Category Archives: Courage

PSA: Do You Need Help?

April 8, 2021 By in Americans Abroad, Courage, MEDical, Realities of the FS, State Department, U.S. Missions Tags: , , , ,
13 GoingOn 14: Help Keep the Blog Going For 2021 — GFM: https://gofund.me/32671a27

 

Via state.gov:

We strongly encourage you to get help and support from a trained mental health professional if you are:

  • Feeling sad or depressed most of the time for more than one week.
  • Feeling anxious or having distressing thoughts you can’t control most of the time for more than one week.
  • Having continuing difficulty working or meeting your daily responsibilities.
  • Having problems in your relationships, or trouble taking care of your family.
  • Increasing your use of alcohol or misuse prescription medications, street drugs, or using them to cope.
  • Having traumatic stress reactions that are not getting better as time passes.
  • Thinking about hurting or killing yourself.
  • Thinking about hurting or killing someone else.
  • Doing things to hurt yourself, like cutting or burning yourself.
  • You are extremely angry most of the time.
  • Other people are saying they’re concerned about you and think you should talk to someone.
  • You are having trouble sleeping most of the time.
  • You are experiencing changes in appetite (significant increase or decrease), most of the time or you’ve lost significant weight without meaning to.
If you are feeling suicidal or homicidal, it’s URGENT that you let someone know. You should seek help immediately by calling 911 or going to the closest emergency room or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you are overseas you should seek help immediately by calling or visit the health unit, your doctor or visit or call the Military Crisis Line  or a local Suicide Hotline .

It doesn’t have to be an emergency for you to benefit from talking with a professional. Professionals who have training and expertise in working with military personnel and those deployed to the combat environment can help you with several things:

  • Learn to manage your feelings and thoughts more effectively.
  • Learn to feel more comfortable talking to people in your daily life.
  • Learn to pursue goals that are important to you.
  • Learn to focus on the future.

Some reactions are very common in the first week or two following a traumatic event and, do not require in-person consultation with a counselor. Initially you may difficulties with normal activities and responsibilities, avoidance of situations, nervousness, or sleeping problems. If there is no improvement after the first weeks following a stressful or traumatic event, then face-to-face counseling should be strongly considered.

You may also want to consider counseling if:

  • The people close to you are not able to support you the way you need them to.
  • You are isolated or without close family or friends.
  • The traumatic experience feels so personal or sensitive (such as rape, assault, domestic violence, loss of a buddy, friendly-fire related incident) that you don’t feel comfortable or safe talking with anyone you may know.

Remember… 
Seeking counseling is not a sign of weakness; seeking support is a sign of strength. Talking to a counselor can improve your ability to help yourself.

If you’re not sure whether to seek counseling

Make an appointment for a consultation. This is not a contract for services. You can meet with a therapist and discuss if the services are right for you at this time. Remember that “shopping around” for a counselor is a perfectly acceptable thing to do; in fact many people recommend it.

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American Oversight Publishes Heavily Redacted State/OIG Hotline Complaint Regarding Pompeo Conduct

July 20, 2020 By in Courage, Govt Documents, Mike Pompeo, Oversight, Pompeo, Public Service, Secretary of State, State Department, Trends, Whistleblowers Tags: , , , , , , , ,

 

In May this year, American Oversight filed an FOIA request to the Department of State seeking “records sufficient to identify any whistleblower complaints containing allegations that concern the conduct of Secretary Mike Pompeo.” It also asked that the request be processed on an expedited basis. “The request was made in light of news on May 15 that President Donald Trump would be ousting State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, the independent watchdog tasked with overseeing the State Department headed by Secretary Mike Pompeo.”
On July 17, 2020, American Oversight published the State/OIG Hotline Complaint, a 4-page heavily redacted document of a whistleblower complaint.
The complaint was not/not submitted anonymously, but the sender marked “no” on the section for willingness to waive confidentiality.
The whistleblower said that they witnessed “concerning activities” in Washington, D.C. , other locations in the U.S. including New York and Florida, and overseas.
A heavily redacted Summary of Incident notes whistleblower “directly witness and/or heard numerous firsthand accounts” followed by two paragraphs of blackened entry.
Under “False or misleading statements” were two paragraphs that were ruthlessly Sharpied.
Under “Direction by” two paragraphs were also under cover of darkness.
The complaint states, “tried on several occasions to obtain clarifications and guidance from senior leadership in S/ES and from the Office of Legal Advisors, but were blocked from doing so.”
Redacted names “were made aware of these concerns on repeated occasions.” “To my knowledge, none of them ever took action to resolve the issues, and several of them specifically directed subordinate staff to continue facilitating questionable activities after the concerns were raised.”
At some point the names of these alleged enablers will be known to the public. Please be alert on what happens to this whistleblower whose identity is known to State/OIG.
S/ES is the Executive Secretariat of the State Department.  The Office of Legal Adviser is currently encumbered by an Acting Legal Adviser since the departure of the Legal Adviser in May 2019.

