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The State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned

82 points by aestetix 10y ago

ryanmarsh 10y ago
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.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  > 2. I mean, wouldn't many of them have been Obama/Clinton loyalists? Third paragraph: """All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations."""
  - glenra 10y ago
    Wasn't Obama basically a continuation of Bush as far as State Department policy? If Trump wants to actually change things when it comes to foreign policy, the "institutional memory" of these guys could be a significant hindrance to doing so. I didn't support Trump but I'm cautiously optimistic. We can't know from the outside, but letting these guys go might easily be an example of "draining the swamp".
    - altern8tif 10y ago
      Even if we think that the "old guard" should go, how does one go about replacing all of them in such a short span of time? It's not like they can "hire" replacements from competitors (like what happens in the corporate world). There is only one State Department and the work they do is very different from any other institution.
- wwweston 10y ago
  > 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. It seems likely there's primarily one tool that needs to be replaced, here. (Email, obviously. What, did you think I meant something else?) Seriously. How many times in the last decade or two have you thought "You know, America's working pretty well, but it's clear that we really need is a big shake up in State Department processes and tools."
  - ryanmarsh 10y ago
    Yah, email. That's kind of what I was thinking.
- celticninja 10y ago
  re: 2 - I assume these guys are like the UK Civil Service, they are experts in their field but politically neutral in their work. They serve the government of the day as best they can, fulfilling their policy objectives using their specialist knowledge to identify the best (or least worst) way of doing it.
  - wwweston 10y ago
    Yep. And their resignation seems likely to mean "I can't fulfill the set of policy objectives I'm seeing proposed, as a matter of conscience." Think about the different policy leanings you've seen over recent decades, and think about what might be outside them.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > 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 10y ago
    Only one (Kennedy) held his respective position before Obama, and he entered after the Democrats controlled Congress.
- ryanmarsh 10y ago
  LOL, thoughtful response... get's downvoted to -1 hahaha. Fucking HN. That'll teach me to respond to political posts with anything but a partisan liberal response.
  - mcphage 10y ago
    People don't like it when you refer to government instability as "a great bit of creative destruction". It makes it seem like you're indifferent to the notion of a stable civilization, which millions of people rely upon to be able to house, clothe, feed, and support their families.
    - ryanmarsh 10y ago
      See... there you go, projecting... "government instability". I'm sure everything will be fine, but if it's not will it be because I pondered it? To some people what's going on will be wonderful. Why is it not ok to think out loud about these thins and engage in an abstract discussion.
ihsw 10y ago
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 10y ago
  From the article: "All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations."
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    He gets extremely upset about criticism and lack of respect. His brand really seems to matter to him.
- jerrycruncher 10y ago
  I think their motive was probably to avoid having to tell the diplomatic relations they'd spent decades building to lick Trump's boot or fuck off.
coldcode 10y ago
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.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- masonic 10y ago
  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-news-media-reports-state-dept-mass-resignation-officials-actually-fired/ http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/01/26/fake-n...
MrZongle2 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    "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.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  The senior leaders involved are in roles that, while I think they are all politically appointed, are more administrative than policy making (the most senior is the Undersecretary for Management.) Whatever criticisms there have been of foreign policy, there has been little criticism that the State Department has failed administrstively in implementing the policy set by the Administration.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  But the newly-emptied roles are things like Director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations. Those jobs have been performed quite competently, up to the limits of what elected leadership has permitted. The obvious counterpoints like Benghazi ultimately trace back to either executive or legislative decisions; the resignees are the people who were requesting more security, while the people who refused it are still in place in Congress.
bryanmgreen 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
- pabloski 10y ago
  "you're quitting because of a new leader with opposing views", this says it all about how tolerant the radical chics are!! if they win it is democracy, if they lose it is tyranny and the only ones who benefited from 20+ years of liberals/globalists in power are Wall Street oligarchs
dsr_ 10y ago
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.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > People seem to be under the impression that the senior civil service creates policy. These are people in positions that, I believe, are all political appointments, not civil service jobs. They are all career foreign service officers who have been in non-political jobs at State for decades, and all but one seem to have held political appointments under Presidents of both parties, but they aren't "senior civil service".
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  > 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.
rokosbasilisk 10y ago
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.
cakeface 10y ago
Why was this flagged?
- sctb 10y ago
  Most politics, especially pure politics, and certainly partisan politics, are explicitly off-topic for HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- SlipperySlope 10y ago
  Off topic for hackers?
  - AlexandrB 10y ago
    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.

