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Ex-Iranian Lobbyist at State Dept Moved After Conservative Pressure

April 23, 2017

Ex-Iranian Lobbyist at State Dept Moved After Conservative Pressure, Front Page Magazine (The Point), Daniel Greenfield, April 23, 2017

No one should assume that the election automatically changed everything. Much of the government is still under the control of the same folks who controlled it last year. And it will take pressure and scrutiny to change that. But pressure can and does work. Conservative activists can change things by focusing on people in government who should not be there.

This is progress.

A top State Department official who helped shape the Iran nuclear deal has reportedly been reassigned following criticism from conservative media outlets that questioned her loyalty to President Trump’s administration.

Sahar Nowrouzzadeh’s yearlong assignment to the secretary of State’s policy planning team was cut short earlier this month following critical stories from the Conservative Review and Breitbart News, Politico reported Friday.

A State Department official told Politico that Nowrouzzadeh did not want to be reassigned, and multiple officials in the State Department believe the media attacks were to blame.

“It puts people on edge,” an unnamed State Department official told Politico.

Good. The people being put on edge ought to be on edge. Especially since some of them are bringing us to the edge of nuclear war.

The State Department said in a statement that Nowrouzzadeh has returned to the Office of Iranian Affairs, but did not specify her new role or tell the publication why she was moved.

We’ll know soon enough.

The Hill story, predictably, makes no mention of why there were objections to her. That’s how you can tell it’s propaganda. It neglects to mention the Iranian lobbyist issue.

This Iran lobby, publicly represented by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), has become a staunch institutional ally of the White House selling the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the nuclear deal is known. .. Perhaps NIAC’s most accomplished alum is Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, who is now National Security Council director for Iran in the Obama administration and therefore the top U.S. official for Iran policy, bringing together the various departments of government working on U.S. strategy toward the country. She is also, after the White House principals, one of the leading advisers to President Obama on Iran.

No doubt owing to the sensitivity (and influence) of her government role, Nowrouzzadeh has maintained a low profile, but her work at NIAC is publicly available. She drafted one of the organization’s annual reports for 2002-2003 and was referred to by Dokhi Fassihian, then executive director, as a “staff member” (DOC). The Obama administration insists that Nowrouzzadeh was only ever an intern with NIAC, and Nowrouzzadeh does not seem eager to play up her affiliation with the group. According to her LinkedIn profile, she has worked at the State Department and the Department of Defense. The profile doesn’t mention NIAC at all.

Neither does the Hill story.

Nowrouzzadeh should not be in any agency of the government. Let alone sitting pretty in the Office of Iranian Affairs. But there has been some progress. And this is part of draining the swamp.

Categories: "Drain the swamp", Deep state, Department of State, Iran lobby, Obama hold-overs, Trump agenda, Trump and Iran
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Judicial Watch Sues State Department and USAID for Records about Funding and Political Activities of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation – Macedonia

April 20, 2017

Judicial Watch Sues State Department and USAID for Records about Funding and Political Activities of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation – Macedonia, Judicial Watch, April 19, 2017

(The Trump administration should confess judgment and order the Department of State and USAID to turn over the document. Will Obama administration holdovers in the deep state try to prevent that? — DM)

USAID website reports it gave $4,819,125 in taxpayer money to Soros’s Open Society Foundation – Macedonia between from 2012 to 2016 

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for records and communications relating to the funding and political activities of the Open Society Foundation – Macedonia.  The Macedonia organization, part of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, received nearly $5 million from USAID from 2012 to 2016. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (No. 1:17-cv-00729)).

The suit was filed after both the U.S. Department of State and USAID failed to respond to a February 16, 2017, FOIA request seeking:

  • All records related to any grants, contracts, or disbursements of funds by the Department of State to the Open Society Foundation – Macedonia and/or any of the Foundation’s subsidiaries. This request includes all related requests for funding, payment authorizations, or similar records, as well as all related records of communication between any official, employee, or representative of the Department of State and any official, employee, or representative of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
  • Any records of communication between any official, employee, or representative of the Department of State and any officer, employee, or representative of the Open Society Foundation -Macedonia and/or any of the Foundation’s affiliated organizations. This request includes responsive records of communication sent from or directed to U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia Jess L. Baily.
  • All analyses or similar records regarding the political activities of the Open Society Foundation -Macedonia and/or any of the Foundation’s affiliated organizations.
  • All messages transmitted via the State Department’s SMART system sent from any U.S. Government employee or contractor operating under the Chief of Mission’s authority at the U.S. Embassy in Skopje that pertain to the Open Society Foundation – Macedonia and/or any of the Foundation’s affiliated organizations.