Tex Harris: What happens when crucial facts are ignored by your superiors? (Via ADST)

July 10, 2020 By in Americans Abroad, Courage, Foreign Service, FSOs, Public Service, Realities of the FS, State Department, U.S. Missions, WHA|Western Hemisphere Tags: , , , ,

 

Via ADST

The tension between Harris and the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires came to a head with the discovery of a file on the planned Yacyretá Dam project, a hydroelectric dam to be constructed between several South American countries with EXIM [Export-Import Bank of the United States] financing for the involvement of an American company. However, Harris quickly noted something unusual about the Argentine manufacturer listed in the file he had borrowed. It had deep connections to the government regime, information that had not been shared with Washington.

In this “Moment,” Tex Harris describes the difficulties and the risk to his personal career he faced in spreading awareness of the dangers of U.S. involvement in the Yacyretá Dam project, highlighting the barriers to morality he occasionally encountered within the bureaucracy.

F. Allen “Tex” Harris’s interview was conducted by Charles Stuart Kennedy on December 10, 1999.

Read Tex Harris’s full oral history HERE (pdf).

Defying superiors: So Bill Hallman [the political counselor] came into my little airless office, like an overgrown closet, and he sat down and he talked about responsibility and team play and all the other kinds of things that we had to understand in the Foreign Service, that there was a responsibility to doing things in a collective way and that, even though we may feel strongly about something as an individual, we had to put things into perspective and [accept] the judgment of senior people and other visions and other ideas, and blend in. We had this long philosophical discussion. Bill was a wonderful, very thoughtful and conscientious Catholic probably trained in a Jesuit school. He was very intelligent and a fine Officer. So we had this very, very theoretical discussion about responsibility in the Foreign Service to be a member of the team and to fit your ideas into the fabric of an embassy’s reporting. Then, like a bombshell, he pulled out my letters and said that the DCM and he had requested me to withdraw these letters and not to send them in the pouch, that they shouldn’t go up as an official-informal with information that was as pertinent and as potentially disruptive to a major multimillion-dollar arrangement. It should be done in a considered way by the embassy. Well, I don’t get angry, I really don’t get angry, but I was really upset. I didn’t lose it, but I was really upset, and I told Bill absolutely not, I had considered this, and if the embassy wanted to send up a detailed telegram, it would get there certainly before the classified pouch got there. These were marked “confidential,” and these official-informal letters would come after the fact, and the embassy would send a telegram out in the next day or so, next day or two, and still put its considered view, and I refused to withdraw the letters and they should go in the pouch. So we talked for another half an hour, and then when it was all over, Bill then said to me, “I guess I’ve done one thing. At least we’ve missed the closing of the pouch for this day,” . . . it bought him some more time. This was before e-mails. This was when telephone calls were big deals, and the main thing was either pouch or cable. So Hallman left. I felt I had just been hit with about a three-hundred-pound stone. I went down kind of reeling to the “cobra,” to the pouch room, where you put your messages in the communications center. The guy was there and I said, “I’ve got to get these in the pouch. They were taken out by the DCM, but now I want to send them back.” He said, “I’m sorry. I can’t. We’ve closed the pouch.” So probably my greatest negotiation as a diplomat was to convince the communicator to open the pouch. After some conversation about the importance of this, he decided that he would open the pouch, which meant he had to redo all the seals and redo all the paperwork. He did it and put these two letters back in the pouch and closed them up. I didn’t say anything further to Hallman. I didn’t tell him that I had gotten them in the pouch. I just went back to my office with a feeling of satisfaction that I had overcome what had been a significantly bad event.

Facing the music: I got what was probably the worst efficiency report ever written on any individual. It was absolutely incredible: “not a team player, his own sense of values and priorities,” and so forth, and I got a fairly rigorous and tough but in a sense fair from his perspective [review] from the political counselor. There was a certain amount of negotiation involved in that. But the DCM, who was a very skillful writer, Max Chaplin, wrote a review that was absolutely an epitaph, just carved in stone. When this got back to Washington, I was identified for selection out. My tour was going to be a three-year tour, and the Argentine government had come to the ambassador, Castro, and said that they were going to PNG me [make me persona non grata], and Castro talked them out of that on the theory that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know, and if you send Harris back, then Derian will send someone else down here who may be even taller and worse than Harris. So Castro talked them out of that, and they didn’t PNG me, but things became so difficult in the embassy after this Yacyretá business. . . .

