64th Secretary of State
66th Secretary of State
67th Secretary of State
68th Secretary of State
70th Secretary of State
Posted: 12:12 am ET
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We’ve previously blogged about the case of Sabrina De Sousa, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in India who served as a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. State Department from 1998 to 2009. In August 1998, she was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Rome, Italy as a Political Officer, Second Secretary. In May 2001, she was transferred to the U.S. Consulate in Milan as a Consular Officer for a tour of duty scheduled to end in May 2004. In dismissing the case against De Sousa filed against the State Department, United States District Judge, Beryl A. Howell on January 5, 2012 issued an opinion –here’s the important part:
“The facts underlying this case are troubling in many ways. The plaintiff served the government and the people of the United States in the Foreign Service for a decade. During the course of her service to this country, she was accused and convicted in absentia of committing a crime in a foreign nation, not for any personal gain, but at the alleged behest of the United States government. According to her allegations, she requested the government’s assistance to counter the charges against her in Italy, but received none and was instead “[e]ffectively abandoned and left to fend for herself.” Am. Compl. at 2. Following her foreign conviction, she faces the risk of arrest and imprisonment if she travels outside the United States, which is a particular hardship in her case both because of the impact on her professional options and because she is a naturalized citizen with family members living abroad. Then, when the plaintiff sought judicial review in this Court, the government did little to minimize the “logistical obstacles” presented by the need to protect against the inadvertent disclosure of classified information, but rather denied her counsel the use of a secure computer to draft filings and “threatened” the continuation of her counsel’s security clearance. ECF No. 63 at 13 n.6. The message that this scenario sends to civilian government employees serving this country on tours of duty abroad is a potentially demoralizing one.”
In a July 2013 interview with McClatchyDC, Ms. De Sousa confirmed that she worked under cover for the CIA in Milan.
Confirming for the first time that she worked undercover for the CIA in Milan when the operation took place, Sabrina De Sousa provided new details about the “extraordinary rendition” that led to the only criminal prosecution stemming from the secret Bush administration rendition and detention program launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
[…]
Among the allegations made by De Sousa in a series of interviews with McClatchy:
– The former CIA station chief in Rome, Jeffrey Castelli, whom she called the mastermind of the operation, exaggerated Nasr’s terrorist threat to win approval for the rendition and misled his superiors that Italian military intelligence had agreed to the operation.
– Senior CIA officials, including then-CIA Director George Tenet, approved the operation even though Nasr wasn’t wanted in Egypt and wasn’t on the U.S. list of top al Qaida terrorists.
– Condoleezza Rice, then the White House national security adviser, also had concerns about the case, especially what Italy would do if the CIA were caught, but she eventually agreed to it and recommended that Bush approve the abduction.
[…]
“I don’t have any of the cables with me. Please put that down,” De Sousa added with a nervous laugh, her unease reflecting the Obama administration’s unprecedented crackdown on leaks of classified information to journalists.
[…]
De Sousa, 57, a naturalized U.S. citizen from India’s state of Goa, was one of 23 Americans convicted in absentia in 2009 by a Milan court for Nasr’s abduction. She received a five-year sentence. An appeals court in 2011 added two more years, and Italy’s Supreme Court upheld the sentence. Nineteen of the Americans, De Sousa said, “don’t exist,” because they were aliases used by the CIA snatch team.
The case drew fresh attention this month when Panama detained Robert Seldon Lady, the CIA’s former Milan station chief, whom the Italian court had sentenced to nine years in prison. But Panama released him within 24 hours and allowed him to fly to the United States, rather than wait for Italy to request his extradition.
Another convicted American, Air Force Col. Joseph Romano, who oversaw security at Aviano, the U.S. base from which Nasr was flown out of Italy, received a seven-year term. But Italian President Giorgio Napolitano pardoned him in April under U.S. pressure.
The Bush and the Obama administrations, however, have refused to ask Italy to do the same for De Sousa, who insists that she qualified for diplomatic immunity as a second secretary accredited to the U.S. Embassy in Rome.
[…]
[H]er treatment, she said, provides a warning to U.S. employees serving around the world. If they get prosecuted while doing their jobs, she said, “You have no protection whatsoever. Zero.”
An old piece from 2013 but worth reading again, given that the new CIA appointee called officials who waterboarded patriots. Ms. De Sousa writes on Twitter, “Patriots” till investigations and prosecutions by foreign courts…then abandoned. #milanrendition #scapegoatery
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Posted: 1:03 am ET
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If you’re taking a road trip, and are looking for something to listen to in the car, check out the DiploSport Podcast. FSO Morgan O’Brien spent the past year studying sports diplomacy as part of a fellowship sponsored by the Council of Foreign Relations and the NBA. For his research, he interviewed journalists, policy makers and athletes to discuss the interplay of sports and government.