The USAID website reports that between February 27, 2012, and August 31, 2016, USAID gave $4,819,125 in taxpayer money to Soros’s Open Society Foundation – Macedonia (FOSM), in partnership with four local civil society organizations. The USAID’s website links to http://www.soros.org.mk, and says the project trained hundreds of young Macedonians “on topics such as freedom of association, youth policies, citizen initiatives, persuasive argumentation and use of new media.”

In February, Judicial Watch reported:

The U.S. government has quietly spent millions of taxpayer dollars to destabilize the democratically elected, center-right government in Macedonia by colluding with leftwing billionaire philanthropist George Soros, records obtained by Judicial Watch show. Barack Obama’s U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia, Jess L. Baily, has worked behind the scenes with Soros’ Open Society Foundation to funnel large sums of American dollars for the cause, constituting an interference of the U.S. Ambassador in domestic political affairs in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

***

Here’s how the clandestine operation functions, according to high-level sources in Macedonia and the U.S. that have provided Judicial Watch with records as part of an ongoing investigation. The Open Society Foundation has established and funded dozens of leftwing, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Macedonia to overthrow the conservative government. One Macedonian government official interviewed by Judicial Watch in Washington D.C. recently, calls it the “Soros infantry.” The groups organize youth movements, create influential media outlets and organize violent protests to undermine the institutions and policies implemented by the government. One of the Soros’ groups funded the translation and publication of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” into Macedonian. The book is a tactical manual of subversion, provides direct advice for radical street protests and proclaims Lucifer to be the first radical. Thanks to Obama’s ambassador, who has not been replaced by President Trump, Uncle Sam keeps the money flowing so the groups can continue operating and recruiting, sources in Macedonia and the U.S. confirm.

According to InsidePhilanthropy.com, Soros’ Open Society Foundation “may be the largest philanthropic organization ever built, with branches in 37 countries. While the Gates Foundation spends more money, OSF has a larger footprint worldwide thanks to its many local offices, including throughout Africa.” OSF’s budget will be around $930 million …”

The activities of Ambassador Bailey and USAID’s funding of the Open Society Foundation have recently come under Congressional scrutiny. On January 17, 2017, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) sent a letter to Baily asking him to explain the State Department’s relationship with Open Society Foundation. On February 24, 2017, Representatives Chris Smith (R-NJ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), and others called on the Government Accountability Office to conduct an investigation and audit of the Department of State and USAID’s activities in Macedonia, including funding of Open Society Foundation entities and potential interference in domestic Macedonian political affairs in potential violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

“The Obama administration seemed to bust taxpayer budgets in an effort to fund the Soros operation,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The Trump State Department and USAID should get their act together and disclose the details of the Obama-Soros spigot.”

Categories: Deep state, Department of State, George Soros, Judicial Watch, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. courts
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Trump backs off Muslim Brotherhood’s designation as terrorist organization

March 28, 2017

Trump backs off Muslim Brotherhood’s designation as terrorist organization, Washington Times, Guy Taylor, March 27, 2017

(Please see also, Five Reasons The Muslim Brotherhood Is a Terror Group. Who at the State Department are advising against designation as a terrorist organization? Holdovers from the Obama administration?– DM)

In 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood briefly was elected democratically to power in Egypt before its leader, Mohammed Morsi, was ousted from power.

President Trump has — for the time being — put on the back burner an executive order designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, according to U.S. officials close to a heated debate inside the administration over the status of the global Islamist movement.

While the White House has declined to comment publicly, officials speaking on condition of anonymity say the administration backed down from a plan to designate the Brotherhood last month after an internal State Department memo advised against it because of the movement’s loose-knit structure and far-flung political ties across the Middle East.

The memo “explained that there’s not one monolithic Muslim Brotherhood,” according to one of the officials, who told The Washington Times that while the movement may well be tied to such bona fide terrorist groups as Hamas, its more legitimate political activities would complicate the terrorist designation process.

The Brotherhood has prominent political factions engaged — at least perfunctorily — in democracy in Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and several other Muslim-majority nations, and the State Department memo coincided with high-level pressure placed on the Trump administration from at least one of them.

Senior diplomats from Jordan — a close U.S. ally — are believed to have weighed in heavily against the idea of adding the Brotherhood to the State Department’s foreign terrorist organizations list, said the official, because the movement’s political arm in Amman currently holds 16 Jordanian parliament seats.

