Thread: It's a bloodbath at the State Department

It's a bloodbath at the State Department

By Daniel Halper
February 17, 2017 | 9:16am

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is cleaning house at the State Department, according to a report.

Staffers in the offices of deputy secretary of state for management and resources as well as counselor were shown the door Thursday, according to CBS News.

Many of those let go were on the building’s seventh floor — top-floor bigs — a symbolically important sign to the rest of the diplomatic corps that their new boss has different priorities than the last one.

The staffing changes came as Tillerson was on his first foreign trip — attending a G-20 meeting in Bonn, Germany.

“As part of the transition from one administration to the next, we continue to build out our team. The State Department is supported by a very talented group of individuals, both Republicans and Democrats,” State Department spokesman RC Hammond told CBS.

“We are appreciative to any American who dedicates their talents to public,” he added.

This week’s round of firings marks the second time State Department personnel have been cleared out since President Trump took office last month.

Four top officials were cleared out of the building at the end of January.

“As is standard with every transition, the outgoing administration, in coordination with the incoming one, requested all politically appointed officers submit letters of resignation,” a State Department spokesman said at the time.
http://nypost.com/2017/02/17/rex-til...te-department/

Top State Dept. officials exit after Tillerson visit

By Daniel Halper and Bob Fredericks
January 26, 2017 | 12:12pm

Four top career officials at the State Department left the same day Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson paid a visit to Foggy Bottom to introduce himself, officials said Thursday.

The four — including Patrick Kennedy, State’s long-time undersecretary for management, who had been with the department since 1973 — and the others left on Wednesday.

“As is standard with every transition, the outgoing administration, in coordination with the incoming one, requested all politically appointed officers submit letters of resignation,” acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

“These positions are political appointments, and require the president to nominate and the Senate to confirm them in these roles. They are not career appointments but of limited term.”

Toner went on to thank those who were canned for their service.

“These officers have served admirably and well. Their departure offers a moment to consider their accomplishments and thank them for their service,” he said.

Kennedy, a nine-year veteran in his last post, had been active in the transition from John Kerry to the former ExxonMobil chief, and was said to want to remain in the job.

The Washington Post reported that he and 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, had all resigned rather than serve under President Trump.

But a source close to the White House denied that.

“Pat Kennedy was fired. He may be saving face and pretending that he resigned but he was let go. The poorly performing senior leaders at State will also be pushed out. You should expect other ‘resignations’ there, too,” the source told The Post.

All were long-time staffers who had served under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

And they weren’t the first to go.


Secretary of State-designate Rex TillersonAP


Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick KennedyAP

Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr retired Jan. 20 — the day Trump was inaugurated — and the director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, Lydia Muniz, left the same day.

CNN said they had all gotten letters from the White House telling them their services were no longer needed.

“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under Kerry, told the Washington Post.

“Department expertise in security, management, administrative and consular positions in particular are very difficult to replicate and particularly difficult to find in the private sector.”

Ambassador Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman for Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, said there’s always turnover when a new administration takes office and that top officials work with the new appointees to see who should stay on.

But the mass exodus will make it harder for Tillerson to hit the ground running, he said.

“You don’t run foreign policy by making statements, you run it with thousands of people working to implement programs every day. To undercut that is to undercut the institution,” Boucher said
.
Meanwhile, the US Border Patrol chief has left the agency that’s in charge of securing the country’s borders with Mexico and Canada.

A current and former official told AP that Border Patrol agents had been informed that Mark Morgan is no longer on the job.

It was not immediately clear whether Morgan quit or was canned.

Morgan’s departure comes a day after Trump announced plans to build a wall at the Mexican border and hire 5,000 Border Patrol agents.
http://nypost.com/2017/01/26/senior-...te-department/

As long as the place gets cleaned up after the bloodbath. It has to happen.

It would appear that Patrick Kennedy was involved in some shady deals for Hillary Clinton. Seems that Tillerson is on the right track.

From the ALIPAC archives.

Clinton sought end-run around counter-terrorism bureau on night of Benghazi attack, witness will say

By James Rosen, Chad Pergram

Published May 05, 2013
FoxNews.com

On the night of Sept. 11, as the Obama administration scrambled to respond to the Benghazi terror attacks, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a key aide effectively tried to cut the department's own counterterrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making, according to a "whistle-blower" witness from that bureau who will soon testify to the charge before Congress, Fox News has learned.

That witness is Mark I. Thompson, a former Marine and now the deputy coordinator for operations in the agency’s counterterrorism bureau. Sources tell Fox News Thompson will level the allegation against Clinton during testimony on Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Fox News has also learned that another official from the counterterrorism bureau -- independently of Thompson -- voiced the same complaint about Clinton and Under Secretary for Management PatrickKennedy to trusted national security colleagues back in October.