The first episode features former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as his inaugural guest (full transcript here). Others featured in the podcast include Norwegian speedskating legend and Olympic champion, Dr. Johann Olav Koss, founder of Right to Play (bit.ly/JOKossRtP) an organization which uses sport to connect with youth around the globe who face some of the most challenging circumstances imaginable; 3x American skeleton Olympian Katie Uhlaender who is preparing for the next Winter Games in Pyeongchang 2018; Ruth Riley who served as a State Department Sports Envoy, and an NBA Cares Ambassador; and two-time Olympic medalist Michelle Kwan who also did a stint as a State Department Sports Envoy. He told us that he started interviewing earlier this year and have about 20 podcasts in the can.
The podcast host is a Public Diplomacy officer who joined the Foreign Service in 2009 (146th A-100). He was Ambassador Holbrooke’s assistant for his first tour, and he did a consular tour in Brazzaville. When he came back to the State Department, he worked at the Sports Diplomacy Division of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). For the past 12 months, he was attached to the National Basketball Association’s International Operations team and had the opportunity to study sports diplomacy. He is currently in language training in preparation for his next assignment to an East Asia post. We asked him a few questions about this project:
Q: How were you able to get a fun fellowship like this?
MO: This past year, I was on the International Affairs Fellowship through the Council on Foreign Relations, so this wasn’t a formalized “sports diplomacy/NBA Fellowship,” per se. I first pitched the idea to the NBA, with whom I had worked the previous two years when I was in ECA. When they agreed to the concept, I put together a written proposal for the CFR, which was then followed by a panel interview before ultimately being accepted. Since I applied, two things I think have changed: one of the stipulations was that applicants needed to be under 35, I think that’s no longer the case; and I think there is an extra level of State vetting now. Whereas I sent my proposal directly to the CFR, I think this year’s applicants need to be approved by HR before submitting to the CFR.
If one gets creative in canvassing the bid list, they’ll find that the Department can be fantastic about enabling/empowering officers to pursue opportunities outside State, including awesome fellowships (the Una Chapman Cox Fellowship is another incredible, self-paced opportunity). And while I don’t know how it was done, there are officers actually working on international affairs for a few mayor’s offices in a handful of major cities in the US.
Q: What was it like working with the NBA team?
MO: I was a fully-integrated member of the NBA team for the year, fulfilling a childhood dream of working in pro sports. I supported the All Star Game (held in Toronto) and the “Basketball Without Borders” elite youth camps held around the world this past summer. I learned a ton about the decision-making process of a multi-billion dollar organization, and was pretty blown away by their sincere commitment to social responsibility programming. At State, we should also be proud to know that the NBA really relies on us around the world as subject matter experts and partners. There are dozens of Posts with whom we worked throughout the year—whether it be for women/girls-centered programming in Latvia and Ethiopia or to help demystify the visa process for the families of our players in Serbia or Congo.
Q: What did you learn from this private sector experience?
MO: The private sector exposure was fantastic. I’m bringing back to State a wealth of knowledge in monitoring and evaluation and emphasizing efficiency. I do have to admit that the time away also reinforced my love for the Foreign Service, our mission and our wonderful colleagues. My private sector teammates always found it fascinating that we get to travel the world on behalf of the country, and were every bit as interested in what we do day-to-day as I was of their work.
Morgan O’Brien’s views/opinions expressed on the blog/podcasts are not necessarily those of the State Department.
Check out the diplosport links below and while you’re at it, you might also check @SportsDiplomacy, the official Twitter account of exchanges.state.gov/sports
Sound Cloud: https://soundcloud.com/diplosport
iTunes: http://bit.ly/DiploSport
Google Play: http://bit.ly/2bUgvdI
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Posted: 2:09 pm EDT
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The Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) Office of Evaluation and Special Projects is examining the State Department’s records preservation and the use of personal hardware and software by five Secretaries of State (Albright, Powell, Rice, Clinton, and Kerry) and their immediate staff. On March 4, State/OIG posted the OIG (Linick) – M (Kennedy) memorandum on classified material discovered in the archives and its removal for secured storage:
During the course of this evaluation, OIG searched unclassified archives and discovered records suggesting instances in which potentially sensitive material may have been transmitted via personal email accounts or other unclassified means to Secretary Powell or to Secretary Rice’s immediate staff. None of the material was marked as classified, but the substance of the material and “NODIS” (No Distribution) references in the body or subject lines of some of the documents suggested that the documents could be potentially sensitive. On October 19, 2015, OIG transmitted to the Department and separately to the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community (ICIG) for classification review 19 separate Office of the Secretary archival documents. The date range of the documents is from February 2003 through June 2008.
[…]
On December 29, 2015, the Department advised OIG that 12 of the 19 documents contain national security information classified at the Secret or Confidential levels based on a review by 9 Department bureaus and offices. Two of these documents were emails sent to Secretary Powell’s personal email account; the remaining were documents transmitted to personal or unclassified accounts belonging to a member of Secretary Rice’s immediate staff and another senior Department official.
