Tornado Alley (PROG)

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BREAKING: Senior adviser to Pompeo resigns

Michael McKinley, a career diplomat and senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, has resigned his position amid rising dissatisfaction and plummeting morale inside the State Department over what is seen as Pompeo’s failure to support personnel ensnared in the Ukraine controversy.

A senior officer who has held a range of diplomatic posts, including ambassador to Afghanistan, Colombia and Peru, McKinley was serving as ambassador to Brazil last year when Pompeo recruited him as a policy adviser and a conduit between his office and the career service. Pompeo was expected to issue a statement Friday announcing his departure. McKinley declined to comment Thursday evening.

Among the many issues on which he played a role, McKinley has been closely involved in administration policy on Venezuela, Mexico, Southeast Asia and Afghanistan, where last month President Trump abruptly canceled U.S. peace negotiations with the Taliban that both sides had said were near an agreement.

A person familiar with the situation said that McKinley felt that Pompeo had been a positive force compared to his predecessor, Rex Tillerson, in terms of encouraging alternative views within the department, as well as lifting a Tillerson freeze on promotions and prohibitions against spouses working abroad.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/senior-adviser-to-pompeo-resigns/2019/10/10/0d771aa2-ebb5-11e9-85c0-85a098e47b37_story.html

Damn. The gushers keep coming.