Working for the State Department is an inside job

by YankeeJim | March 15, 2012 at 05:33 am

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Double dipper

As soon as a government employee wants to share their opinions publically, they have decided to enter politics. Doing so, they have made a choice to depart their government employment. There is nothing wrong with that.

Choosing to hang around and trying to have it both ways violates the rules and you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

It is a game smart people play to see how long they can draw a paycheck.

“State Department moves to fire diplomat who criticized Iraq reconstruction

By Lisa Rein, Published: March 14

Peter Van Buren, a foreign service officer who wrote an unflattering book about his year leading two U.S. reconstruction teams in Iraq, was stripped of his security clearance, banned from State Department headquarters for a time and transferred to a telework job that consists of copying Internet addresses into a file.

Now the State Department is moving to fire him based on eight charges ranging from linking on his blog to documents on the whistleblowing Web site WikiLeaks to disclosing classified information.

In his 24 years as a diplomat, Van Buren was posted around the world. He speaks four languages. He calls the termination notice he received Friday the coup de grace in a series of blows he received since his book, “We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People,” was published last fall.”