The blunt firing of Rex Tillerson, relayed Tuesday morning via presidential tweet, was met with more indignation than shock inside the limestone walls of the State Department headquarters in Foggy Bottom. “It was chaos . . . it was a ‘W.T.F.’ moment,” a current state department staffer said of the episode, which had been quietly anticipated for months. “Everyone had been expecting a moment like this to happen, some sudden off-the-cuff decision,” but the unceremonious ouster still stung. Technically, Tillerson was America’s top diplomat, the staffer said, but in other ways, he had become “an afterthought” in an administration where the only voice that matters is Donald Trump. “Mike Pompeo, Director of the C.I.A., will become our new Secretary of State,” the president wrote. “He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the C.I.A., and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!”

Sources paint a conflicting picture of when, precisely, Tillerson learned that he’d been given the ax. Diplomats had seen the writing on the wall last week, when Tillerson, left in the dark over Trump’s surprise plan to meet with Kim Jong Un, grumbled that the U.S. was a “long way from negotiations” with North Korea. The following day, while traveling in Africa, a spokesperson said that Tillerson had fallen ill. “We knew something was up on Friday. Just as we thought he had dodged the bullet,” a second State Department staffer told me, adding that according to sources that were on the trip with Tillerson, the secretary “Didn’t appear sick.” According to The Washington Post, that was the same day that Trump told him to step aside. As I was told by a former diplomat in contact with officials at the U.S. embassy in Kenya, staffers were outraged that Tillerson continued his visit after he was reportedly fired, with one fuming that Tillerson had wasted thousands of taxpayer dollars.

A State spokesperson, however, disputed that timeline. In a remarkable statement Tuesday morning, Steve Goldstein said that Tillerson had been blindsided by the president’s decision. “The secretary had every intention of staying because of the critical progress made in national security,” Goldstein, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, said. “The secretary did not speak to the president and is unaware of the reason, but he is grateful for the opportunity to serve and still believes strongly that public service is a noble calling.” Shortly after contradicting the White House, Goldstein was also fired.

The proximate cause of Tillerson’s ouster, too, is in dispute. “It had become pretty clear that his role had become untenable and that he was no longer effectively serving the president and the country,” Brett Bruen, a former foreign-service officer, told me. “It was time for him to go.” But being undercut—again—on North Korea might have been the final straw for the embattled secretary. “It sends a pretty strong signal that State is not part of the discussion anymore on the top level issues,” the current staffer told me. “I think sometimes people forget that he is very low-key, he is down to earth but he does still think of himself as this C.E.O. and more than anything else this embarrassed him.” In a final act of defiance, Tillerson broke with the White House late Monday, declaring that the brutal killing of an ex-Russian spy and his daughter with a military-grade nerve agent in the United Kingdom was “a really egregious act” that “clearly came from Russia.” A senior State Department official saw the remark as a message to Trump. “He couldn’t have made this comment without knowing that this was a little bit of a ‘stick your finger in that direction,’” the official told me.

The enmity appears to run both ways. Trump, who had repeatedly denied reports that Tillerson’s exit was imminent, was openly dismissive of his former secretary in comments to reporters Tuesday morning, saying that he and Tillerson “were not thinking the same” and predicting that “Rex will be happier now.” During a brief press conference later Tuesday afternoon, Tillerson announced that March 31 will be his final day as Secretary of State, after which he will “return to private life as a private citizen,” but is delegating his responsibilities to his deputy, John Sullivan in the interim. Tillerson kept his remarks brief, his voice wavering somewhat as he thanked his colleagues. He did not once mention Trump, and did not take any questions before walking away.