[…]
State’s official response: Office of the Executive Secretariat (S/ES) staff have removed from the Department’s unclassified network all of the email material identified as classified and placed it in secure storage. Additionally, retired electronic records provided to the Bureau of Administration that were initially stored in an unclassified system have b~enmoved to the appropriate classified system. With regard to paper records relating to former Secretaries Powell and Rice, the Department does not believe any action is warranted because these materials are currently stored in a facility certified to house classified Department record~up to the SECRET level.
Read the memo exchange here:
Related post:
Classified Material Discovered in Unclassified Archival Material | Posted On: March 04, 2016 Report Date: March 2016 | Report Number: ESP-16-02
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Posted: 2:53 am EDT
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Last August, we did a timeline of the Clinton email controversy (See Clinton Email Controversy Needs Its Own Cable Channel, For Now, a Timeline). Also @StateDept Officials on Clinton Private Email Debacle: Yo! Had Been Caught Off Guard? Ay, Caramba!
To recall, this report from WaPo:
But State Department officials provided new information Tuesday that undercuts Clinton’s characterization. They said the request was not simply about general record-keeping but was prompted entirely by the discovery that Clinton had exclusively used a private e-mail system. They also said they *first contacted her in the summer of 2014, at least three months before **the agency asked Clinton and three of her predecessors to provide their e-mails.
At that time, we wrote this:
If the State Department had first contacted her in the summer of 2014, we have yet to see that correspondence. It was potentially sent sometime in August 2014, three months before the letters to Clinton and predecessors went out in November 12, 2014 from “M” (see below). Three months is an early call? C’mon! Secretary Clinton left State in February 2013.
[…]
It took six months for three senior State Department officials to tell WaPo that they “had been caught off guard” by the secretary of state’s exclusive use of a private account? These officials “were concerned by the practice”, so much so that they issued a three month-“early call” in the summer of 2014, 1 year and 6 months after the end of the Clinton tenure. And we’re only hearing about this concern now, 2 years and 7 months after Secretary Clinton left office?
Well, now we have an email (released via Judicial Watch due to FOIA litigation) from Cheryl Mills to Secretary Kerry’s Chief of Staff David Wade dated August 22, 2014 citing a request made in July 2014 about getting hard copies of the Clinton emails to/from accounts ending in .gov during her tenure at the State Department. The email was cc’ed to Philippe Raines (former Public Affairs DAS), and Deputy Legal Adviser Richard Visek.
So it looks like four months after the original request for the emails was made by Secretary Kerry’s chief of staff, the Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy sent a Letter to Hilary Clinton’s representative, Cheryl Mills re: the Federal Records Act of 1950, dated November 12, 2014; to Colin Powell, to Condoleezza Rice; to Madeleine Albright saying in part:
The Department of State has a longstanding and continujng commitment to preserving the history of U.S. diplomacy, established in authorities under the Federal Records Act of 1950. l am writing to you, the representative of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as to representatives of other fonner Secretaries (principals), to request your assistance in further meeting this requirement.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry poses for photo at the groundbreaking ceremony for the U.S. Diplomacy Center with former Secretaries of State Henry A. Kissinger, James A. Baker, III, Madeleine K. Albright, Colin L. Powell, and Hillary Rodham Clinton at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC on September 3, 2014. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
On March 3, 2015, four months after the Kennedy letter was sent to Mills and eight months after the original request was made by Kerry’s chief of staff to Mills, then deputy spokesperson of the State Department, Marie Harf also said this from the podium:
MS. HARF: … When in the process of updating our records management – this is something that’s sort of ongoing given technology and the changes – we reached out to all of the former secretaries of state to ask them to provide any records they had. Secretary Clinton sent back 55,000 pages of documents to the State Department very shortly after we sent the letter to her. She was the only former Secretary of State who sent documents back in to this request. These 55,000 pages covered her time, the breadth of her time at the State Department.
No mention that the original request was specific to Secretary Clinton.
And the three previous secretaries of state were added here to what … enhance dramatic tension? Oy!
The letter asks for “any records.” Why did they stop at Colin Powell and did not include James Baker, heck why not go all the way to Henry Kissinger, which by the way, would have made the National Security Archive really happy (see The State Department Kissinger Telcons: The Story of a FOIA Request).
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Posted: 2:30 am EDT
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In November 2013, David Rohde, a columnist for Reuters, and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize penned a lengthy piece for The Atlantic on How John Kerry Could End Up Outdoing Hillary Clinton. Below is an excerpt:
“… (If you ask long-serving diplomats—the vast majority of whom are politically liberal—to identify their favorite secretary, they will name Powell.) Before taking office, Kerry conducted long interviews with every living former secretary of state—Kissinger, George Shultz, Baker, Madeleine Albright, Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Clinton—and set out to model himself after Shultz, who, in six and a half years serving under Ronald Reagan, was seen as a combination of the two prototypes, both a great diplomat and a good manager. “Beyond going around doing things as secretary of state,” Shultz told me in an interview, “you have to recognize that you have managerial responsibilities.”
