Talk:Michael Springmann

Untitled

This article should list when he made his comments.

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The article says "Following Springmann's complaints, he was fired by the State Department." Not exactly. One is rarely "fired" from the Foreign Service as Felix Bloch was (and Bloch lost his right to an eventual FSRDS pension since he wasn't of pensionable age and, apparently, agreed to take back his contributions). What happened to Springmann is that he joined the FS from the Civil Service and never received tenure. He wasn't "selected out" for poor performance but rather terminated for not receiving tenure within five years. (The only other ways to be removed from the rolls other than for cause is for "time in class" -- lack of promotion -- but that almost always allows one to reach retirement age (50, with 20 years of service) and retire with a pension and health insurance for life.

The best source of (professional) bio info on Springmann is his 1994 interview with Charles Stuart Kennedy in the Diplomatic Oral History series: http://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Springmann,%20J.%20Michael.toc.pdf What Springmann says about the Foreign Commercial Service and (in his view, concurred in by many others) its cynical use by political hacks to park incompetent businessmen ex-placed by their firms is worth reading. Springmann's story ends in the late 1990s so it doesn't reach some of the weirder cases like Peter Frederick (ex-placed by DuPont which seemingly never fires anybody) and Bob Connan (brother-in-law of James Moorhouse although Jim didn't reveal that to the promotion boards he sat on and -- but for a timely intervention by the White House -- Bob might have been appointed US Ambassador to Iceland.)

Because Springmann made waves and has lectured widely on the subject of Saudi Arabia and the political interference in policymaking (and visa issuance) there, a search engine query is a better source of information than this Wikipedia stub. Springmann today is a "K Street lawyer" handing general family, immigration and business law from his office in Washington DC.

The above may be useful as a guide to source material for anyone wanting to enlarge on the main page. That is the point of this submission as I do not amend main pages myself except sometimes to correct spelling or punctuation that offends the eye. Andygx (talk) 09:06, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

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