Senior officials at the State Department could smell blood in the water, and with the gangsterism admired by anyone who has ever wanted to pull a cannabis-smoking news-anchor move (see below), they all said, “Bye, Felicia” to their jobs rather than work under President Donald Trump.
According to the Washington Post, what makes it even more gangster is that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was actually in the State Department headquarters Wednesday, checking out his new digs, when news came out that three top officials had suddenly resigned.
“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” have all announced that they will be leaving their current posts, the Post reports. Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy had previously announced that he would be retiring at the end of the month.
Considering that 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, the lion’s share of senior staff who manage the State Department, its overseas posts and its people have resigned, although the Post notes that they could be moved to different positions.
“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 Secretary of State John Kerry, told the 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.”
Read more at the Washington Post.