Political Skullduggery

The State Department has been valued by policymakers for well over 200 years for providing as independent advice as you will find in this heavily politicized town.

That's what makes the following so egregious:

A State Department reorganization of analysts involved in preventing the spread of deadly weapons has spawned internal turmoil, with more than half a dozen career employees alleging in interviews that political appointees sought to punish long-term employees whose views they considered suspect...

"There are a number of disgruntled employees who feel they have been shoved aside for political purposes. That's true," said one of these (senior departmental) officials. "But there was rank insubordination on the part of these officers."

Rank insubordination? These officials didn't publicly call BS on the phony WMDs. I would call that loyalty.

About a dozen top experts on nonproliferation have left the department in recent months, with many citing the reorganization as a reason...

Some State Department officials privately acknowledge that they used to be thrilled by the department's reputation as a renegade in President Bush's first term, but they say the message has become clear in the past year that such attitudes are no longer acceptable...

The employees who say that they have been targeted once had a back channel to then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, who they said would on occasion ask them to bypass their superior, John R. Bolton, now the ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton, with backing from allies in the Pentagon and the vice president's office, frequently battled the rest of the State Department on policy issues.

But (Robert Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control, who oversaw the reorganization), who worked for Rice at the White House, is an ideological soul mate of Bolton's and retained much of Bolton's staff -- and now officials say the policy disputes that characterized Powell's State Department have largely faded under Rice's tenure. The back channel that these employees used to alert senior management to their problems with Bolton no longer exists, the career officials said.

By many accounts, the decision to merge two key bureaus focusing on nonproliferation and arms control was necessary. The merger was originally approved by Powell, in his waning days as secretary, after the department's inspector general recommended combining the bureaus on the grounds of efficiency and workload. The IG said the nonproliferation bureau -- which seeks to deter the spread of weapons of mass destruction -- was overworked, and the arms-control bureau -- which negotiates and implements arms-control agreements -- was underworked. The IG also recommended that a third bureau, verification and compliance, be downsized.

But once a panel of Joseph's top aides began implementing the plan, some of the IG's recommendations were set aside -- the verification bureau was expanded, not downsized, while officials in the arms-control bureau appeared to attain more authority. Both bureaus had appeared more in sync with the administration's views, officials said.

The dominant meme lately is that State is much more in the loop with the rest of the administration, and that they have a much greater say in U.S. policy under Rice than Powell.

Now we know why.