Carl (Tres) Siebentritt, US Diplomat
My nearly 30 years in the Foreign Service offered a few occasions to do something unique to help others in the context of my official duties.
Rescuing an Albanian Justice
In early 1996, serving as the political chief at Embassy Tirana, I had the opportunity to prevent the arrest and possible imprisonment of the then-chief justice of Albania’s Court of Cassation, the rough equivalent of the Supreme Court in Albania. Albania’s president at the time, the first “democratic” president after the fall of the Communist regime, was turning out to be far less democratic and more authoritarian than expected. In several rulings, Chief Justice Brozi had run afoul of the regime and the president looked for ways to oust him.
I was with Brozi in his office when it was suddenly surrounded by police and we turned on the TV to hear of his ouster, which was news to him! He was allowed to go home unmolested that time, but some days later, he called me at 5 am on a Sunday morning to say that his apartment building was surrounded by police. They were demanding to enter his apartment and seize his passport. With our ambassador’s permission, I went to his apartment with nothing but a big Motorola walkie-talkie in my hands, looking as official and American as I could. (We were the big dogs in post-Communist Albania and the US remains very popular there).
I walked through the police cordon with faked confidence and managed to get in Brozi’s apartment. I stayed with him and his fiancee until our ambassador could work his contacts and convince the government the US would not look kindly on Brozi’s arrest. The police eventually departed, pushing one of their vehicles out of the mud. A few weeks later, I accompanied Brozi and his fiancee to the airport so they could leave for the US, where we had arranged a temporary position for him at a US university (the New School in NY) to get him out of danger. With all sorts of creepy looking characters hanging about, I ensured they got to the gate and the Swissair plane departed as planned.
We have seen the Brozi’s several times since then and he always refers to me emotionally as his “ambulance.” He and his wife and daughter have had successful careers in the US and remain grateful to the US for our help. In all of this, I thought I was doing my job but probably underestimated the danger I was in at the time. In a recent interview with an Albanian talk show host, Brozi recounted this story and mentioned my role with tears in his eyes. Some of that history that I was part of remains very much alive in Albania, at a time when the first “democratic” president is still active in politics in very negative ways.
….Braving Dangerous Roads and Red Tape in the Albanian Hinterland….
A few years later, having left my assignment in Tirana, I found myself back at the embassy there to provide help after embassy staff had been drawn down to a very low level following the evacuation of the embassy in 1997 when Albania fell into chaos as pyramid schemes collapsed and people lost their savings. I was asked by the ambassador to find a way to get to a remote northern town to recover the bodies of an older American couple who had been tragically killed in a car accident while working for a local NGO.
I went to the airport, now occupied by NATO military forces preparing for the war in Kosovo, and had to find a way to get someone to get me to the remote location by helicopter, as the roads were too dangerous. With the help of some of my colleagues from three-letter agencies, we were able to summon three transport helicopters from a nearby Navy ship, which took me to where we believed local authorities were holding the bodies (no widespread availability of cellphones at that time). They flew me, a local consular assistant, and two Navy doctors to the little town of Pukë (yep, that’s it’s name) and basically pushed us out the back door and hovered in the air over a sports field while I negotiated with local authorities over the release of the bodies.
By speaking Albanian and saying I was married to one of their women, I got a pompous local judge to release the bodies to us without a lot of paperwork (he also wanted a joyride on the helos but didn’t get one). If he had delayed us longer, the helicopters would have had to go back to Tirana to refuel, which would have left us stranded. We got the bodies back to Tirana, where the NGO they worked for was able to take custody. The ambassador had asked me to do this because of my experience, language ability, and ability to work with the military. I felt I put all of my diplomatic skills to work at one time in that mission.
…Rocking the State Department Boat to Help Haitian Women….
Years later in Port-au-Prince, leading a well-funded State Department program to build police and judicial infrastructure to bring security and stability to post-earthquake Haiti, I found myself at odds with the Department over the best way to provide training to new female police recruits. We were actively trying to get more women into the Haitian National Police so they could help deal with sexual violence and related gender issues plaguing Haitian society, especially in the camps for people displaced by the 2010 earthquake. The Department wanted me to spend our funds on US contractors to train female police officers, but I saw a better opportunity in having them trained in Colombia, which had been building a modern and credible police apparatus (with our help) following the drug wars there. I felt the Colombians could do a better job of training female Haitian cops, given their recent experience combined with cultural and developmental similarities.
State didn’t like this, but I appealed to our ambassador, a USAID veteran and a woman, who supported me fully. I also got on the Department’s bad side by turning over State funds I couldn’t spend on time to USAID, our “rivals,” (Shane MacCarthy and Bob Merrill will understand!) for use on USAID projects that were underway but needed some additional funds. These were projects, like solar-powered street lighting in the populous northern town of Cap Haitien, that were directly related to my security-building mission in any case. But I knew I wasn’t likely to be promoted doing that sort of thing!
….And Helping Youth Face Their Role in a Dangerous World
More recently, in retirement, I have been acting as a character development instructor for our Germany-based squadron of the Civil Air Patrol, the US Air Force auxiliary organization that provides small aircraft and crews for search-and-rescue and emergency operations in the US. We focus on the development of students at the US Defense Department’s high school here in Germany who are interested in aviation careers. I provide mentoring and regular character development lessons, hoping to get these kids thinking about their role in an ever more dangerous world after they graduate.