Entire state dept senior management resigns
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Uranium-gate
According to the New York Times, a group of Canadian donors to the Clinton Foundation wanted to sell their uranium mining company, Uranium One, to Russia, but because uranium is considered a strategic material, the sale of those portions of the uranium mines located in the United States needed State Department permission.
In 2013, the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off was the State Department, then headed by Hillary Clinton. As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.
This deal transferred control of 20% of America's uranium to Russian control.
There was only one problem. The location of the new uranium mine was underneath privately-owned ranch lands. Im order to clear the ranchers off, the Bureau of Land Management attempted to seize the lands under the pretext that cattle were illegaly grazing on government land, leading to the standoff and shooting at the Mahleur National Wildlife Refuge. Rancher spokesman LaVoy Finicum was going public about the link between the Clinton Foundation/Uranium One deal to the Bureau of Land Managament's attempts to seize the ranchers' lands when he was stopped at a police
you must be illiterate - cause if you truly read the article...
anyway - further in the article it states:
Clinton did not represent the State Department on the panel of agency officials who approve deals such as the Uranium One transaction. The representative at the time, former Assistant Secretary Jose Fernandez, told the Times, "Mrs. Clinton never intervened with me on any C.F.I.U.S. matter," referring to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States...
The national security question raised by the transaction at the time centered on whether it would make the United States reliant on foreign sources of uranium, not on the proliferation of nuclear weapons...
The United States and Russia had exchanged enriched and raw uranium for years...
Here is some more reading for you:
The U.S.-Russian Uranium Deal: Results and Lessons
The idea of down-blending excess stockpiles of weapons HEU and using the resulting LEU as fuel for nuclear power plants was first proposed in 1991 by Thomas Neff, a senior researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies.[3] The idea was received in the U.S. academic community with great enthusiasm and was supported by the Bush administration in view of the signing in July 1991 of the Soviet-U.S. Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), which mandated a reduction of the two countries’ nuclear weapons stockpiles by approximately 5,000 warheads apiece.[4]
Given the difficult economic situation in the Soviet Union at the time, Moscow expressed interest in Neff’s proposal, which opened up the prospect of billions of U.S. dollars in hard currency earnings being generated as a by-product of implementing START I. The idea looked attractive to the Russian government, which hoped that some of that money could be used to support the Russian nuclear industry, which, like all other state enterprises, was suffering from a sharp reduction in government funding.
The HEU-LEU agreement differed in an important way from the 1992 Agreement on the Safe and Secure Transportation, Storage and Destruction of Weapons and the Prevention of Weapons Proliferation, which provided the legal framework for the so-called Nunn-Lugar program. Under the terms of the latter agreement, the United States was the donor and Russia was the recipient of U.S. financial and technical assistance, including money provided to help Russia implement the reductions specified in START I. In contrast, the HEU-LEU agreement was essentially a mutually advantageous commercial deal...
continue reading more : https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2013_12/Looking-Back_The-US-Russian-Uranium-Deal-Results-and-Lessons
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now you want to name callyou must be illiterate - cause if you truly read the article...
anyway - further in the article it states:
Clinton did not represent the State Department on the panel of agency officials who approve deals such as the Uranium One transaction. The representative at the time, former Assistant Secretary Jose Fernandez, told the Times, "Mrs. Clinton never intervened with me on any C.F.I.U.S. matter," referring to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States...
You must be stupid because the WHOLE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE was about Hilliary.. and her corruption
no name calling
just pointing out that you are the one that can't see a difference between conjecture and facts
and you selectively posted portions of the report trying to imply support for your beliefs instead posting the entire report that included the facts - facts that shed light on the fairy tales you choose to believe
r i f...
if you are debating based on facts no need to hide a thing
i posted the WEB LINK to the article . the NEW York Times staff reached the conclusion on Hilliary after they did an investigation......go argue with them
again very poor reading comprehension on your part... no one is arguing possible corruption on part of the Clintons... but even that article details the facts of uranium being exchanged between the US and Russia for decades...
If you want to pick at something look at / talk about what the article is really pointing to:
The mining rights and mine ownership
With Departure of Top Lawyer, State Department Exodus Continues
Another one bites the dust.