But debate over the Brotherhood’s status remains biting in Washington, where hard-liners in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism say former President Barack Obama erred for years by failing to target the organization’s promotion of extremist ideology, and that President Trump is now badly fumbling a chance to rectify the situation.

Links to terror

A small but vocal group of Republicans on Capitol Hill is pushing legislation that would direct the State Department to either designate the Brotherhood, as well as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, as terrorist organizations or justify why they are being kept off the list.

Sen. Ted Cruz, who reintroduced the Muslim Brotherhood portion of the legislation last month with a House version backed by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, says listing the movement would “codify needed reforms in America’s war against radical Islamic terrorism.”

“This potent threat to our civilization has intensified under the Obama administration due to the willful blindness of politically-correct policies that hamper our safety and security,” the Texas Republican said in a statement at the time.

“This bill would impose tough sanctions on a hateful group that has spread violence and spawned extremist movements throughout the Middle East,” added Mr. Diaz-Balart, Florida Republican.

While hard-line groups have rallied behind such assertions for years, the legislation also has a number of more moderate backers, including Qanta A. Ahmed, a Muslim British physician and author, who argues that the Brotherhood “birthed modern-day Islamism” as a “supremacist totalitarian ideology that seeks to undermine pluralist societies and impose hardline theocratic regimes.”

“Founded in Egypt in 1928 and with branches or affiliates in over 70 nations, the Muslim Brotherhood today masquerades as a legitimate Islamic institution and a benign democratic actor,” Ms. Ahmed argued in an article published this month by the National Review.

“It is neither,” she wrote, adding that the movement has “well-documented links to the financing of terrorism” and that “the United States should designate [it] as a foreign terrorist organization.”

Missing the nuances

Current and former State Department officials say those calling for the designation of a movement as broadly based as the Muslim Brotherhood are ignoring a host of complex factors that could undermine the designation’s legitimacy.

The Brotherhood, analysts say, exists as a vast and loosely knit political and social organization, with millions of followers and dozens of factions spread across the Muslim world.

Few question its promotion of Shariah or Islamic law, or that some of its followers have embraced terrorism — the most notable example being the Palestinian group Hamas, whose official charter calls for the destruction of Israel. Hamas was put on the terror list in 1997 and has stayed there since.

But away from Hamas, many Brotherhood leaders were known during the 1970s to renounce violence in favor of politics. And recent decades saw factions of the movement embrace democracy to gain legitimacy in various Middle East nations, as well as to try to topple dictatorships.

Following the 2011 overthrow of Egypt’s authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak, the Brotherhood was — albeit briefly — democratically elected to power in Cairo before the nation’s military ousted the movement’s national leader, Mohammed Morsi.

While several Gulf Arab monarchies view the Brotherhood as an internal political threat, the movement’s factions are seen as part of the democratic landscape in other places, including Turkey, where many see the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) as a distant Brotherhood affiliate.

Creating problems

“If you’re talking about just broadly listing the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, you’re going to run quickly into a serious definitional problem,” says P.J. Crowley, who served as an assistant secretary of state for public affairs under President Obama.

“Certainly, if you look at Hamas, it’s part of the Muslim Brotherhood family,” Mr. Crowley told The Times. “But the Brotherhood is also a distant cousin of the AKP in Turkey, so once you start down that road, you get into an immediate problem that could create significant diplomatic issues. And what about Morocco, Jordan and Tunisia?

“The one thing that distinguishes the Muslim Brotherhood from groups like al Qaeda is that al Qaeda wants to blow up any democratic process, while the Brotherhood is theoretically prepared to participate in the democratic process,” he said.

A report by NPR recently maintained that the Brotherhood became popular among Middle East university activists in the 1960s and 1970s — and when some immigrated to the United States with student visas, they brought the movement’s ideology with them.

“They were helped even by our State Department,” Hossein Goal, who emigrated from Iran during the period, told NPR. “They gave them sanctuary to come here.”

It follows that members of the movement had significant roles in establishing mosques, Islamic schools and other U.S.-based Muslim organizations. NPR suggested that, over the years, the situation fueled debate over the whether the movement’s true aim was to participate in American life or to advance an Islamist political agenda in the U.S.

Seeking truth

One prominent U.S. Muslim organization says the push to get the Brotherhood listed as a terrorist organization today is a ruse. “We believe it is just a smokescreen for a witch hunt targeting the civil rights and civic participation of American Muslims,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“Sponsors and supporters of the designation have for many years falsely linked the majority of mainstream American Muslim organizations and leaders to the Muslim Brotherhood,” Mr. Hooper told The Times. “[This] will inevitably be used in a political campaign to attack those same groups and individuals, to marginalize the American Muslim community and to demonize Islam.”

