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NEWSLETTER
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Always Check the CV By Willard J. Hertz
The homicidal contractor at the Navy Yard in Washington reminded me of a disturbing incident with a gun-carrying contractor that the Ford Foundation had to contend with in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) 47 years ago.
When I was the assistant representative in Pakistan, the Foundation had about 30 advisers in the country working on various institution-building projects. Unlike India, where most advisers were direct hires by the FF, in Pakistan they were mostly furnished and employed by “back-stopping” institutions, generally United States universities.
Under that system, the government of Pakistan asked the Foundation for technical or training assistance in specific fields for specific Pakistani institutions. The FF then selected back-stopping institutions with experience in those fields and granted them funds for the advisers’ employment. The back-stoppers either sent existing staff members or contracted qualified outside personnel. The FF provided the advisers housing, local transportation and logistical services, oversaw their work, and, when necessary, helped them solve their problems with their Pakistani counterparts.
One such project was the East Pakistan Small Industries Corporation (EPSIC), a government agency, which provided technical and training assistance to small entrepreneurs, a critical need in a developing country. The government asked for an advisory team of four members: an engineer, an economist and two specialists in finance and marketing. The back-stopper was the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), then an affiliate of Stanford University and now an independent agency, SRI International.
One day I received an emergency phone call in my office in Karachi from the project head in Dacca. In a panicky voice, he reported that the team economist, in a heated argument, had pulled a revolver on the project head and pointed it at him. The adviser didn’t pull the trigger, but clearly that was not acceptable behavior to either the SRI or the Foundation. Further, the adviser had secretly brought the gun into Pakistan in violation of the FF's import privileges.
We agreed that the man had to leave the country, and he was immediately packed by the Foundation’s support staff and escorted to the airport. But what to tell the Pakistan government about his hasty departure? After a bit of thought, I sent a carefully worded letter to the Foreign Affairs Secretary informing him that the adviser had to leave because of mental illness.
Later I learned that SRI had fallen down on the job in the adviser’s recruitment. The adviser had claimed in his biodata and supporting correspondence that he had a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics. After the experience in East Pakistan, SRI contacted LSE and was told that LSE had never heard of him.
The lesson: Always check the CV.
I should add that this adviser was a bad apple in an otherwise good barrel. In general, the back-stoppers recruited advisers who were specialists in their fields and who acted responsibly in their jobs. One—David Bell—came to Pakistan as the team head of the FF-financed Harvard-recruited advisers to the Pakistan Planning Commission. Later he became director of AID in the Kennedy administration and then executive vice president of the Ford Foundation.
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