Interview with John Berry
John Berry, the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is the highest-ranking LGBT federal officer in American history. He heads the federal government’s civil service workforce and has been active in establishing workplace diversity standards as well as serving as a vital link to the LGBT community. He spoke to Matthew’s Place several months ago and recently delivered the keynote address at the Matthew Shepard Foundation’s 2011 “Bear to Make a Difference” gala in Denver.
MP: We do interviews with government leaders, professionals, entertainers, attorneys, and other prominent people to give young people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered or who just are allies to those people or care about them, to give them more information about career options that are open to them regardless of their sexual orientation or other differences they may have. So you, through the [Office of Personnel Management] obviously oversee the administrative aspects of civil services. And we’re wondering if, with that audience in mind, you could describe the commitment to workplace diversity that the federal government currently has and maybe a little bit about how that works.
John Berry: Well, obviously you’re a strong [resource]. You know, the goal of the federal government is to find the best and the brightest and to marry their interests and their skills with the job, and to do that based on one thing and one thing alone — the person’s ability to do the job, and on no extraneous or irrelevant characteristic. And I include in that all the traditional categories. And we have made very clear that that includes sexual orientation and gender identity as well. So we want to provide a welcoming environment for everyone, where they’re judged by only one thing and that is whether they can do the job and how well they can do it. And so we believe that’s the standard that not only the government should hold to, but society as well.
MP: Your family history includes both civilian and military service to the United States. From the time that you were growing up and your parents were in federal service, until now, how have you seen that change at the federal level?
JB: Well, it’s interesting. My dad was in the military. He was actually in World War II, volunteered for the First Marine Division and served our country at Guadalcanal. Luckily for me he survived that battle, which was a tough one, and came home to produce a great family, and one based on love and respect. And my mom, neither one were really active or permanent federal employees, my mom was a census worker at times, you know, during the decennial census, but they both deeply valued federal service and they saw this as an incredibly honorable career. And so when I decided to pursue public service, they were extremely supportive. And my mother used to say, “You know, public service is an incredible opportunity to do good, good for others.” And before she passed away, I was fortunate to have been promoted to some pretty senior jobs in the Clinton Administration. And my mom’s advice to me during those times was, “Keep in mind two things: you’re being given great authority, and you only have it for a short period of time. Do as much good as you can every day. The clock is running against you, but always use that authority for good.” And so I now, God rest her soul, always try to keep that in mind wherever I go. You know, public service is an incredible opportunity to do just that, to really uniquely help folks in an amazing way and to touch a number of lives and, just inconceivable opportunity, an array of opportunities, to do that. So that, I think, would be my sense on that. My parents gave me the basics –– you know, love of country, and love of neighbor and … that was the foundation upon which then I built my career.
MP: That’s great. And that’s nice to hear, in this era in which there’s so much cynicism about what government actually is for and what it can do for people.
JB: Well … look across the array of the opportunities in the federal government that a young person could pursue today. You know, if they were a medical researcher they could be working at [the National Institutes for Health] on cures for cancer and Alzheimer’s and autism. If they were interested in a job that provided thorough thinking, you know, we have everything from sort-of “James Bond”, down. I mean, you could go from fighting forest fires in the West to rescuing lives on the high seas with the Coast Guard to literally working with the CIA and being a modern day James Bond. If you are interested in health care, you know, we have numerous opportunities to help and advance people, everything ranging from direct health care services, for example our veterans’ hospitals, right through to health care policy which could set the tone for the rest of the nation. So … there are endless opportunities and I could go on and on. But, it’s just so exciting. I mean, look at my life. I’m just one federal employee; I have gotten to manage the Secret Service. I have managed the National Park Service. You know, I’ve got to go to the North Pole and the South Pole. I’ve been director of the National Zoo. And now I am the highest-ranking openly gay person in the federal government. In the history of our country that’s — I never dreamed I would hold such a responsibility. But it’s quite an honor and, you know, I’m just one average Joe. It’s not like — I didn’t go to Harvard or anything. I grew up in Rockville, my dad worked for a moving company. My mom was an X-ray technician. We were lower middle class and I went to state school, University of Maryland, and got a great education. It’s a testament that in this country, with hard work and a little energy and a little gumption, there’s no reason you should be held back from anything.