One of the strongest advocates for designating the Brotherhood says that’s nonsense.

“It is a terrorist organization,” says Frank Gaffney, who heads the Center for Security Policy think tank in Washington. “It’s the leading edge in this country and elsewhere in the West for Shariah supremacism.”

Mr. Gaffney, who drew liberal ire during the Obama years for claiming the former president was secretly a Muslim, told The Times that U.S. policy has long been afflicted by thinking the “Brotherhood is part of the solution, not part of the problem.”

“We are in the fix we’re in today, 16 years since 9/11 and having basically lost two wars, not due to military inadequacies but due to this incoherent understanding, or nonunderstanding, of the nature of the enemy,” Mr. Gaffney said.

“One of the things that was most important about Donald Trump’s claim that he understood the nature of the enemy was that he seemed to recognize that it involves the Muslim Brotherhood — and, for that reason, he should designate it a terrorist organization.”

Categories: CAIR, Department of State, Islamist infiltration, Islamist organizations, Islamists in America, Muslim Brotherhood
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State Department’s Top Iran Official Helped Sell Notorious Iran Deal

March 19, 2017

State Department’s Top Iran Official Helped Sell Notorious Iran Deal, Iran Focus, March 19, 2017

(Secretary of State Tillerson should pick Backemeyer’s brain for information about Iran’s vulnerabilities and the negotiation of the Iran scam. Then he should probably fire him — DM)

London, 19 Mar – A current senior official at the State Department, Chris Backemeyer, who serves as deputy assistant secretary for Iranian affairs under Secretary Rex Tillerson, was intimately involved in convincing public and private agencies of the Iran deal’s merits. Allegedly, he was a key component of the operation to sell the Iran nuclear deal to the American people.

As part of his duties under Obama, Backemeyer was the U.S. principal deputy coordinator for sanctions policy. He traveled throughout the country (and the world) working to convince multinational corporations to do business with the Iranian regime. He was also the lead sanctions negotiator in the P5+1 talks that resulted in the Iran deal.

Today, Backemeyer is the highest-ranking official at the State Department with intimate experience in Iran policy.

In an article by National security correspondent Jordan Schachtel, he writes that “Backemeyer reassured mega-companies such as Boeing that investing in Iran was a safe bet, while at the same time the Iranian regime was exporting its caliphatist ideology across the globe. Iran is the world’s foremost state-sponsor of international terrorism. The dictatorship in Tehran funds and aids several terrorist groups throughout the Middle East and the world at large.”

As part of the deal, Iran received an estimated $100-plus billion in assets for agreeing to stop its rapid nuclear development, a windfall for that country. But in fact, according to Schachtel, the deal gave Tehran an accelerated path to a nuclear weapon. Chris Backemeyer helped charter a deal that threw a lifeline to a regime with a flailing economy. Last year, it was revealed that the US paid a $1.7 billion ransom to Iran for the release of American hostages. In his testimony before Congress, Backemeyer claiming that the money would go to serve “the critical needs that Iran has had.” Instead, say Schachtel, “some of the cash was handed over to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the group responsible for conducting Iran’s worldwide terrorist operations.”

The State Department official spoke at an annual confab last year, which was hosted by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). This is a group that many Iranian dissidents consider to be a front group for Tehran, with deep ties to the regime.

Categories: Chris Backemeyer, Department of State, Trump and Iran, Trump and Iran scam
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Memo to U.S. Mission in Vienna: Obama No Longer President

March 10, 2017

Memo to U.S. Mission in Vienna: Obama No Longer President, PJ Media, Claudia Rosett, March 9, 2017

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock)

Haley deserves applause for deflecting the pressures to start bargaining with Kim. Deals with North Korea do not work, and will not work while Kim remains in power. The long record of U.S. talks, deals and attempted talks with North Korea is one of humiliation and failure for the U.S., as North Korea’s dynastic Kim regime has repeatedly pocketed any gains, milked every concession, cheated on every agreement, and carried on with its atrocities and its nuclear missile projects.

Schofer’s words did not quite mesh with Haley’s polite dismissal of pressure for “talks and negotiations.” Rather, Schofer repeated what was for years the refrain of the Obama administration — and of former Secretary of State John Kerry, in particular — offering Pyongyang, under conditions North Korea had previously agreed to, and then violated, the option of returning to the bargaining table:

We have consistently communicated to Pyongyang that we remain open to meaningful negotiations based on the understandings reached by all members of the Six-Party Talks in the 2005 Joint Statement.

