campaigns : Campaign Archive

April 28, 2008

A summary of daily news relevant to the federal workforce produced by the Partnership for Public Service.

Navy Limits Applications for Its Nominations to Space Program
Federal Diary: For Volunteer, Early Exit Adds To Disease's Pain
Anthropologists Lend Military Insight Into Customs, Values of Foreign Cultures

Navy Limits Applications for Its Nominations to Space Program

By John Schwartz

For what may be the first time since the inception of the American space program, the Navy is restricting nominations to the astronaut corps. The move comes nearly 50 years after Alan B. Shepard, a naval aviator, became the first American in space.

The cutback, Navy officials say, comes as the service tries to retain the expertise it needs to fulfill its wartime obligations while experiencing an overall decline in its numbers. A message from Vice Admiral J. C. Harvey Jr. last month stated that applications for Navy nominations to the space program from 10 specialties would not be accepted "due to critical inventory shortfalls and/or priority global war on terrorism skill set requirements."

Those groups include the special warfare forces known as Seals, certain engineering groups and experts in explosive ordnance disposal, as well as permanent military professors and public affairs officers.

George W. S. Abbey, a former NASA official who wielded control over the astronaut office during much of his long tenure at the agency, which lasted from 1964 to 2002, said "the Navy is taking a position that adversely affects the country's ability to have a vital and ongoing space program."

Lt. Cmdr. William Marks, a Navy spokesman, said he could find no previous restriction on naval applications to the astronaut corps, but insisted that the move in no way diminished the service's commitment to NASA.

"Officially, we are a very enthusiastic supporter of the NASA program," Commander Marks said. "We always have been and still are."

But, he said, the Navy has been trying to hold on to its service communities in wartime, and it would be hypocritical to tell those communities that they are desperately needed, "but we can still let you go."

"We don't want to lose credibility with our own people," he said.

One applicant who was affected by the decision, Lt. Cmdr. Michael Runkle, executive officer of the Navy Experimental Diving Unit in Panama City Beach, Fla., said he was "a little bitter" about the new rules. Commander Runkle said he joined the Navy in part because he had hoped it would lead to a career in space, even though he knew the chances of acceptance were slim.

"It's kind of like winning the lottery," he said. "You live your life as you do, but you buy a ticket every once in a while."

He applied unsuccessfully twice before, and "I'm under no great illusion that I would have been chosen this time," though he said his application was stronger. With his expertise in ordnance disposal, however, he cannot apply again under the new rules.

"I'm told I'm not allowed to buy a lottery ticket," he said, "just on the off chance that I win."

In the past 15 years, the Navy has nominated as many as 211 and as few as 105 candidates for consideration by NASA, though groups from earlier years numbered as low as 34.

The Navy Times first reported the news of the restrictions. Duane Ross, the manager for astronaut candidate selection and training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said the space agency heard about the squeeze earlier this year when word came down through their usual "points of contact " that only five people would be nominated by the Navy.

"The five was kind of a shocker to us," he said. The letter from Admiral Harvey increased the number of nominees to 50. Still, Mr. Ross said, the restrictions were "a little bit disturbing for us."

The Navy "has always been a good provider of folks" for NASA, he said, and the service has been represented in every astronaut class -- they are chosen every couple of years -- that the agency has selected.

"Just about every mission, you can pick out some top-notch Navy folks," Mr. Ross said, from Shepard's historic flight to the most recent mission of the space shuttle, commanded by Dominic L. Gorie, a retired captain.

Although NASA is a civilian agency, service members have long been highly prized as astronaut candidates because of the skills they bring to the program, including discipline and the ability to work in teams and under difficult conditions.

William M. Shepherd, a retired astronaut and a retired captain in the Navy who served as the first commander aboard the International Space Station, said Navy experience provided long-term expedition training, with the kind of independent, flexible style of operation that prepared astronauts for long-duration missions aboard the station and in future planned voyages to the Moon and Mars.

"The era that we're in now in space activities is becoming more like voyaging at sea than flying in the air," Captain Shepherd said.

While he expressed great admiration for the Navy, he said he was chagrined by the new restrictions. "In the past, the Navy has taken a longer view," he said.

