
The State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned - aestetix
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/01/26/the-state-departments-entire-senior-management-team-just-resigned/
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coldcode
This is virtually unprecedented. You cannot replace people with such
specialized knowledge with political benefactors or some random people. It's
like replacing all the doctors in a hospital with random non-doctors. While
people can learn these complex roles, with no one to train them the end result
can only be a mess. Same is true at the CIA, the people who do all the
analysis might not be glamorous as spies, but these are specialized people
requiring a lot of experience and knowledge. If these type of folks leave, you
are basically out of luck for a long time.

~~~
masonic
Regarding the WP's headline:

"All four, career officers serving in positions appointed by the President,
submitted letters of resignation per tradition at the beginning of a new
administration. The letters from the White House said that their resignations
were accepted and they were thanked for their service. The “entire senior
management” team suffering this “mass” obliteration consists of Assistant
Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of
State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond, Ambassador Gentry O. Smith of the
Office of Foreign Missions, and most notably Undersecretary for Management
Patrick Kennedy, who tried to drag the FBI into Hillary Clinton’s cover-ups.
Also, while most news reports described the four outgoing officials as holding
their offices under both Republican and Democrat administrations, to promote
the impression they were nonpartisan fixtures of the bureaucracy who just
couldn’t handle the arrival of President Trump, that is really only true of
Kennedy, and he was only in position for two years before the Obama
administration began. Joyce Barr was appointed in 2011, while Michele Bond and
Gentry Smith were appointed in 2015. The Hill reports that these four joined
“a number of other officials who have departed since President Trump took
office last week,” but goes on to cite only two names: Assistant Secretary of
State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr, who retired, and Bureau of
Overseas Building Operations Lydia Muniz. CNN notes that Starr only came out
of retirement in 2012, and planned all along to retire at the end of the Obama
administration, even if Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election... The New York
Daily News falsely implied Tillerson’s visit to the State Department on
Wednesday actually prompted the “walk-outs” that didn’t happen..."

[http://www.breitbart.com/national-
security/2017/01/26/fake-n...](http://www.breitbart.com/national-
security/2017/01/26/fake-news-media-reports-state-dept-mass-resignation-
officials-actually-fired/)

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dsr_
People seem to be under the impression that the senior civil service creates
policy.

They don't. They implement policy. They are handed policy objectives and
figure out who needs to do what to make that happen.

This is like having all the seniormost engineers and project managers leave a
gigantic company after a takeover.

~~~
Bartweiss
> People seem to be under the impression that the senior civil service creates
> policy.

Arguably they _do_ create policy, in the _Yes, Minister_ sense that they'll
happily modify or kill a political initiative that would knock things off an
even keel. There a lot of things that do or don't happen pretty much heedless
of what politicians demand.

Of course, that doesn't derail your metaphor. A good PM can do a lot to guide
a client or executive away from their original demands to a better plan that
still satisfies them. This is still a huge loss of institutional knowledge and
ability to execute properly.

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rokosbasilisk
Not suprising, this goes beyond republican and democrats. Trump is a first
president of the new realignment. He destroyed or will destroy the legacy of
Clinton, Bush, and Obama.

Its not democrat vs republican to him. Its nationalist vs globalist. The old
guard were globalists. This has Thiel and Bannons fingerprints all over it.

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MrZongle2
Many are pointing out that the senior leadership has been in the State
Department under both Republican and Democrat administrations. But given the
mess that America's foreign policy has been since 2001, is this _truly_ a
disaster?

Tenure does not equal competence. Some would argue this is especially true in
government.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
America's foreign policy has been _implemented_ well, which is the
responsibility of these people, who, like judges, are forbidden from partisan
political activity.

