Tag Archives: Bill Burns

CIA’s Interim Report on Havana Syndrome Issued, Have You Read It? #AskMollyHale

January 20, 2022 By in Americans Abroad, CIA, Foreign Service, Hotspots, MEDical, Realities of the FS, State Department Tags: , , , , , , ,

 

NYT reports that the C.I.A. has found that “most cases of the mysterious ailments known as Havana syndrome are unlikely to have been caused by Russia or another foreign adversary, agency officials said, a conclusion that angered victims.”  CIA officials describing the interim findings to reporters also say that “A majority of the 1,000 cases reported to the government can be explained by environmental causes, undiagnosed medical conditions or stress, rather than a sustained global campaign by a foreign power.”
Politico writes that “CIA Director William Burns stands behind the current finding, but made clear the probe continues with an indefinite timeline.
“While we have reached some significant interim findings, we are not done,” Burns said in a statement. “We will continue the mission to investigate these incidents and provide access to world-class care for those who need it. While underlying causes may differ, our officers are suffering real symptoms. Our commitment to care is unwavering.”
A group of Havana Syndrome victims have reportedly released a statement criticizing the report while the investigation is ongoing. We haven’t seen the report. It looks like CIA officials are talking to the media discussing the findings of the interim report but the interim report itself has not been made available for the public to read.

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Nominee: Retired FSO Lisa Carty to be U.S. Representative to @UNECOSOC; Alt Rep to UNGA

July 19, 2021 By in FSOs, Nominations, Officially In, UN Tags: , , , ,
Thank you to over 500 readers and supporters who made our continued operation possible this year. Raising funds for a small outlet that is already open and free for all to read has often been the most challenging part of running  this blog. We are grateful for your continued support and well wishes. Gracias — DS
President Biden announced his intent to nominate Lisa Carty to be Representative of the United States of America on the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations with the rank of Ambassador and Alternate Representative to the United Nations General Assembly. The WH released the following brief bio:

Lisa Carty, Nominee for Representative of the United States of America on the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations with the rank of Ambassador and Alternate Representative to the United Nations General Assembly
Lisa A. Carty is Director for Humanitarian Financing and Resource Mobilization with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.  She has worked for more than three decades in multilateral diplomacy, including on humanitarian, global health and development issues.  Carty has had leadership roles in both the public and non-profit sectors including twenty-five years as a diplomat with the U.S. Foreign Service with overseas assignments in Asia, the Middle East and Russia.  Her United Nations career has included work with the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, as well as positions with the Joint United Nations Program on AIDS.

Earlier in her career, Ms. Carty helped lead the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program and was a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.   She holds a Master’s degree in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.  She speaks French.

 

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Confirmations: Bill Burns as CIA Director, Brian McKeon as State D/MR; Cancún Cruz Still a Hold on Sherman

March 18, 2021 By in CIA, Confirmations, Senate Hold, Senators, State Department, Top Ranks, U.S. Senate Tags: , , , , ,

 

On March 18, the U.S. Senate confirmed by voice vote the following nominations:
  • Executive Calendar #28, William Joseph Burns, of Maryland, to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
  • Executive Calendar #36, Brian P. McKeon, of the District of Columbia, to be Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources
The nomination of Wendy Sherman to be Deputy Secretary of State remains pending on the Executive Calendar with the reported hold placed on her nomination by  Cancún Cruz, a senator who will forever be remembered as either one of the heroes of the January 6 insurrection or one who fled to Mexico while his state froze.

 

 

SFRC Clears Sherman, McKeon Nominations; Cancún Cruz Announces Hold

March 12, 2021 By in Confirmations, Nominations, Senate Hold, Senators, SFRC, State Department, Top Ranks, Trends, U.S. Senate Tags: , , , ,
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Via senate.gov:

The senator from Texas has previously put a hold on the confirmation of Bill Burns as CIA Director.

 

 

Trump-Putin Show: A Shocker to the World, But “Fabulous …Better Than Super” to Russians

July 16, 2018 By in Diplomatic History, Disasters, EUR|Europe, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Hotspots, Huh? News, Realities of the FS, Security, Spectacular, State Department, Trends, Trump, US Presidents Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

The one-on-one summit meeting between President Trump and Russian President Putin finally happened today in Helsinki with no American officials in attendance as observers or notetakers, only interpreters.  The interpreter for the USG side is Marina Gross.

