As I was finishing my tour as the deputy director of the State Department’s “green” environmental office – responsible for living things like forests, animals, and humans – the office across the hall that was responsible for supporting foreign service science officers in the field asked if I would accept the science job in Poland. I agreed and after a year of Polish language training, Cheryl and I left for Warsaw in the mid-1990s.
My job was to manage a joint science cooperation fund, the Marie Skladowska Curie Fund, between the US and Poland. It was to last three years, and each year the two countries would each contribute $2 million. When I arrived, there was already $4 million in the bank. The accounts were maintained by the office executive assistant, a very smart young woman. She used an accounting program developed by my predecessor’s son in a program called Data-Ease. There were no instructions for it, since it was one-of-a-kind, but the admin assistant knew it well, and it worked correctly.
The Berlin Wall had only recently come down, and Poland was progressing rapidly out of Communism. My smart assistant soon found a higher paying job in the private sector and left me with the sui generis accounting program. My predecessor had spent almost no money except for a celebratory dinner at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. He had paid his son for developing the program and he had bought a Volvo to distribute science periodicals, which he pretty much used as a second personal car.
I only had about a week to learn about the accounting program before my assistant left. After some time using the old program, I decided that I should switch to new more widely used accounting software with documentation and support for its users. As I recall, QuickBooks was still embargoed for import into Poland because the regulations had not been updated, but an older version of Quicken was allowed. So, I ordered and started using Quicken. I hired a new assistant and trained her on how to use Quicken.
At the same time the US Congress began working on its appropriations for next year. Democratic President Bill Clinton and Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich were fighting over the budget, and the Republicans cut the next $2 million for Polish science out of it. The Poles were upset and offended. They were a poor country coming out of Communism and they were willing to put up their $2 million, but only if the US matched it, as promised. In spite of the fact that the US had signed a formal memorandum of understanding jointly with Poland, the US refused to pay. At the end of the fiscal year, the main State Department budget had some funds left and could pay one million dollars on one of several unfunded science cooperation agreements. It decided that Chinese scientists needed the money the most, and gave it to the Chinese.
My predecessor had funded almost no cooperation proposals before I arrived. Scientists had submitted proposals naming the US and Polish participants and what the goals of their research were. In general the small awards funded a new computer for the Polish scientist, some other equipment purchases, and some travel between the US and Poland. All of the proposals were written in Polish and were intended to provide some support to the Poles, whose research had been almost entirely funded by the government, which now cut off most of that funding as it transitioned out of Communism. Many Polish scientists were having a hard time financially. We had a blue ribbon panel to oversee the cooperation, and an award winning chemist agreed (reluctantly) to lead a group to oversee the selection of the proposals. We allocated the remaining money which would be spent over a year or two, but the US still refused to supply its promised contribution. The fund paid for an administrative office in the Science Ministry to handle administrative details, which had to be closed down as the money ran out.
I was terribly disappointed that the US did not live up to the promises it had made, particularly because it meant real economic hardship for some of the scientists.
Meanwhile, I had more success working on environmental issues. The US had agreed to convert $10 million of Poland’s debt to the US into a grant to an environmental NGO, Ekofundusz. The Ekofundusz was run by a former (and future) economic minister, Maciej Nowicki, who had been opposed to the Communists, but who had been replaced by a Communist minister as politics evolved in Poland. This time the US government came through, especially because of the work of my backstop at the State Department in Washington, who navigated the bureaucracy to get approval there.
The Eko Fund led by Nowicki was very successful in identifying and carrying out environmental projects throughout Poland. Nowicki attracted some of the best environmental talent to work with him at the fund. They had not spent the $10 million before I had to leave Poland for my next assignment in Italy.
In addition to working with the Ekofundusz, I was also the designated embassy officer to deal with the Environment Ministry and its current (Communist-leaning) minister. He and Nowicki were competitors to lead Poland’s environmental activities, so he somewhat resented my support for Nowicki, but treated me professionally. The embassy policy was to show no preference for former Communists and anti-Communists in the government. I am sure the Environment Minister was aware of my anti-Communist feelings, but we conducted business cordially. I became friends with the head geologist of Poland, who worked under the Environment Minister. He was soon fired. I wondered if it was because he was too friendly with me. In any case, the Eko Fund took him in; so, he continued to have a job, which was more than I had done for many of the laid off scientists in the science cooperation program.
On the downside,I worked with USAID on another environmental project. One of USAID’s projects was to reduce CO2 emissions from power plants. It was fitting the device to a relatively small power plant in Skawina, near Krakow, where the acid rain from the emissions were eroding the classic statues and buildings. An American contractor had developed a system using limestone to reduce the emissions. However, a Polish expert who worked with the current, Communist-sympathetic environment minister told me that the American system was not working. When I looked into it, I discovered that he was right; it was not removing the sulfur dioxide. Looking deeper into it, it turned out that Polish limestone was not suitable for the process. It had a slightly different chemical makeup than the American limestone that had been used to test the process. The Polish environment expert took me to a much larger power plant that was using a Dutch process, licensed from GE, to remove the sulfur dioxide, which was working properly. It turned out that Czech had limestone that worked in the USAID process, but importing large quantities of limestone made the process much less feasible. When I left Poland they were still trying to tweak the system to get it to work with Polish limestone.
In addition, I was also the embassy officer responsible for some science policy issues. In particular I worked with Foreign Ministry Ambassador Tadeusz Strulak, who was responsible for nuclear non-proliferation issues. He was a rapporteur for a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference. He was trying to bring Poland into the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), but President Clinton had blackballed Poland’s request to join. He said he had asked around Washington to find someone to talk to about the MTCR, and several people had told him that I was the leading expert on the issue; however, because of the organization of responsibilities within the embassy, the political section had responsibility for non-proliferation issues. So, they received all the telegrams from Washington on dealing with those issues.
I was out of the loop because I did not get all of the telegrams, but I knew the problem because I had been deeply involved in creating the MTCR. The MTCR was not a treaty; it was a suppliers’ group, members agreed on what items could not be transferred to problem countries such as North Korea or Iran. We started small with friendly countries since it was a new idea, and of course it would be opposed by the countries it was directed against. We approached the G-7 countries: Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Japan. We agreed that decisions would be made by consensus. I realized that as time passed, more countries had joined the MTCR, and it was becoming more difficult to make decisions by consensus, hence Clinton’s reluctance to allow Poland to join. In my new position in Warsaw, I saw no problem with allowing Poland to join, because they were unlikely to create problems within the organization. Ambassador Strulak told me that due to Poland’s experience with domination by the Soviet Union, which remained nearby, Poland was anxious to join every arms control agreement it could. In addition, Washington may have been worried about what effect Poland’s joining might have on the attitudes of the countries that the MTCR was directed against.
The failure to fund the promised science cooperation was at least in part due to New Gingrich’s pressure on Clinton to cut the federal budget. This pressure cascaded down, and two years into my three year assignment the ambassador said that one of the embassy jobs he was eliminating was mine; however, he said I could finish my three year tour, but I would not be replaced. Shortly after this I received a call from Washington saying that the science officer in Rome was leaving unexpectedly. Would I be interested in replacing him? Rome is one of the most desired assignments in the Foreign Service; so, I agreed to go. We left Warsaw for Rome very shortly. I stayed a few days to attend the first formal meeting of the Eko Fund after it had been awarded its $10 million by the US.