BREAKING: The State Department's entire senior management team just resigned. [View all]

[kstewart33]

Last edited Thu Jan 26, 2017, 12:06 PM - Edit history (1)

Posted at 11:02 am ET today by The Washington Post:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s job running the State Department just got considerably more difficult. The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior foreign service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.

...Tillerson was actually inside the State Department’s headquarters in Foggy Bottom on Wednesday, taking meetings and getting the lay of the land. I reported Wednesday morning that the Trump team was narrowing its search for his No. 2 and three officials, and that it was looking to replace the State Department’s long-serving undersecretary for management, Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy, who has been in that job for nine years, was actively involved in the transition and was angling to keep that job under Tillerson, three State Department officials told me.

Then suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy and three of his top officials resigned unexpectedly, four State Department officials confirmed. Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Ambassador Gentry O. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Missions, followed him out the door. All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/01/26/the-state-departments-entire-senior-management-team-just-resigned/?postshare=1341485447378534&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.6dddacd169b0

Edit update: Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” says Kerry Chief of Staff David Wade.

This is bad for Tillerson. But it's bad for everyone. Kennedy was reportedly trying to stay on in his position, as I believe he did from Bush to Obama. It sure sounds like there was some precipitating event.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/top-state-dept-leadership-resigns