Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy: A Memoir

by Christopher R. Hill

  But working alongside Phil was not for the faint of heart. Operationally, that is connecting people or pushing an issue forward so that it could be implemented and be of use as part of a foreign policy, he was like a human computer virus who would infect and destroy the simplest of tasks. Why was I being connected to him? I wondered as he came on the phone.

  “Chris, can you get to a secure phone there?”

  “Uh, not easy, Philip, what with my being here in Vanuatu.”

  “Okay, well I’ll just have to talk around it.” What a disappointment, I thought. For the Vanuatu intelligence service this was probably the most interesting telephone call on the island since the invasion of Guadalcanal was launched from there in 1942.

  “Um, okay, go ahead, Phil.”

  “The secretary has had some in-depth discussions with her counterpart in the biggest Six Party country.” (“Biggest . . .” Oh, I get it. He’s talking about China. Boy, those poor Vanuatan eavesdroppers must be scratching their heads over that one.) “They agreed that you should go there very quietly and meet your little friends. Can you get there by Monday?” “Little friends?” I repeated to myself, the rain still beating on the hotel’s tin roof. I have lots of little friends. Oh, I got it . . .

  “She wants me to meet those guys?” I said, referring to the North Koreans. “And with the Chi—, I mean, the biggest country present, I assume.” I didn’t want to go through another such episode.

  “She expects the big guys to start the meeting, then you will talk with your little friends bilaterally.”

  “Okay, I’ll be in Sydney thirty-six hours from now. If I could get some more details of how to handle these talks sent through our consulate there, I’ll figure out how to get to Beijing and what the logistics are.”

  The next morning I met the president and the prime minister of Vanuatu, then spent the rest of the day visiting Peace Corps volunteers in their villages. In one place, the chief and two volunteers working on public health turned out the entire village for my visit. I wondered whom the villagers thought they were meeting, since assistant secretary is not a title that necessarily means a lot to a Vanuatan villager.

  One of the volunteers explained: “We told them you were important and had once been a volunteer like us.”

  “Perfect,” I replied, wishing I were back in Cameroon on my Suzuki 125 dirt bike.

  I gave a short speech about how the Pacific Ocean, which was lapping up against the edge of the village, joins my country to this village, and that the same waters flow between us. As someone afflicted with a fever and chills I was relieved I had come up with lines like that on the spur of the moment. I was channeling my Peace Corps days. (Once I had told an audience near Tiko, Cameroon, “Ask not what your credit union can do for you; ask what you can do for your credit union.”)

  The chief of the Vanuatan village told an inspiring story about the fact that during “the war” American soldiers (marines) had left a large pile of no-longer-needed equipment in the village, and how honored everyone was that the Americans chose their village for that.

  I shook hands with a long line of people, and when after about forty-five minutes I could feel my hand beginning to throb, I realized that people were shaking my hand and then getting back in line to do it again. I asked the Peace Corps volunteer about it, and he answered: “Happens here a lot with visitors. There otherwise isn’t much going on here.”

  • • •

  I arrived in Beijing Monday night, slipped down the stairs from the plane to a waiting embassy car, and headed off to the apartment belonging to Deputy Chief of Mission David Sedney, where I spent the night. The next morning I began discussions with the North Koreans out at the Diaoyutai, and this time the Chinese showed up.

  What the Chinese had delivered was a willingness of the North Koreans to attend the next session of the Six Party Talks. What they had not delivered was any flexibility on the part of the North Koreans to engage in actual negotiations. Essentially, the Chinese delivered North Koreans who would attend but not engage.

  I explained to Kim Gye Gwan what I had explained to him the previous November: that there was nothing I could do about the sanctions situation, and that the matter was in the banking world. Wu didn’t try to suggest otherwise, perhaps already knowing that the fix was in and the North Koreans were prepared to return to the talks, even if just to sit there.

