We’ve all wanted to blow off steam about our boss, co-workers, or those troglodytes in Human Resources. Robin Berrington, who served as Public Affairs Officer in Dublin from 1978 through 1981, was no different. He talked about his frustrations with his job and with Ireland in general in what was supposed to be a private Christmas letter to friends and family, writing things like, “No great issues burn up the wires between Dublin and Washington. The country has food and climate well matched for each other — dull.” People have said much worse. However, someone somehow leaked the contents of Berrington’s letter to the media and then all hell broke loose. He was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy beginning in 2000.
“Hmmm, I wonder if he got a copy of my Christmas letter?”
BERRINGTON: Well, I should preface this by saying I do what many Foreign Service officers do every end of the year, which is write a Christmas letter. My Christmas letter is something I type up myself. It is something I Xerox myself and stuff the envelopes myself, and stamp and mail myself…to my 50 or 60 friends around the world and the U.S. that I have been keeping up with over the years. It is usually a catalogue of what happened the last year…. That year, because it was my last year in Dublin, I figured it would be appropriate to do a kind of summing up of my time in Dublin and how I saw things. My Christmas letters have usually not been “And, oh, Uncle Harry and Aunt Harriet visited, and I had a nice home leave at Lake Winnypoopoo or whatever.” I mean, I would go into some of the issues and things we deal with in the Foreign Service.
Well, that’s what I did. Since this was a private matter going to friends who I didn’t think would reveal any embarrassing confidences, I was fairly frank about a lot of what had been going on in Ireland. Not inside the embassy. I must say my relationship with the ambassador is not something I would like other people to be aware of. A lot of people were aware of this because the problems had been occurring for a few years, people in Washington as well as elsewhere, but it wasn’t something I would write on. So I did the letter, sent it off, and I was going out to a party one night, and I had a phone call from a friend of mine who was the editor of something called Business and Finance, I believe. It was things going on in business…. He said, “Robin, I think you should realize that I received a mailing from you today which contains what looks like a personal letter from you. It has got all these comments about Ireland in it, and I don’t know why you sent this to me, but I will send it back to you so you know what it is; it has gone out in your name.” I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
I went off to the party and I thought about it. Then maybe about 10:00 at night I recalled, ‘Hmmm, I wonder if he got a copy of my Christmas letter?’ If he did, how in the world could that have happened? Well, besides trying to figure this out, I didn’t pay too much more attention.
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