After a whole morning trapped in the vomitorium, we finally surfaced for air and some coffee. That joint press conference frankly was more bonkers than the SBC show we watched last night. After picking up our jaw from the floor, we saw that the Department of Justice this morning also unsealed a criminal complaint in the District of Columbia charging Maria Butina, a Russian national residing in Washington, D.C. with conspiracy to act as an agent of the Russian Federation within the United States.

I’m still sick to my stomach. We’ll remember this Helsinki moment in the future.

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Who will be Secretary of State on Jan. 31, 2017?

October 17, 2016 By in Elections, John F. Kerry, Secretary of State, State Department Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Posted: 3:11 pm PT
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PredictIt is a real money site that tests your knowledge of political and financial events by letting you make and trade predictions on the future.  The website says it is an educational purpose project of Victoria University, Wellington of New Zealand, a not-for-profit university, with support provided by Aristotle International, Inc., a U.S. provider of processing and verification services.  It involves real money so the consequences of being wrong can be bad for your pocket.

One of its current contracts is Who will be Secretary of State on Jan. 31, 2017? Right now the prediction market is favoring career diplomat, William Burns as the next SecState with Wendy Sherman and John Kerry following at second and third place. The other names making the list is Senator Bob Corker, Senator Rob Portman, and Ron Paul.

predictit-secstate

click on image to go to predictit

 

The names above are not the only ones going around these days, take a look:

 

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Familiar Names For Foggy Bottom in a Potential Clinton White House

August 4, 2016 By in Elections, Hillary Clinton, People, Public Service, Secretary of State, Social Media, Spectacular, State Department Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Posted: 3:01 am ET
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The names on who might be coming or coming back to Foggy Bottom in a Clinton Administration are not unexpected. Ambassador Wendy R. Sherman, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and Ambassador Nicholas Burns, also a former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs have been with her through the primary season. The two were part of a group of former top government officials who issued a joint statement raising questions about Senator Bernie Sanders’ proposals for countering ISIS and dealing with Iran. Probably the only surprising name in this round is James Stavridis, a retired U.S. Navy admiral and former Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) who is the current dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

Via Politico:

Secretary of State

For obvious reasons, this is seen as the job Clinton will think about most — potentially empowering the pick, or potentially leading to an extra level of oversight at Foggy Bottom from the West Wing. Clinton’s seen as being intrigued by having a person in the role who has experience in elected office, but there’s no obvious contender from the House and Senate (except for current Secretary of State John Kerry, whom people expect would leap at the chance to stay on, though probably would suffer from Clinton wanting to have her own pick in this job most of all). People at the State Department and elsewhere are pulling for Wendy Sherman, the former undersecretary of state for political affairs and a key player in the Iran nuclear deal, and Bill Burns, a career diplomat who was deputy secretary of state. Nick Burns is seen as being in the mix as well, a career foreign officer who rose to undersecretary of state for political affairs in Bush’s second term and has been a strong defender of Clinton in the campaign. Kurt Campbell, Clinton’s assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, has expressed interest to several people. Strobe Talbott, the friend of the Clintons and a deputy secretary of state during Bill Clinton’s first term and now the president of the Brookings Institute, is also seen as a possibility. Or Clinton might go for a surprise like James Stavridis, the admiral who was the only nonpolitician to be vetted for her running mate.

Would be interesting to see who might be coming to Foggy Bottom in a potential Trump administration. GOP national security folks, all 121 of them, recently published an open letter  saying “… we are united in our opposition to a Donald Trump presidency.”

The letter was coordinated by Dr. Eliot A. Cohen, former Counselor of the Department of State (2007–8) under Secretary Rice, and Bryan McGrath, Managing Director of The FerryBridge Group, a defense consultancy. Lots of familiar names. All saying, “as committed and loyal Republicans, we are unable to support a Party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head. We commit ourselves to working energetically to prevent the election of someone so utterly unfitted to the office.”  These folks have effectively ruled themselves out from working in a Trump Administration.  Which begs the question, who are still left in the tent?