4 HOURS AGO- CATEGORIES: EXCLUSIVE
- Colum Lynch and Robbie Gramer
A senior State Department lawyer, Todd Buchwald, is stepping down in the coming weeks, joining scores of career civil and foreign service officers fleeing an administration that critics say has diminished the standing of U.S. diplomacy, according to friends and colleagues.
The high-level departure comes weeks after the State Department decided to downgrade the Office of Global Criminal Justice, which Buchwald led from December 2015 through the end of July 2017. After being forced from that job, he was reassigned to the Office of the Legal Advisor, where he had previously worked for most of his career at the State Department.
Buchwald’s imminent resignation follows last week’s exodus of three other top career diplomats who oversee the department’s policies on Europe, the United Nations, and narcotics and law enforcement respectively. The departures have reinforced concerns about the State Department’s ability to retain some of its most experienced and senior diplomats and lawyers.
One former State Department attorney described Buchwald as “possibly the best lawyer in State right now and one of the most senior.” His departure, the source said, is “a huge loss for the department.” It is also likely to have knock-on effects, undercutting the department’s ability to recruit new talent. The former official, who now teaches law at a major university, says he cautions his brightest students with an interest in public services about the perils of serving the State Department in this political climate.
Veteran employees have been leaving in droves since January, when the Trump administration forced the State Department’s top career diplomats, including Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary of state for management, and Tom Countryman, the acting undersecretary for arms control, to pack their bags. “This is extraordinary…I’ve never seen anything like it,” said one senior career State Department official.
Some are leaving voluntarily to escape Foggy Bottom’s historically low morale and an administration hostile to professional diplomats, while others are being forced into retirement amid Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s controversial efforts to “redesign” the State Department. In a letter to Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Tillerson wrote that 36 of the department’s 66 special envoys and representatives would be eliminated or folded into other bureaus.
“It’s a combination of three things: A little bit of arrogance, a little bit of incompetence, and a little bit of ignorance,” the senior career State Department official told FP, when asked why the Trump administration is either failing to retain, or forcing out, some of the State Department’s most experienced diplomats.
Some close friends and confidantes of Buchwald believe he is being forced out. “I’d be surprised if he did this on his own,” said one former State Department official who worked closely with Buchwald. “This is a guy who’s put his whole life into diplomacy.”
A State Department spokesman confirmed Buchwald plans to retire, but declined to comment on specifics. “Out of respect for his privacy, we have no additional information to provide at this time,” the spokesman said.Buchwald did not respond to several requests for comment.
The State Department can force out senior employees in indirect ways. On senior State Department official suggested that is what may have happened to Buchwald, who was reassigned from his senior post as head of Global Criminal Justice back to a job in legal affairs. “He was moved to something that I’m sure is not up to his ability,” said the official, who has worked closely with Buchwald.
But others say he is retiring of his own volition — the dismal state of State under Trump merely expedited his decision.
The first hint that his days at State were numbered came in July, when Buchwald sent out an email to colleagues announcing his departure from the war crimes office. He noted that he could be reached at his official State Department email for “the time being” but that they should take down his private email if they wanted to contact him in the future.
Buchwald has also been quietly confiding his plans to a small circle of friends and colleagues to get word out that he will be looking for a new job, possibly teaching law and diplomacy. An associate recalled he had once mused about a second career as a high school civics or social studies teacher.
Buchwald, who previously oversaw U.N. legal issues, is part of a small coterie of U.S. government lawyers that have played an outsize role in drafting U.N. resolutions that aimed at curtailing North Korean and Iranian nuclear ambitions and holding international war criminals to account.
“He was the guy who wrote the resolution that sent Darfur to the International Criminal Court,” said Stephen Rapp, the former U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes, referring a 2006 vote that led to charges of genocide against Sudan’s leader, Hassan Omar Al-Bashir.
Rapp worried the departure of State Department lawyers like Buchwald has the potential to leave a void in the government’s institutional memory. “If you want to know what happened in the Security Council in 1985 and what we can or can’t do something they know the answer,” he said. “Losing that experience is even more tragic and in a way devastating than losing” diplomats.
Yet one Trump administration advisor challenged complaints by foreign policy observers about the dire state of the State Department under Tillerson.
