Daily Archives: November 11, 2020

@Transition46 Releases Names of Agency Review Teams For @StateDept, @USAID, @USAGM, and @USUN

November 11, 2020 By in Biden, Federal Agencies, State Department, Transition, USAID Tags: , , , , , ,
The Biden-Harris Transition has released the names of Agency Review Teams for the State Department, USAID (which includes MCC, Peace Crops, IDFC),  the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) and the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. A lot of familiar names here. Note that all members are currently listed as “volunteers”. According to Transition46, these are individuals who are volunteering for the Transition in their personal capacity. For these team members, their current or most recent employer is listed (for informational purposes only), and their source of funding is listed as “Volunteer.”
We have added a countdown to Inauguration Day on our right sidebar.

 

MikeyPo Shows Once More His Smallness as Secretary of State #ByePompeo

November 11, 2020 By in Americans Abroad, Diplomatic Security, Elections, Foreign Service, Hall of Shame, Leadership and Management, Mike Pompeo, Pompeo, Realities of the FS, Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State, Social Media, State Department, Transition, Trends, Trump, U.S. Missions, US Presidents Tags: , , ,
We’re not sure why people expects anything better from the 70th secretary of state. If you were shocked, you have not been paying attention. This secretary of state has shown repeatedly, despite a much touted swagger, that he was not the man for this job. Why do you think he needed that swagger?  But swagger can only take one so far. Reality eventually catches up with you. He will go down in history not only as the most political secretary of state in modern times, but also the worst one by far.
No, we haven’t forgotten about Rex Tillerson, but the 69th secretary of state was not an  ideologue nor an opportunistic hack like his successor. SecState 69th was also his own man, and he recognized a moron when he saw one. Unfortunately, this is something we cannot say about the soon to be former secretary of state otherwise known as ‘a heat-seeking missile’ for … oh, golly, you undiplomatic, you!
Folks may complain in the future about other secretaries of state, but we expect it will always come down to the threshold question — is he or she Pompeo-bad?
The leadership behavior at State appears to be trickling down. A senior security official at the US Embassy in Kabul recently called the U.S. election on social media, a “fraudulent election”, called President-Elect Joe Biden, a “senile idiot” and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris, “a woman that claims to be black, but she’s not.” As if that’s not offensive enough, this senior career official also writes, “Oh and did I mention, so much for the economy, when this stupid fucking moron appoints Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to his cabinet. Watch it all collapse and then you’ll wonder what happened to our country. Obama fucked it all up and Trump turned it around. Now it all goes to shit again.”  Meltdown at the Kabul aisle!
This is not only unacceptable and outstandingly bad behavior for a senior official overseas, this is also against the Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual, see 3 FAM 4123.3  for Political Activities for starters. But given the tolerance for bad behavior in Foggy Bottom, will US Embassy Kabul, DGHR, or the State Department clean up or just look away with a sigh?
There are some good news though; come January 20, Mr. Pompeo (and his buddies), whether he accepts the Biden reality or not, will have to step down from his job. And oh, my gosh!  He also must leave the USG-provided housing he now occupies (one flag officer says yay!) and return to … well, we’re not sure exactly where that might be. Maybe Kansas where he almost run for the Senate and could have won a six-year term.  It doesn’t matter, really, does it?  He’ll be working on his 2024 project unless somebody crashes it.  Somewhere, we imagine, he will be grilling a journalist or two with blank world maps. And he needs to walk and scoop after Sherman and Mercer.
Also on January 20, please fumigate swagger from Foggy Bottom and get moving. There is much work to be done. We hope folks will pour their energies in the rebuilding and strengthening of our institutions. But we also hope they won’t forget to write down their memos to file documenting their last four years of organizational life. May y’all remember because the world will not go back to what it was as the Kabul incident shows.  Something broke here. And it will take many long years to repair. But it’s important to remember, and uphold — as Sheila S. Coronel of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism wrote in “A warning from the Philippines on how a demagogue can haunt politics for decades” — uphold “a truthful record of history” even as some of these people swagger into the sunset.