As the Trump administration now toils to reduce the threats and clean up the mess bequeathed by Obama’s “global approaches” — including Obama’s gross failure to block North Korea’s prolific nuclear-weapons advances of recent years — perhaps it’s not too much to ask that America’s Mission to the UN in Vienna get entirely on board with the new administration, even if that entails updating its web site to reflect in full that Trump, not Obama, is now the president.

*****************************

Quite likely you don’t spend a lot of time following the doings of Andrew J. Schofer, a career State Department officer who is currently the Charge d’Affaires at the U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Vienna (UNVIE). Nor was Schofer anywhere high on my radar until this week, when he delivered a statement on North Korea that seemed to me slightly at odds with what Ambassador Nikki Haley was saying at the United Nations in New York. Which sent me to the web site for his legation in Vienna … but before I get ahead of myself on that, here’s a bit more background.

Haley, at a UN press stakeout in New York, following a Security Council meeting this Wednesday on North Korea, said that while the U.S. reevaluates how to handle North Korea, “all options are on the table.” But Haley also went out of her way to imply that the Trump administration is far from eager to accede to pressures, such as those from China, to default to talks or deals with North Korea. Referring to North Korea’s tyrant, Kim Jong Un, Haley told reporters:

I appreciate all of my counterparts wanting to talk about talks and negotiations. We are not dealing with a rational person.

To my mind, Haley may be wrong in her assessment of Kim Jong Un as irrational. We can debate whether Kim is actually a madman incapable of rational calculation, or a wily thug, who in the interest of maintaining his hereditary totalitarian throne has been proving adept, like his forebears, at calibrating what he can get away with in the way of threats, hostage-taking, assassinations, executions, extortion rackets, and nuclear missile projects — all in the interest of consolidating his grip on power and expanding his reach.

But wherever one comes down on the crazy-Kim question, Haley deserves applause for deflecting the pressures to start bargaining with Kim. Deals with North Korea do not work, and will not work while Kim remains in power. The long record of U.S. talks, deals and attempted talks with North Korea is one of humiliation and failure for the U.S., as North Korea’s dynastic Kim regime has repeatedly pocketed any gains, milked every concession, cheated on every agreement, and carried on with its atrocities and its nuclear missile projects.

Which brings me to the statement delivered this Wednesday in Vienna by U.S. Charge D’Affaires Schofer, at a meeting of the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. Schofer’s words did not quite mesh with Haley’s polite dismissal of pressure for “talks and negotiations.” Rather, Schofer repeated what was for years the refrain of the Obama administration — and of former Secretary of State John Kerry, in particular — offering Pyongyang, under conditions North Korea had previously agreed to, and then violated, the option of returning to the bargaining table:

We have consistently communicated to Pyongyang that we remain open to meaningful negotiations based on the understandings reached by all members of the Six-Party Talks in the 2005 Joint Statement.

Whether Schofer on matters involving North Korea is genuinely out of sync with Haley, or with the Trump administration generally, I don’t know. But I do know this: Schofer’s statement was different enough from Haley’s, and similar enough to those of the Obama administration, that after reading it I went looking for more information on the web site of the U.S. Mission currently run by Schofer in Vienna — an important legation, not least, because it represents the U.S. at the IAEA.

It is also, as it turns out, a legation that is in some respects almost two months out of date on a major change at the White House — meaning the inauguration on Jan. 20 of a new president. Perhaps someone at the State Department should remind Schofer that Obama has left office? Here’s an excerpt from the web site of the U.S. Mission in Vienna (boldface is mine):

UNVIE’s mission is to conduct effective multilateral diplomacy with International Organizations in Vienna to advance President Obama’s commitment to design and implement global approaches to reduce global threats and seize global opportunities.

Yes, this is small stuff, in its way — that seven weeks after Trump’s inauguration, the U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Vienna has not gotten around to fully updating its web site. (Surely the problem here is one of carelessness, not political bias among career foreign service officers.) But details matter, especially in the symbolically freighted realms of diplomacy.

As the Trump administration now toils to reduce the threats and clean up the mess bequeathed by Obama’s “global approaches” — including Obama’s gross failure to block North Korea’s prolific nuclear-weapons advances of recent years — perhaps it’s not to much to ask that America’s Mission to the UN in Vienna get entirely on board with the new administration, even if that entails updating its web site to reflect in full that Trump, not Obama, is now the president.

