to risk hiding the bad news and, when it comes up, as it usually does, blaming me. After being rolled like this a few times, I learned to always follow up our conversation with an email documenting our chat and a translation of the offending piece. You have to keep receipts in this business.
* * * * *
People leak for a variety of reasons. Despite what you see in movies, whistleblowing is only one of them. (Deep Throat is a rare bird.) The most common motive is positioning: The leaker wants to disseminate a version of the story that makes them look good and their opponents look bad. Another reason is frustration. When someone feels ignored, they are tempted to blow off steam to someone who will listen. Sometimes that person is a journalist. A third is status signaling, the desire not just to be in the loop but be seen as such by a particular audience.
Good reporters know how to divine a source who might yield something. They know how to massage the ego of an aggrieved employee and allay any fears of being found out. Part of “protecting the source” is dutiful observance of the First Amendment and part is the journalist maintaining their pipeline, so the information keeps flowing, preferably to them alone.
The skilled reporter, like a politician, knows how to nourish a grievance. I heard that there was some pushback to Washington’s announcement about the recent elections, that they were free and fair. But I guess what’s done is done. Or, It seems strange no one reached out to the family members of the Americans killed in the ferry accident. The reporter recognizes what the source needs and is not receiving, emotionally, from his employer and provides a facsimile of sympathy in exchange for information.
Finally, the leaker usually goes unpunished. The leaker is often above the flack in the hierarchy, making it difficult for the PR/press attaché to march in and demand an accounting. Furthermore, experienced journalists often work for outlets that require multiple sources and will wait before publishing. This muddies the waters, so it becomes impossible for the flack to say for certain that X colleague is responsible for Y piece of information getting out and appearing today in publication Z. In most cases, nobody wants to launch what would be a time-consuming, morale-sapping investigation. Suspicion often falls on the flack. After all, we are the ones having lunch with the Reuters correspondent or coffee with the Los Angeles Times stringer. It’s all there in the vouchers we have submitted for reimbursement. Occam’s razor would suggest that the flack is behind the leak.
Now it’s true that sometimes the flack has said something boneheaded or been indiscreet. When Hillary Clinton came to Greece as First Lady, I wondered aloud – never do this with reporters around – why she needed an entourage three times the size of Queen Elizabeth’s. That wound up in the Guardian. (Unattributed, thank God, until now.) Any flack who’s doing their job will eventually say something they shouldn’t to a journalist. This is normal human fallibility, though the principal may not see it that generously if what we said is published and traced to us.
But the flack is rarely the leaker. Leaking requires the source to believe, at some level, that getting information out will make a difference, indeed that it matters enough to risk career suicide. Most flacks are bubbly cynics with great banter but little faith in justice or the transformative power of truth. Our business is in impressions, our work writ in water.
Moreover, the flack knows full well that they will be the first person suspected in a leak and that they have zero plausible deniability. The leaker knows this, too, of course, and takes advantage of that vulnerability.
Lastly, flacks know journalists too well.
“I’ve gotten three PR people fired in the last year,” a reporter friend told me once, when I was back in New York on home leave. “Which shows people are really reading my stuff.” She went back to talking about rents in Park Slope.
* * * * *
In this minefield, getting the optics right is like cooking, not baking. There are too many variables to be sure exactly how something will turn out, so you have to monitor the situation, switch things up as circumstances change. There are, however, some things flacks can do to stay calm and employed.
Do not lie. Short-term, lying is the easy way out. It is a bad idea. The morality is obvious. More convincing to your average, ethically bendy flack is the fact that the lie, when it’s discovered, hurts your image or, if you must, your brand. Your credibility goes out the window with everyone. First, the reporter who has been duped is now full of scorn for you and tells their contacts (other reporters and more reliable sources) that you lie. Your employer, while possibly relieved that the heat is off for the moment, understands two things: This reprieve is temporary, and you have no ethical compass. While your boss does not, generally, care where you are with the Lord, they immediately grasp that if you’ll lie to a reporter, you’ll lie to them. They will freeze you out, except when it comes to the most noxious of errands. With a lie you earn from co-workers and contacts a contempt with a long half-life, and, per Machiavelli, being hated is the spot where you don’t want to be.