It was quite clear that my career was in deep trouble with this efficiency report. I had sent a copy of it to Derian and to Mark and asked them if there was anything they could put in the file to balance it off, and he put a very good—I think Mark may have signed it, Patt may have been out—and it was a very well done praise of the work I had done and the contribution I had made to American foreign policy. So the review board—after having been low ranked, I went to the review board—essentially gave me a censure. It wasn’t an official reprimand or anything where I lost pay or things like that, but essentially wrote me a letter of censure that I had to become a better team player, and of course I had been low-ranked. Now, I was the guy who had invented the grievance system. I had been there at the beginning with other people, and here was an efficiency report that was absolutely defective, but I was so emotionally unable, psychologically unable, to deal with the ramifications of going through all this pain that was associated with the report and my being identified for selection out, and all these other painful moments, that I ran away from it, which is a very standard psychological behavior of diverting from things that are difficult and hard and painful. It’s the way the body protects itself. So for year after year after year I couldn’t get promoted, because they’d open up the file and here was this low ranking, this selection-out procedure in the file, and this horrific report, and I was facing [the] time in class [deadline].

 

Highlighting Heroes: Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch Honors Her Oath

December 5, 2019 By in Ambassadors, Courage, Foreign Service, FSOs, Govt Documents, Impeachment Inquiry, Leadership and Management, Mike Pompeo, Pompeo, Realities of the FS, Secretary of State, State Department, Top Ranks Tags: , , , ,
It is highly likely that the State Department will not include Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch in its Highlighting Heroes initiative.  So we will do our own highlights here. No matter what is in the future for her, we and many others will remember her and honor her for her courage in speaking up first when it mattered most.
The secretary of state, proud … um defender of the rule of law only when convenient, told the committee Ambassador Yovanovitch may not attend the deposition without agency provided counsel (counsel that looks after the government not the employee’s interest), and the undersecretary for management, who oversees personnel at the State Department instructed her not to appear for a deposition. She was issued a congressional subpoena and appeared for her deposition and public testimony.
Her private counsel wrote to U/S Brian Bulatao: “Although the Ambassador has faithfully and consistently honored her professional duties as a State Department employee—including at all times following her abrupt termination as U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine—she is unable to obey your most recent directive.”
Excerpt from The Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report

Despite President Trump’s explicit orders that no Executive Branch employees should cooperate with the House’s impeachment inquiry and efforts by federal agencies to limit the testimony of those who did, multiple key officials complied with duly authorized subpoenas and provided critical testimony at depositions and public hearings. These officials adhered to the rule of law and obeyed lawful subpoenas.

Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Department of State
See PDF pp 245-247

On September 13, the Committees sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seeking a transcribed interview with Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and other State Department officials.287

The Committees received no direct, substantive response to this letter. On September 27, the Committees sent a letter informing Secretary Pompeo that Ambassador Yovanovitch’s deposition was being scheduled on October 2, stating:

On September 13, the Committees wrote to request that you make State Department employees available for transcribed interviews. We asked you to provide, by September 20, dates by which the employees would be made available for transcribed interviews. You failed to comply with the Committees’ request.288

Also on September 27, the Committees sent a letter directly to Ambassador Yovanovitch seeking her appearance at a deposition on October 2.289

On October 1, Secretary Pompeo sent a letter to the Committees stating:

Therefore, the five officials subject to your letter may not attend any interview or deposition without counsel from the Executive Branch present to ensure that the Executive Branch’s constitutional authority to control the disclosure of confidential information, including deliberative matters and diplomatic communications, is not impaired.290

After further discussions with Ambassador Yovanovitch’s counsel, her deposition was rescheduled for October 11. On October 10, Brian Bulatao, the Under Secretary of State for Management, sent a letter to Ambassador Yovanovitch’s personal attorney directing Ambassador Yovanovitch not to appear for her deposition and enclosing Mr. Cipollone’s October 8 letter stating that President Trump and his Administration would not participate in the House’s impeachment inquiry. Mr. Bulatao’s letter stated:

