THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2024 27 For this latter claim, Johnson was attacked by a group of nine Senior Foreign Service officers and defended by several past presidents of AFSA, but the data was not in dispute. Although she had received the department’s Distinguished Honor Award and multiple Meritorious Honor Awards, she received no onward assignment and retired at the end of her second term. 2017-2023: The Trump Administration and Beyond AFSA and its president, Barbara Stephenson (2015-2019), greeted the Trump administration (2017-2021) with a certain hopefulness. “You Can Count on Us,” Stephenson wrote in the January-February 2017 Foreign Service Journal. When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (2017-2018) announced his intention to “redesign” the Department of State, she publicly hailed the potential. “I’m encouraging all of our folks to make the most of this opportunity for reform,” she said—despite a hiring freeze that showed no signs of ending and an administration budget request that would cut State and USAID by 30 percent. And when Tillerson’s successor, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, declared, “I want the State Department to get its swagger back,” Stephenson felt a surge of optimism. Secretary of State Pompeo (2018-2021) lifted the hiring freeze and, as AFSA had demanded, restored the ability of overseas posts to hire spouses and other family members of employees on permanent assignment. In fact, there was never any hope of a positive relationship with the administration, which from the campaign forward treated government professionals as political enemies and likely saboteurs. Political appointees at State harassed and vilified career professionals, without serious consequences. Especially at senior levels, resignations and early retirements came in droves (minister-counselors down from 431 to 369 between September and December 2017), leading Stephenson to write in “Time to Ask Why,” her December 2017 President’s Views column: “Where is the mandate to pull the Foreign Service team from the field and forfeit the game to our adversaries?” In 2019 the number of FSOs serving as assistant secretary or above fell to zero. Stephenson chose to turn AFSA away from lobbying for benefits. She gave guidance to AFSA staff: “The point we need to make to Congress … is that we are chosen through an extraordinary process and make extraordinary sacrifices in the name of our country, and we do it willingly. Don’t talk about allowances, talk about how proud we are to serve.” These were words Congress needed to hear, at a time Congress needed to hear them. AFSA pounded the message home. Impeachment. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, a career FSO, faced hard choices. President Trump and Secretary Pompeo recalled her from Kyiv, where she was ambassador, because she was seen as an obstacle to Trump’s efforts to obtain a Ukrainian announcement of an investigation into the activities of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, a board member at a Ukrainian energy company. A House committee of inquiry into what Democrats in Congress called the “TrumpGiuliani Ukraine scheme” to force that announcement by withholding military aid called on her to testify, under subpoena. The administration told her not to comply. She had to choose. The same choice faced other career Foreign Service members called by the committee: Ambassador Michael McKinley, David Holmes, Jennifer Williams, and George Kent. Yovanovitch wrote in her memoir: “AFSA had been my first stop when I was recalled … and it had stood by me ever since. … AFSA told us that the administration would have a hard time disciplining or firing me if I testified. Most importantly, they assured me that my pension was safe.” She and the Amb. Marie Yovanovitch and then–AFSA President Eric Rubin discussed her new memoir on March 30, 2022, at AFSA headquarters. Rubin is holding up a copy of his review of Lessons from the Edge in the April 2022 FSJ. AFSA/JULIA WOHLERS
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