‘Strong sense of relief’: State Department staffers react to Tillerson’s ouster Many staffers hope that Mike Pompeo’s close relationship with the president will mean more influence with Trump.

State Department employees had one main reaction to Rex Tillerson’s ouster as secretary of state on Tuesday: “Good riddance.”

President Donald Trump’s decision to fire the top U.S. diplomat sent a wave of hope through a department battered by low morale under Tillerson, who dismissed the expertise of career diplomats and sought to downsize the department. Tillerson was also widely seen as unable to speak for the president, who frequently undercut him on policy issues.


“There is strong sense of relief at State,” said Brett Bruen, a former department official. “The last year has been traumatic to put it mildly. It was as though ‘T-Rex’ stomped through Foggy Bottom devouring staff and structures.”

Several current State officials said they also hoped to bid farewell to Tillerson’s top aides, including chief of staff Margaret Peterlin and policy chief Brian Hook, whom they criticize for forming a protective and secretive clique around the secretary during his nearly 14-month tenure.

“People see this as a chance for a clean sweep,” said one staffer, who like most others spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid losing his job. “This team has proven itself incapable of managing the State Department.”

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Multiple Foreign and Civil Service officers struck an optimistic note about Tillerson’s chosen replacement, CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Many hope that Pompeo’s close relationship with Trump will mean that the State Department will gain more influence with a president who has often sidelined it.

But some sounded more wary, pointing out that Pompeo has a hawkish reputation and little diplomatic experience. One recently departed State Department official noted that Pompeo had a reputation in some quarters of the CIA as a political partisan, warning: “If people at State disliked Tillerson, they might downright hate Pompeo.”

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker said in a statement on Tuesday that Pompeo’s confirmation hearing was expected to be held in April. Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, a more popular figure than Tillerson in the department, is expected take over as acting secretary in the meantime.

In a statement before reporters on Tuesday afternoon, a weary-looking Tillerson — whose father died last month and who got little sleep on his just-ended Africa trip — said he would delegate his responsibilities to Sullivan by the end of the day Tuesday. His last official day as secretary will be March 31, he said, to ensure “an orderly and smooth transition.”

Tillerson praised U.S. diplomats as well as U.S. troops and other government staffers. He praised the State Department’s efforts to bring pressure on North Korea for its nuclear program, while also warning that Russia was headed on a path “to greater isolation.” But Tillerson did not mention Trump by name nor specifically thank him, and he took no questions.

“I'll now return to private life, be a private citizen, proud American, proud to have served my country,” Tillerson said.

He and the Trump have a history of differences that veered into the personal on at least one occasion, with Tillerson reported to have once referred to the president as a “moron.” (When later questioned by reporters, he did not deny making the remark.)

Despite months of rumors that Tillerson would be fired or simply quit, the announcement on Tuesday took many U.S. diplomats by surprise, and some were uncomfortable about the way Tillerson was treated.

The news came just as Tillerson had returned to the United States from a trip to Africa — a journey that had suggested he planned to stick around for a while. And there were conflicting accounts of when Tillerson learned he would be pushed out; some reports said he didn’t know until he saw a Trump tweet on Tuesday, while others said the president’s chief of staff, John Kelly, had warned him on Friday. Tillerson had canceled his appearances in Africa on Saturday; aides said he had fallen ill.

Tillerson’s undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, Steve Goldstein, was also pushed out of his job on Tuesday. His ouster came after he said Tillerson hadn’t spoken to Trump about his future until Tuesday morning and was “unaware of the reason” he was being fired, an account that seemed to contradict the White House.

Tillerson, a former ExxonMobil CEO, himself had said he would be at the helm of the department through at least 2018. At the same time, he seemed to have notched some recent wins with a president who’d frequently undercut him; the secretary had been advocating for talks with North Korea long before Trump last week said he’d be willing to meet face to face with the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un — although Trump’s decision seemed to catch Tillerson unawares.

Some lawmakers said Tillerson’s rocky tenure was in part due to Trump’s lack of discipline. A number noted that Tillerson had been more hawkish on Russia than the president. That included this week, when the secretary directly blamed the Kremlin for a nerve agent attack in Britain, while the White House refrained from naming a culprit.

“While I have opposed several of Secretary Tillerson’s decisions during his tenure at the State Department, I don’t believe that President Trump ever gave him the trust, personnel and resources he needed to be effective as the nation’s top diplomat,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.)

Several State staffers have noted over the past year an irony at the heart of Tillerson’s tenure: He took over at Foggy Bottom having had a long track record in management but little diplomatic experience, and yet he proved to be better at the latter than the former as secretary of state.

Meanwhile, there are a host of questions about how Pompeo will tackle both policy and management issues at the State Department.

Tillerson has moved to “redesign” State — an initiative that has come to largely revolve around modernizing technology and upgrading human resources rules. Thanks in part to disagreements with the White house, Tillerson has failed to fill numerous leadership slots at the department, while several of his nominees have yet to be confirmed by the Senate. It’s not clear whether Pompeo will move ahead with Tillerson’s nominees for some of those slots.

Pompeo, too, is more hawkish than Tillerson on some key issues. In particular, Pompeo, a former Republican congressman from Kansas, has been a harsh critic of the Iran nuclear deal. While Tillerson has advocated for keeping the Barack Obama-era deal in place, Pompeo is more willing to question its value.

State Department employees, many of whom view the Iran deal as a major diplomatic achievement, said they hoped Pompeo would at least be more willing to consider their expertise and opinions.

“While Pompeo’s views seem to have expressed a preference for force over diplomacy, my guess is he knows his success is dependent upon the information that comes to him through the building,” one State official said. “I think he’ll rely more heavily on depth of experience across the department than Tillerson ever cared to.”

How Pompeo will deal with the threat from Russia is another open question. The CIA chief has called out Russia over its interference in the 2016 presidential race. But he’s also managed to stay in Trump’s good graces even as the president has downplayed intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia intervened in the election to help Trump win.

“I sincerely hope he’s not being set up to fail as so many others have been by this White House,” said Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “He’s a former House colleague, and I respect his candor about Russia’s ongoing effort to attack American democracy.”

Pompeo’s nomination for the Foggy Bottom role has alarmed human rights activists, who have criticized him for seeming unwilling to denounce the use of torture, or enhanced interrogation, and mass surveillance. Sarah Margon, the Washington director for Human Rights Watch, called Trump’s choice of Pompeo “deeply troubling.” U.S. Muslim organizations also expressed worry, pointing to past statements from Pompeo that they deemed Islamophobic.

Tillerson’s insular management style was reinforced by several of his top aides, including Peterlin and Hook, the director of the secretary’s Policy Planning Staff. Hook’s division, which in the past had acted as more of a medium- to long-term internal think tank, had taken over many policy roles traditionally left to regional and functional bureaus at the department.

Finding themselves sidelined, many senior diplomats simply quit or retired over the past year. Among the recent departures was Joseph Yun, the special envoy for North Korea issues. The top-ranking career Foreign Service officer in the department, Thomas Shannon, has also announced he will retire.

State employees interviewed on Tuesday said they hoped Pompeo would embrace the whole department and its 75,000 employees across the world.

“We all know he’s more comfortable with Trump and vice versa. That’s good,” one senior State Department official said. “We will want to work successfully with him, but we want him to trust us.”