  In December 2006 we had the next session, three days and out by the twenty-second, just in time to get us all back to our families by Christmas. I presented a phased denuclearization plan, but the North Koreans would not comment, though they did agree to take it back for study.

  The Chinese issued a “Chairman’s Statement,” a weaker formulation than a Joint Statement like the one issued in September 2005. The statement fecklessly reaffirmed that the parties all continued to be committed to the September 2005 Joint Statement, noted the fact that candid discussions were conducted in bilateral channels, and declared the Fifth Round to be in recess pending consultations in capitals. In short, the talks had not moved an inch since September 2005. During the December round, there were side discussions between the Treasury Department representatives and the North Koreans on the subject of the sanctions against Banco Delta Asia. These too got nowhere, although I was glad to let the Treasury representatives, led by a very reasonable and knowledgable deputy assistant secretary, Danny Glaser, have the pleasure of dealing with the North Koreans on this issue.

  On the evening of December 22, Victor Cha, the NSC director for Northeast Asia, accompanied by Korea office director Sung Kim, visited the North Korean embassy and discussed next steps with Li Gun and Choi Sun Ai, the North Korean deputy (Victor’s counterpart) and the “interpreter” (who at times behaved like the head of the North Korean delegation).

  To Victor’s and Sung’s surprise, Li and Choi suggested a quiet meeting somewhere in Europe where we might be able to make progress on the denuclearization issues, with the proviso that the Banco Delta Asia sanctions eventually be reversed before anything could be actually agreed and implemented. I immediately informed Secretary Rice, who was intrigued by the possibility but suggested I get home and that we take up the matter after Christmas.

  I met with her immediately after New Year’s. She had already communicated the possibility to the president, who was prepared to explore it further. After considerable discussion, the decision was made to go ahead with Berlin, a traditional venue for East-West interaction. Condi and the president wanted to limit the publicity and told me to find an excuse for why I was in Berlin. I called Holbrooke, who, long out of government, was, among his other activities, chairman of the American Academy of Berlin. We worked out that I would speak at the Academy. He agreed to be in Berlin, saying so in a tone that convinced me that he would not want to be anywhere else in the world. Holbrooke loved this stuff. It would be like old times, I thought, except he would be my wingman.

  We arrived in Berlin on January 15, 2007, for two days of talks with the North Koreans, starting the first session early the next morning in our embassy. We sat across a table in a sparsely decorated U.S. Embassy conference room. Box lunches were brought in and we ate separately in rooms reserved for the two delegations. Following a set of talking points that had been approved by the president, Hadley, and Rice (and not too many other people), I told Kim that we could commit to a process leading to the unfreezing of North Korean assets, but that we had to identify a means to unfreeze the North Korean accounts at Banco Delta Asia, and that wasn’t turning out to be easy.

  In addition to offering heavy fuel oil to North Korea, I also proposed to open embassy-like “interest sections” in each other’s capital. The Chinese were very enthused about this idea, since it had been the basis for developing U.S.-China relations in the aftermath of the 1972 Shanghai Accords. Washington was less enthusiastic, as many believed this was too big a plum for the North Koreans. The issue became moot when Kim Gye Gwan told me his government was not interested in pursuing intere
st sections at all. I was not entirely surprised. What the North Koreans would get out of such an arrangement would be access in Washington, but they would not appreciate an active U.S. mission in Pyongyang, its officers fanning out to make contact with North Korean society.

  It was clear from the discussions that the North Koreans needed fuel oil (how much would need to be negotiated at the next round) and would be prepared to disable their nuclear facilities (with details to be negotiated at the next round of talks).

  A major problem remained. The North Koreans were not prepared to discuss our well-founded suspicions about their uranium enrichment program (UEP). We knew that they had made purchases consistent with a UEP, but in the absence of any proven facility, and dogged by the Iraq experience, in which allegations resulting in a war had proven to be inaccurate, we were reluctant to hold up negotiation to eliminate a known site—the Yongbyon plutonium site—for the sake of suspicions but little proof. Our formulation with the North Koreans continued to be that this was an “outstanding question” that needed to be answered to everyone’s satisfaction.

