Weapons Experts Replaced at U.S. State Department
Global Security Newswire
Career weapons experts at the U.S. State Department have been replaced by officials with less experience who are more in line with the administration’s views on diplomacy and treaties, Knight Ridder reported today (see GSN, Sept. 30, 2005).
While a reorganization of the department’s international security and arms control bureaus was meant to prepare the department to deal with modern day threats, it has led to trouble and high turnover of WMD experts, according to documents and current and former officials.
Four political appointees secretly conducted the reorganization. Only after personnel decisions had been made was a career agency expert permitted to join the panel.
Frederick Fleitz, a CIA official who came to the State Department as a senior adviser to then-Undersecretary John Bolton, oversaw the group’s work.
The changes were needed, according to Robert Joseph, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.
“Reorganizations are never easy. They inevitably mean change,” Joseph said. “The reorganization ... was essential to better position us to further the president's strategy against WMD proliferation and (Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s) emphasis on transformational diplomacy.”
Other officials blasted the changes, saying they were made in violation of long-time management and personnel guidelines. They worry that Rice has been deprived of WMD expertise. For example, the agency’s leading expert on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has left the department.
“We had a great group of people. They are highly knowledgeable experts,” said former Assistant Secretary of State John Wolf. “To the extent they now are leaving State Department employ, or U.S. government employ, it’s a real loss to [the] State Department. It’s a real loss to the government.”
Global Security Institute Director Jonathan Granoff said the departure of so many weapons experts is especially troubling considering that the U.S.-Russian 1991 START I pact is due to expire in less than three years.
“Rather than nurture our experts, the administration seems to have brought in neophytes without a passion for progress in this field and, worse, undermined the international institutions that are most effective in stopping proliferation,” he said.
Specialists within the agency have split into two camps. One advocates negotiating arms reduction, while the other believes the threat of force, sanctions and unilateral steps are the best way to discourage proliferation.
Rice, when she announced the changes at the agency, said more was needed to combat proliferation.
“We must … go on the offensive against outlaw scientists, black-market arms dealers and rogue state proliferators,” she said.
Officials, while acknowledging the need to reorganize WMD policy offices, said they worry that the agency’s current lack of expertise would hurt future administrations.
Knight Ridder reported instances in which appointments made during the reorganization were highly politicized and hurt morale.
For example, Thomas Lehrman, a White House appointee in charge of the new office of Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism, said in an e-mail message advertising a job opening that qualifications included loyalty to Bush administration policy. He recalled the message after being told that this was an improper qualification.
Also, experts in the former Nonproliferation Bureau, a regular opponent of Bolton policy moves, were refused jobs when that office merged with the Arms Control Bureau.
“Bolton had blood in his eyes for the Nonproliferation Bureau,” said a State Department official.
Finally, an expert on the International Atomic Energy Agency was refused a position promised to him after returning from 2 1/2 years in Vienna. Instead, the position was offered to a more junior officer with views similar to Bolton’s, according to Knight Ridder.
Five other more senior officials were passed over, according to a complaint document, for no reason “aside from intimations that they were not as ‘trusted’ politically by the political management level.”
Mark Fitzpatrick, a nonproliferation expert who recently left the agency, said he is concerned about the “exodus” of specialists.
“It seems about a dozen or so have left since the merger [of the Nonproliferation and Arms Control bureaus] came about, many out of frustration,” said Fitzpatrick, now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “I'm concerned that the ability of the merged bureaus to provide to Condoleezza Rice the same kind of high-quality advice they provided Colin Powell on the very dire proliferation issues facing the world will be diminished by the exodus” (Warren Strobel, Knight Ridder, Feb. 8).