[…]
Richard Armitage, who served as Powell’s deputy secretary of state, praises Clinton but says she was poorly served by her aides. “My view is that she was pretty sheltered,” he told me. “They were not interpersonally pleasant, and they were very protective of her. You can get into a cocoon.”
[…]
Kerry also works in a cocoon, albeit one of a different sort. Very quickly he earned a reputation in the State Department for being aloof, keeping to himself, and not bothering to read staff memos. Diplomats outside Kerry’s inner circle complain that they have little sense of his priorities or plans. One former aide told me Kerry is “lovably unapproachable.” Career State Department officials complain to journalists that, under Kerry’s leadership, power has become so centralized among the secretary and a small coterie of his aides that decision making in the building slows to a crawl during his frequent overseas trips. Others in the State Department say Kerry has a kind of diplomatic attention deficit disorder—he shifts from topic to topic, changes his schedule often, and fails to focus on long-term strategy. State Department employees say morale in the building is lower now than under Clinton, despite Kerry’s early diplomatic achievements.
[…]
Colin Powell told me that before he became secretary of state in 2001, he received a letter from George Kennan, the famed foreign-policy thinker, then in his 90s. Kennan warned Powell about the dangers of traveling too much—of prioritizing activist diplomacy over providing the White House with solid foreign-policy analysis. “This office has in recent decades, in my view,” Kennan wrote, “been seriously misused and distorted.” Kennan urged Powell to minimize his travel and focus on advising the president. Powell gave a copy of Kennan’s letter to Kerry. So far, Kerry is not following the advice.
The Rohde piece was written slightly over two years ago. As Secretary Kerry winds up his tenure in the next 12-13 months, it is likely that somebody will revisit this topic again. Meanwhile, it doesn’t look like his globetrotting days are going to let up anytime soon. In late November, Secretary Kerry travelled to France, Belgium, Kosovo, Serbia, Cyprus, and Greece (November 30-December 4, 2015). He came back briefly and is now off again, to Paris, from December 7-11, 2015 to attend the 21st UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP21).
Since assuming office in February 2013, Secretary Kerry has traveled 422 days. As of this writing, he has traveled a total of 957,744 miles with visits to 77 countries according to state.gov. (Secretary Clinton covered 956,733 miles in her four years on the job. Condoleezza Rice’s record is 1.06 million miles in the air).
About that small coterie of aides, below is an album of sorts with some members of the Kerry inner circle in the last couple of years:
![U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks with his chief of staff, David Wade, and State Department Spokesperson Jennifer Psaki before his airplane departs Moscow, Russia, on May 8, 2013. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]](https://i0.wp.com/diplopundit.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/8720133546_bdb9a5af10_z.jpg?resize=400%2C300&ssl=1)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks with his chief of staff, David Wade, and State Department Spokesperson Jennifer Psaki before his airplane departs Moscow, Russia, on May 8, 2013. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
![9:59 p.m., September 11, 2013 - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sits in the aisle of his Air Force jet as he chats with, from left, Executive Secretary John Bass, Deputy Chief of Staff Jonathan Finer, Counselor to the National Security Advisor Salman Ahmed, and Undersecretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman about upcoming negotiations with Russian officials focused on eliminating Syrian chemical weapons. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]](https://i0.wp.com/diplopundit.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/9757076605_d470568a8a_z.jpg?resize=400%2C266&ssl=1)
9:59 p.m., September 11, 2013 – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sits in the aisle of his Air Force jet as he chats with, from left, Executive Secretary John Bass, Deputy Chief of Staff Jonathan Finer, Counselor to the National Security Advisor Salman Ahmed, and Undersecretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman about upcoming negotiations with Russian officials focused on eliminating Syrian chemical weapons. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
![U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry prepares with his Deputy Chief of Staff, William C. Danvers, for a joint press availability in Istanbul, Turkey, April 7, 2013. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]](https://i0.wp.com/diplopundit.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/8627808286_36b8e801c0_z.jpg?resize=400%2C300&ssl=1)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry prepares with his Deputy Chief of Staff, William C. Danvers, for a joint press availability in Istanbul, Turkey, April 7, 2013. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
![U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom, and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah discuss the Secretary’s upcoming trip to Africa during a meeting at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on April 25, 2014. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]](https://i0.wp.com/diplopundit.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/14009832955_ab18cb9612_z.jpg?resize=400%2C266&ssl=1)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom, and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah discuss the Secretary’s upcoming trip to Africa during a meeting at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on April 25, 2014. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, flanked by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and State Department Executive Assistant Jennifer Davis, bangs the gavel to begin a meeting of more than 60 anti-ISIL coalition parties held on December 3, 2014, at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. [State Department photo /Public Domain]