Commander Marks noted that other large Navy communities, including aviators, were not prohibited from applying. But Mr. Ross of NASA said the agency was not in the market for new pilots at the moment, since the space shuttle program would be wound down by 2010 and the next-generation spacecraft was not likely to be ready before 2015.

In the interim, astronauts will reach the station as passengers aboard Russian spacecraft, he said. Pilots have skills that would be valuable to the program, he said, but "they're not going to be flying the spaceships" for many years to come.

Representatives of the Air Force, the Army and the Marine Corps said their services were not restricting astronaut applications.

To Captain Shepherd, the former astronaut and a former Seal, the Navy decision could well be a "bellwether" of a broader shift in society and its attitude about space travel -- and, in fact, the fundamental human need to explore the universe around us.

"This is the first tick of the needle," he said. "Our commitment to doing this might be changing. This is important beyond the Navy, beyond NASA."

For Volunteer, Early Exit Adds To Disease's Pain

The Washington Post

By Stephen Barr

As a Peace Corps volunteer, Jeremiah S. Johnson taught English to sixth- through 11th-graders in Ukraine. About 100 students took his classes, and his work prompted him to think about trying to open an English resource center in the small city of Rozdilna, where he was teaching.

But his work ended abruptly. A test for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, came back positive, and the Peace Corps brought him back to Washington, where he was discharged by the agency.

"They told me it was Peace Corps policy for HIV-positive people to be medically separated," Johnson said in an interview. "I was told I could not work anywhere else for the Peace Corps."

The shock of the diagnosis was compounded by the stress involved in telling family and friends why he was back in the United States almost a year earlier than scheduled. "It put a dark and depressing spin on my coming home, which I didn't want," he said.

Johnson, who describes himself as healthy, said he thinks the Peace Corps' decision to let him go is contrary to federal anti-discrimination laws. He talked with a lawyer, who referred him to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Last week, the ACLU wrote to Ronald A. Tschetter, director of the Peace Corps, about Johnson's termination. Rebecca C. Shore, an ACLU staff lawyer, said Johnson's dismissal "appears based upon a Peace Corps policy to terminate volunteers who are HIV-positive without an individualized assessment as to whether they are able to serve with reasonable accommodation." Such a policy violates the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, she wrote.

Amanda H. Beck, the Peace Corps press director, said Tschetter plans to respond to the ACLU, which posted the letter on its Web site and sent out a news release about Johnson's case.

"The Peace Corps does not have a policy of automatically excluding people with HIV," Beck said. "The Peace Corps conducts individualized medical examinations of volunteers and applicants who are HIV-positive."

She said she cannot comment on Johnson's case because of privacy rules, noting that Johnson "has not given us permission to speak about his individual situation."

The ACLU thinks the Peace Corps should have negotiated with Johnson when he returned from Ukraine and offered him a chance to serve elsewhere. "Regardless of what they say their general policy is, that is not what happened here," Shore said.

In its letter, the ACLU pointed out that the State Department in February changed rules that disqualified HIV-positive Americans from becoming diplomats. The department said it revised medical clearance guidelines based on advances in HIV care and treatment and will take a case-by-case approach in deciding on applicants for Foreign Service assignments.

State's policy change came just weeks before a trial was scheduled to start in a lawsuit brought in 2003 by Lorenzo Taylor, who had been rejected for employment when he told the department about his HIV status. He was represented by Lambda Legal, a New York group that is an advocate for people with HIV.

Johnson discovered he had HIV during a trip in January to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, where he was attending a Russian language program with other Peace Corps volunteers. While in Kiev, he was given a scheduled medical exam, "and I opted to have an HIV test done. Unfortunately, it came back positive," Johnson said.

A few days later, the Peace Corps country director for Ukraine told Johnson to return to Washington because Ukrainian law bars people with HIV from working in the country, Johnson said.

Johnson said he was never shown a copy of the law; the Peace Corps declined to comment on the issue. State Department and travel-related Web sites show that foreigners working in Ukraine on visas lasting more than three months are required to undergo a test for HIV. A telephone call to the Ukrainian Embassy was not returned.

Back in Washington in February, Johnson had another medical exam and was given a "medical separation" from the Peace Corps.

On the notice, the Peace Corps said that it had determined "the resolution of your condition(s) will take longer than the maximum-allowable 45 days" and that "you would be medically unable to perform your volunteer assignment."

