WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th November, 2019) An investigation of politicized personnel moves at the Department of State found that officials reassigned a career employee in the Office of Policy Planning due to work on Iran during the Obama administration and also because of the employee's ethnicity, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) said in a report on Thursday.
"OIG found that Department officials ended the detail of a career employee in the Office of Policy Planning after significant discussion concerning the employee's perceived political views, association with the former administrations, and perceived national origin," the report said.
The report recommended that the State Department consider disciplining the officials responsible for reassigning the employee.
About two months after President Donald Trump's January 2017 inauguration, a conservative website published an article claiming that a State Department "architect of the Iran nuclear deal" was in charge of US policy toward Tehran. Within hours of the article's publication, the White House requested the employee's reassignment and the State Department complied, the report said.
The Office of Policy Planning was created to provide independent policy analysis to the Secretary of State, according to a department website.
The OIG also examined cases of four other employees who were reassigned, allegedly for political reasons. For two employees the OIG found "no evidence that impermissible factors influenced the personnel decisions," and in the final two cases, results of the investigation were "inconclusive," the report said.