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry leads his staff in an airborne rendition of “Happy Birthday” on April 15, 2015, as they celebrate the birthday of and final trip for State Department Executive Director Kathleen Hill, a career Foreign Service Officer departing to a new assignment after organizing Secretary’s visit to Lubeck, Germany, and his 59 preceding international trips across 765,000 miles since he assumed office in February 2013. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
State Department Chief of Staff Jon Finer speaks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on July 29, 2015, before he joined U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey, U.S. Energy Secretary Dr. Ernest Moniz, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew in testifying about the Iranian nuclear deal before the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington, D.C. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and a group of advisers – State Department Executive Assistant Lisa Kenna, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Egypt and Maghreb Affairs John Desrocher, and Chief of StaffJon Finer – sit with King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain and his advisers on March 14, 2015, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, at the outset of a bilateral meeting amid an Egyptian development conference. [State Department Photo/Public Domain]
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry chats with State Department Chief of Staff Jon Finer and Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations Frank Lowenstein before addressing reporters on November 24, 2015, following his meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the Muqata’a Presidential Compound in Ramallah, West Bank. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Senior Aide Jason Meininger laugh as bar patrons at the Navigator Inn invite the Secretary in for a drink as he walked through Iqaluit, Canada, just below the Arctic Circle, after the United States assumed a two-year chairmanship of the body during a meeting of its eight member nations and seven Permanent Representatives on April 24, 2015. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
![U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, accompanied by State Department Deputy Chief of Staff Tom Sullivan, walks through the U.S. Embassy in Paris, France, after addressing members of the bilateral Mission, UNESCO, USOECD and their families on November 17, 2015. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]](https://i0.wp.com/diplopundit.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/23069495566_627a991e20_z.jpg?resize=400%2C267&ssl=1)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, accompanied by State Department Deputy Chief of Staff Tom Sullivan, walks through the U.S. Embassy in Paris, France, after addressing members of the bilateral Mission, UNESCO, USOECD and their families on November 17, 2015. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
Ambassador to Seoul Mark Lippert with Jonathan Finer and Jennifer Park Stout, @JohnKerry’s Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff. May 17, 2015 via Twitter
And let’s not forget Ben F. Kerry, Secretary Kerry’s best friend in Washington, D.C. who apparently performs ribbon-cutting events on occasion, and all he gets is an extra homemade kibble.
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— Domani Spero
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Recently, the State Department officially rejected criticisms that too many top diplomatic jobs have gone to political appointees rather than to career foreign service officers. The spokesperson of the State Department, a former political operative and herself, a political appointee, reportedly told Yahoo News via email the following:
“There’s never been a secretary of state more personally connected to the Foreign Service than Secretary (John) Kerry. It’s in his blood. It’s stamped in his DNA. He’s the son of a foreign service officer,” spokeswoman Jen Psaki told Yahoo News by email.
“It’s no accident that he has worked with President (Barack) Obama to build a senior team with more foreign service officers in leading assistant secretary positions than at any time in recent memory, and no accident that he chose a foreign service officer to serve as the State Department’s Counselor for the first time in thirty years,” she added.
See Political Appointee Rejects Criticisms of Too Many Political Picks at the State Department
So, because we’re a tad obsessive, we wanted to find out if what Ms. Psaki told Yahoo News is actually true. If her “at any time in recent memory” includes only the the Clinton tenure, then sure, Secretary Kerry, indeed, appointed five FSOs career employees (four FSOs and 1 Civil Service) out of seven assistant secretaries, which is two more than former Secretary Clinton who appointed three FSOs out of seven assistant secretary positions at the regional level. (WHA’s Roberta Jacobson is reportedly a CS employee; history.state.gov incorrectly lists her as a foreign service officer). *Corrected graphic below.
Secretary Rice under the second Bush term, appointed five FSOs and three political appointees as assistant secretaries at the geographic level. If we go back all the way to 2001 then, Secretary Kerry has appointed as many FSOs as Secretary Rice but not “more,” at least at the geographic level. If “recent memory” includes the appointments under the Clinton, Rice and Powell tenures, the spox’s claim would not fly.
We hope to look at the functional bureaus separately, time permitting; maybe that’s the appointment universe the spokesperson is talking about?
The Powell appointments at the geographic level are sort of weird. It looks like he inherited one A/S from the previous administration (C. David Welch) and that appointee continue to served until 2002. In all, stats from history.state.gov and Wikipedia indicates that Secretary Powell appointed three FSOs and seven non-career appointees to the seven geographic bureaus. AF, WHA and IO had two appointees each during the Bush first term.
