The Quintessential Public Servant — and Consummate Diplomat
Richard Boucher, the longest-serving State Department spokesman, had no personal or political agenda.
As public servants face vicious attacks and lose their livelihoods, one of their former colleagues reminds us that the dehumanizing caricatures the current administration has perpetuated bear no resemblance to reality. That reminder is inspired by the life and career of Richard Boucher, who died on June 27 at age 73.
Boucher was a U.S. Foreign Service officer for 32 years, rising to the highest rank of career ambassador and serving twice as assistant secretary of state. But he is best known as State Department spokesman under six secretaries of state: James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger, Warren Christopher, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Between his two stints in that post, he was ambassador to Cyprus and consul general in Hong Kong.
As a journalist covering the department, I worked with several spokespeople. Boucher was by far the best — regardless of whether he served a Democratic or Republican administration. He represented both with equal dedication, professionalism and patriotism. His exceptional grasp of complex foreign-policy matters, coupled with a rare ability to navigate not only the department’s global bureaucracy, but that of the entire U.S. government, made him a superb diplomat.
No one knows everything about everything — though it often seemed he did — but he knew exactly where to find the answer to any question, usually within minutes.
The secretary’s partner
The quintessential public servant, whose career began in the Peace Corps, Boucher had no personal or political agenda. He excelled at serving both the secretary of state and the president — whoever they were.
That is no easy task, especially during fraught moments, such as Powell’s clashes with Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war. When absolutely necessary, Boucher prioritized protecting the secretary, his direct boss, over the president. He was always calm, patient and — as time would inevitably prove — wise.
What made him extraordinary was his empathy. As I’ve written before, empathy is essential in diplomacy, but I experienced Boucher’s mostly as a journalist. He understood our job better than any other spokesperson — ironically, he was an economic officer — and had a deep appreciation for the challenges, pressures and deadlines State Department reporters faced. While many of his counterparts in Washington routinely ignored media phone calls, he always returned the calls of those of us accredited to the department the same day, even if it was 9 p.m.
Because he knew the policies of the administration in office inside and out, he offered meaningful comments even before receiving specific guidance on a breaking-news item.
The best of insiders
Weeks before the 2003 Iraq invasion, I obtained a secret directive by President George W. Bush authorizing a nuclear response to biological and chemical attacks, which the White House feared the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, might unleash on U.S. forces. Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, declined to comment even off the record, as did every other official I asked.
Boucher, however, understood that my front-page deadline was fast approaching and came to the rescue, although that was the first time he saw the directive and hadn’t been briefed on Bush’s motivation in changing a decades-old U.S. policy.
Previous presidents had upheld a strategy of “deliberate ambiguity.” Bush maintained that ambiguity in his directive’s public version, which said that the United States reserved the right to respond to a WMD attack “with overwhelming force, including through resort to all of our options.” But in the text classified as “top secret,” that final clause was changed to “including potentially nuclear weapons.”
Carefully choosing his words to avoid getting himself into trouble — and speaking on background as a “senior administration official” — Boucher told me that the secret directive gave military and other officials, who were its intended audience, “a little more of an instruction to prepare all sorts of options for the president,” if need be.
I would have published the story even without that comment, because Rice had tacitly acknowledged the document’s authenticity, but the quote undoubtedly lent the piece more credibility. The White House officially confirmed its veracity the next day, and no one got into trouble.
Building trust
I met Boucher in September 2000, when I was 26. It was during the opening session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, where I did the first in a series of interviews with Albright for a profile in The Financial Times. But I didn’t get to know him until my first trip on the secretary’s plane a couple of weeks later. I vividly remember a dinner we had in Paris with two other reporters — it was where I decided I could trust him.
We had very different jobs and stood on opposite sides of the barricade, but that was no reason we couldn’t work well together. He was already a seasoned pro — and my father’s age — while I was a novice, so naturally I learned a lot from him. But it was more than that: even though I never worked for him, he became an important mentor.
In every administration, Boucher was scrupulously fair in granting access to the secretary and avoiding favoritism. His philosophy was that, on foreign travel, we all paid the same substantial costs for the official flights, as well as for the hotels, filing facilities and meals, and no one should receive more information than their colleagues.
He briefed us regularly on the secretary’s activities, mindful of both our deadlines and the need to justify the expense to our editors back in Washington. If the secretary gave an interview to a certain news outlet during a trip, Boucher made sure that others got their turn on the next one. He may have been overruled at times, but he always tried.
