HE got it right this time! Musharraf’s Aug 14 address had a generous sprinkling of English for Americans (who matter most), such as Condi Rice, to hear terrorism abused right from the horse’s mouth. Earlier, Bush’s national security advisor, Ms Rice, was all keyed up to hear the General’s Jan 12 live PTV address, but his press managers picked up a dumb translator who sputtered all the way and hashed up the speech real bad.

Beware of information top dogs. They often end up baying under the wrong tree. This egregious pack, full of hubris and blather, are hollow men who pull down their government and the country’s image. Aside from Zia’s information bulldog, General Mujeebur Rehman, who ruled the ministry with steel, Benazir and Nawaz’s press pyramid: minister, advisor, and secretary often tangled over turf, with the one having BB or MNS’s ear surviving, and the rest evaporating.

Remember the palace intrigues between media greats Mushahid Hussain and Siddiqul Farooq during the last Sharif rule? Mushahid won the day. And in BB’s reign, we had information warlords Bashir Riaz, Farhatullah Babar, Hussain Haqqani and Tanvir Khan fighting each other for control. Not only did they decide which hack got the juicy leaks, but also ruled who got the plum press attache postings abroad.

Before political patronage turned postings into a spoil system and snuffed merit out forever, I remember our outstanding press minister in Washington DC, the late Iqbal Butt. Long before I met him, I knew him, courtesy Tad Szulc, the New York Times’ acerbic correspondent and famous author of Fidel (Castro’s biography). “Iki is the best representative Pakistan can ever have,” Tad told me several years ago. As the don of Washington’s press, Tad genuinely felt that men such as Mr Butt had a natural flair of plugging for Pakistan because not only did they have top credentials, they also had the confidence to sell anything that they were charged with.

Iqbal Butt had the odious job of selling Zia and his military government after he had hanged Bhutto!

Dr Maleeha Lodhi, till recently our ambassador in Washington DC and the recipient of Hilal-i-Imtiaz, managed the hungry press herself. With years of journalism behind her, she fed us what we wanted. For this alone, she gets an A plus. Call her up (office or residence) and sure enough, she’d return your call within hours! And mind you, no crude assistant to tell you to hold until ‘Her Excellency’ arrived on the line. Never! Send her an e-mail and you’d promptly get a reply back the same day. Still, she made enemies, too. One of them being Dr Hafiz Malik, a Pakistani professor of Villanova University, Pennsylvania, who, for months, peddled his story to the press about Maleeha having ‘plagiarized’ her Ph.D. thesis. He even sent a letter to the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, about it! What has Powell got to do with Lodhi allegedly stealing someone else’s work? No news outlet (other than a start-up that is already making waves here) wanted to touch this story until Maleeha was in town. Hours after she boarded her flight back to Pakistan, Infotimes, an online journal, opened up the floodgates and vomited out dirt provided by the professor. “Dr Malik by marriage — his spouse is Jewish and they even celebrated their boys’ bar mitzvahs — has an ‘in’ with the powers that be,” a Pakistani who knows him well told me long before Lodhi’s story hit the headlines here. Wheels within wheels, would you not say?

The other day, when I called up the press attache, Asad Hayauddin in Washington, a gruff “hello” greeted me. The guy sounded in a tearing hurry, so I quickly revved up my brain waves and asked for his e-mail to post my query about Musharraf’s forthcoming visit to the US. My e-mail went out the minute I put down the phone. Not a word out of him so far! Not even a mealy-mouthed acknowledgment.

“As a Pakistani living in the US for over ten years, we at the Association of Pakistani Professionals (AOPP) hardly see any response from the information desk of our embassy,” complains Asif Alam, the founding member of AOOP, a watch-dog organization set up to closely monitor stories appearing here about Pakistan. “We need forceful, competent and strong press attaches both in DC and New York, who can aggressively counter the negative image that is often portrayed here.” Asif is angry and frustrated at their stonewalling themselves behind official lines.

Athar Osama, a Ph.D. working for Rand US, a world-renowned think-tank in International Security, and Adeem Usman at MIT, have set up a web site, Virtual Pakistan, that transcends boundaries and space and brings Pakistani professionals together to work for the progress of their homeland.

Athar calls our press outfit here ‘pathetic’, ‘unimaginative’, ‘lethargic’ and ‘myopic’. “Apart from some personal charm that Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi was able to bring to the table, our media-diplomatic corps is a bunch of ‘dead’ people whose only job so far is to botch our causes. I can’t recall a single significant diplomatic victory in my recent memory that we have been able to achieve. Remind me if I am wrong. Again and again, as I talk to many of these diplomats and government bureaucrats, I am amazed at how mediocre and lethargic these people are.”

Oh, by the way, the press attache in DC has done a good job at letter-writing. He’s a good firefighter! But he needs to be reminded to update his embassy’s web site! It still shows Maleeha Lodhi as our ambassador. Now that her successor, Ashraf Jehangir Kazi, should be firmly in the saddle, hopefully the embassy press outfit will reinvent itself.

Mr Kazi is highly regarded for his intellect and analytical powers. “Personally, I am happy that Washington has gone to a career diplomat, as it should, rather than a non-career person without the credentials and experience to fulfil a demanding assignment,” says a fixture in DC who has seen ambassadors come and go. “But please don’t expect any miracles from him. He will be able to do a competent job, specially diplomatic reporting, but that is about it. Socially, the Kazis will be okay, but not up to the standard of Sahibzada Yaqub-Khan or Jamsheed Marker.”

Meanwhile, our man in New York, Munir Akram, hit the ground running when he became Pakistan’s UN Permanent Representative. The media-savvy ambassador got out his views to the world immediately after taking charge when India and Pakistan were ready to go to war. Barbara Crossette of NYT gave Akram a good spread, while the esoteric Charlie Rose of Channel Thirteen invited Akram for an interview. Like Maleeha Lodhi, Munir Akram, too, renders his press attache, Ms Rizwan Khan, somewhat redundant and out-of-the-loop.

So, when I approached her for information about Musharraf attending the UN General Assembly Session, pat came her perfunctory reply: “Not yet finalized, as soon as it’s done, it will be made available.” Period.

Munir Akram, who was our favourite foreign office spokesman back in Islamabad during the mid-90s, parlayed his charm into winning over the press even when he had no story to hand us. Unlike what his press attache, Ms Khan, is merrily doing.

Attaches with an attitude are best off elsewhere — faraway from public diplomacy and basic good manners.