Reports: Top State Department Management Team Out

The State Department's entire senior management team has resigned — part of a mass departure of senior Foreign Service officers who were asked to leave by President Donald Trump's administration, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

Those asked to leave in the administration's effort to "clean house," according to the WSJ and CNN:

• Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy.
• Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr.
• Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond.
• Ambassador Gentry Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Missions.

Kennedy had been involved in the transition and was hoping to keep his post under new Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, The Washington Post reported.

Kennedy will retire from Foreign Service at the end of January.

The Post also reported Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr retired Jan. 20, and the director of Bureau of Overseas Building Operations Lydia Muniz left the same day.

"It's the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that's incredibly difficult to replicate," David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry, told the Post. "Department expertise in security, management, administrative and consular positions in particular are very difficult to replicate and particularly difficult to find in the private sector.

"Diplomatic security, consular affairs, there's just not a corollary that exists outside the department, and you can least afford a learning curve in these areas where issues can quickly become matters of life and death. The muscle memory is critical. These retirements are a big loss. They leave a void. These are very difficult people to replace."

• Tesla Founder Musk: Tillerson Has Potential to Be 'Excellent' Secretary of State
• Senior Diplomat Kennedy, Involved in Benghazi, Hillary Emails, Stepping Down