Categories: Democrat holdovers, Department of State, Kim Jong-un, Mixed signals, Nikki Haley, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes
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Obama Admin. Arranged Sessions’ First Meeting with Russian Ambassador, Fmr. DOJ Atty. Reveals

March 4, 2017

Obama Admin. Arranged Sessions’ First Meeting with Russian Ambassador, Fmr. DOJ Atty. Reveals, CNS News, Craig Bannister, March 3, 2017

sessions2_0

It was actually the Obama Administration that set up Senator Jeff Sessions’ (R-Texas) first meeting with a Russian ambassador last year, which Democrats are attempting to demonize, a former Justice Department attorney reveals.

Attorney Hans A. von Spakovsky, former civil rights counsel for the Justice Department who also served two years as a member of the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), lays out the innocuous details of Sessions’ first meeting in his commentary, “Get real, Democrats, there is no good reason for Sessions to resign”:

“So what are the two meetings that Sessions had? The first came at a conference on “Global Partners in Diplomacy,” where Sessions was the keynote speaker. Sponsored by the U.S. State Department, The Heritage Foundation, and several other organizations, it was held in Cleveland during the Republican National Convention.

“The conference was an educational program for ambassadors invited by the Obama State Department to observe the convention. The Obama State Department handled all of the coordination with ambassadors and their staff, of which there were about 100 at the conference.”

So, Obama’s State Department not only sponsored the event, but it also invited the Russian ambassador Democrats are now vilifying, thus setting Sessions up to interact with him, Von Spakovsky explains:

“Apparently, after Sessions finished speaking, a small group of ambassadors—including the Russian ambassador—approached the senator as he left the stage and thanked him for his remarks.”

It would be impossible to clandestinely plot anything nefarious in such a public gathering, von Spakovsky concludes:

“That’s the first ‘meeting.’ And it’s hardly an occasion—much less a venue—in when a conspiracy to “interfere” with the November election could be hatched.”

So, members of the Obama Administration sponsored and arranged the event. Then, as The New York Times reports, they carried out plans to sensationalize and draw suspicion to the very encounter with the Russian ambassador that they prompted.

Categories: Department of State, Jeff Sessions, Obama administration, Republican National Convention, Russian ambassador
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Champagne time: it’s a “bloodbath” at the State Department

February 17, 2017

Champagne time: it’s a “bloodbath” at the State Department, Jihad Watch, , February 17, 2017

(Next? How about the “intelligence community?” — DM)

Break out the hats and hooters: the failed State Department establishment, which has applied and reapplied and reapplied again failed policies that have been shown to be based on false analysis time and time again (Poverty causes terrorism! Islam is a religion of peace!), is finally being cleaned out. May this swamp-draining long continue.

rex-tillerson

“It’s a bloodbath at the State Department,” New York Post, February 17, 2017:

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….

Categories: Administrative state, Department of State, Foreign policy, Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State, Swamp draining, Trump agenda, Trump appointments
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BREAKING: Senate confirms Rex Tillerson as secretary of state

February 1, 2017

BREAKING: Senate confirms Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, Washington Times,  Guy Taylor, February 1, 2017

secstatetillersonFILE – In this Jan. 11, 2017, file photo, Secretary of State-nominee Rex Tillerson testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. Trump’s nomination of Tillerson for secretary of state is headed toward Senate confirmation after several Democrats crossed party lines . . . .

The Senate voted Wednesday afternoon to confirm Rex Tillerson as the nation’s 69th secretary of state, officially making the former ExxonMobil CEO America’s top diplomat and chief foreign policy advisor to President Trump.

In a 56-43 vote, Republicans picked up three Democratic votes to pierce the minority’s hoped-for united front against Mr. Trump’s unconventional nominee: Sens. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Mark R. Warner of Virginia, all of whom face re-election next year. Democratic-leaning independent Sen. Angus S. King Jr. of Maine also voted to advance Mr. Tillerson’s nomination.

Mr. Tillerson, who had an extended lunch meeting with Mr. Trump Wednesday afternoon, was expected to be sworn in during a private ceremony later in the day. Officials said he is unlikely to appear in person at State Department headquarters in Foggy Bottom before Friday.

Officials said Mr. Tillerson, who had an extended lunch meeting with Mr. Trump Wednesday afternoon, would be sworn in during a private ceremony. He is not expected to appear at State Department headquarters in Foggy Bottom until Thursday or Friday.

Once the swearing in formalities are taken care of, the new secretary of state will be confronted quickly by a slate of delicate issues.