The face of U.S. foreign policy
From the State Department podium, Boucher was a virtuoso explainer of U.S. foreign policy — even when a decision he defended ran counter to his own recommendation during internal deliberations. Thoughtful and soft-spoken, he was a reporter’s dream, speaking in full, clear sentences that required no translation from bureaucratic jargon to plain English. When he tried to spin us — as every government spokesperson does sometimes — he did it as elegantly as he did everything else.
Boucher also mastered the art of sending messages to foreign governments from the podium — although he could have done that using more traditional forms of private diplomatic communication, he understood that certain signals or warnings were better delivered publicly.
My book “America’s Other Army” would not have been possible without Boucher. When I started my years-long research in 2003, I gave him a list of three dozen embassies and consulates I wanted to visit, and he wrote a cable to all of them encouraging Foreign Service members to talk to me. His successors later followed suit, enabling me to complete my research at 80 diplomatic missions over nine years.
In a moment of reflection, Boucher once told me that one of his regrets about U.S. foreign policy was the response to the 9/11 attacks in 2001. The State Department, he said, “could have offered a plan with a coherent structure” as a diplomatic alternative to the over-reliance on military force, which dominated the Bush administration’s policy toolbox. Stunned by the devastating terrorist attacks, “we went into a defensive and survival mode,” and that “didn’t bring out” the department’s strengths, he added.
Tributes to one of a kind
Everyone who worked with Boucher — subordinates, peers, more senior officials and journalists — benefited from his decency, generosity and insight. After retiring from the U.S. government, he became deputy secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, and later taught at several universities.
William J. Burns, another former Foreign Service officer who served as assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs during most of Boucher’s final five years as spokesman, told me that Boucher “embodied the best of career public service.”
“An extraordinary diplomat and spokesman, Richard understood as well as anyone I’ve ever known the importance of explaining American foreign policy to a wider public with professionalism and integrity,” said Burns, who went on to become deputy secretary of state and CIA director. “In an era in which faith in public institutions has been in increasingly short supply, he was a calm, eloquent and immensely reassuring voice.”
Philip Reeker, Boucher’s longtime deputy in the Bureau of Public Affairs, said his “passing was a real blow.” Reeker recalled how they “would joke about the queasiness that accompanied going out for the daily press briefing” before cameras and reporters. “I agreed with him that the briefing was like that dream where you have to show up for the exam and you haven’t been to class once,” Reeker said. “With his characteristic wry humor,” Reeker added, Boucher would quip, “And you are not wearing any pants!”
Andrea Mitchell, NBC’s chief foreign affairs correspondent, remembered Boucher as “courteous and kind.” She said he “distinguished himself in every position he held.”
Barbara Slavin, a former diplomatic reporter for USA Today, called Boucher “a perfect partner for Colin Powell” during Bush’s first term. “Unlike so many of the press secretaries appointed for their alleged media skills or political loyalty, Richard was a career diplomat steeped in all the issues that he was called upon to address,” Slavin noted. “He was nonpartisan and, as far as I know, never lied to me, but offered what he could in the way of guidance — and demurred on the rest.”
Despite perceptions of heartless and entitled bureaucrats in Washington, the U.S. government — and the American people — owe a huge debt of gratitude to people like Boucher. Yes, he was one of a kind, but his values, qualities and skills are shared by thousands of public servants. No one should doubt that the current sweeping purges will cost the United States dearly — and much sooner than we think.
What’s your take?
Have you worked with Boucher or other inspiring public servants?
Leave a comment below.
Nicholas Kralev is the founder and executive director of the Washington International Diplomatic Academy, and a former Financial Times and Washington Times correspondent. His books include “Diplomatic Tradecraft,” “America’s Other Army” and “Diplomats in the Trenches.”
I was saddened to hear of the passing of Richard Boucher. I was the press attaché at the US Consulate General in Hong Kong during his final year there as Consul General. I’ll admit that the prospect of being press officer for the master press officer was a bit intimidating. But he himself never was.
He was warm and supportive, and despite his extensive experience as Department spokesman, he never tried to micromanage our consulate press office. He sought my opinion on press matters and respected my judgment, for which I was profoundly grateful. And I learned a lot from him when he shared his experience.
I remember once I had to call him late at night with a press question. I apologized the next day, but he just laughed and proceeded to regale me with stories about all the times he had been awakened as press spokesman.
A fine professional, and a fine human being.
Nice job, Nick, in capturing Richard's influence and humanity. As a young-ish bureau press officer, I was always a little scared to brief him, as I knew his knowledge of most issues was much deeper than my own. But when I stepped down as Acting Spokesperson in 2016, he sent me the kindest email, thanking me for doing the job during a particularly tough time. That email meant more to me than gold. He'll be missed.