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@StateDept Launches Center for the Study of the Conduct of Diplomacy at FSI

February 4, 2016 By in Diplomacy, Foreign Service, Lessons, Secretary of State, State Department, Technology and Work, Top Ranks Tags: , , , , , 2 Comments

Posted: 1:35 am EDT
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Excerpt from D/Secretary Antony J. Blinken on “American Diplomacy: Preparing for the Challenges of Tomorrow,” February 2, 2016:

Every day, our team here at State works towards big goals like this that benefit from the leadership and creativity of the innovation community.

And every day, our team tackles issues at the intersection of technology and foreign policy—from modernizing arms control agreements to negotiating norms of behavior in cyberspace or outer space.

Despite this focus, we need to create more bridges that allow our diplomats to tap into the energy and ingenuity of American education, innovation, and entrepreneurship—and enable our foreign policy priorities to spark or accelerate new ideas.

Developed under Deputy Secretary Burns’ leadership, the Foreign Service Institute’s Center for the Study of the Conduct of Diplomacy is one such bridge—ensuring that we apply the lessons of the past to our conduct and actions in the future.

We are also developing a new core curriculum at FSI, to ensure that everyone starts their careers with foundational knowledge and skills relevant to this century. Through new and experiential training, we will prepare our officers to better understand unstated assumptions that shape conflict and collaboration, apply future forecasting to the geopolitical world of tomorrow, and tap into unconscious drivers of behavior that will help us effectively conduct and advance our foreign policy.

To help build another of these bridges, Secretary Kerry recently established the Innovation Forum in order to enable our foreign policy leaders to be able to see around the innovation corner—to ask important questions like: “What does the revolution in robotics mean for warfighting? What do advances in artificial intelligence mean for our labor markets? What does the advent of digital currency mean for the dollar?”

Read in full here.

 

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Oh, boy, email of the day! [REDACTED] is “one of the biggest jerks in the foreign service”

January 4, 2016 By in Ambassadors, Foreign Service, FSOs, Functional Bureaus, Govt Documents, Hillary Clinton, Org Culture, Realities of the FS, Secretary of State, Staffing the FS, State Department, U.S. Missions, Where Are They Now? Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Posted: 2:02 pm EDT
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Thank you for your emails alerting us to this! We did not want to start our 2016 blogging about the jerk in the foreign service but today is the 4th day, and there’s a lesson here somewhere, so that’s our excuse.

Somebody’s corridor reputation showed up as toner and ice, stirred, from the latest Clinton email dump of December 31.  Sidney Blumenthal calls this John Kornblum’s “unvarnished tone” in his email to then Secretary Clinton.

 

 

Ambassador Kornblum, a career diplomat joined the Foreign Service in 1964. He was President Clinton’s Ambassador to Germany from 1997 to 2001. Prior to that assignment, he was the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs from July 3, 1996 – July 1, 1997.  Previously, President George Herbert Walker also nominated him to be U.S. Ambassador to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in 1991. In that capacity he served as chief of the American delegation to the 1992 Helsinki Review Conference and played a major role in drafting the Declaration approved at the July 1992 Helsinki Summit. According to the state.gov archive, Ambassador Kornblum established the new American delegation to the OSCE in Vienna in August 1992 where he served until April 1994. According to the WSJ, he is now senior counselor for Noerr LLP law firm in Berlin.

Bill Burns was appointed Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (P) on May 13, 2008 and served until July 28, 2011.  This Sid email is dated March 11, 2011, about four months before Burns departed post to become Deputy Secretary.  We don’t know what happened to the top Foreign Service contenders for the “P” job but we all know Bill Burns was succeeded by non-career appointee Wendy Sherman who was appointed “P” on September 21, 2011.

Prior to Ms. Sherman’s  appointment, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also wrote an email to HRC saying, “Don’t want to interfere but in case you are thinking about P, you will not be surprised that I am suggesting [name redacted].” Sherman had been Vice Chair of the Albright Stonebridge Group, Albright’s international strategic consulting firm, since the group’s formation in 2009.

In September 2015, President Obama nominated career diplomat Thomas Shannon to succeed Ms. Sherman who left office on October 2, 2015. The Shannon nomination has been subjected to Senator Grassley’s hold in the 114th Congress.