“Look, I don’t think Rex has been doing a fantastic job; he needs to hire more political appointees,” the advisor said. “But the career guys are saying there is no better time for career people right now. They love the fact that there are no political appointees and they are getting the senior jobs and they get to make their own decisions.”
Besides, the advisor added, “the State Department is bloated.”
For critics, however, the ongoing exodus is yet another sign that the Trump administration is kneecapping American diplomacy.
“When serious hardcore professional diplomats that have records of exemplary service serving both Republicans and Democrats are deciding to head for the door rather than stick it out, something is very wrong,” said Reuben Brigety, dean of George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and former U.S. ambassador to the African Union.
“If you wanted to actually set out to break American diplomacy, this is how you’d do it,” Brigety said.
Photo credit: PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images
Like this article? Read an unlimited amount of articles, plus access to our entire 46-year printed archive, the FP App, and the FP Insights Tool when you subscribe to FP Premium for 20% off!
Diplomats Sound the Alarm as They Are Pushed Out in Droves
Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson at the White House on Monday. Mr. Tillerson has made no secret of his belief that the State Department is a bloated bureaucracy.
TOM BRENNER / THE NEW YORK TIMES
By GARDINER HARRIS
NOVEMBER 24, 2017
WASHINGTON — Of all the State Department employees who might have been vulnerable in the staff reductions that Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson has initiated as he reshapes the department, the one person who seemed least likely to be a target was the chief of security, Bill A. Miller.
Republicans pilloried Hillary Clinton for what they claimed was her inadequate attention to security as secretary of state in the months before the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. Congress even passed legislation mandating that the department’s top security official have unrestricted access to the secretary of state.
But in his first nine months in office, Mr. Tillerson turned down repeated and sometimes urgent requests from the department’s security staff to brief him, according to several former top officials in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Finally, Mr. Miller, the acting assistant secretary for diplomatic security, was forced to cite the law’s requirement that he be allowed to speak to Mr. Tillerson.
Mr. Miller got just five minutes with the secretary of state, the former officials said. Afterward, Mr. Miller, a career Foreign Service officer, was pushed out, joining a parade of dismissals and early retirements that has decimated the State Department’s senior ranks. Mr. Miller declined to comment.
The departures mark a new stage in the broken and increasingly contentious relationship between Mr. Tillerson and much of his department’s work force. By last spring, interviews at the time suggested, the guarded optimism that greeted his arrival had given way to concern among diplomats about his aloofness and lack of communication. By the summer, the secretary’s focus on efficiency and reorganization over policy provoked off-the-record anger.
Now the estrangement is in the open, as diplomats going out the door make their feelings known and members of Congress raise questions about the impact of their leaving.
In a letter to Mr. Tillerson last week, Democratic members of the House Foreign Relations Committee, citing what they said was “the exodus of more than 100 senior Foreign Service officers from the State Department since January,” expressed concern about “what appears to be the intentional hollowing-out of our senior diplomatic ranks.”
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, sent a similar letter, telling Mr. Tillerson that “America’s diplomatic power is being weakened internally as complex global crises are growing externally.”
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. Even before Mr. Tillerson was confirmed, his staff fired six of the State Department’s top career diplomats, including Patrick Kennedy, who had been appointed to his position by President George W. Bush. Kristie Kenney, the department’s counselor and one of just five career ambassadors, was summarily fired a few weeks later.
None were given any reason for their dismissals, although Mr. Kennedy and Ms. Kenney had been reprimanded by Trump transition officials for answering basic logistical questions from Nikki R. Haley, President Trump’s pick as United Nations ambassador. Mr. Tillerson is widely believed to dislike Ms. Haley, who has been seen as a possible successor if Mr. Tillerson steps down.
In the following months, Mr. 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.
One of them was Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a career Foreign Service officer who served as ambassador to Liberia under Mr. Bush and as director general of the Foreign Service and assistant secretary for African Affairs during the Obama administration. Ms. Thomas-Greenfield was among those asked to leave by Mr. Tillerson’s staff, but she appealed and remained until her retirement in September.
“I don’t feel targeted as an African-American,” she said. “I feel targeted as a professional.”
Bill A. Miller, the department’s former chief of security.
