Don’t think Tillerson is actively sabotaging the State Department? Read this…
While the news media is busy dangling a big shiny thing, namely the State Department’s inexplicable refusal to send personnel with Ivanka Trump for her trip to India, there is far more dire news about former (?) oil magnate Rex Tillerson’s fiefdom.
First, experienced, season diplomats are being forced out by Tillerson’s petty, unscrupulous, and incompetent leadership:
Mr. Tillerson, a former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, has made no secret of his belief that the State Department is a bloated bureaucracy and that he regards much of the day-to-day diplomacy that lower-level officials conduct as unproductive. … Tillerson launched a reorganization that he has said will be the most important thing he will do, and he has hired two consulting companies to lead the effort. Since he decided before even arriving at the State Department to slash its budget by 31 percent, many in the department have always seen the reorganization as a smoke screen for drastic cuts.
Mr. Tillerson has frozen most hiring and recently offered a $25,000 buyout in hopes of pushing nearly 2,000 career diplomats and civil servants to leave by October 2018.
His small cadre of aides have fired some diplomats and gotten others to resign by refusing them the assignments they wanted or taking away their duties altogether. Among those fired or sidelined were most of the top African-American and Latino diplomats, as well as many women, difficult losses in a department that has long struggled with diversity.
…
The number of those with the department’s top two ranks of career ambassador and career minister — equivalent to four- and three-star generals — will have been cut in half by Dec. 1, from 39 to 19. And of the 431 minister-counselors, who have two-star-equivalent ranks, 369 remain and another 14 have indicated that they will leave soon — an 18 percent drop — according to an accounting provided by the American Foreign Service Association.
Second, it is apparent that Tillerson does not take the security of State epartment personnel seriously:
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson previously turned down multiple meetings with the department’s chief of security, forcing the chief to invoke the law’s requirement that he is allowed to meet with the top U.S. diplomat, according to The New York Times.
The chief, Bill Miller, has since resigned from his position.
Former senior officials at the Bureau of Diplomatic Security told The Times that for nine months Tillerson had turned down multiple briefing requests, including urgent requests, from Miller.
Miller was eventually granted a meeting, according to the report, but only after demanding it in according with the law. The meeting reportedly only lasted five minutes.
It is as if the Secretary of State is hell-bent on destroying the United States’ strength and influence in all things diplomatic.
Putin must be elated.
Is there a connection between the two?
‘Nuff said.
