in order here, mark schneider who was first principal deputy secretary in d.r.l. in 19777 and 1979 and he is now vice president of the international crisis group. awful these general, -- all of these gentlemen, it's a bipartisan panel here, which is something we are very proud of. next to mark is elliott abrams who was ronald reagan's assistant -- assistant secretary for d.r.l., 1971 to 1975. he is now at the council on foreign relations as middle east scholar and also a lifetime human rightser. next to him we are proud to have congressman jim mcgovern who in 1979 was the lead investigator on the motion to reconsiderly commission investigating the murders in el salvador and since 1996 has proudly represented the people of the third district of massachusetts. he's also minority house rules committee whip and co-chair of the tom lantos human rights commission. and finally, a mentor to a whole generation of foreign service officers, tex harris, who spent 35 years in the foreign service and was one of the probably the first human rights descenter in the foreign servic

this was stopped by mark schneider. it caused an uproar. american business salt that they were losing jobs. a year later they saw themselves having this turbine factory under their control. they saw that as their nest egg. they were refusing to stop the killing. but they came to argentina -- if they came to argentina, we thought if we get them to come they would stop the killing. they made a deal to invite the human rights commission to argentina and the killing stopped. it was serendipity. it happened. >> individuals matter. witness matters. washington support matters. everybody who thought this was a nutty for them to deal differently with government it turned out not to be the case. it turned out that ronald reagan and george shultz care just as much about human rights. can you talk about that? >> you are right. there were a lot of people that thought that. i started at the bureau and moved over to the human rights bureau. it was physically a dump. as you all know if you think there is a long term permanent rivalry between india and paki

reflect back and i start reminiscing to my first visit to the state department, and they talk about mark schneider and the things tex harris did in argentina and i would get these slightly dazed looks. it occurred to me that everybody was not actively involved in human rights advocacy in 1982. we drove out and so i did some research. i did the forensic investigation, yielded the fact that 65% of our bureau was not born in 1977. [laughter] so this day is really dedicated to the generations that is the drl generation, the people who were born and raised in the world from 1977 until today and the generation both in government and outside, who are the next leaders and advocates for human rights. i think we have a terrific -- i know we have a terrific group of people here. we are delighted you are all here and so sit back and enjoy and have fun. one final thank you, the thank you to tory nuland who is a fabulous spokesperson in the department. she called me yesterday morning from istanbul. she was traveling with the secretary, a typical relaxed secretary clinton affair, eight countries in eight days. .