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Friday, January 27th, 2017

The State Department’s entire senior administrative team just resigned

Author:     Josh Rogin
Source:     The Washington Post
Publication Date:     January 26 at 11:02 AM
 Link: The State Department’s entire senior administrative team just resigned
Stephan:   Diplomacy requires a sense of history, and a capacity for continuity. In an organization such as the State Department it is this corporate memory that helps the ship of state run smioothly. The Trump administration has now crippled itself because the senior management of the department cannot abide a witless rank amateur mucking up relationships which have taken years, or even decades to contsruct. Having known a number of senior State Department men and women  I suspect these resignations also were driven by people who had worked with high integrity and were personally outraged, and felt besmirched. They saw that their careful work was being disregarded by an administration that has shown no capacity for competence

Credit: U.S. State Department

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s job running the State Department just got considerably more difficult. The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior Foreign Service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.

Tillerson was actually inside the State Department’s headquarters in Foggy Bottom on Wednesday, taking meetings and getting the lay of the land. I reported Wednesday morning that the Trump team was narrowing its search for his No. 2, and that it was looking to replace the State Department’s long-serving undersecretary for management, Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy, who has been in that job for nine years, was actively involved in the transition and was angling to keep that job under Tillerson, three State Department officials told me.

Then suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy and three of his top officials resigned unexpectedly, four State Department officials confirmed. Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Ambassador Gentry O. Smith, director of the […]

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3 Comments

  1. Steven K Hovland on Friday, January 27, 2017 at 5:49 am

    It’s routine for senior management at agencies to offer their resignations when a new administration comes in. There is no story here.

  2. Robert Rouse on Friday, January 27, 2017 at 9:55 am

    They were forced out. Just what Putin would want.

  3. David Bean on Friday, January 27, 2017 at 4:30 pm

    Foggy Bottom, home of the CIA is near the State Department, but close is no cigar. As a non DC local, suspect that the CIA continge of State said Syonara. I sure would. But Stephan, this is your old back yard. Does this article make sense? S Hovland’s comment not withstanding.