"CODELs" are a topic whenever old Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) gather.
"CODEL" is U.S. State Department shorthand for "CONgressional DELegation."

The more important to American foreign Policy an Embassy or Consulate is,
the more it is visited by Congressmen. Before retiring in 1991, I worked my
share of CODELs. My memory most often returns to those during my very first
tour abroad. I was then a Vice Consul of the American Consulate General in
Hong Kong.

Being helpful to CODELs is an important responsibility of an American
Ambassador or Consul General and his staff. Some few Congressmen abuse
their trips abroad, making them thinly disguised holidays or shopping
jaunts. Most Congressmen, however, are serious professionals. The
legislators go overseas to learn about the area visited, to oversee
allocation of  U.S. Government resources and to ponder how Congress might
support or oppose executive branch activities.

In 1964-1965 diplomatic relations with  Communist China were not yet in
view. Since 1949 the American post in Hong Kong had been the premier U. S.
Government listening post for the mainland. China hands old and young were
there taking the Red Dragon's measure. The post's staff was larger than
that of many embassies.

Before the Viet-Nam war, CODELs came to Hong Kong in manageable numbers and their focus was on either regional trade or mainland China. But after the Tonkin Gulf incident of 1964 and the subsequent open-ended Senate
resolution, America's defense of the elected government of South Viet-Nam
against the Communist North quickly cost many more lives and much more money.  On Capitol Hill it therefore seemed time to go to Viet-Nam. Congressmen would usually break their flight in Hong Kong.

Normally, the American Consul General would go in person by car and ferry
to Hong Kong's Kai Tak airport to receive the visiting Senator or
Representative. If that very senior Foreign Service Officer could not go in
person, then on rare occasions he sent his equally high ranking Deputy.
There were no exceptions.

In 1965 almost one-fifth of both Houses of Congress came through Hong Kong en route to and from Saigon. Some came in groups. Some traveled alone. But on the long Thanksgiving Day  weekend of 1965, five CODELs at once came through the small British Crown Colony. The Consul General and his Deputy could not cover so many bases. So trainee Vice Consul Patrick Killough was ordered to fill in, go to the airport and meet the Majority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Honorable Hale Boggs (Democrat of Louisiana).

That may have been the first time that so low ranking an officer was sent
to meet a CODEL. But once Congressmen began flooding through Hong Kong en route to and from Viet-Nam, the exception became the new rule.

My wife Mary and I spent much of that long weekend with the Congressman and his aide, Argyll Campbell. I think of that witty, gracious gentleman, Hale
Boggs, every time I watch his daughter, Cokie Roberts, on ABC Television.
His widow, Lindy Boggs, is now the U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican. Mr.
Boggs told us that he was one of five members of Congress who met weekly
with President Lyndon Johnson. Mary took him shopping. We both took him to
a cocktail party organized by an expatriate New Orleans businessman whom we knew. We went with him to church on Sunday, driving in our tiny red
three-wheeled fiber glass automobile.

For Thanksgiving dinner, Boggs and all the other Congressmen in town went
to the home of Consul General and Mrs. Edward Rice, high above the harbor.
State Department "cables," as electronic messages in print are called, have
as their signature the last name of the principal officer of an overseas
post. Hale Boggs had found it amusing that the official cabled invitation
from Hong Kong through the State Department to him had ended, "Consul
General cordially invites Representative Boggs to his home for Thanksgiving
Dinner. Rice." With a big smile, Boggs told Mary and me that he had "sort
of expected a Thanksgiving Dinner to have turkey, not rice, as its main
course."

If a CODEL came through Hong Kong en route to Viet-Nam, it normally also
came back our way. The Consul General, or increasingly frequently a more
junior designee, would  meet the Congressmen at the airport, take them to
their hotels and perform other chores as needed. In 1965 and 1966 most
Congressmen were visiting Viet-Nam for the first time. They may have acted
detached on their way in. But it was another story when they headed home
afterwards. I  recall Senator John Tower of my home state of Texas.  On the
way to Viet-Nam he had been professionally concerned, cool, not visibly
engaged emotionally. But in Hong Kong afterwards, I spent over an hour with
Mr. Tower in his hotel suite. He talked about the war. He was shocked,
depressed and moved. He sobbed, recalling body bags holding corpses of
American soldiers. After another two years American public support of that
war would fall off decisively. But the first hard questioning dates from 1965 and 1966 when many Congressmen visited Viet-Nam for the first time.

I support official overseas visits by members of Congress. For it is one
thing to stay home and read about a country. It is something very different
to see it, be assaulted by its aromas, catch its spirit and speak if only
for a little while with its people.

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for Asheville TRIBUNE