(I am not talking here about evasive replies regarding operational security of a sensitive mission or ongoing negotiations. In those cases, it’s best to stick to generalities, such as “We continue to work with our partners on a wide range of issues.”)
Everyone has their own take on when the selection of facts and opinions that puts your case in its best light crosses the frontier into lying. Decide where your threshold is early on. Use your antennae to figure out when people are lying to you and asking you to carry this message to the public. Realize that when the lie is discovered, you will be the one blamed. If you’re the one recorded saying it, the statement belongs to you and you alone. Anyone googling you will find your name attached to the lie.
Talking points. These are the reason spokespeople can sound smarmy. “Why don’t they just answer the question,” my father complains when a flack comes on TV and answers the question they wish the reporter had asked rather than the one posed. In these cases, the flack is usually following a script, sticking to the talking points. These are the institution’s agreed-upon lines.
In the State Department, the clearance process is the tortuous way in which talking points are drafted and finalized. For an issue relating to the South China Sea, for example, you need every single institution with a stake signed on: the Pentagon, Congressional liaison, China desk, the National Security Council, Embassy Beijing, Pacific Command, the American Institute in Taiwan, and more. This text goes through multiple rounds of edits. Whatever comes out in the end is what the flack needs to stick to, come hell, high water, or a persistent AP reporter.
Talking points are usually on the record, but occasionally they are delivered on background by a “senior government official.” On sensitive issues, the existence and use of talking points do two things: First, they spread ownership over a particular policy around a multitude of offices and agencies so one person or office cannot be blamed if they are received poorly. Second, they protect the flack from the reporter’s constant efforts to find daylight between what the flack says and what some other government official says. That gap, of course, would become an easy story for the journalist. Gotcha!
Underpromise/Overdeliver. There seems to be a larger share of people-pleasers in flackdom than in the general population. We are natural marketers and packagers, used to optimizing, so we tend to oversell how much we can accomplish, how much we control.
Temper this behavior. If you think the interview might get lots of play, tell the principal it will get some. If you think the video campaign on social will get 30,000 views, predict it will get 12,000. Promise the speech by Friday, get it in by Wednesday. Then trumpet how much you’ve exceeded expectations. Be shameless about this: The flack needs to be their own best flack.
Be careful in a foreign language. When done right, doing interviews in the host country language is magic. You are doing what you are paid to do, which is get out the government line in the most effective way possible, using a language you may have learned at taxpayer expense. But as the Spartacus gay travel guide used to warn travelers, you go certain places AYOR, at your own risk. You may not be aware of the connotation or emotional register of a particular word or term. There might be a historical resonance you aren’t aware of. You can put together talking points in that language, but what happens when the reporter starts asking questions? They’ll know you are working outside your mother tongue and speed up to get you to make a mistake. A US spokesperson flaming out on live TV in the host country language is ratings gold.
Even the best linguists have off moments. In a 2006 interview with Al-Jazeera, veteran diplomat and fluent Arabic speaker Alberto Fernandez, then director of the Near Eastern Affairs bureau’s office of press and public diplomacy, said, “I think there is great room for strong criticism, because without doubt, there was arrogance and stupidity by the United States in Iraq.” This was not in the talking points.
Once an ambassador took me along as a one-man interpreter/notetaker/PR on a visit to northern Greece. A meeting with a local mayor went on for an hour with me interpreting in both directions and writing things down concurrently so I had notes for the cable I would write. (CONCERN I wrote in my notebook, though whether it was mine or the ambassador’s or the mayor’s was unclear. Someone, or everyone, was concerned. About something.) When we left city hall, there was a group of reporters by the main steps, and, about 10 yards away, a small band of protesters from the Communist Party.