U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
For those who have not been dismissed, retirement has become a preferred alternative when, like Mr. Miller, they find no demand for their expertise. A retirement class that concludes this month has 26 senior employees, including two acting assistant secretaries in their early 50s who would normally wait years before leaving.
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.
The political appointees who normally join the department after a change in administration have not made up for those departures. So far, just 10 of the top 44 political positions in the department have been filled, and for most of the vacancies, Mr. Tillerson has not nominated anyone.
“Leadership matters,” said Nancy McEldowney, a former ambassador who retired in June after a 30-year career as a Foreign Service officer. “There’s a vacuum throughout the State Department, and the junior people now working in these top jobs lack the confidence and credibility that comes from a presidential nomination and Senate confirmation.”
Even more departures are expected as a result of an intense campaign that Mr. Tillerson has ordered to reduce the department’s longtime backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests. CNN reportedthat the task had resulted from Mr. Trump’s desire to accelerate the release of Mrs. Clinton’s remaining emails.
Every bureau in the department has been asked to contribute to the effort. That has left midlevel employees and diplomats — including some just returning from high-level or difficult overseas assignments — to spend months performing mind-numbing clerical functions beside unpaid interns.
Mr. Tillerson’s spokesman, R. C. Hammond, dismissed any suggestion that the departures had had a negative effect.
“There are qualified people who are delivering on America’s diplomatic mission,” Mr. Hammond said. “It’s insulting to them every time someone comes up to them and says that the State Department is being gutted.”
Former State Department officials disagree.
“The United States is at the center of every crisis around the world, and you simply cannot be effective if you don’t have assistant secretaries and ambassadors in place,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a retired career diplomat who was an under secretary of state for President George W. Bush. “It shows a disdain for diplomacy.”
One result is that there is no one in place with responsibilities for some key trouble spots.
Although the North Korean nuclear crisis is the Trump administration’s top priority, the administration has yet to nominate an assistant secretary for East Asia or an ambassador to South Korea, crucial positions to deal with the issue.
In the midst of the war in Syria and growing worries over a possible conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, there is no confirmed assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs or ambassadors to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt or Qatar. And as Zimbabwe confronts the future after the departure of Robert Mugabe, the department is lacking a confirmed assistant secretary for African affairs or an ambassador to neighboring South Africa.
And the department’s future effectiveness may also be threatened. As more senior officials depart, interest in joining the Foreign Service is dwindling. With fewer prospects for rewarding careers, the number of people taking its entrance exam is on track to drop by 50 percent this year, according to the Foreign Service Association.
“The message from the State Department right now is, ‘We don’t want you,’ and students are hearing that,” said James Goldgeier, former dean of the School of International Service at American University.
For many at the State Department, their experience under Mr. Tillerson has been a particular shock because their hopes for him were initially high.
Mrs. Clinton and John Kerry, her successor, were both seen as focused on their own priorities and were not particularly popular within the department. The model secretaries in recent history have been Colin Powell, James A. Baker III and George P. Shultz, Republicans who cared about management.
“Everyone who called me, I said: ‘Listen, guys, this is going to be great, and maybe he’ll finally get the department in shape,’” said Dana Shell Smith, the ambassador to Qatar, who recently resigned.
Since then, Ms. Smith has changed her mind.
“These people either do not believe the U.S. should be a world leader, or they’re utterly incompetent,” she said. “Either way, having so many vacancies in essential places is a disaster waiting to happen.”
Gutting the state department and the court system
That way Russia gets what they want and the white supremacist get what they want. A match made in traitor’s heaven.
DAMN NO ONE IS SAFE
I like one of the comments said: This the only administration that uses a temp agency to fill its vacancies.
I like one of the comments said: This the only administration that uses a temp agency to fill its vacancies.
there are no coincidences...
this isn't incompetence - this is coordinated
DAMN NO ONE IS SAFE
I like one of the comments said: This the only administration that uses a temp agency to fill its vacancies.
Star U.S. Diplomat Quits With Fiery Letter To Rex Tillerson
The Trump administration has a “stinging disrespect” for diplomats, she wrote.
By Igor Bobic
A distinguished U.S. diplomat who was seen as a rising star at the State Department resigned after writing a searing letter to Secretary Of State Rex Tillerson, accusing him of gutting the department and damaging America’s standing across the world.
