Preceded by Donald Hayes Name Patrick Kennedy | Succeeded by Bonnie R. Cohen | |
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President George W. BushBarack Obama Education Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University | ||
Flight 253 patrick f kennedy testimony
Patrick Francis Kennedy (born June 22, 1949) is a former career Foreign Service Officer who served as the U.S. State Department's Under Secretary of State for Management. He was Director of the Office of Management Policy, Rightsizing and Innovation. He has been Deputy Director for Management at the cabinet level Office of the Director of National Intelligence; he returned to the Department of State on May 7, 2007. Kennedy was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for Management and Reform and previously served as Chief of Staff for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He was the Assistant Secretary of State for Administration for the Clinton Administration from 1993 to 2001.
Contents
- Flight 253 patrick f kennedy testimony
- Diplomatic career
- Highlights
- Blackwater investigation
- Election of 2008
- Benghazi affair
- Investigation of the ambassador to Belgium
- Hillary Clinton email investigation
- Resignation
- References
Diplomatic career
Kennedy holds a B.S.F.S. degree from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University.
Highlights
Blackwater investigation
In 2007, Patrick F. Kennedy chaired an investigation into the behavior of Blackwater Worldwide, following the Nisour Square shooting.
Election of 2008
During the 2008 presidential election, Kennedy ordered that State Department employees in Europe be barred from attending Senator Barack Obama's speech in Berlin on July 24, 2008, to ensure they displayed political neutrality. Kennedy labeled Obama's visit as a partisan political activity.
Benghazi affair
Kennedy's role in diplomatic security decisions has come under scrutiny from politicians since the terrorist attacks on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi in 2012. Kennedy testified to the House Oversight Committee on October 10, 2012, about the death of Chris Stevens. He testified that, after the October 2011 fall of Gaddafi, the government of Libya was in flux, and that Stevens first arrived in Benghazi "during the height of the revolution", which occurred between February 17 and October 23, 2011, "when the city was the heart of the opposition to Colonel Qadhafi and the rebels there were fighting for their lives." At that time he was Special Representative to the National Transitional Council. Stevens returned to Libya as ambassador in June 2012, and was killed on September 11 of that year.
The Republican minority on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence alleged that Kennedy, as Under Secretary for Management, failed to approve requests for additional security in Benghazi and Tripoli, and failed to implement recommendations regarding high-risk diplomatic posts that had been issued after the bombings of embassies in 1998. In fact, the facility was classified as a U.S. Special Mission, which was then a novel category, that required a waiver which "legally allowed the CIA annex to be housed in a location about one mile from the U.S. special mission."
Investigation of the ambassador to Belgium
On June 10, 2013, CBS News reported that a memo from an official in the State Department inspector general’s office alleged that the then-current ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, was ditching his security detail to engage prostitutes and underage children , and further alleged that Patrick F. Kennedy had killed the original investigation in order to protect Ambassador Gutman and maybe others. On June 11, 2013, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney confirmed that the allegation regarding Kennedy was under active investigation by an independent inspector general. On June 21, 2013, the White House announced Denise Bauer as the new nominee to be the next U.S. Ambassador to Belgium.
Hillary Clinton email investigation
On October 17, 2016, the FBI released interviews related to the Hillary Clinton email investigation. One of the interviews alleges that Patrick F. Kennedy "pressured" the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to declassify an email from Hillary Clinton's private server in exchange for a "quid pro quo" of placing more agents in certain countries. The FBI stated that the email's classification status was re-reviewed and remained unchanged and denied quid pro quo accusations. The State Department called the allegations "inaccurate" and maintained that Kennedy was trying to "understand" the FBI's classification process.
Resignation
On January 26, 2017, when Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump's nominee for United States Secretary of State, visited the United States State Department, Kennedy, Joyce Anne Barr, Michele Bond, and Gentry O. Smith were all simultaneously asked to resign from the department.