In any case, according to AFP, America apparently was left guessing after a tantalizing near-revelation about the “biggest jerk in American diplomacy” email.  If you are playing the guessing game on your first day at work in 2016, just remember that the candidate for this title is a he, who purportedly “went over to the dark side” during the Bush administration, and quite possibly, an EUR/NSC/WH hand, high enough in rank/connection to shout down a career ambassador.

And no, we’re not soliciting nominations for this one, so please keep the comments clean.

Like folks often say, your EER gets you promoted, but your corridor reputation gets you your next job.

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State Dept’s Wendy Sherman Now Dual-Hatted as “P” and New Acting Deputy Secretary

November 3, 2014 By in Appointments, John F. Kerry, Leadership and Management, Obama, Political Appointees, Realities of the FS, Secretary of State, Staffing the FS, State Department, Top Ranks Tags: , , , , , ,

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On November 3, the State Department’s No. 4 official, the Under Secretary for Political Affairs (P), Wendy Sherman was designated as the acting deputy secretary of state pending the official nomination of Bill Burns’ successor. We do not know how long is this interim period but since the appointment is in an acting capacity, the vacancy at “P” will also be for an acting capacity. If Ms. Sherman is officially nominated as deputy secretary, there will be an official vacancy at “P,” a post traditionally encumbered by a career Foreign Service Officer. If another individual is nominated as deputy secretary of state (White House deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken is rumored to be in the running), Ms. Sherman may just return to her previous assignment at “P.” Place your bets now, folks.

The Secretary has requested and the President has designated Wendy R. Sherman to assume all authorities and responsibilities of the Deputy Secretary, effective November 3, 2014.

Ambassador Wendy R. Sherman was sworn in as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs on September 21, 2011, a position she will retain during the interim period.

Prior to this position, Under Secretary Sherman served as Vice Chair of Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy firm, and a member of the Investment Committee of Albright Capital Management, an affiliated investment advisory firm focused on emerging markets.

Ambassador Sherman served as Counselor for the State Department from 1997 to 2001, as well as Special Advisor to President Clinton and Policy Coordinator on North Korea. From 1993 to 1996, under Secretary of State Warren Christopher, she was Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs.

Ambassador Sherman served as Chair of the Board of Directors of Oxfam America. She also served on the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Policy Board, a group tasked with providing the Secretary of Defense with independent, informed advice and opinion concerning matters of defense policy.

In 2008, Ambassador Sherman was appointed by Congressional Leadership to serve on the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation and Terrorism.

Ambassador Sherman attended Smith College, and received a B.A. cum laude from Boston University and a Master’s degree in Social Work, Phi Kappa Phi, from the University of Maryland.

Just curious —  is there at all, any career diplomat,being considered or is in the running for the D or P positions?

Originally posted as State Dept Gets a New Acting Deputy Secretary; Hurry, Now Vacancy for “Acting  P.”

Update:  The Cable’s John Hudson is reporting that an internal notice went out to employees today informing them  that Ms. Sherman will “assume all authorities and responsibilities of the Deputy Secretary,” effective immediately. At the same time, she will apparently continue to hold the position of undersecretary of state for political affairs and operate out of her same office.  The same report also says that President Barack Obama reportedly now favors the nomination of Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken for deputy secretary of state, the No. 2 position in Foggy Bottom and that “Ms. Sherman has been informed that she is not the permanent pick for the job.” Information is sourced from multiple unnamed sources.

Maybe this is all true, or maybe it’s an effort to shore up support for the “D” candidate floated around, and/or see what kind of Hill reaction surfaces.   Makes one wonder one thing though, if Blinken is now the top pick, how come the White House has not made an official announcement.  Instead, what we have are anonymous talks about Blinken as the WH preferred candidate. Is the WH waiting to make an announcement after the election or after a new Congress is seated?  Hold on, maybe, the WH is waiting for President Obama to actually make up his mind?

As a side note, given the nature of the two jobs, we can’t imagine that Ms. Sherman can remain dual-hatted as “D” and “P” for a lengthy period. The John Hudson report also cited a State Department staffer saying that the Sherman “promotion” was in part prompted by “the bureaucratic need to have “D-level” signatures sign off on important State Department business, such as contracts.” Wait, what?  If the deputy secretary of state (“D”)  actually need to sign contracts, what’s the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources for?

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