"Sources close to the congressional investigation who have been briefed on what Thompson will testify tell Fox News the veteran counterterrorism official concluded on Sept. 11 that Clinton and Kennedytried to cut the counterterrorism bureau out of the loop as they and other Obama administration officials weighed how to respond to -- and characterize -- the Benghazi attacks.
"
https://www.alipac.us/f9/clinton-sou...tack-w-277859/

Bombshell: Benghazi Security Was Cut… by Over 70%

“Chris Stevens was not responsible for the reduction in security personnel,” Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Thursday. “His requests for additional security were denied or ignored. Officials at the State and Defense Departments in Washington made the decisions that resulted in reduced security.” [...]

While Republicans have said that should extend to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, some media commentators have clung to a portion of the report that states Stevens declined an offer from then-Africa Commander Gen. Carter Ham for increased security.

“Since Chris cannot speak, I want to explain the reasons and timing for his responses to Gen. Ham,” Hicks wrote, explaining that much of the matter revolved around when to shift command of U.S. Special Forces from the State Department – where soldiers had diplomatic immunity – to the Defense Department – where they would not.

“Chris had requested on July 9 by cable that Washington provide a minimum of 13 American security professionals for Libya over and above the diplomatic security complement of eight assigned to Tripoli and Benghazi,” Hicks wrote. “On July 11, the Defense Department, apparently in response to Chris’s request, offered to extend the special forces mission to protect the U.S. Embassy.”

“However, on July 13, State Department Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy refused the Defense Department offer and thus Chris’s July 9 request. His rationale was that Libyan guards would be hired to take over this responsibility,” Hicks continued.

Diplomatic immunity was a serious consideration, Hicks explained in the op-ed.

“[Stevens] explained to Rear Adm. Charles J. Leidig that if a member of the special forces team used weapons to protect U.S. facilities, personnel or themselves, he would be subject to Libyan law,” Hicks wrote. “The law would be administered by judges appointed to the bench by Moammar Gadhafi or, worse, tribal judges.”

https://www.alipac.us/f9/bombshell-b...-70%25-296841/

Benghazi Hero Glenn Doherty’s Family Hasn’t Received His Death Benefit Or Insurance Payment

2. They would start to demand that PatrickKennedy(yes he’s a “Kennedy”), the DOS Undersecretary of management, be held accountable at State. His leadership resulted in denied security requests, and he purposely slowed down the follow on investigation at State. He left his people and Stevens in perilous danger, and his neglect, and lack of leadership (Lions led by Lambs at DOS) contributed to four dead Americans.
https://www.alipac.us/f9/%5Bwatch%5D...-story-302540/

State Department tried to bribe FBI to unclassify Clinton emails

By Daniel Halper, Marisa Schultz and Bob Fredericks
October 17, 2016 | 12:16pm | Updated

A top State Department official offered a “quid pro quo” to an FBI investigator to declassify an e-mail from Hillary Clinton’s private server in exchange for allowing the bureau to operate in countries where it was banned, stunning new documents revealed Monday.

The FBI documents show that Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy pitched the deal to the unnamed agent, allegedly as part of an effort to back up Clinton’s claim that she did not send or receive classified documents on the server in her Westchester home.https://www.alipac.us/f9/state-depar...emails-338914/

Scandals surround Hillary Clinton's gatekeeper at State

By SUSAN CRABTREE(@SUSANCRABTREE)

•

10/19/16 12:01 AM

Republicans aren't surprised at all that Undersecretary of State PatrickKennedy is in the middle of the latest Hillary Clinton email scandal, since Kennedy has been in the GOP crosshairs for the last four years for other Clinton controversies.

FBI notes released Monday indicated that Kennedy offered a trade with the FBI in order to downgrade a classified email from Clinton's private server. But Republicans pointed out Tuesday that Kennedy was involved in two earlier scandals.

For example, Kennedy oversaw security for U.S. diplomatic compounds around the globe leading up to the Benghazi attacks in 2012, which led to the death of four Americans, even as he managed the telecommunications operations that allowed Clinton to use a private email server for official business.

"Patrick Kennedy was at the heart of the State Department's effort to stonewall" our investigation into the Benghazi attacks, Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., told the Washington Examiner Tuesday, recalling how that GOP-led House probe uncovered Clinton's use of a private email server. "[Kennedy] was also at the heart of her efforts to set up a private email system

What's so stark in the alleged quid pro quo example, Pompeo argued, is that Kennedy's pressure appeared to be focused on leveraging his power for the sole purpose of covering up for Clinton.

Also, same article.
Here's a look at some of the most controversial moments of Kennedy's tenure at State over the last several years.

