[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 15 (Monday, January 26, 2009)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E136-E137]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO CHARLOTTE PREECE

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. HOWARD L. BERMAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, January 26, 2009

  Mr. BERMAN. Madam Speaker, I want to take this opportunity today to 
salute a distinguished servant of the U.S. Congress in the field of 
foreign affairs. At the beginning of February 2009, Charlotte Preece 
will retire from the Congressional Research Service after 32 productive 
years of service to the legislative branch. Ms. Preece has spent her 
entire professional career at CRS serving the U.S. Congress in multiple 
capacities. She joined CRS in July 1976 as an analyst in European 
Affairs. In that capacity, she authored dozens of reports for the 
Congress on issues in U.S. European relations. She was promoted to 
specialist in European Affairs in 1982, and later headed the Defense 
Manpower, Budget, and Policy Analysis section for 3 years before 
becoming assistant chief of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense 
Division.
  She served the last 17 years of her CRS career as the Chief of the 
Foreign Affairs Division, a position to which she was named in 1991. 
After a reorganization of CRS in 2000, the Foreign Affairs Division was 
expanded to incorporate international trade and finance specialists and 
was renamed the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division. Ms. 
Preece became the Congressional Research Service's assistant director 
for Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade. In that capacity, she has 
supervised a staff that has grown to about 90 policy analysts and is 
responsible for directing the

[[Page E137]]

research agenda to support the work of the U.S. Congress in foreign 
affairs, defense, and trade.
  In honoring Charlotte Preece for her service at this time of great 
challenge for our country, both economically and in foreign affairs, it 
is worth pausing for a moment to consider the strengths and 
contributions consistently made to the U.S. Congress by the 
Congressional Research Service, where Ms. Preece has spent her 
professional career. We are so well served by this institution, and Ms. 
Preece epitomizes one of the greatest strengths that CRS offers to the 
congressional clients it serves: its long-serving analysts are a 
reservoir of ``institutional memory'' that continually builds on past 
knowledge and informs future decisions.
  The importance of CRS' ``institutional memory'' is evident when 
considering even a brief list of the critical issues that have come 
before Congress during Ms. Preece's tenure at CRS: the signing of the 
Camp David Accord by Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin in 1978; the Iran 
Hostage Crisis in 1979; the normalization of relations with the 
People's Republic of China in 1979; the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 
Tiananmen Square Crackdown in China in 1989; the end of the Cold War 
and demise of the Soviet Union beginning in 1989; the Gulf War in 1991; 
the end of South African apartheid by 1993; the devastating terrorist 
attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001; the invasion 
of Afghanistan in 2001; and the toppling of Saddam Hussein at the 
beginning of the Iraq War in 2003. All of these critical events and 
more unfolded on Ms. Preece's watch at CRS, giving her unique insight 
and invaluable expertise to a Congress that saw much turnover during 
the same period. Of the 535 Members who served in the 94th Congress in 
1976, when Ms. Preece began her CRS service, only 21 are still serving 
in 2008: 14 in the House, and 7 in the Senate. Newly elected Members 
are well served by having access to CRS experts that have not just read 
about but have worked closely on the policy issues of recent decades.
  I also want to reflect for a few minutes on the attributes and 
talents of Ms. Preece herself. Before coming to CRS in 1976, she earned 
her bachelor's of arts degree in international relations and Soviet 
area studies at the Pennsylvania State University, where she graduated 
summa cum laude. She went on to earn a master's degree in international 
security studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. At CRS, 
she had the distinction of being the youngest person the Service has 
ever named to attend the U.S. National War College, graduating with the 
class of 1983. As head of the CRS Terrorism Task Force, Charlotte 
Preece personally directed the massive and extraordinarily helpful CRS 
effort to provide Congress with timely and crucial policy analysis and 
information in the tragic days and weeks after 9/11.
  In her distinguished career with CRS, Charlotte Preece has always 
understood and respected the power and special needs of Congress, 
including its legislative and oversight responsibilities as well as its 
obligation to represent the interests of constituents. She has always 
found time to serve as a mentor, counselor, and friend to others, 
whether it be to those she supervised, new congressional staff, or 
newly elected Members of Congress. Her exceptional skills at framing 
policy issues, her abilities in research management, and her 
instinctive grasp of the needs and aspirations of those she has 
supervised have earned her the respect and loyalty of her team. 
Charlotte Preece will be greatly missed, as will the loss of her 
exceptional leadership of the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade 
Division of CRS. We offer her our deepest gratitude for her many years 
of contributions to the work of the Congress, and we wish her well.

                          ____________________