Bureau of Legislative Affairs

For my second five-week bridge assignment, I worked in the Legislative Reference Unit of the State Department's Bureau of Legislative Affairs (also known as H, for "[Capitol] Hill").


What with the timing of office turnover and work to be done, there were some days when they didn't really have much for me to do. On the one hand, that meant that I was occasionally underutilized; on the other hand, it gave me the opportunity to seek out assignments in various parts of the office and not get stuck in a routine. So I was able to help with a lot of aspects of the work that H does as liaison between State and the Congress: sifting through legislation to identify reports that Congress wants to receive from the Department, sending taskings to the varoius regional and functional bureaus that could prepare those reports or answer questions from Senators and Representative, maintaining databases, and so on.

Most excitingly, I even got a chance to help to prepare for a briefing on the current situation and future possibilities in Iraq by Amb. Christopher Hill before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chaired by Sen. John Kerry. I also got to attend the briefing and help take notes. Ambassador Hill is one of the most inspirational people in the State Department for me; before becoming the Obama administration's Ambassador to Iraq, he served as the principal U.S. negotiator in the Six-Party Talks with North Korea, having previously been a very successful Ambassador to South Korea. So that was definitely one of the coolest experiences of my time in DC.

Assisting Victims of Crime

It turns out I wasn't finished with FSI training after all - when arranging my arrival in Copenhagen with my future boss, he suggested that I add one more course onto my training schedule, and my boss in my second bridge assignment graciously allowed me to take a few days off for it.

The three-day course focused on what services the U.S. Embassy can provide to Americans who become the victim of a serious crime while abroad. A major part of it was on how to interview and talk to someone who might be a victim of domestic abuse, which unfortunately is something many consular officers will have to do on a regular basis. Although I may thankfully never have to be part of such cases, there's always the possibility that I will, and the course definitely made me feel a little bit more confident that I'd be able to muddle through. It would be a lot of responsibility, of course, but fortunately the embassy is not the principal resource for victims, as of course consular officers are not trained as social workers.

Some of the stories from the Victims Assistance course were pretty sobering, but I'm still excited about moving overseas again!