Accordingly, in accordance with applicable law, I write on behalf of the Department of State, pursuant to the President’s instruction reflected in Mr. Cipollone’s letter, to instruct your client (as a current employee of the Department of State), consistent with Mr. Cipollone’s letter, not to appear before the Committees under the present circumstances.291

That same day, October 10, when asked whether he intended to block Ambassador Yovanovitch from testifying the next day, President Trump stated: “You know, I don’t think people should be allowed. You have to run a country, I don’t think you should be allowed to do that.”292

On the morning of Ambassador Yovanovitch’s deposition on October 11, the Committees sent a letter to her personal attorney transmitting a subpoena compelling her appearance, stating:

In light of recent attempts by the Administration to direct your client not to appear voluntarily for the deposition, the enclosed subpoena now compels your client’s mandatory appearance at today’s deposition on October 11, 2019.293

Later on October 11, Ambassador Yovanovitch’s personal attorney sent a letter to Mr. Bulatao, stating:

In my capacity as counsel for Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, I have received your letter of October 10, 2019, directing the Ambassador not to appear voluntarily for her scheduled deposition testimony on October 11, 2019 before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Committee on Oversight and Reform in connection with the House of Representatives’s impeachment inquiry. Just this morning, the Ambassador received a subpoena issued by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, requiring her to appear for the deposition as scheduled. Although the Ambassador has faithfully and consistently honored her professional duties as a State Department employee—including at all times following her abrupt termination as U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine—she is unable to obey your most recent directive. As the recipient of a duly issued congressional subpoena, Ambassador Yovanovitch is, in my judgment, legally obligated to attend the depositions as scheduled.294

Ambassador Yovanovitch participated in the deposition on October 11, in compliance with the Committees’ subpoena.295 During her deposition, Ambassador Yovanovitch’s personal attorney confirmed that “she received a direction by the Under Secretary to decline to appear voluntarily.”296

On November 15, the Committees transmitted a subpoena to Ambassador Yovanovitch compelling her to testify at a public hearing of the Intelligence Committee that same day.297 Ambassador Yovanovitch complied with the Committees’ subpoena and testified at the public hearing. During the hearing, Chairman Schiff acknowledged Ambassador Yovanovitch’s compliance, stating:

Ambassador, I want to thank you for your decades of service. I want to thank you, as Mr. Maloney said, for being the first one through the gap. What you did in coming forward and answering a lawful subpoena was to give courage to others that also witnessed wrongdoing, that they, too, could show the same courage that you have, that they could stand up, speak out, answer questions, they could endure whatever threats, insults may come their way. And so in your long and distinguished career you have done another great public service in answering the call of our subpoena and testifying before us today.298

A Resolute Marie Yovanovitch Shines at the Impeachment Inquiry

November 18, 2019 By in Ambassadors, Courage, Foreign Service, FSOs, Realities of the FS, State Department, Trump, U.S. Missions, Ukraine Tags: ,

 