“How do you feel about this demonstration?” asked one journalist. I interpreted that for my boss. Calling a group of 12 people a demonstration was a stretch, but I let it go.
“This is pathetic,” he said, to my surprise. He was an experienced spokesperson, far defter than I was. “This is what they do, this is their occupation, just protesting America.”
I knew the word pathetic comes from the Greek pathos, but that pathetikos means passive. It is a faux ami, which are less common in Greek than in French but still crop up. The term was used in grammar as the alternative to the active voice, but I heard it more frequently in the context of being the “bottom” in gay sex. I did not want to convey that; this was not an era in which we were encouraged to bring our whole selves to work.
Then, for “occupation” I was coming up blank: I knew the word doulia, for work, but that wasn’t quite it. The word for profession, epangelma, was standing there but I left it on the shelf; it seemed like something that required years of schooling, like law or medicine. I did remember a word that meant “occupation,” and that was katohi, but it was in the military sense. Given this region had suffered a brutal Nazi occupation, I wanted to avoid anything that evoked the Wehrmacht. (Staying away from comparisons to Nazis is another important lesson for flacks.)
While my interpreter brain struggled, my flack brain recoiled. I disliked the derisiveness of the comment, which would get picked up by reporters as another example of American arrogance and scorn, the spirit of James Peurifoy alive and well, fulminating about communists.
“Thank you for asking that question,” I blurted out in Greek. “Greece, like the US, is a democracy, and everyone has a chance to express their views in public. We have to stop here. Na pate sto kaló.” Go to the good. Not the customary way to see off reporters, granted, but it worked.
I walked around to the back of the car, out of frame, so the cameras could get a clean shot of the ambassador entering the car, and prayed he hadn’t cottoned on to what I’d ad-libbed.
“What was that?” he said, while smiling through the bulletproof window at the cameras. I came clean and said I had been tired after a day of interpreting and stumped about the right word for occupation. Understandably, my quest for le mot juste did not interest him. I added that I was worried his response would become the media focus of the whole trip.
He told me to never do that again and took me off interpreter duty. That lasted until midway through our next call, which was with the local bishop. The interpreter he had lined up was a Greek-American who owned a diner in Alaska. She struggled with a conversation about the listing of religious affiliation on state identity cards, an issue unlikely to arise at church dinners in Anchorage. I took notes on this awkward convrsation until the Ambassador asked me to jump in.
“Are you sure?” I drawled, my Capote affect emerging at the bishop’s palace. I was not going to make this easy.
I told my mother this story and she was appalled by all of it, from the blanking out on the word to altering the statement entirely to “just being generally fresh.”
“Would it kill you to keep your mouth shut?” My mother was always better at navigating bureaucracy than I was.
She didn’t even know the whole story. The next day Ta Nea (top circulation, pro-government) ran what I’d put in the ambassador’s mouth as their quote of the day. A reporter called to congratulate me on my boss’s ambassador’s measured response.
Sleep. The comedian Sandra Bernhard once said, “Never judge your life when you are exhausted,” and that also applies to talking to the press. I made some of my biggest mistakes around the time undiagnosed sleep apnea meant I was tired all the time. Lack of sleep can also make you irritable, which can lead to saying something spiteful. This is never great, but it is especially dangerous when talking to reporters. An angry person is more likely to go beyond the talking points. (As is someone who has had a few drinks, which is why reporters often suggest meeting at a bar.)
Finally, if too many diplomats think they are the second coming of Richard Holbrooke, too many reporters imagine themselves Woodward or Bernstein. They will perceive hostility not just as incivility but as an attack on Truth. It is best not to provoke people with a savior complex, a competitive streak, and an audience.
Overprepare. This goes for murder boards (see earlier section on reporters) and for everything else. Before the principal meets with a group of editors and reporters, get everything you can on the participants. Who runs the network/paper? Is it a family-owned company, and if so, what are the family dynamics? Where is the money coming from? Who has the title and who has the power? Do anyone’s kids go to school in the US? Which one wrote that nasty, unsigned opinion piece? Which participants hate each other, and why? Who ignores sourcing rules?
