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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDiplomats Sound the Alarm as They Are Pushed Out in Droves
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 departments 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 departments 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 laws 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 Departments 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 departments 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 secretarys focus on efficiency and reorganization over policy provoked off-the-record anger.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/diplomats-sound-the-alarm-as-they-are-pushed-out-in-droves/ar-BBFBI7T?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=edgsp
The Blue Flower
(5,446 posts)He's filling the vacuum the US leaves behind.
delisen
(6,044 posts)relationships with other nations and start with a clean slate of Russia-friendly "diplomats." who agree with Putin's foreign policy strategy.
Tillerson may have dubbed Trump a moron but I do not think he would call Putin a moron. He may consider Putin a genius or at least a Strongman Extraordinaire.
Tillerson has spent a lot of time in Putin's Russia and I do not think it unreasonable to think there is Kompromat.
If there is, I think that the psychology of a Tillerson or even a trump is as follows:
The Russians may be holding damaging information on me, and want me to do certain things-but these are things I would want to anyway and a more authoritarian U.S. will be an improvement. So it is ok if I carry them out.
Tillerson wants Exxon Mobil in Russia, end of sanctions, end of annoyance about Exxon Mobil having to consider Human Rights issue (authoritarian governments easier for oil companies to deal with and Exxon should be allowed to externalize social cost of their contracts).
I think his disparagement of Trump is anger that Trump arouses strong opposition that may expose Tillerson and Exxon-Mobil and the Russian Strategy.