  My hope throughout the process, a hope shared by Rice and others, was that the more we could get on the ground in North Korea, the more we could assess the status of the uranium program, whether it was real or something the North Koreans had tried and failed at. Stanford University scholars Siegfried “Sig” Hecker and John Lewis, both of whom had known Secretary Rice for years, made an impassioned case to her for getting on with shutting down the plutonium-producing reactor as the clear and present danger, and keeping the door open to finding out more about the highly enriched uranium (HEU) program. I believed that was good advice, as long as we never dropped the HEU issue.

  Berlin marked an important step forward. By logistical happenstance, Rice came through Berlin while returning from a trip to the Middle East. Taking my entire five-member team with me, I briefed her in her sparsely appointed suite, whose décor was pretty much limited to a reproduction of a large oil portrait of a frightening Frederick the Great. Yuri Kim leaned over to me and said, “Can we cover him up? He’s scaring me.” Condi, oblivious to Frederick’s glare, was intrigued by the idea that we could get some disablement of facilities, put international inspectors on the ground, and share the fuel oil costs with the other partners. A key item on the price tag, however, was to reverse the Banco Delta Asia sanctions, something nobody had yet figured out how to do.

  The next morning I spoke before the American Academy in Berlin, at the Adlon, a proud, historic hotel that unfortunately had become known around the world as the place where Michael Jackson dangled his baby outside a fourth-story window for no apparent reason other than to pose before the crowd below. “No, guys,” I told my team. “We are not going to look at where Michael Jackson held the baby.”

  I met Holbrooke in the café and walked with him to the ballroom where I would be giving the talk. He was lamenting the lack of notice and what he feared would be too small a crowd. He had clearly forgotten the habits of the East Asian press. Swarms of them, including a couple of Japanese television crews, met us at the elevator and followed us to the ballroom. Trying to get a better shot of me, one hit the back of Holbrooke’s head with a camera. Holbrooke turned to the diminutive journalist and threw him to the floor before he had a chance to apologize. I was so upset by the incident, the wounding of Holbrooke’s pride more so than the bump on his head or his smackdown of the journalist, that I began the remarks with lengthy odes to Dick and his accomplishments. The bump on his bruised head seemed to go away.

  At lunch, Dick and John Kornblum took my team and me to a Chinese restaurant on the top floor. Dick asked me if I would mind if he addressed the team, and I said of course not, walking away to have a side conversation with John and let my old boss perform. I knew he missed it badly. For ten minutes, he told them to relish being part of a team working on negotiations of real consequence. At best, we might bring to bear our collective diplomatic skills to hammer out a deal with the North Koreans. At the very least, we would have learned lessons that can only come through experience. Either way, he told them, they would come out stronger, better diplomats. And one more thing, he concluded: enjoy the moment, because “you may never have another like it.” His tone was impassioned and deeply personal, one generation imparting wisdom to another. Not that any of this team needed a pep talk, but it moved them all deeply. As I spoke with John I could see Yuri, Victor Cha, Tom Gibbons, and Sung Kim sitting there spellbound, listening to every word.

  On February 8, 2007, we arrived in Beijing for what we hoped would be real progress after almost eighteen months of virtually none. The talks were tough as the North Koreans pressed for more fuel oil in compensation, and often the discussions ran deep into the night. We knew that to get anything agreed, we would have to reverse the sanctions at Banco Delta Asia, and that no one had yet figured out how to do that. But it was clear that we were going to get some disablement of facilities in return for a supply of heavy fuel oil for the North Koreans, whose cost would be shared among the participants, giving them all a stake in the game.

  In one of my telephone updates to Secretary Rice, I told her we had agreement to bring back international inspectors to Yongbyon, and agreement on some disablement steps, but that the North Koreans were holding out for too much fuel oil. I told her I was sure we would get them down to 40,000 tons rather than 50,000.