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock this past week (like you know who),  you’ve probably already seen, read or heard about former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch’s appearance at a public hearing on the first week of the impeachment inquiry. Beyond the obvious parts of the testimony concerning her removal, and the president’s detestable tweet while she was in the middle of the hearing, we were struck by a few things:
Just doing what needs to be done
At one point during the hearing, Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Alabama) said: “You spoke about how your service is not just your own personal service, it affects your family, and today we have seen you as this former ambassador of this 33 year veteran of the Foreign Service. But I want to know about you personally and how this has affected you personally and your family.”
Ambassador Yovanovitch’s answered that “It’s been a difficult time. I am a private person, I don’t want to put all of that out there, it’s been a very, very difficult time because the president does have the right to have his own, her own ambassador in every country in the world.”
Rep. Terri Sewell tried again asking, “how has it affected your family?”
Ambassador Yovanovitch gave a very diplomatic and firm response by simply saying that “I really don’t want to get into that, but thank you for asking.” She could have told them about the recent loss of her 91-year old mother, but she did not. She had one job to do there and she was not going to get distracted from that despite what ever else may be going on in her personal life.  Her resoluteness in the face of difficulties  and the challenges she will face going forward is admirable. 
No praises for Trump even to save her job 
When Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) asked Ambassador Yovanovitch about the advice given to her by political ambassador to USEU Gordon Sondland, Ambassador Yovanovitch said, “He suggested that I needed to go big or go home. And he said that the best thing to do would be to, you know, send out a tweet, praise the president, that sort of thing.” When asked about her reaction to that advice,  she responded that she’s sure “he meant well, but it was not advice that I could really follow. It felt — it felt partisan, it felt political and I just — that was not something that I thought (ph) was in keeping with my role as ambassador and a Foreign Service officer.”
When asked if Ambassador Sondland gave “any specific suggestions on what to say about the president of the United States, or just say something nice about him”, Ambassador Yovanovitch responded , “Yeah, just to praise him.”
She could have easily “gone big” as suggested by somebody who donated big to this president’s inauguration; no one but her and Sondland would have known about the advice had she done it. But the 33-year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service declined to sing Trump praises — even to save her job — because  she thought it was not “in  keeping ” with her “role as ambassador and a Foreign Service officer.”
Imagine that. 
How many ambassadors (or cabinet secretaries for that matter) would make the same choices or would folks just start thinking, hey what’s the harm with a simple tweet? But how long before it will be more than just a simple tweet and folks start wearing dark eye googles just to comb their thinning hair in front of the mirror?
Fellowship at Georgetown
New York Representative  Elise Stefanik wanted confirmation that Ambassador Yovanovitch is still an employee of the  State Department so “there’s no public confusion” and said that “Georgetown students are lucky to have” her.
Texas representative K. Michael Conaway wanted to know “what happened when you — when you came back here as to what your next assignment would be at — at State?” (This is the same representative who wanted to know if somebody paid George Kent to say those “glowing” things about Ambassador Yovanovitch. He also asked her, “Do they shun you at the lunch counter? I mean, do they treat you badly as a — as a result of the way you were treated by — by the president?”)
Ambassador Yovanovitch responded that when she came back “obviously it was sort of out of cycle, there was nothing set up…”. She added, “And again, I am grateful that Deputy Secretary Sullivan asked me what I would like to do next. I recalled that there was the fellowship at Georgetown and asked whether that might be something that could be arranged.”
Representative Conaway asked “Was that your only choice?” She responded “I’m not sure.... We didn’t really discuss other options.” He ended up his inquiry by saying, “I hope that, whatever you decide to do after the Georgetown fellowship, that — that you’re as successful there as you’ve been in the first 33 years.”  He has no idea, does he?
Foreign Service assignments for tenured employees typically run 3 years, with occasional 1 year extensions. These assignments are usually handed out a year before the actual rotation. Since she was reportedly asked earlier to extend her assignment in Kyiv until 2020, it most probably means she was not “bidding” for any assignment by the time she was yanked out of Ukraine. There are few jobs available when assignments are suddenly curtailed or shortened.  And given the target on her back after Ukraine, Georgetown may have been the only option for her. But here’s the thing, she could not stay there forever. At most, that’s a one year assignment. Which also means that she would have been looking for her next assignment during this year’s bidding cycles.
No next time, Mr. Pompeo and State Department spoxes talk about their support for Foreign Service employees, ask them what is Ambassador Yovanovitch’s next assignment.
Most jobs appropriate for her rank (Minister-Counselor, equivalent to Two-star rank (O-8) require a nomination or a State Department leadership approval. She previously served as Deputy Commandant at the Eisenhower School at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.as well as Dean of the School of Language Studies at the Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute. She could do the schools again or get back and serve in Foggy Bottom.  But it’s not a simple question of “whatever” she decides to do after the Georgetown fellowship, it’s a question of what the State Department will allow her to do. We do not expect her to get another ambassadorship under this administration. We are concerned, however, that she will also have difficulties finding an onward assignment after her fellowship and that she will be forced into retirement.

US Embassy Ukraine’s Political Counselor David Holmes Appears For Deposition in #ImpeachmentInquiry

November 18, 2019 By in Courage, Foreign Service, FSOs, Impeachment Inquiry, Realities of the FS, State Department, Trends, Trump, U.S. Missions, Ukraine Tags: , , , , ,

 

 

Read: Opening Statements By FSOs Catherine Croft and Christopher Anderson in #ImpeachmentInquiry

October 30, 2019 By in Congress, Courage, Foreign Service, FSOs, Impeachment Inquiry, Realities of the FS, Special Envoys and Reps, State Department, Trends, U.S. Missions, Ukraine Tags: , , , , ,

 

Foreign Service Officers Catherine Croft and Christopher Anderson appeared on the Hill today for their closed door depositions. The links to their Opening Statements are provided below.