MP: That’s great, and that resumé is remarkable. I think about — I’m kind of an amateur historian on John Hay, who showed up in, you know, the 19th century and sort of worked his way through an array of jobs, like the one you just listed from your own life. And it’s easy to forget that it’s actually not that different [now] — that a talented person can come to Washington, D.C., and move through a really wide portfolio of different responsibilities over the course of a career. And while the government has grown, the hunger for gifted people who are talented administrators is still similar to what it was 150 years ago.
JB: If not even more so. I guess that, circling back to your original question of, sort of, what’s changed over the past 50 years in government service, I would have said … probably 50 years ago the government was primarily focused on — it was a clerical, a clerk army if you will, that was forms and processing and paper and things like that. The government is now a very sophisticated operation. It requires much higher educational levels than it would have 50 years ago. It requires more skill in the workplace than would have been required 50 years ago. The complexity of the jobs is much higher than it would have been 50 years ago. And you can see that in terms of just the pay scales, because we have become much more white-collar than blue-collar. And it is everything from engineering to lawyers to senior managers … and doctors and researchers, comprise the majority of the workforce. Whereas, 50 years ago, that would not have been the majority; that would have been the minority of the work force. And so I think the federal government has, as has society, gotten more complex … and so the opportunities that are available are obviously richer, broader and deeper than I think would have been available 50 years ago.
MP: I wanted to ask you about the security clearance process. I know OPM has a role in that. We have a Foundation supporter that works for a private company in technology that does some sensitive contracting, who had to go through the security clearance process some time ago, I think early in the Clinton Administration. And this was at a time when it was still potentially disqualifying to be gay or lesbian. And he described vaguely the questions he endured at that time as being, you know, undignified to say the least, then, kind of a little bit, you know, personally hurtful. And he went through a renewal process quite recently and remarked that it was just night-and-day; not only was being gay not disqualifying but that the… process was much more dignified and just reflected a broader acceptance of gay and lesbian people as not being a security risk obviously — being people who have skills who need a security clearance, who are deserving of it and can go about their work at the end of their process. Do you have any insight into the changes in that security clearance process regarding sexual orientation over, say, the last 15 years or so, and where it stands now?
JB: Absolutely. Actually I’ll give it you over the past 30 years. Personally, let me start with more of a historical perspective. I think the one gentleman who really deserves the credit for the major changes in this area is [the late gay activist] Frank Kameny, Dr. Kameny. As far back as 1975 he had worked, and through both his legal and social protesting, had the Department of Defense sort of shift their position and policies on this back in the 1970s. The National Security Agency came along in the 80s, the early 80s, again under pressure from Dr. Kameny. I started working for the federal government in 1985 at the time as a legislative aide for Congressman Hoyer, now the [House minority whip], and when I was doing that I was his aide in charge of defense issues, both defense appropriations and defense policies for the congressman. And so in that capacity I held a clearance. And so I would agree that the questioning on those clearances was, let’s politely refer to it as awkward. And what the troubling part was, you didn’t know exactly what they were trying to get to, and whether your answers were going to be construed to mean something other than what you were saying. That experience — when I left the Hill I went to the Treasury Department and now this was the middle ’90s, about 10 years after my first experience with this, when President Clinton had changed the rules of the game. So in 1995, Clinton really sort of rolled the ball forward on this and that began the major shift on this. Now the clearance level I had then — because I was literally overseeing 40 percent of federal law enforcement, not only the Secret Service but Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the Customs Service, IRS, Criminal Federal Enforcement Training Center and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. It comprised 40 percent of federal law-enforcement, gun-carrying agents at the time. And so you can imagine my clearance to do that was the highest clearance you can get. It’s called SCI and Code Word. And that was a very, let’s say thorough examination. At the time we openly discussed, and it was, I made clear that basically, I was out. I was out to everybody I cared about in the world. No one could use this as a source for blackmail and that — you know, if anybody didn’t know that I was openly