Elizabeth Shackelford, who served as a political officer based in Nairobi for the U.S. mission to Somalia, lamented in a Nov. 7 letter obtained by Foreign Policythe “stinging disrespect” President Donald Trump’s administration had shown the diplomatic corps and how it was “driving” the department’s most experienced staff away in growing numbers.
“The cost of this is visible every day in Mission Somalia, my current post, where State’s diplomatic influence, on the country and within our own interagency, is waning,” Shackelford wrote.
She said she was “shocked” when Tillerson, who stepped down as ExxonMobil CEO to serve as Trump’s secretary of state, told department employees that advancing human rights across the globe “creates obstacles to our ability to advance our national security interests.“
If Tillerson is unable to “stem the bleeding” and preserve the department’s mission, she added, “I would humbly recommend you follow me out the door.”
Trump’s administration has been harshly criticized for downplaying human rights issues in countries like Russia, Turkey, and the Philippines. Democratic lawmakers and former ambassadors have also accused Tillerson of gutting the department’s budget and staff at a critical and dangerous time, as difficult foreign policy challenges persist in the Middle East and on the Korean peninsula.
Tillerson, who has still has not denied having called Trump a “moron” in private earlier this year, has been the subject of a raft of rumors that his time at the State Department will be short-lived. The White House last month reportedly floated a plan about replacing Tillerson with CIA Director Mike Pompeo in order to help push out the secretary of state.
Tillerson has defended the job he has done and said the department has been in need of a “redesign” to simplify its workforce.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...fbae4b073789f6a91c5?ncid=edlinkushpmg00000313
The Trump administration has a “stinging disrespect” for diplomats, she wrote.
By Igor Bobic
A distinguished U.S. diplomat who was seen as a rising star at the State Department resigned after writing a searing letter to Secretary Of State Rex Tillerson, accusing him of gutting the department and damaging America’s standing across the world.
Elizabeth Shackelford, who served as a political officer based in Nairobi for the U.S. mission to Somalia, lamented in a Nov. 7 letter obtained by Foreign Policythe “stinging disrespect” President Donald Trump’s administration had shown the diplomatic corps and how it was “driving” the department’s most experienced staff away in growing numbers.
“The cost of this is visible every day in Mission Somalia, my current post, where State’s diplomatic influence, on the country and within our own interagency, is waning,” Shackelford wrote.
She said she was “shocked” when Tillerson, who stepped down as ExxonMobil CEO to serve as Trump’s secretary of state, told department employees that advancing human rights across the globe “creates obstacles to our ability to advance our national security interests.“
If Tillerson is unable to “stem the bleeding” and preserve the department’s mission, she added, “I would humbly recommend you follow me out the door.”
Trump’s administration has been harshly criticized for downplaying human rights issues in countries like Russia, Turkey, and the Philippines. Democratic lawmakers and former ambassadors have also accused Tillerson of gutting the department’s budget and staff at a critical and dangerous time, as difficult foreign policy challenges persist in the Middle East and on the Korean peninsula.
Tillerson, who has still has not denied having called Trump a “moron” in private earlier this year, has been the subject of a raft of rumors that his time at the State Department will be short-lived. The White House last month reportedly floated a plan about replacing Tillerson with CIA Director Mike Pompeo in order to help push out the secretary of state.
Tillerson has defended the job he has done and said the department has been in need of a “redesign” to simplify its workforce.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...fbae4b073789f6a91c5?ncid=edlinkushpmg00000313
He's finishing what he started
Mass layoffs in a department that oversees negotiating with other countries on treaties, providing services to Americans when abroad, foreign aid and counter terrorism.
This is bad.
God help anyone who loses their passport or runs into any other issues abroad that would require the assistance of one of our embassies
This is bad.
God help anyone who loses their passport or runs into any other issues abroad that would require the assistance of one of our embassies
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Traffic goes in 2 directions. It also traps mofos here who may try to flee and tell the truth on whats happening here. You can't have any Julius Scotts telling stories of Common Winds.Mass layoffs in a department that oversees negotiating with other countries on treaties, providing services to Americans when abroad, foreign aid and counter terrorism.
This is bad.
God help anyone who loses their passport or runs into any other issues abroad that would require the assistance of one of our embassies
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