We should note that if you’re a career FSO, the chance of getting an assistant secretary (A/S) position at the regional level is highest at Near Eastern Affairs (NEA), European Affairs (EUR), African Affairs (AF). Statistics compiled by AFSA from 1975 to-date indicates that 92.3% of all A/S appointments to the NEA bureau were career diplomats. That percentage of FSO A/S appointment is 75% for the EUR bureau and 58.3% for the African Affairs bureau.
However, if you’re a non-career political appointee, the chance of getting an assistant secretary position at the regional level is highest at International Organization (IO) and East Asia Pacific (EAP). Statistics compiled by AFSA from 1975 to-date indicates that 80% of all A/S appointments to the International Organization Affairs bureau went to non-career appointees. Ranked a distant second is EAP appointments at 57.1%. The A/S appointments for South Central Asia Affairs has been 50/50 according to the AFSA statistics.
* * *
Updated on 11/10/14 @ 8:52 am to correct listing of appointees during the Powell tenure and to clarify the total between FSOs and non career appointees.
@1531 added clarification that current WHA A/S is a career CS employee.
— Domani Spero
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A James Risen scoop over in NYT on how a warning on Blackwater in Iraq prior to the 2007 Nisour Square shooting that killed 17 civilians was ignored by the State Department. Quick excerpt:
State Department investigators arrived in Baghdad on Aug. 1, 2007, to begin a monthlong review of Blackwater’s operations, the situation became volatile. Internal State Department documents, which were turned over to plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Blackwater that was unrelated to the Nisour Square shooting, provide details of what happened.
It did not take long for the two-man investigative team — Mr. Richter, a Diplomatic Security special agent, and Donald Thomas Jr., a State Department management analyst — to discover a long list of contract violations by Blackwater.
[…]
The armored vehicles Blackwater used to protect American diplomats were poorly maintained and deteriorating, and the investigators found that four drunk guards had commandeered one heavily armored, $180,000 vehicle to drive to a private party, and crashed into a concrete barrier.
[…]
The investigators concluded that Blackwater was getting away with such conduct because embassy personnel had gotten too close to the contractor.
[…]
The next day, the two men met with Daniel Carroll, Blackwater’s project manager in Iraq, to discuss the investigation, including a complaint over food quality and sanitary conditions at a cafeteria in Blackwater’s compound. Mr. Carroll barked that Mr. Richter could not tell him what to do about his cafeteria, Mr. Richter’s report said. The Blackwater official went on to threaten the agent and say he would not face any consequences, according to Mr. Richter’s later account.Mr. Carroll said “that he could kill me at that very moment and no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” Mr. Richter wrote in a memo to senior State Department officials in Washington. He noted that Mr. Carroll had formerly served with Navy SEAL Team 6, an elite unit.
[…]
On Oct. 5, 2007, just as the State Department and Blackwater were being rocked by scandal in the aftermath of Nisour Square, State Department officials finally responded to Mr. Richter’s August warning about Blackwater. They took statements from Mr. Richter and Mr. Thomas about their accusations of a threat by Mr. Carroll, but took no further action.Condoleezza Rice, then the secretary of state, named a special panel to examine the Nisour Square episode and recommend reforms, but the panel never interviewed Mr. Richter or Mr. Thomas.
Patrick Kennedy, the State Department official who led the special panel, told reporters on Oct. 23, 2007, that the panel had not found any communications from the embassy in Baghdad before the Nisour Square shooting that raised concerns about contractor conduct.
“We interviewed a large number of individuals,” Mr. Kennedy said. “We did not find any, I think, significant pattern of incidents that had not — that the embassy had suppressed in any way.”
Read in full Mr. Risen’s piece, Before Shooting in Iraq, a Warning on Blackwater.
Click here for text of the teleconference call on October 23, 2007 with then State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack and Ambassador Patrick F. Kennedy on the Report of the Secretary of State’s Panel on Personal Protective Services in Iraq. The Q and A below:
QUESTION: Hi, this is Brian Bennett from Time magazine. I’m wondering in these reviews — why this review wasn’t done earlier, complaints about contractor conduct have been relayed to Ambassador Khalilzad, tocharge d’affaires Margaret Scobey, to Ambassador Crocker. And I’m wondering if in looking into this you had found any communiqus that have gone out of the Embassy into main State in the months prior to the September 16th incident about concerns about contractor conduct and why wasn’t – why it took an event like September 16th for these concerns to be addressed?
AMBASSADOR KENNEDY: We — when you look through the report you’ll see that we interviewed a large number — large number of individuals. We did not find any, I think, significant pattern of incidents that had not — that the Embassy had suppressed in any way. No one told us that they had — that they had made reports to the Embassy that had been suppressed.
