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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project Foreign Service Spouse Series SUZANNE SWANSON Interviewed by: Jewell Fenzi Initial interview date: July 19, 1989 TABLE OF CONTENTS Ms. S anson accompanied her Foreign Service Officer husband, Wayne Steven Salisbury, on his Foreign Service assignments in Washington, DC and abroad. In this intervie she discusses her experiences as Community Liaison Officer (CLO) at posts abroad. Background Born in Washington State ,niversity of Washington Married Foreign Service Officer, Wayne Steven Salisbury in 1.77 Spouse entered the Foreign Service in1.01 Direct Communication ith Spouses Program Program content ,pdating Family Liaison Office (FLO) 2ligibility Community Liaison Office (CLO) 2ligibility Overseas Briefing Center (OFC) 3enerating interest Manila4 Community Liaison Officer (CLO) 5isit of Secretary of State Shult6 Relations ith Regional Security Office (RSO) Seminars and meetings Security briefings for ives Sheila Platt (Wife of Ambassador Platt) Teenagers Relations ith school staff 8In9Touch: Mental Health 3rant funded Members 1 Divorce cases Method of operations Mental Health programs Sources of funding Privacy issues Operations Rosemary Mills 2mbassy Women;s Club assistance 2mployment of 2mbassy spouses Automated 5isa Look Out System (A5LOS) International School Peace Corps Housing Official representation functions 2mbassy support CLO meetings in Washington, D.C. Work load of CLO CLO Assistants CLO Support Officer ,S 2mbassy Association (,S2A) Post security Ne CLO Postings Brasilia, Bra6il 1.0191.05 Manila, Philippines 1.0691.00 Washington, D.C. 1.009 INTERVIEW Q: This is Jewell Fenzi on Tuesday, July 18, 1989. I'm interviewin Suzanne Swanson at my home in Washin ton. Suzanne has served in Brasilia and Manila and now in Washin ton. Durin her tour in Manila she was CLO and I thin) the emphasis of our interview today will be to e,plore her e,periences as CLO. SWANSON4 I talk so fast, I hope ... Q: No, that's o)ay. That won't bother it at all. /Discussion re: defective tapes0. Anyway, we're discussin the direct communication with spouses pro ram, pro2ect, whatever you want to call it, which came out when you were CLO and when I was CLO too. I found it to be less than successful in a very small Embassy, and I thin) it's interestin that you have the same reaction from your lar e Embassy. 4ou were tellin me how you tried to )eep your spouses abreast of ... 2 SWANSON4 Okay. It had been going on by the time I as CLO ... the Direct Communication ith Spouses Program has been around as long as I've been in the Foreign Service, the past six years, I ould say because I remember hearing about it shortly after I got to post in Brasilia, and then again it became more of an impetus to hear about it hen I got to Manila. Then I became CLO. I kne about the system, and I kne ho it orked. They ould send cables out saying, "We need updated information for the Direct Communication of Spouses program." They ere trying to streamline the process. At that time, as you may have already experienced, it as very bureaucratic and ound up in a lot of paper ork. They had to streamline out a lot of the information. They had names of people that ere no longer at post, and they had no ay of follo ing up on them, or these people had completely dropped out of sight, or they ere never there in the first place. There ere a lot of problems that they had to ork out. So hat they ere asking for as an updated list, that they ould only ork from this list. Only those most interested in the program ould be included in it. The problem I had ith this program, from my point of vie , as I asn't sure hat the real aim of it as. If it as to help people find more jobs hen they got home, to keep them abreast of Foreign Service life in general, or a little bit of everything. I came to the conclusion that it as the latter, the final thing. So hat I did as, I sent into CLO Corner, the ne sletter that Manila had, that they needed this information. This is your last chance type of thing, very dramatic. I did get Auite a fe inAuiries and hat I found as interesting as most people did not have any idea hat it as about. Some people had heard about it, or said it as in the back of their brain. Several ladies ho ere real firecrackers, real go9getters, and ere perked by this, came in, got the information, filled it out and sent it back. The interesting thing as that t o of those ladies got that same information returned to them, and ere told by FLO that they ere very, very sorry, but they could not be included in the program because they ere Military spouses. Q: Oh, no5 SWANSON4 That as another big problem ith the hole thing. Military spouses encompassed too much and I can see here FLO as in a tight bind because it (the military) encompasses so many numbers of people, and they are so much more difficult to keep track of than the Foreign Service spouses. Then it became something I had to delineate. Only if you fall into these categories are you eligible for it. It as a very interesting experience because hen they got them back they came into my office to tell me. They said, "oh, I thought you'd ant to kno that I'm not eligible for this." They took it in stride, but ere miffed at the same time. "Why have it if not everyone can participateB" and that's something every CLO tries to keep at post, is a sense of bridging all the differences and keeping everybody happy. I'll remember that most about the Direct Communication ith Spouses because it turned out to be a little disappointing for those real gung9ho ladies that turned it in. Not that many turned it in at all because hen I came back for the conference Michael Ann approached me about it. She said, "I only have five people from your post ..." This is a post of C50 dependents so it as very shocking, and 3 my name asn't on there either. So I Auickly filled my form out. Q: I thin) I will inter2ect my e,perience. I was CLO when they were puttin to ether the bi thic) pac)et which they sent out. One of the cables that I got, I loo)ed at it, and I really couldn't believe what I was readin . It said, 6Tell everybody at your post, all the spouses at your post, to loo) for a mailin that they're goin to get.6 I loo)ed at it a ain and I thou ht, 6.ow wait a minute. They can't be serious.6 That is what the cable said. I was supposed to inform all the women in my post that they should loo) for a mailin from the CLO office. That was administratively so sophomoric, I couldn't believe it. And then the bi fat thin came out, and I did ta)e a loo) at it. I obviously loo)ed at mine and one woman brou ht hers bac) in. So I put it in the CLO office so anyone could loo) at it who wanted to. No one ever as)ed. SWANSON4 I found a lack of interest in it because I think it as too unclear. They ere trying to appeal to everyone, and by trying to do that they lost their focal point. Q: Ri ht. It had no focus and the thin that could have given it focus was to spend a little more money, and computerize a little bit more, and put people in a pre8retirement cate ory, a teena e child cate ory. Cate orize people and just send them the information that appealed to them. I don't )now what you found as CLO, but I found that people only read what was of interest to them. SWANSON4 That's right. I think that is hat they are no trying to do. That as part of the process they ere going through t o years ago. I really don't kno ho in the CLO Euarterly Report, I don't kno if they have anything in there. The thing that is nice, that it could have done, as to make this kind of information streamlined like the CLO Euarterly into stuff that they could send out little headlines on. Q: Little updates. SWANSON4 That's right. Then people could pursue that, if they ere interested in kno ing about it. For example, the changing Overseas Briefing Center focus. They keep adding different courses and subtracting others. Fust a variety of things I think are interesting in the OBC at certain points in different people's postings. They may not be interested in the hat the Overseas Briefing Center has to offer after they first arrive at post, but hen they are about to leave, that is a different story. And a lot of omen 99 that as another interesting thing 99 a lot of omen in Manila, because they are hat e affectionately call amateurs to Foreign Service life, (in other ords people ho had never been overseas before), ere totally una are of hat OBC could do for them. If they ere under the five major agencies they ere eligible to go to OBC.