American values? Tillerson: “The president speaks for himself.” Uh-oh!

Posted: 4:51 am  ET
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Axios writes: “We’ve been hearing for weeks, from sources who’ve spoken to the president, that Trump is getting more and more fed up with Tillerson, who has still yet to staff his agency.” The report enumerates multiple criticisms directed at Tillerson:
1) why he still doesn’t have political appointees in the top roles at the State Department;
2) Tillerson hasn’t put in the time to build goodwill with Washington’s foreign policy community or with the media;
3) reports that Tillerson has destroyed morale at State, empowering only the tiniest inner circle;
4) Qatar;
5) Venezuela and Tom Shannon;
6) Iran;
7) Tillerson’s Chief of Staff Margaret Peterlin

AND NOW THIS —

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More Departures: John Heffern (EUR), Tracey Ann Jacobson (IO), Bill Brownfield (INL)

Posted: 4:16 am  ET
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Last week, FP reported that Tracey Ann Jacobson, 52, a career foreign service officer who served as Acting Assistant Secretary of the Bureau for International Organization Affairs (IO), announced her plans to take early retirement to her staff.  The current Assistant Secretary of State of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs William R. Brownfield who was appointed to post in January 10, 2011, reportedly also told his bureau that he would step down by the end of September.  Just a few weeks ago, Ambassador Brownfirled was still rumored as in the running for the WHA post. The two departures in addition to the Acting Assistant Secretary of the European Affairs Ambassador John Heffern who also stepped down from post before the confirmation of the EUR nominee.

With the exception of EUR, no nominees have been announced for IO or INL, which means, the musical chairs will continue in Foggy Bottom. In the case of Ambassador Heffern, he is stepping down prior to the confirmation of the EUR nominee Wess Mitchell (2017-07-25 PN816 Department of State | A. Wess Mitchell, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Secretary of State (European and Eurasian Affairs)).  Presumably, the nominee will be confirmed but we won’t really know until it happens or when. As of this writing, Mr. Mitchell’s nomination is pending in the SFRC and no hearing schedule has been announced.  This has now become a trend in Foggy Bottom — acting assistant secretaries replaced with other acting assistant secretaries absent the nomination of actual nominees. Which doesn’t make sense, folks adjusting to these new bosses who will be gone when later new bosses will be appointed to take their places.

It could always get worse, of course. Maybe you’ll show up for work on Monday reporting to a two-eyed new boss, and by Friday, you get a three-eyed new boss.

We don’t know who will be in acting capacities for IO and INL but we were informed that Ambassador Elisabeth I. Millard, a career diplomat who was sworn in as the United States Ambassador to Tajikistan on December 14, 2015 is coming in a Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (PDAS) and presumably will be acting EUR pending the Mitchell confirmation.  Under normal times, she would be on a typical 3-year tour so she would not be expected to rotate out of Tajikistan until next year. But these are abnormal times.  Abnormal times in more ways than one. Would anyone actually be surprised if it turns out that a top official is pushed out in all likelihood because of a tweet?

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16 USG Employees in “Sonic Attack” and More on The Secret History of Diplomats and Invisible Weapons

Posted: 3:33 am  ET
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On August 24, during the Daily Press Briefing, the State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert confirmed that 16 USG employees were affected by the “sonic attack.”

We only now have the confirmation of the number of Americans who have been affected by this. We can confirm that at least 16 U.S. Government employees, members of our embassy community, have experienced some kind of symptoms. They have been provided medical treatment in the United States as well as in Cuba. We take this situation extremely seriously. We are trying to provide them the help, the medical care, the treatment, and the support that they need and the support that they deserve.

It is not clear at this time if this number includes family members. We are aware of at least one spouse who was reportedly affected by this attack, was medevaced with the employee-spouse, and both were reassigned elsewhere.

The spox also said that “The incidents are no longer occurring.”  A reporter asked “so if we haven’t found a device and we don’t know who did it, and we’re talking about symptoms that are not, like, “Ow,” no longer ow; we’re talking about things that have – that developed over time, how do we – how do we know that this isn’t ongoing?”

The spox gave a very unsatisfying answer as follows: “How do we know that it’s not – because we talk with our staff and we talk with the medical professionals.”

Below is a piece by Sharon Weinberger from her book, The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency that Changed the World via FP:

In 1965, medical workers began showing up at the American embassy in Moscow, drawing blood from the employees inside. The American diplomats were told that doctors were looking for possible exposure to a new type of virus, something not unexpected in a country known for its frigid winters.

It was all a lie. The Moscow Viral Study, as it was called, was the cover story for the American government’s top secret investigation into the effects of microwave radiation on humans.
[…]
A State Department doctor in charge of the blood tests, Cecil Jacobson, asserted that there had been some chromosomal changes, but none of the scientific reviews of his work seemed to back his view. Jacobson achieved infamy in later years, not for the Moscow Signal, but for fraud related to his fertility work. Among other misdeeds, he was sent to prison for impregnating possibly dozens of unsuspecting patients with his own sperm, rather than that of screened anonymous donors as they were expecting.

Richard Cesaro never attained that level of personal notoriety, but he asserted, even after he retired, that the Moscow Signal remained an open question. “I look at it as still a major, serious, unsettled threat to the security of the United States,” he said, when interviewed about it nearly two decades later. “If you really make the breakthrough, you’ve got something better than any bomb ever built, because when you finally come down the line you’re talking about controlling people’s minds.”

Perhaps, but Pandora resonated for years as the secrecy surrounding the project generated public paranoia and distrust of government research on radiation safety. Project Pandora was often cited as proof that the government knew more about the health effects of electro- magnetic radiation than it was letting on. The government did finally inform embassy personnel in the 1970s about the microwave radiation, prompting, not surprisingly, a slew of lawsuits.

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POTUS Tweets About Wall During #Harvey, Reminds Us of Mexico’s Help During Katrina

Posted: 2:46 am  ET
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