82 points by aestetix 10y ago

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.

GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
> 2. I mean, wouldn't many of them have been Obama/Clinton loyalists? Third paragraph: """All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations."""
- glenra 10y ago
  Wasn't Obama basically a continuation of Bush as far as State Department policy? If Trump wants to actually change things when it comes to foreign policy, the "institutional memory" of these guys could be a significant hindrance to doing so. I didn't support Trump but I'm cautiously optimistic. We can't know from the outside, but letting these guys go might easily be an example of "draining the swamp".
  - altern8tif 10y ago
    Even if we think that the "old guard" should go, how does one go about replacing all of them in such a short span of time? It's not like they can "hire" replacements from competitors (like what happens in the corporate world). There is only one State Department and the work they do is very different from any other institution.
wwweston 10y ago
> 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. It seems likely there's primarily one tool that needs to be replaced, here. (Email, obviously. What, did you think I meant something else?) Seriously. How many times in the last decade or two have you thought "You know, America's working pretty well, but it's clear that we really need is a big shake up in State Department processes and tools."
- ryanmarsh 10y ago
  Yah, email. That's kind of what I was thinking.
celticninja 10y ago
re: 2 - I assume these guys are like the UK Civil Service, they are experts in their field but politically neutral in their work. They serve the government of the day as best they can, fulfilling their policy objectives using their specialist knowledge to identify the best (or least worst) way of doing it.
- wwweston 10y ago
  Yep. And their resignation seems likely to mean "I can't fulfill the set of policy objectives I'm seeing proposed, as a matter of conscience." Think about the different policy leanings you've seen over recent decades, and think about what might be outside them.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> 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 10y ago
  Only one (Kennedy) held his respective position before Obama, and he entered after the Democrats controlled Congress.
ryanmarsh 10y ago
LOL, thoughtful response... get's downvoted to -1 hahaha. Fucking HN. That'll teach me to respond to political posts with anything but a partisan liberal response.
- mcphage 10y ago
  People don't like it when you refer to government instability as "a great bit of creative destruction". It makes it seem like you're indifferent to the notion of a stable civilization, which millions of people rely upon to be able to house, clothe, feed, and support their families.
  - ryanmarsh 10y ago
    See... there you go, projecting... "government instability". I'm sure everything will be fine, but if it's not will it be because I pondered it? To some people what's going on will be wonderful. Why is it not ok to think out loud about these thins and engage in an abstract discussion.

ihsw 10y ago

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 10y ago
From the article: "All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations."

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  He gets extremely upset about criticism and lack of respect. His brand really seems to matter to him.
jerrycruncher 10y ago
I think their motive was probably to avoid having to tell the diplomatic relations they'd spent decades building to lick Trump's boot or fuck off.

coldcode 10y ago

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.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
masonic 10y ago
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-news-media-reports-state-dept-mass-resignation-officials-actually-fired/ http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/01/26/fake-n...

MrZongle2 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  "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.
dragonwriter 10y ago
The senior leaders involved are in roles that, while I think they are all politically appointed, are more administrative than policy making (the most senior is the Undersecretary for Management.) Whatever criticisms there have been of foreign policy, there has been little criticism that the State Department has failed administrstively in implementing the policy set by the Administration.
Bartweiss 10y ago
But the newly-emptied roles are things like Director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations. Those jobs have been performed quite competently, up to the limits of what elected leadership has permitted. The obvious counterpoints like Benghazi ultimately trace back to either executive or legislative decisions; the resignees are the people who were requesting more security, while the people who refused it are still in place in Congress.

bryanmgreen 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.
pabloski 10y ago
"you're quitting because of a new leader with opposing views", this says it all about how tolerant the radical chics are!! if they win it is democracy, if they lose it is tyranny and the only ones who benefited from 20+ years of liberals/globalists in power are Wall Street oligarchs

dsr_ 10y ago

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.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> People seem to be under the impression that the senior civil service creates policy. These are people in positions that, I believe, are all political appointments, not civil service jobs. They are all career foreign service officers who have been in non-political jobs at State for decades, and all but one seem to have held political appointments under Presidents of both parties, but they aren't "senior civil service".
Bartweiss 10y ago
> 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.

rokosbasilisk 10y ago

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.

cakeface 10y ago

Why was this flagged?

sctb 10y ago
Most politics, especially pure politics, and certainly partisan politics, are explicitly off-topic for HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
SlipperySlope 10y ago
Off topic for hackers?
- AlexandrB 10y ago
  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.