In addition to an already turbulent landscape of foreign policy challenges — from the North Korean nuclear threat to Syria’s civil war, Russian meddling in Ukraine and the international battle against the Islamic State — Mr. Tillerson arrival at Foggy Bottom coincides deep hand-wringing over Mr. Trump’s recent executive order relating to the so-called “extreme vetting” of Muslims trying to enter the U.S.

Recent days brought reports that hundreds of U.S. diplomats and State Department rank and file have signed a scathing dissent memorandum criticizing the order Mr. Trump signed Friday to suspend all refugee access to the U.S. and temporarily halt visas to citizens of seven majority Muslim nations, including Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Sudan.

“We are better than this,” said the memo, which was submitted as a cable into the State Department’s infamous “dissent channel” and leaked to reporters.

The White House response to those who signed the memo has been confrontational, with administration spokesman Sean Spicer asserting Monday that they “should either get with the program or they can go.”

The new secretary of state will face the immediate and delicate task of trying win back their loyalty and restore morale at the department.

Mr. Tillerson was noncommittal on the visa and refugee issue during his nomination hearing last month. While he voiced apprehension toward Mr. Trump’s campaign trail calls for a ban on “all Muslims” entering the U.S., he also said he might be open to the creation of some kind of registry of Muslims living in the country.

During the hearing, Mr. Tillerson also faced scrutiny over close relationships he built with high-level Russian officials as head of ExxonMobil — he was CEO from 2006 through 2016 — and the extent to which those relationships may influence his view of economic sanctions designed to contain Moscow’s meddling in Ukraine.

Mr. Tillerson was generally elusive on sanctions and Russia. He spoke out against the use of economic penalties as a foreign policy tool. But he also condemned suspected interference by Russia in the U.S. presidential election, and said he believed Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula was illegal and worthy of a muscular response from Washington.

Another issue that drew scrutiny during the hearing was Mr. Tillerson view on climate change and the extent to which he hopes to change or renounce the 2015 global Paris Climate Accord that former Secretary of State John F. Kerry fought for in recent years.

Mr. Tillerson said he believes “the risk of climate change does exist” and “the consequences of it could be serious enough that action should be taken.” While he said the “type of action seems to be where the largest areas of debate exist,” he added that it’s “important to recognize the U.S. had done a pretty good job.”

Categories: Department of State, Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State, Trump agenda, Trump appointments, U.S. Senate
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Trump Fires Hillary’s Benghazi Fixer

January 26, 2017

Trump Fires Hillary’s Benghazi Fixer, Front Page Magazine (The Point), Daniel Greenfield, January 26, 2017

(Please see also, Josh Rogin The State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned. — DM)

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The mainstream media’s fake news operation is predictably spinning this as principled resignations by public officials who couldn’t stand the idea of working under Trump. Except that Patrick Kennedy, the biggest fish being forced out, had reportedly been begging to keep his job. These were resignations in name only. They were actually firings.

Thomas Shannon remains the United States’ acting secretary of state, but Foggy Bottom has lost its entire senior management team. President Donald Trump reportedly ordered these moves in an effort to “clean house.”

CNN reports the administration told four senior State Department officials that their services were no longer needed. The Washington Post characterized the departures as “sudden.”

Among those who are out include State’s long-serving undersecretary of management, Patrick Kennedy. He is reported to have been lobbying to keep his job. Other top officials who are no longer working at State include: Joyce Anne Barr, Gentry O. Smith and Michelle Bond. All three are career foreign service officers who have served under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Lydia Muniz, director of the bureau of overseas building operations, was asked to depart as well, CNN reports.

“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” said David Wade, who served as Secretary John Kerry’s chief of staff.

Good and good riddance. Here’s a refresher on Patrick Kennedy from Paul Mirengoff at Powerline.

Patrick Kennedy, the State Department official who tried to get the FBI to change email classifications in exchange for helping the FBI meet its staffing needs in Bagdhad, is what they used to call a “fixer.” ..

Kennedy was at fault for the poor security at Benghazi. Gregory Hicks, the State Department’s charge d’affaires in Libya, testified before Congress that “given the decision-making that Under Secretary Pat Kennedy was making with respect to Embassy Tripoli and Consulate Benghazi operations, he has to bear some responsibility” for the Benghazi terror attack.

As Clinton’s fixer, it was only natural that Kennedy assist the Clinton Foundation. The Washington Examiner reports that Kennedy was involved in pushing plans for a new $177.9 million embassy in Norway in 2011 over the apparent objections of diplomatic officials in Oslo. Norway’s government has donated between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, donor records show.

