After three years as a refugee coordinator in a danger zone in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Hushek served as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kolonia, Micronesia, in the Pacific, from 2002 to 2004. Later, after a stint in Washington, he returned to Afghanistan as the director for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement in Kabul from 2012 to 2013, and then served as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Mission to the International Organizations in Vienna from 2013 to 2015.   read more

As Mitch McConnell's policy advisor, Chatterjee took a leading role in fighting any policies that might lead to a reduction in the use of coal, as that industry has been a major supporter of McConnell. Chatterjee backed the Keystone pipeline and opposed Obama regulations from the EPA. In 2016, he warned that if a Republican regained the White House, the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement that Obama had signed, which is exactly what happened when Donald Trump became president.   read more

After serving in Beijing, Kritenbrink, in 2015, was put in a key role, serving as Asia policy adviser to the National Security Council. In the waning days of the Obama administration, Kritenbrink addressed such issues as North Korea’s nuclear program, the lifting of the U.S. arms embargo on Vietnam and China’s construction of islands in the South China Sea. His last assignment before his nomination to be ambassador was senior adviser for North Korean policy.   read more

Fossil-fuel giant Exxon Mobil has knowingly misled the public for nearly 40 years about the dangers of climate change, according to a new study. Researchers found “gaping, systematic discrepancy” between what Exxon said about climate change in private and in academic circles and what it said to the public. The study found Exxon "contributed to advancing climate science—by way of its scientists’ academic publications—but promoted doubt about it in advertorials."   read more

A Dutch American born in the Netherlands, Hoekstra will soon find himself at odds with his homeland as President Trump’s ambassador to the Netherlands. On a broad range of issues, including marriage equality, gay and transgender rights, marijuana use, NATO spending, anti-terrorism, refugees and immigration, and trade, Hoekstra and Trump hold views opposed by most Dutch and by their government. Hoekstra’s bizarre and false comments about the Netherlands already raised concerns there in 2015.   read more

Representing the U.S. at the UN, Sison found herself in the thick of the action in 2016 when the Obama administration clashed with the Russian government over the war in Syria. In 2017, she made it clear the Trump administration did not intend to contribute to a UN trust fund to fight Haiti’s cholera epidemic because the U.S. had already contributed more than $100 million to the anti-cholera effort. She also accused South Sudan of using man-made famine as a tactic in that country’s civil war.   read more

Obama and Trump’s rhetoric suggests that the prime mover of government is not separation of powers, political parties or the bureaucracy – but the will of the president. The differences between their rhetorical styles seem stark. Yet, looking more carefully at the words Trump used in his first months in office, we discovered that, in certain ways, these two presidents are remarkably like each other. Here’s what we found – and why Obama and Trump have more in common than you would think...   read more

Dodman took his first “hardship post” when he served as economic counselor at the embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2008–2009, then headed back to Europe to serve as economic counselor and chargé d'affaires at the U.S. mission to the European Union in Brussels, Belgium. Dodman took a second hardship post at one of the most dangerous U.S. diplomatic locations in the world, serving from July 2012 to August 2014 as consul general at the U.S. consulate in Karachi, which is Pakistan’s largest city.   read more

As U.S. consul in Tokyo in 2002, Barlerin signed documents compensating the victims of a collision the previous year between a Japanese fishery school boat and the attack submarine USS Greeneville. The U.S. agreed to pay more than $11 million to the survivors of the accident and the families of those killed. Barlerin spent two years in Paris as economic policy advisor and later worked in the Office of Regional and Security Affairs and served as the State Dept’s Chad Task Force coordinator.   read more

President Obama chose Bass to be U.S. ambassador to Georgia at a time when Georgia was recovering from a military conflict with the Russian government. When France approved the sale of two amphibious assault ships to Russia, Bass, in 2009, authored a cable calling it “'the wrong ship from the wrong country at the wrong time.” In 2011, Bass was charged by the Tbilisi government’s opposition with “meddling in Georgia’s domestic affairs” by encouraging the government’s crackdown on protests.   read more

In his third try at naming a Secretary of the Army, President Trump has turned to a longtime lobbyist for the arms industry, raising serious questions of ethics and conflicts of interest that are nothing new to this administration. Mark Esper has been vice president for government relations at Raytheon, a major weapons contractor, since July 2010. In a July 2017 conference call with investors, Raytheon CEO Tom Kennedy enthused that the Trump administration “has opened several doors for us.”   read more

Attorneys said the Trump administration will “lose badly” for failing to respond to a family’s petition regarding Border Patrol agents' killing of their loved one at the border. The family claims human rights abuses over the agents’ extrajudicial killing and an allegedly botched investigation by U.S. officials. The U.S. has remained silent – breaking decades of tradition of cooperating with the human rights agency IACHR, even with regard to abuse of prisoners kept at Guantanamo Bay.   read more

Mitchell has spent his career since 2004 at CEPA, a foreign policy analysis firm. In 2015, Mitchell and CEPA secured a contract with the Pentagon to produce a study that supported moving NATO troops and “prepositioned equipment” closer to Russia to protect Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. Mitchell believes that Russia, China and Iran want to challenge U.S. power by nibbling away at smaller countries and that the U.S. needs to challenge this strategy.   read more

Craft is primarily an activist in GOP politics. After getting assurances from Donald Trump that he would not try to oust Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Craft and husband Joe gave $431,000 to Trump Victory, which supported Trump’s 2016 campaign, the RNC and state Republican parties. They also donated $750,000 to Future45, a pro-Trump PAC that produced attack ads against Hillary Clinton. Joe Craft once gave more than $3 million to Karl Rove’s super PAC.   read more

Desrocher started his State Dept career with stops in Monrovia, Liberia, and Bonn, West Germany, and served in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative working on free trade agreements with Chile and Singapore. He also served as the State Dept desk officer for Iraq. Desrocher was serving as economic officer in the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem in 1999 when he helped get Palestinian customs agents to destroy bootleg 17,000 CDs of American musicians’ work.   read more

Flowers joined FTA as a senior advisor in 2015, and was named acting administrator in 2016. After leaving FTA when Donald Trump assumed the presidency, Flowers joined Los Angeles-based engineering firm AECOM as senior VP and head of its transit practice. That move has generated ethics criticism, as AECOM is set to be a major beneficiary of a large ($647 million) grant for a California rail project that Flowers approved two days before resigning and two weeks before she went to work for AECOM.   read more