WASHINGTON: Nearly 1,000 State Department officials have signed a dissent note submitted to the Trump administration questioning its travel strictures against refugees and immigrants in what is said to be the largest bureaucratic revolt in US history.The memo was finalized despite career officers being warned by the White House that they should quit if they disagree with the President. Undeterred by White House fury, the mandarins on Tuesday formally submitted the memo to the State Department’s policy planning director to be forwarded to the Secretary of State.Typically, top officials are called on to respond substantively within 30 to 60 days to memos from the Dissent Channel . There were conflicting accounts as to whether the White House Damocles' sword hanging over them, evident after two senior dissenting law enforcement officials were fired, spurred or inhibited more signatures.The State Department’s Dissent Channel was established during the Vietnam War to ensure that senior leadership in the department would have access to alternative policy views on the war, with dissenters given immunity from retribution. There are four to five dissent notes each year, some with only one or two signatories, although last year, more than 50 diplomats sent a dissent cable opposing US inaction in Syria.Career US Foreign Service Officers from all over the world are reported to have signed the memo against the so-called Trump travel ban, even as the new administration disputed that it was a ban and it was aimed explicitly against Muslims.But the White House, while blaming the media for distorting the executive order, put itself in a spot after the President himself used the word ban in a tweet and his spokesman used the word ban in several interviews while later declaring from the White House lectern that it was not a ban.Although administration officials insisted the travel restrictions were temporary, the executive order, formally called "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States," has upset many mandarins tasked with executing US foreign policy on the ground."The end result of this ban will not be a drop in terror attacks in the United States; rather, it will be a drop in international good will towards Americans and a threat towards our economy," the draft dissent memo argued.The memo also pointed out that acts of foreign terrorism in the United States involved nationals from countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which were not covered by the executive order."Looking beyond its effectiveness, this ban stands in opposition to core American and constitutional values that we, as federal employees, took an oath to uphold," the memo stated, adding, "We are better than this ban."