gay, then they basically weren’t close enough or either hadn’t done much research or weren’t close enough to — it’s not like I go around yelling about it on the streets every day to everybody I meet. But anybody who I cared about, you know, certainly knew. And so they verified that obviously through the clearance and I was awarded at the time those clearance levels. And so I think it’s important to understand today and for anybody else pursuing this, it is clearly not a basis for the denial of a clearance. What we’re looking for in clearance is the ability for people to be honest, to have had a track record that shows that they can be trusted, that they’ve shown that not only with how they manage their finances and their work life but also quite frankly their individual and their social life. So what we’re looking for there is to make sure that a person is of upstanding character and that they can be trusted to protect the nation’s important information. And you know, sexuality doesn’t really have anything to do with that, whether it be heterosexual or homosexual. And instead what they look for now is … they’re trying to get to the bottom of it through both the questions and the investigations. And so my counsel, [to] anyone who is pursuing the job, is not to be worried about this — to make sure obviously that you’re leading a good life, that you’re being careful, that you’re following the law. And as long as that’s the case, and you can be a trustworthy individual, then odds are, with high probability, you’re going to be eligible for the clearance. Keeping in mind, I guess, my last word on it would be that a clearance is not a right, it’s a privilege. And no one is entitled to one. It is different than the other rights that we’re entitled to, for example, through the Constitution and through law. It is something you must earn and therefore must be deemed worthy of, not entitled to. So I think that we have the right perspective on this now, and we’ll keep watching this and be making sure that it’s not applied in any discriminatory fashion. And hopefully this is just going to continue to get better and better as we go forward.
MP: That’s great. So … one further question. Just going forward, are there changes in the works now that relate to LGBT Americans being able to work in our civil service? Or are there additional policy changes, further into the future, that you feel would be needed to make the workplace more inclusive?
JB: Well, one — thinking right now, [there] is legislation on the Hill that the administration is supporting, that Congresswoman [Tammy] Baldwin and Senator [Joseph] Lieberman have introduced, to provide domestic partner benefits. And I think that is going to really bring us up to where the private sector is right now, and that will be very good. We’re looking at also the tax treatment of those benefits and how we can help treat those, not only for federal government employees but for all domestic partner benefits in the private sector as well. We’re also working on a report and a policy, essentially, that the president issued last summer, that will ensure that everywhere that we have benefits that are provided to heterosexual employees, to the full extent we can under the law, that we would provide the same to same-sex couples as well. And so that effort is under way now across the agencies, looking at everything from travel benefits to relocation benefits to visas, all of that kind of stuff — the day-to-day headaches that federal employees have to wrestle with.
And finally I would say, you know, more broadly, the agenda the administration is strongly supporting is obviously passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which will enshrine into law and make it illegal to discriminate against anyone based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. And then ultimately the … Defense of Marriage Act. And so, those are the items that we’re working on with the Congress, and then across the government. Some of those we can do regulatorily, others, like … DOMA will require legislation, as will the domestic partner benefits legislation. And so we’re working on all those fronts. And I’m pretty optimistic that we’re going to get solid points on the board over the course of the administration.
MP: That’s great. Well, it is a meaningful and robust agenda and we certainly wish you every success in it. And I just want to thank you again for taking the time to talk to Matthew’s Place — and best of luck with everything that you’re doing, it’s historic and we’re pulling for you.
JB: Well Jason, Judy [Shepard] gave me her book, “The Meaning of Matthew,” and I keep it here on my desk. Every day it reminds me of the important work, and who we’re doing it for. It’s for people just like Matthew out there so that we never face another situation like that, and that we create the climate where people in this country are judged by how well they can do the job and nothing else. And so I really appreciate your work, the work of the Foundation and of Judy, in helping to advance those principles throughout society, and the leadership that you provide day in and day out to young men and women out there, to know that there is no glass ceiling. The sky is the limit in this country and, you know, pursue your dreams, because anything is possible in this great land of ours.