Catherine M. Croft is a Foreign Service Officer with nine years in service. According to her Opening Statement, she started work on Ukraine in 2013, when she was posted to the U.S. Mission to NATO. After Russia invaded Crimea, she was assigned to NATO headquarters in Brussels. From August 2015 to July 2017, she served as one of several Ukraine Desk Officers in Foggy Bottom. In July 2017 she joined the National Security Council Staff at the White House as Director covering Ukraine. She left  the NSC in July 2018 and started studying Arabic at the ForeignService Institute in preparation for a tour in Baghdad. But in May 2019, she was asked to take over as Ambassador Volker’s Advisor. She spent the month of June at the US Embassy Kyiv “to prepare and then spent the week of July 8 overlapping with” her predecessor, Christopher Anderson.

Christopher J. Anderson is a Foreign Service Officer with fourteen years of service. According to his Opening Statement, he has been in the Foreign Service since 2005. His work in Ukraine began with a three-week temporary duty to Kyiv in March 2014 “just after Russia invaded and occupied Crimea.” He returned to Kyiv in September 2014 to serve as the External Unit Chief in the Political Section of Embassy Kyiv. He served in Kyiv from 2014–2017 and “worked closely with Ambassador Yovanovitch from 2015–2017.” In August 2017 Ambassador Volker reportedly asked him to serve as Special Advisor for Ukraine Negotiations. He served in that position from late August 2017 until July 12, 2019. He was succeed on his job by Catherine Croft.

 

Secretary ‘No See, No Hear’ Expected to Stand Up For Something, a No Show

October 23, 2019 By in Ambassadors, Courage, Impeachment Inquiry, Leadership and Management, Mike Pompeo, Realities of the FS, Secretary of State, Spectacular, State Department, Trends, Trump Tags: , ,

 

Sexual Harassment in the Federal Government: Public Comments #FedMeToo

October 17, 2019 By in Courage, EEOC, Foreign Service, FSOs, Leadership and Management, Realities of the FS, Regulations, State Department, Trends, U.S. Missions Tags: , , , , ,

 

This is a follow-up to our posts on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’s  examination of sexual harassment in the federal government.  The Commission specifically examined agency-level practices to address sexual harassment at the U.S. Department of State and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) says that the testimony from their May 2019 briefing and public comments “will inform” their 2020 report “to Congress, the President, and the American people regarding the federal government’s response to sexual harassment in the federal workplace.”
USCCR has now made available the public comments sent to the Commission.
Note that S/OCR is one of those offices that report directly to the Secretary of State,
Also, left on its own, we don’t think the State Department would willingly release the victims of harassment, discrimination or assaults from the Non Disclosure Agreements signed.  It is left to the U.S. Congress to mandate such a release, as well as require the Department to make public the cost of these taxpayer funded-settlements each fiscal year.
Individual 2: FSO-01 with 17 years in the Foreign Service and six years of active duty in the U.S. Military

 

Individual 3: Retired FSO (2006-2017) with 16 co-signers

 

Individual 5: FSO for Locally Employed Staff

FSO, assault survivor

Senior Litigator at the Justice Department, stalked by supervisor for over a year
Related posts:

WaPo Editorial Board: Pompeo is enabling the destruction of U.S. diplomacy

October 4, 2019 By in Courage, Diplomacy, Diplomatic Life, Elections, Foreign Service, FSOs, Hall of Shame, Impeachment, Media, Pompeo, Realities of the FS, Secretary of State, State Department, Trump Tags: , , , ,

 

Via WaPo Editorial Board:

Mr. Pompeo listened on July 25 while Mr. Trump pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate that theory as well as the false story that Mr. Biden sought the removal of a Ukrainian prosecutor to protect his son. He listened while Mr. Trump slandered the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch — a dedicated Foreign Service professional — whose tour in Kiev Mr. Pompeo had cut short.
[…]
Mr. Pompeo’s claim that the conversation was “in the context” of long-standing U.S. policy is demonstrably false.

So, too, was Mr. Pompeo’s assertion that a request by House committees for depositions from Ms. Yovanovitch and other State Department officials was improper. Mr. Pompeo claimed the committees had not followed proper procedure or given the officials enough time to prepare. He insisted that State Department lawyers must be present at all depositions to prevent the disclosure of “privileged information.” The House committee chairmen correctly interpreted this bluster: Mr. Pompeo, they said, was “intimidating Department witnesses in order to protect himself and the President.”

Fortunately, one of those witnesses, former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt D. Volker, is due to testify on Thursday, and Ms. Yovanovitch has reportedly been scheduled for next week. They and other State Department professionals should not hesitate to tell Congress the truth about how Mr. Pompeo enabled the destruction of U.S. diplomacy.

Give this guy the “One Team” Award!