The philosophical and political decisions that dictate what that foreign
policy says are given by the Secretary of State and eventually the
presidential administration over these people.

~~~
MrZongle2
_" America's foreign policy has been implemented well..."_

I think that's debatable. The Russian "reset" of 2009 comes to mind; it seems
like an abject failure from start (the intended Russian word for "reset" on
the symbolic button was actually "overload", but nobody at State caught that)
to finish.

I won't argue that, as with any senior departure(s) in other organizations,
there is going to be some institutional knowledge vanishing. And that's never
good.

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bryanmgreen
Resignation against terrible bosses is good an all, but when you're part of a
public entity, and you're quitting because of a new leader with opposing
views... I don't get it. The lets the door open sooner for that leader to
bring in their own people - why not stay and fight as long as you can?

~~~
eric_h
TFA suggests that the jury is still out on whether they resigned as a form of
protest or were pushed out by the Trump administration.

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cakeface
Why was this flagged?

~~~
SlipperySlope
Off topic for hackers?

~~~
AlexandrB
Only if "hackers" aren't part of society and won't be affected by monumental
changes to the leadership of that society.

So yeah, "off topic for hackers" I guess.

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ihsw
Is this due to the revolving door of politics or the FBI investigation into
criminal links between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation?
Personally I was expecting their departure as it seems perfectly logical for
them to evacuate the public service rather than get on board with a non-
Democrat presidency.

It's sad to see so much of the government tied so closely to the Clinton
machine but it's for the best that they go quietly into the night, now we can
move forward without the graft plaguing the Democrats where foreign money
infects every corner of DC and PA.

~~~
akamaka
From the article: "All are career foreign service officers who have served
under both Republican and Democratic administrations."

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rm_-rf_slash
If their motives were to protest Trump, I think they may have been better
served by sticking around and pouncing at the chance to leak evidence of
corruption or something that otherwise undermines the administration, just
like Deep Throat having been a disgruntled FBI agent who ultimately collapsed
the Nixon Administration.

But the State Department knows a lot more about what is really going on than
many of us do. Maybe they wanted no part of it, should there be some kind of
post-calamity Nuremberg Trials.

~~~
devoply
Funny how little you can do to Trump at his age. He'll probably be dead before
you can do anything to him that matters to him.

~~~
daveFNbuck
He gets extremely upset about criticism and lack of respect. His brand really
seems to matter to him.

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ryanmarsh
I'm conflicted about this.

1\. A giant departure of the old guard (some of whom were set to retire soon)
could be a great bit of creative destruction. Think of all the internal
processes and tools that new leaders could fix or replace.

2\. Isn't this kind of expected during a regime change? I mean, wouldn't many
of them have been Obama/Clinton loyalists? I'm asking not telling.

3\. Like the article states, there is a component of brain-drain. Knowledge
that likely won't be reacquired except through mistakes.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Isn't this kind of expected during a regime change?

No, it's not expected during a change in administration. While the positions
involved are, I believe, all positions that serve at the pleasure of the
President, they people involved are career officers that have served in senior
positions under administrations of both parties (as the article states). It
would be normal for them to have offered their resignation effective at the
moment of transition, but they wouldn't still be there now if they hadn't been
asked, and agreed, to stay on. A mass resignation just after the new Secretary
of State has been confirmed is _not_ normal.

> I mean, wouldn't many of them have been Obama/Clinton loyalists?

Probably not. While Joyce Ann Barr was appointed to her current position by
Obama, she was appointed to her prior position (Ambassador to Namibia) by
George W. Bush, and has been with State since 1979. Michele Bond has only held
political appointments under Obama, but has been a Foreign Service officer
since 1977. Gentry Smith has been with State since 1987, and looks like we was
Director of the Office of Physical Security programs before Obama came into
office. And the main figure, Patrick Kennedy, was appointed to his _current_
office by George W. Bush, held a different appointed office previously under
Bush, and held an appointed position for essentially the whole Clinton
Administration; he's been a Foreign service office since 1973.

Between the four, it's like 152 person-years of foreign-service experience.

These guys aren't partisan loyalists of any stripe.

~~~
DrScump
Only _one_ (Kennedy) held his respective position before Obama, and he entered
after the Democrats controlled Congress.

