Running the State Department has suddenly become more challenging for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. One week into newly elected United States President Donald Trump's presidency, a mass exodus of management officials was underway.
In a report from the Business Insider, all senior level of management officials resigned on Wednesday. The management officials would prefer to leave their posts, which they'd held for several years, rather than serve under Donald Trump's administration.
Donald Trump's selection of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was actually present in Foggy Bottom on Wednesday. Tillerson was taking meetings when the mass resignations took place.
Donald Trump was narrowing his search for the State Department's No. 2 official and was looking to replace undersecretary for management, Patrick Kennedy, according to a report from The Washington Post. Kennedy has been the State Department's undersecretary for nine years.
Patrick Kennedy, however, suddenly resigned on Wednesday, along with his three top officials, four State Department officials confirmed. The officials that followed Kennedy's resignation are 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. All three officials are career Foreign Service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
The resignation of Patrick Kennedy was unexpected. Kennedy has been very active working closely with the transition and was taking on more responsibility inside the department. That's why Kennedy's sudden resignation caught everyone by surprise, especially other State Department officials who were working with him.
Aside from the resignation of Patrick Kennedy and his top officials, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr retired on Jan. 20 and Bureau of Overseas Building Operations director Lydia Muniz also left on the same day. The mass exodus is the biggest departure of state officials in recent memory according to former State Department chief of staff David Wade.
"It's the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that's incredibly difficult to replicate," said David Wade. "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."
