US embassy cable - 05BANGKOK3588

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 BANGKOK 003588 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR EAP, EAP/EX, EAP/BCLTV 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: APER 
SUBJECT: NOMINATION OF MICHAEL D. SWEENEY FOR THE POWELL 
FELLOWS PROGRAM 
 
REF: A. STATE 92063 
 
     B. STATE 79836 
 
NOMINATION STATEMENT 
 
1. (U)  I nominate Michael D. Sweeney for consideration as 
one of the EAP Bureau's nominees for the Powell Fellows 
Program.  Michael is a tenured FS-03 Foreign Service 
generalist who has distinguished himself while working in the 
Consular and Political sections in Embassy Bangkok.  He is 
the type of officer whose strong qualities should be nurtured 
early in his career, and the Powell Fellows Program is an 
excellent opportunity to provide him with exposure and 
development that will redound to the Department's benefit. 
 
Mike's contributions to the Mission in his current position 
as the Embassy's human rights officer have been exceptional. 
He is known for his initiative, insightful written work, 
astute cultivation of government and NGO contacts, and 
general ability to stay far ahead of the curve on reporting 
or any of the many projects for which he is responsible. 
Mike is widely respected by American and Thai staff for his 
maturity and motivation, and for his openness to people and 
ideas. 
 
Examples that highlight Mike's performance and abilities come 
easily to mind.  Mike's Thailand 2004 Chapter for the Human 
Rights Report (HRR) was praised as one of the best in the 
region.  His early drafts were balanced, detailed and clearly 
written.  He negotiated careful edits with the Department. 
Mike also authored several of the most relevant cables sent 
from Bangkok, including an analytic piece, "Thaksin's Victory 
-- Credit the Man, Innovative Policies, and the Thai Rak Thai 
Political Machine."  That cable in particular illustrated 
Mike's great versatility.  When the tsunami disaster strained 
the Political section's ability to properly cover the 
national elections, Mike easily stepped up to a central role 
in reporting on domestic politics, adroitly drawing on 
knowledge gleaned from being our lead reporter on Thai civil 
society.  Mike's cable on the views of the new foreign 
minister toward Thai-Burma relations, "New Face, Same 
Policy," also influenced Washington.  In updates to senior 
colleagues, briefings to visitors on his areas of 
responsibility, and exchanges with Thai officials and 
politicians, Mike's verbal skills mirrored his writing; he 
was always organized, informed, articulate and to the point. 
Remarkably, Mike could make such presentations in either Thai 
or English -- he is by far the best Thai language speaker in 
the Political section and is rivaled by only a handful of 
other Americans in the entire Mission. 
 
Mike's leadership potential is especially impressive.  He is 
relatively new to the Foreign Service, but entered after over 
10 years of work experience, most of it overseas, in 
community development, human rights and refugee work.  He 
brings good judgment and a seasoned background to his efforts 
to improve the way goals are achieved in the Mission.  He has 
organizational and managerial skills equal to much more 
senior officers, and time and again in Bangkok has made 
superior contributions to the work of the Consular and 
Political sections.  He implemented a Department grant 
supporting Thai citizenship for hill tribes.  Working closely 
with USAID, he was the prime shaper of a USD 1 million 
program to improve freedom of the press in Thailand. 
 
PERSONAL STATEMENT OF NOMINEE MICHAEL SWEENEY 
 
2. (U)  I would like to participate in the Powell Fellows 
Program because I want to broaden my leadership skills, 
including the ability to find creative solutions to problems, 
enhance openness in our profession to innovation, and 
ultimately to become a more effective diplomat.  Since 
joining the State Department in 2001, I have learned that 
leadership requires the ability to see problems and solutions 
to those problems in a multidimensional way, beyond the 
traditional top-down bureaucracy that holds our many 
administrative and decision-making systems together.  Being 
part of large regional missions like Manila and Bangkok, 
which constitute a vast array of agencies, I have experienced 
the need to contrast and compare different work cultures from 
various offices and agencies at post.  I have had to learn to 
make meaningful contacts with key officers from other 
agencies that helped me do my job better.  Lastly, I learned 
the importance of promoting the State Department's key 
programs and policy initiatives within the context of the 
interagency Mission team.  All of these efforts required 
leadership. 
 
One recent of example where my own leadership skills were 
called to task was during discussions about Economic Support 
Funds (ESF) for Burma.  I was tasked with organizing 
logistics for a joint State Department - USAID team visiting 
the Thai-Burma border and Bangkok.  The goal of the trip was 
to find out the best way to spend funds earmarked by Congress 
to support pro-democracy groups working for democratic change 
inside Burma.  Yet even as closely as State and AID work 
together, I found a real culture gap:  in work vocabulary, 
budget cycles, and even the mundane details of protocol at 
meetings.  At the end of the trip, after a week of traveling 
and 12-hour days of site visits and office calls, team 
members were asking the question, "What now?"  For a while, 
it appeared that no one wanted to make the suggestion we were 
all dreading:  another meeting.  I found myself in a 
situation where leaders can often find themselves thinking, 
"Who is going to ask the question, speak up and make a 
suggestion and get the ball rolling?"  Well, I did.  Almost 
overnight, rather than letting the joint team just get on a 
plane the next day and go back to DC, I organized a late 
afternoon meeting of all the relevant offices and section 
chiefs (including the Ambassador and AID Mission Chief) to 
get a summary of the findings of the team and to learn more 
about the many offices at post that work on Burma.  If I had 
not looked beyond my control officer role and seen the larger 
interagency picture, that meeting and the possibilities for 
further interagency and interoffice exchange on one of the 
most important issues to this Mission and to the U.S., would 
not have taken place. 
 
I think broadening this experience even further through a 
program of contacts with leaders in politics, academia, 
research centers and other sectors would be an excellent 
chance to build on the leadership skills I have achieved thus 
far. 
 
As I come near the end of my second tour as a Foreign Service 
Officer, I look forward to the challenges facing me as 
Consular manager in Vientiane, Laos.  My goal following that 
is to seek increasing management responsibilities at a larger 
Consular post, such as Guangzhou or another larger post in 
another geographic region.  I would also like to pursue work 
in either the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor 
(DRL), or Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), where I 
can use my background and personal interest in human rights, 
civil society and refugees to lead others in our shared task 
of implementing the management of human and other resources 
to accomplish our foreign policy objectives. 
BOYCE