Also see the Implementation of Recommendations from the Secretary of State’s Report on Personal Protective Service Details
We found the Panel’s 2007 report (see below). The Panel was composed of Eric Boswell, George Joulwan, J. Stapleton Roy and Patrick F. Kennedy. Appended at the end of the report are the list of interviewees, which includes the acting RSO named in the NYT report. It does not, however, include the names of the Blackwater project manager, or Jean C. Richter, the Diplomatic Security special agent nor Donald Thomas Jr., the State Department management analyst. According to the NYT, Mr. Richter and Mr. Thomas declined to comment for its article.
Mr. Richter’s report that the private security firm’s manager there had threatened to kill him, an episode that occurred just weeks before Blackwater guards shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square is available here via NYT. We note also that Ambassador Kennedy was appointed Under Secretary of State for Management (M) on November 6, 2007. Prior to assuming his position as “M,” he was Director of the Office of Management Policy, Rightsizing, and Innovation (M/PRI) from May 2007.
Read the Secretary of State’s Report on Personal Protective Service Details from 2007:
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— Domani Spero
Update on 5/7/14: Names of a few more special envoys during the Albright era added.
We were looking into mushrooms one day (problematic backyard lawn) and stumbled upon “The cleverness of mushrooms.” The article says that “exactly how mushrooms proliferate is still poorly understood.” Hey, we thought — isn’t that kind of the same thing when it comes to special advisors, special envoys and special representatives proliferating inside the State Department?
Exactly how it’s done is still poorly understood.
For instance, Secretary Madeleine Albright (1997-2001) had, can you believe it, two. There was Theresa A. Loar, the Coordinator for International Women’s Issues. Then there was Norman Neureiter, the Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State. If there were more, they were not listed in the secretary’s archive.
Update on 5/7/14: A few more special envoys during the Albright era, not reflected on the state.gov archive (Thanks Michael T.):
Also, according to state.gov’s archive, there were fourteen senior folks including “Special Envoys” and “Special Representatives” at the State Department from 2001-2009 encompassing the tenure of Secretary Colin Powell (2001-2005) and Secretary Condoleezza Rice (2005-2009).
During Secretary Hillary Clinton’s tenure (2009-2013) and presently under Secretary Kerry, the number of these special folks has grown by quite a bit. In six years, the State Department went from 14 special folks to something like four dozens. It is quite possible that there are more special and senior folks whose appointments/new desks have not yet made it to the official website. The number of senior advisors as opposed to the special advisors is even more difficult to find.
One example is Tom Perriello, the Special Representative for the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development (QDDR) Review appointed by Secretary Kerry in February 2014. His biography is live but he is not listed here. Another one not listed is Senior Advisor to the Secretary David H. Thorne, former U.S. ambassador to Italy and twin brother of Secretary Kerry’s first wife.
And by the way, we noticed that Special Advisor for Secretary’s Initiative Elizabeth Bagley was appointed on April 20, 2011. According to state.gov, her term of appointment is 04/20/2011 to present. Currently her bio page says “The biography for Special Adviser for Secretary Initiatives Elizabeth Bagley will be posted when available.”
screen shot state.gov
You wait, and wait, and wait …. and nothing happens in three years like what, a turtle carrying the bio page is still circumnavigating the globe to get to Foggy Bottom?
We should note that while it was widely reported last year that the Gitmo Closure office had also been shuttered, Ambassador Daniel Fried was actually succeeded as Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure by Clifford M. Sloan, an attorney who previously served as Publisher of Slate Magazine and as a General Counsel at The Washington Post Company. Ambassador Fried is now the State Department’s Coordinator for Sanctions Policy.
In any case, here they are, the State Department’s Special Advisors, Special Envoys, and Special Representatives:
Afghanistan and Pakistan, Special Representative
–Afghanistan and Pakistan (Special Representative): James F. Dobbins
APEC (U.S. Senior Official): Robert S. Wang
Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) Issues, Special Representative
–Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) Issues (Special Representative): Vacant
Burma, Special Representative and Policy Coordinator
–Burma (Senior Advisor): Judith Beth Cefkin
Special Representative for the Central African Republic: W. Stuart Symington
Civil Society and Emerging Democracies, Senior Advisor
–Civil Society and Emerging Democracies (Coordinator): Tomicah Tillemann
Climate Change, Special Envoy
–Climate Change (Special Envoy): Todd D. Stern
Special Advisor for Children’s Issues Ambassador Susan Jacobs
Closure of the Guantanamo Detention Facility (Special Envoy): Clifford M. Sloan
Commercial and Business Affairs, Special Representative
–Commercial and Business Affairs (Special Representative): Lorraine Hariton
Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, Special Envoy
Cyber Issues, Coordinator
–Cyber Issues (Coordinator): Christopher Painter
Eurasian Energy, Special Envoy
–Faith Based and Community Initiatives (Special Advisor): Shaun Casey
