It's A Combined Team Effort

It is nice when Federal employees get a little credit. In the current political climate, that is a rare occurance.

That's why this piece in the Federal Times is so nice.

Berry: Many feds assisted mission to find, kill bin Laden

[...]

.... [Office of Personnel Management Director John] Berry said in an interview that thousands of civilian employees played a part in collecting and analyzing the intelligence that led to Sunday's mission in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

"It wasn't just the Navy SEALs," Berry said. "It was our men and women at [the Office of the Director of National Intelligence] and the CIA and the Foreign Service from the State Department, who have been on the ground working in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a combined team effort."

[...]

Berry hopes that as the public learns about how civilian employees helped the military kill bin Laden, they will be more receptive to arguments about the value of the federal workforce.

[...]

He noted that nearly 3,000 federal civilian employees have died on the job since 1992, including 24 who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. About 100,000 civilian employees have served alongside military service members in those countries over the last decade, and Berry said more needs to be done to recognize civilian employees killed in the line of duty.

"When you join the military, or you join the civilian force, you take the same oath to defend the same Constitution," Berry said.

[...]

You can read the whole piece here.