Kennedy also helped fix it so that Brian Pagliano, the man in charge of Hillary’s home-brew email server, got a job at the State Department

And then there was this outrageous moment.

According to FBI interview summaries set to be released in the coming days. Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary of state for management, discussed providing additional overseas slots for the FBI in exchange for revisions to classifications of the sensitive emails.

One email in particular concerned Kennedy and, according to the FBI summary, providing a B9 exemption “would allow him to archive the document in the basement of the department of state never to be seen again.” The FBI official told Kennedy that he would look into the email if Kennedy would authorize a pending request for additional FBI personnel in Iraq.

A summary of an interview with the section chief of the FBI records management division provides further evidence of Kennedy’s attempts to have the classification of some sensitive emails changed. The FBI records official, whose job includes making determinations on classification, told investigators that he was approached by his colleague in international operations after the initial discussion with Kennedy. The FBI records official says that his colleague “pressured” him to declassify an email “in exchange for a quid pro quo,” according to the interview summary. “In exchange for making the email unclassified State would reciprocate by allowing the FBI to place more agents in countries where they are presently forbidden.” The request was denied.

In the days that followed, the FBI records official attended an “all-agency” meeting at the State Department to discuss the ongoing “classification review of pending Clinton FOIA materials.” One of the participants at the meeting asked Kennedy whether any of the emails were classified. Kennedy purposely looked at the FBI records chief and then replied: “Well, we’ll see.”

Kennedy shouldn’t just be fired. He should be on trial. But hopefully the investigation of Hillary’s actions will continue.

Categories: Department of State, Trump presidency
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Josh Rogin The State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned

January 26, 2017

Josh Rogin The State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned, Washington Post, Josh Rogin, January 26, 2017

(According to WaPo, Secretary Tillerson’s job “Just got considerably more difficult.” Another way to look at it is that his job of draining the swamp just got considerably easier. — DM)

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 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.

Kennedy will retire from the foreign service at the end of the month, officials said. The other officials could be given assignments elsewhere in the foreign service.

In addition, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr retired Jan. 20, and the director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, Lydia Muniz, departed the same day. That amounts to a near-complete housecleaning of all the senior officials that deal with managing the State Department, its overseas posts and its people.

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

Several senior foreign service officers in the State Department’s regional bureaus have also left their posts or resigned since the election. But the emptying of leadership in the management bureaus is more disruptive because those offices need to be led by people who know the department and have experience running its complicated bureaucracies. There’s no easy way to replace that via the private sector, said Wade.

“Diplomatic security, consular affairs, there’s just not a corollary that exists outside the department, and you can least afford a learning curve in these areas where issues can quickly become matters of life and death,” he said. “The muscle memory is critical. These retirements are a big loss. They leave a void. These are very difficult people to replace.”

Whether Kennedy left on his own volition or was pushed out by the incoming Trump team is a matter of dispute inside the department. Just days before he resigned, Kennedy was taking on more responsibility inside the department and working closely with the transition. His departure was a surprise to other State Department officials who were working with him.

One senior State Department official who responded to my requests for comment said that all the officials had previously submitted their letters of resignation, as was required for all positions that are appointed by the president and that require confirmation by the Senate, known as PAS positions.

“No officer accepts a PAS position with the expectation that it is unlimited. And all officers understand that the President may choose to replace them at any time,” this official said. “These officers have served admirably and well. Their departure offers a moment to consider their accomplishments and thank them for their service. These are the patterns and rhythms of the career service.”

Ambassador Richard Boucher, who served as State Department spokesman for Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, said that while there’s always a lot of turnover around the time a new administration takes office, traditionally senior officials work with the new team to see who should stay on in their roles and what other jobs might be available. But that’s not what happened this time.

The officials who manage the building and thousands of overseas diplomatic posts are charged with taking care of Americans overseas and protecting U.S. diplomats risking their lives abroad. The career foreign service officers are crucial to those functions as well as to implementing the new president’s agenda, whatever it may be, Boucher said.

“You don’t run foreign policy by making statements, you run it with thousands of people working to implement programs every day,” Boucher said. “To undercut that is to undercut the institution.”

By itself, the sudden departure of the State Department’s entire senior management team is disruptive enough. But in the context of a president who railed against the U.S. foreign policy establishment during his campaign and secretary of state with no government experience, the vacancies are much more concerning.

Tillerson’s job No. 1 must be to find qualified and experienced career officials to manage the State Department’s vital offices. His second job should be to reach out to and reassure a State Department workforce that is panicked about what the Trump administration means for them.

Categories: Department of State, Trump presidency
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