Global Food Security, Special Representative
–Global Food Security (Special Representative): Jonathan Shrier (Acting)
Global Health Diplomacy (Special Representative): Leslie V. Rowe (Acting)
Global Intergovernmental Affairs, Special Representative
–Global Intergovernmental Affairs (Special Representative): Mary Pensabene (Acting)
Global Partnerships, Special Representative
–Global Partnerships (Special Representative): Andrew O’Brien
Global Youth Issues, Special Advisor
–Global Youth Issues (Special Adviser): Zeenat Rahman
Great Lakes Region and the D.R.C., Special Envoy
–Great Lakes and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Special Envoy): Russell D. Feingold
Haiti, Special Coordinator
–Haiti (Special Coordinator): Thomas C. Adams
Holocaust Issues, Special Envoy
–Holocaust Issues (Special Adviser): Stuart E. Eizenstat
–Holocaust Issues (Special Envoy): Douglas Davidson
International Disability Rights, Special Advisor
–International Disability Rights (Special Advisor): Judith E. Heumann
International Energy Affairs, Coordinator
–International Energy Affairs (Special Envoy and Coordinator): Carlos Pascual
International Labor Affairs, Special Representative
–International Labor Affairs (Special Representative): Vacant
International Religious Freedom, Ambassador-at-Large
Israel and the Palestinian Authority, U.S. Security Coordinator
–Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations (Special Envoy): Martin S. Indyk
Middle East Transitions (Special Coordinator): Vacant
Middle East Peace, Special Envoy
Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Special Envoy
–Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism (Special Envoy): Ira N. Forman
Muslim Communities, Special Representative
–Muslim Communities (Special Representative): Adnan Kifayat (Acting)
Nonproliferation and Arms Control, Special Advisor
–Nonproliferation and Arms Control (Special Advisor): Robert J. Einhorn
North Korean Human Rights Issues, Special Envoy
–North Korean Human Rights Issues (Special Envoy): Robert R. King
North Korea Policy, Special Representative
–North Korea Policy (Special Representative): Glyn Davies
Nuclear Nonproliferation, Special Representative of the President
–Nuclear Nonproliferation (Special Representative of the President): Susan Burk
Organization of the Islamic Conference, Special Envoy
–Organization of Islamic Cooperation (Special Envoy): Rashad Hussain
QDDR (Special Representative): Thomas Perriello
Sanctions Policy (Coordinator): Daniel Fried
Science and Technology (Adviser): E. William Colglazier
Secretary Initiatives, Special Advisor
–Secretary Initiatives (Special Adviser): Elizabeth Bagley
Senior Advisor to the Secretary: David H. Thorne
Six-Party Talks, Special Envoy
–Six-Party Talks (Special Envoy): Vacant
Strategic Stability and Missile Defense, Special Envoy
Sudan, Special Envoy
–Sudan and South Sudan (Special Envoy): Donald E. Booth
Threat Reduction Programs, Coordinator
–Threat Reduction Programs (Coordinator): Bonnie D. Jenkins
In 2016, if you don’t want to compete for the ambassadorial sweeps, don’t forget these gigs. These positions are not advertised through usajobs.gov and more importantly, these jobs do not/do not require senate confirmations.
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D.B. Des Roches is an associate professor at the Near East South Asia Institute for Strategic Studies. He recently published a commentary about John Kerry’s first trip overseas and the current ‘success’ metric:
John Kerry’s first trip as secretary of state provides a good opportunity to look at how we evaluate our secretaries. Most recent secretaries have considered travel to be the measure of their terms. When Hillary Clinton returned to work from hospitalization, her staff gave her a football jersey with “112” on it – reflecting the number of countries she had visited. Republicans retorted that Condoleezza Rice still held the record for most miles logged.
Photo via state.gov/Flickr
This focus on secretary of state travel as a measure of dedication, efficiency and competence is dysfunctional. We should decide, as Mr. Kerry’s first trip (to Europe and the Middle East) gets underway, to abandon this harmful metric and evaluate diplomacy in a way that acknowledges its complexity.
[…]
These are real issues which require real leadership, but they are not glamorous and don’t lend themselves to photo opportunities. Our nation would be better served if those of us who watch foreign affairs look at these complicated issues of State Department capacity and measure the secretary of state by this, rather than treating him as a sort of Clark Griswold trekking around Rome checking off a list of fountains. Save the secretary of state visits for those issues which truly require a high-level visit to break up a logjam or push an agreement over the top. America needs a secretary of state who can lead, not one who can travel.
Read in full here.
The author made some excellent points that should be required reading for Secretary Kerry’s incoming team. We sincerely hope that no one would attempt to nudge Secretary Kerry to top Condi’s miles, or Hillary’s number of countries visited or number of embassy meet and greet. That would not be original or terribly helpful to an institution that is consistently underfunded and unappreciated not just by the Congress but also by the American public.
The real challenges for the 68th secretary of state do not require an airplane ride. The sooner his Seventh Floor recognizes that, the sooner they can develop a strategy for achievable goals during Secretary Kerry’s tenure and imprint his legacy on the institution.
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