The Foreign Service Journal, June 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2018 13 TALKING POINTS State Welcomes New Secretary N ewly confirmed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spent his first week on the job in Brussels and the Middle East before making his inaugural appearance at the Department of State on May 1. Several hundred Foreign Service members and other employees turned out in the C Street lobby to welcome the new Secretary on his first day in the build- ing. He told the assembled crowd that one of his top priorities is to restore “swagger” to the State Department. Secretary Pompeo was introduced by Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, who referred to the Harvard law school graduate and former Army officer as “a cross between George Patton and Oliver Wendell Holmes.” Pompeo’s address, which he used to set himself apart from former Secretary Rex Tillerson, was covered by Foreign Policy , the Washington Post , Politico and other media outlets. In a change from his predecessor’s management style, Pompeo promised the assembled crowd that he would spend as little time as possible in his seventh-floor office. Within five hours of entering the build- ing on May 1, news outlets reported, the new Secretary had announced that he is lifting the hiring freeze on family mem- bers—a freeze that saw the number of family members employed at U.S. embas- sies and consulates drop from 3,500 to less than 2,400. “Ensuring that we have the right people with the right skills in the right place at the right time to effectively carry out the department’s foreign policy goals is crucial to our continued success,” Pom- peo wrote in a departmentwide email that he signed simply “Mike.” OnMay 2 President Donald J. Trump made his first-ever visit to the State Department to attend Secretary Pompeo’s swearing-in ceremony, at which he praised Pompeo’s “exceptional leadership.” While State employees are cautiously optimistic that Pompeo’s arrival will herald a change in both morale and influ- ence at the department, the new Secre- tary will have to overcome the view that he politicized the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi in 2011. “For the people who were close to Chris Stevens and had our tragedy com- pounded by the gross conspiracies propa- gated by Pompeo and others, trust will have to be earned over time,” Ambassador Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (center) waves as Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan (third from left) introduces him to employees gathered in the C Street Lobby of the State Department on May 1. (ret.) Dana Shell Smith told the Post . “Some State Department officials still quietly express reservations about Pom- peo’s record,” Foreign Policy r eported, “including his past homophobic and Islamophobic statements and how he pilloried the State Department during the congressional Benghazi investigation.” Former FSO Nancy McEldowney, who ran the Foreign Service Institute until she retired last year, told NPR that “the fact that so many people were pushed out or encouraged to leave and then we saw an almost 50 percent drop in the number of people taking the Foreign Service exam to come into the State Department—these will take years to overcome.” AFSA/DMITRYFILIPOFF