Always know what you want out of any interaction with the media. When you schedule any event with journalists, be it press conference, interview, or editorial-board meeting, you should be able to say how it will get you closer to an outcome you want. Are you trying to counter a prevailing narrative about bilateral relations? Are you trying to show, to a domestic or US audience, that the Embassy is engage on a particular issue? Talking to a reporter always comes with risks and, to justify those risks, you and the principal need to have a clear and identical understanding of what you are trying to achieve. Articulating the outcome you want will determine which journalists you choose to talk to, in what format, and with what sourcing.
Statistics. While in flackdom, I overcame my math anxiety and became a data nerd. Reliable poll findings, especially those collected over an extended period, can confirm or challenge received wisdom. Is the country really more pro-American than it used to be? Or is that just something the ambassador believes based on what she heard at a Chamber of Commerce lunch? Has the UN improved in the hiring and retention of women, or is that just something an ambitious Assistant Secretary General claims?
Particularly on issues where senior officials are invested in a particular narrative – relations between our countries have never been stronger, we are bullish on the local economy, the US is seen as a trusted partner, there is greater willingness among Europeans to shoulder more of the costs of their own defense – statistics can be a way to show, gently, that they are wrong. Poll findings depersonalize things. When you are pulling the narrative rug out from under the boss’s feet, telling them something they don’t want to hear, it is best to have some numbers backing you up. Otherwise it can look like truculence, even insubordination. It can look like you don’t know the rules.
The principal will still be annoyed, and probably dismiss the findings, but you’ve planted seeds of doubt. They can’t claim they didn’t know.
Don’t Take it Personally. The flack is often the only person a principal meets who is telling them, unambiguously, that they might be wrong. OK, the principal’s spouse might be telling them that, too, but I lacked visibility into that relationship.
“Do you have to say no to everything?” one ambassador complained at a staff meeting, after I’d nixed a media spot he wanted to do that would have made us look arrogant and achieved nothing. My colleagues looked at me with disappointment, like I was harshing the vibe and making them look bad. They assured him it was a great idea. But in the end he ignored them and listened to me, which was what mattered.
If there is bad press, it’s the flack’s job to convey the news and suggest a response. Every principal has seen careers get sidetracked, even go up in smoke, thanks to a media gaffe. The principal knows you are the person they must rely on to make sure that doesn’t happen to them, but they don’t fully trust your instincts (because they could do the job better) nor your loyalty (because you are, after all, talking to journalists all day). This combination of vulnerability and mistrust is confusing, a disorganized attachment style in the work setting. It can result in erratic behavior.
Finally, as I’ve said, the flack is the one to brush dandruff off the ambassador’s lapel, retie his tie, pass her a breath mint. No man is a hero to his valet, and vice versa. But remember that…
Every Doormat Says Welcome. There is a fine line between being unpopular and becoming the designated scapegoat. I did not always stay on the right side of that line. If this happens, let people know that due to repeated incidents of shooting the messenger, you promise to convey only good news in the future. At this point, the behavior of your principal and your colleagues will improve. Not because they see the error of their ways, but because they know that without you they run the risk of unpleasant surprises. Bureaucrats hate surprises.
Your colleagues, for all their wincing when you surface unpleasant facts, do not want to become the person deputized to bring bad news to the boss. That’s your gig. Your principal, for their part, is usually savvy enough to realize that being surrounded only by yes men would mean flying blind. They don’t want to be oblivious to a highly critical story, one everyone at the next national-day reception will have seen. They don’t want to be home one night watching themselves be interviewed on TV, and realize that they have a shiny forehead, a weird squint, or a bit of spinach in their teeth.
In the end, all is vanity, nothing is fair.
*Todd Pierce is retired from the US Department of State. This is an excerpt from his forthcoming memoir. The opinions and characterizations above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. government.