A senior State Department official has been fired from one of the most prestigious positions in the diplomatic corps after clashing with subordinates and colleagues, the Washington Examiner has confirmed.
Kiron Skinner, tapped as the director of policy planning last August, has been working to develop a long-term strategy for the intensifying geopolitical competition with China. But Skinner’s time in the State Department ended in acrimony, after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo concluded that her leadership of the policy shop was too flawed to tolerate.
“She was hurting the mission of that particular division, and of the department, and so she had to be let go,” a source familiar with the circumstances her Skinner’s firing told the Washington Examiner. “This all had to do with her behavior as a manager, and how she got along with members of a team, and things she did — to her own subordinates — which would get you fired from almost any job.”
Skinner, 58, was accused of yelling at subordinates, threatening her staff, and trying to keep a tight grip on the team’s communication even with other components of the State Department. The clashes reportedly included “making homophobic remarks and accusing people of having affairs,” according to Politico, which first reported her ouster.
Pompeo investigated the charges and decided to fire her in the face of a mass exodus from the policy shop, bringing an abrupt end to the tenure of his top foreign policy strategist even as he travels in Southeast Asia to rally allies and partner nations against the threat of an “imperial” China. But the accusations don’t ring true to at least some people who have worked with Skinner in the Trump administration.
“It’s laughable that unnamed sources would claim that she was abusive to staff,” a former administration official, who also discussed the issue on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Examiner. “Anyone who had worked with her knows that she’s a calm and deliberate thinker. Moreover, it’s offensive that anyone would make an ‘angry black woman’ argument to push her out.”
A State Department representative declined to discuss Skinner’s departure, noting that the agency doesn’t comment on personnel matters. Another State Department official said Skinner had struggled with the pressures of the job, despite being widely respected as a foreign policy thinker.
“She just let the pressure and paranoia and other things get to her,” the State Department official, discussing the issue on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Examiner. “She was so afraid of what people would say and what would leak out that she tried to restrict all communication both within and beyond the organization. And that’s just not State Department culture.”
She has been singed at times when she found herself in the limelight. Skinner described the brewing confrontation with China as a “fight with a really different civilization … the first time that we will have a great power competitor that is not Caucasian” at a foreign policy forum in April.
Skinner, who is African American and has emphasized the need for ethnic and intellectual diversity at the State Department, was trying to make an argument about the need to avoid conventional thinking about how to compete with a rival power. But her comment was a gift for Chinese Communist propagandists, who cited her performance as evidence that President Trump is pursuing a racist agenda in his trade war with Beijing.
The backlash to those comments did not cause Skinner’s departure but did not improve her relationship with colleagues either. “It’s gotten increasingly worse over the last couple of months and so it just became difficult to maintain,” the source familiar with the circumstances added.
Skinner is the third senior State Department official to leave under a cloud this summer, after the chief protocol officer was ousted amid allegations that he had mistreated subordinates and “even was known to carry a whip at work” as an apparent intimidation tactic. Another official left Foggy Bottom amid allegations that he was using his government post to advocate for controversial arms sales that benefited a defense contractor that he previously represented as a lobbyist, although the arms sale was supported by Pompeo.
“They’ve been pushing people out in a very ugly and dishonest way that permanently damages their reputations,” one Skinner defender close to the administration said, while arguing that the charge of homophobia is particularly unjust. “It’s what people say to try to hurt someone. She is not homophobic.”
But other sources within the State Department agreed with the general conclusion that Skinner displayed serious leadership flaws.
“If she made enemies, she made enemies because of the way she managed people and not because of her politics,” the State Department official said. “In a level as high as [policy planning], you have to have people who are more than competent as managers in super high-pressure situations. I think she’s a brilliant academic, but brilliant academics don’t always make the best managers in high-pressure situations.”