The reason for the medical separation written on the form is: "HIV -- lab work positive."

Johnson, 25, is living in Colorado, waiting tables at a restaurant and thinking of returning to college for a graduate degree.

He enjoyed his overseas work and does not see HIV as a barrier to continuing in public service. "The only thing I want is the Peace Corps to respond to this letter, change their policy to comply with federal anti-discrimination laws, or to clarify their policies so if they are in line with the law they stick with it.

"That's why I am going through with all this."

Anthropologists Lend Military Insight Into Customs, Values of Foreign Cultures

Government Executive

By Greg Grant

Small teams of social scientists and anthropologists working with American units to map the "human terrain" in Iraq and Afghanistan and use "soft power" to engage local populations have saved lives and are an important tool in nation building, according to military officials.

In today's irregular wars, "battlefields are often civilian neighborhoods" where American troops face an "indistinguishable mix" of enemy fighters and innocent civilians, said Andre van Tilborg, deputy undersecretary of Defense for science and technology, at a hearing on Thursday before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities. Social scientists can help provide the cultural knowledge that could mean the difference between gun battles and peaceful outcomes in troops' daily interaction with foreign cultures, van Tilborg said.

He said the Pentagon intends to spend roughly $150 million this year on social science research to better understand tribal cultures and social networks. The military wants to use part of that money to increase dramatically the number of Human Terrain Teams operating with military units. The proposal is highly controversial in the academic community, which believes it's an ethical violation for social scientists to work hand-in-hand with troops in war zones.

The program is small, with only eight HTTs -- six in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. The 5- to 8-person teams work with country-specific experts located at a Reach-back Research Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

The largely civilian scientific teams, using laptop computers and human terrain mapping software, conducted village assessments that provide commanders with a detailed data repository on the social groups within tribal communities: their interests, beliefs, motivating factors and leaders. "We learned that the population is the center of gravity, the enemy is hiding among the people and we must understand the culture to win," said Army Col. Martin Schweitzer, who recently returned from a 15-month combat tour in Afghanistan and whose brigade of paratroopers was the first to use an HTT.

He said the teams functioned not just as cultural advisers, but identified the key players within tribal communities whose power structure and patronage networks often confound Western minds. The scientific team questioned the aggressive and firepower-heavy tactics the American troops had used to combat Taliban insurgents in a particular Afghan province, Schweitzer said. That approach was based on a misreading of the local tribes, he pointed out.

The HTT learned that the true power brokers in the area were not the village elders, who were mostly Taliban supporters, but rather the local mullahs, who were Islamic clerics. After redirecting their outreach efforts to the mullahs, Schweitzer said his troops saw a dramatic decrease in Taliban attacks. "For five years, we got nothing from the community," he said. "After meeting the mullahs, we had no more bullets for 28 days, captured 80 Afghan-born Taliban and 32 foreign fighters." The "shadow Taliban" government in the area was eliminated, he said.

Addressing the concerns of the academic community about social scientists working in counterinsurgency operations, Schweitzer said: "The team is not an intelligence tool used to target individuals," and are not qualified or trained to aid in identifying or selecting enemy fighters to be either killed or captured. He said that role is performed by intelligence officers.

The Afghan population is exhausted by the constant fighting and deaths of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, Schweitzer said, so any combat operation, even those that target the Taliban, can be seen as a "step back." The scientific team's impact was "exponentially powerful" he said, leading to a 60 percent to 70 percent reduction in combat operations in his area. The scientific teams typically work with Provincial Reconstruction Teams, small units made up of civil affairs troops and economic development experts from the Agency for International Development and the State Department, that operate in local communities.

Schweitzer said a PRT commander told him that before the HTT arrived, team members were just "ricocheting around," talking to random people, until they identified the power brokers in each village.

While some military personnel might serve with the HTT's, usually reserve officers, the teams are built around social scientists. Much more important than knowledge or expertise in the local Afghan culture, he said, was their scientific training and experience as anthropologists. That allows them to conduct the human dimension analysis and decipher a local culture's norms and values, Schweitzer said. At least one HTT should accompany each battalion-sized unit, roughly 800 troops, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

In a speech last week to the Association of American Universities, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Pentagon must further its understanding of foreign countries and cultures with the help of the social science research community.