Kennedy appeared to know and approve of Clinton's private email server from the start of her time at the State Department.
An email exchange when Clinton was just starting as secretary of State in early 2009 discusses plans to provide Clinton a separate computer to skirt the internal State Department computer network.
Kennedy readily signed off on plans between Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills and another senior State Department official to set up a "stand-alone PC" across the hall so Clinton can check her emails through a separate, non-State Department computer.
"The stand-alone separate network PC is a great idea," Kennedy wrote to Mills and Lewis Lukens, former deputy assistant secretary of State, according to emails obtained through a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

Kennedy sent or received at least 50 email messages from Clinton's private email address.
Kennedy maintained that he never "focused on" Clinton's use of a private email account for official business even though he said he received 50 to 75 emails from Clinton'shrdr22@clintonemail.com">hrdr22@clintonemail.com personal address during her four years at State.
"It did not register as — it did not strike any bells in my mind, no," he said later. Kennedy said when he received the emails, "I was focused on responding to the query that I had received," which included responses to the Benghazi attacks and the evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Tripoli.
The admission came during a sworn deposition in Judicial Watch's civil lawsuit brought under the Freedom of Information Act. The transcript of the admission was released in July.

Republicans accuse Kennedy of rigging the State Department's Accountability Review Board, or ARB.
The ARB was intended to provide a review of the State Department's decision to keep Ambassador Christopher Stevens and other U.S. personnel in Benghazi nearly a year after the death of Muammar Qaddafi.
After a three-months-long review of Stevens' communiqués about the increasingly dangerous security situation and top State Department officials responses, the ARB concluded that "no credible evidence" existed pinning "relevant" security decisions in Benghazi to anyone above the assistant secretary level. The finding essentially cleared Clinton, as well as Kennedy, of any culpability for the death of Stevens and other Americans at the Benghazi diplomatic compound.
Rep. Darrel Issa, R-Calif., who chaired the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at the time, issued a report blaming Kennedy the ARB's findings.
"Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy supervised the selection of the Benghazi ARB staff," he said in the report. "This placed the staff in a position in which their duties required them to evaluate the performance of supervisors, colleagues and friends."
Kennedy defended himself during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing. "I had absolutely nothing to do with the assignment of staff to the board," he said.
But Ambassador Thomas Pickering, the chairman of the ARB, appeared to contradict Kennedy, testifying that the State Department provided the staff for the ARB.
"I spoke with Under Secretary Kennedy about the timing [of the committee's report], and he asked me for some ideas about how and what way the ARB should be conducted," he said.

A State Department internal watchdog accused Kennedy of shutting down an investigation involving allegations of child prostitution.
In 2013, Aurelia Fedenisn, a 26-year veteran government investigator who served in the State Department's inspector general's office, accused Kennedy of shuttering an investigation into allegations that U.S. Ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman patronized prostitutes, including minors, while at his post in Brussels.
It was just one of several State Department IG investigations that Kennedy is accused of influencing, manipulating or shutting down entirely, according to an internal State IG memo, first reported on by CBS News in June 2013.

Gutman, according to the memo, "routinely ditched… his protective detail" in order to "solicit sexual favors from prostitutes."
Sources told CBS News that after the allegations surfaced, the ambassador was called to Washington, D.C. to meet with Kennedy, but was permitted to return to his post.
Kennedy denied meddling in any way with the investigations, arguing that "I have never once interfered, nor would I condone interfering, in any investigation."

https://www.alipac.us/f9/scandals-su...ary-cl-338996/

I think there's a lot more political hacks in the State Department than anyone would want to admit. Our foreign policies have sucked for years, so get them all out, no hacks, no politicians, no Hillary Shrills, Clinton Cons, Bushey Boys or Obamaites, get all this scum out of all the departments especially the US Department of State and Central Intelligence Agency.

What has been going on in our country since the 90's is a national disgrace, and it's mostly at the hands of Congress and the Bureaucracy, the SWAMP, so clean it out good, not because of someone's voter registration or voting history, but because how poorly they did their jobs. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Middle East, Libya, Rwanda, China, North Korea, Russia, Mexico, Venezuela, all of it has sucked to a degree most Americans wouldn't even think possible.

GET THEM OUT OUT OUT!!!

Patrick Kennedy leaving is great news. He would have been a thorn in the side of the Trump administration.

Draining the swamp my friends and that swamp is very deep, he has a long way to go to get rid of all of Obama's plants in our government. But he will and his administration will be great. All of them on the same page and loyal to our president.

There are a lot of good patriotic and loyal people that are not politically motivated working in government. Give them time and they will help to weed the shadow government out. IMO

95% of all federal employee donations were to Democrats. I think we've got a lot of weeds. There's no reason to believe that Democrats in government are any different than Democrats in Congress, Democrats in the New Media, Democrats in Hollywood, etc., etc., etc. The Patriotic Democrats voted for Trump. They didn't donate to Democrats.

They have to clean house at all policy levels and with any one with access to policy documents, conversations and meetings.