  “Chris, don’t be too hard-line on this. Keep in mind that others are sharing the burden, and really, ten thousand tons of fuel oil is not very much, is it?”

  “Okay,” I told her, enjoying the thought that I was the hard-liner here.

  On February 13, Wu Dawei announced a new joint statement, the first since September 2005. The key elements were that the North Koreans had agreed to shut down the plant, take disabling measures, and invite back international inspectors. The statement represented considerable elaboration on the September 2005 one, including the creation of working groups (or, as the Russian interpreter called them: “the groups that work, that is to say, the WGs”) with representatives from all six parties to discuss the creation of a Northeast Asian Peace and Security Mechanism. The “groups that work” began meeting soon after the February Joint Statement, but it was clear the North Koreans were simply not able to gear up on all these fronts and little progress was made.

  Meanwhile, back in the trenches of Washington, D.C., renewed fighting broke out over the commitment we had given the North Koreans to restore their Banco Delta Asia accounts. The problem was still that no bank was prepared to take tainted money, for fear that they would become a target. Efforts by Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson to support Secretary Rice earned him a nasty, tendentious story in the Financial Times, evidently leaked by subordinates who had no interest in implementing the commitment to reverse the measures.

  The impasse continued for months, as Paulson and colleagues from the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank worked out an arrangement with the Russian central bank to transfer the funds out of Banco Delta Asia, in effect laundering the $25 million through these two central banks. In June 2007, Russia announced that it had agreed to take the frozen accounts from Macao and transfer them to the Russian Far Eastern Bank, where North Korea held several accounts. On July 14, after receiving a fuel aid shipment from South Korea, North Korea announced its part of the bargain: it would shut down Yongbyon and upon confirmation of the funds would invite the international inspectors to verify.

  The announcement had been long hoped for, but by June I was beginning to think it would never happen. I was on three-day trip to Mongolia to visit our embassy and call on senior officials in that windswept, sparsely populated country. I went on a weekend trip north from Ulan Bator to get a sense of the vast Mongolian steppe and, as I always tried to do in visits to countries throughout the region, to meet Peace Corps volunteers. Being a Peace Corps volunteer, as I always told them, was the best foreign service assignment I ever had.

  We spent the night in a tourist hotel in
the middle of nowhere that offered as a side treat the opportunity to sleep in a Mongolian yurt, or ger, a traditional round hut with a wood-burning stove in the center. The weather was freezing at night and there was a hard driving rain, a rarity, I was told. Some seven Japanese journalists, who, having been taken by surprise in the “Berlin shock,” were under strict orders by their editors to shadow my every move since January, followed me to the remote hotel.

  One of the journalists informed me that the North Koreans had actually announced the shutdown of the plant and had called for international inspectors. Tom Gibbons, the East Asian and Pacific Affairs Bureau’s special assistant, managed to find a telephone that worked to try to confirm the news. I said very little to the press except that we had a long way to go in the process. Getting inspectors on-site was just the beginning.

  I retired to my room in the hotel, my Mongolian ger having been flooded out by the pounding rain. I pondered how long it had taken to get this far, and if I really had the stomach to stay with this much longer. It was not just the physical toll, but also the beating I was taking within the administration at the hands of its neoconservatives, who continued to regard any negotiation with North Korea as an exercise in appeasement, for which anyone directly engaged needed to be punished. Anytime there was progress, it was attributed to such measures as the freeze on the Banco Delta Asia accounts. I felt I was far too visible a spokesperson on the issue, and that any approbation I earned for our country in East Asia was more than offset by the berating I was getting.

  There was no question that the secretary and the president were supporting me, but there seemed to be little effort to rein in those inside the administration who were trying to scuttle the talks. Condi responded to my every word about such people by telling me to ignore them and understand that the president fully supported me, which I deeply appreciated. Having the support of the president should have been the gold standard, but Washington had become a sort of free-fire zone and it was not at all clear to me that the president could protect an expendable Foreign Service officer.