he was ordered to turn around and fly back and be gone from the state department by tomorrow. a career foreign service officer. somebody operating at such a high level of american diplomacy he s identified by one letter. right now tom countryman is listed on the state department web site. read it yourself. it lists his service at u.s. embassy going back to 1982. serving everywhere from serbia to egypt to greece to italy. it says at the bottom his foreign languages are serbo croatian, arabic, italian, greek and german. yeah, we better get that guy out of there quick. couldn t possibly imagine we d need him or anything. and there s no one left to replace him but that guy among others, out. they took him off a plane, told him to turn around and get out according to this report. why the rush? well, we re also getting first reports tonight, including from a reporter at politico.com who
people who have been there since the 1970s, people who have been there since the 80s. career senior management. career foreign service officers. career diplomats. one former high-ranking career diplomat first appointed by george w. bush said today as a career diplomat, i experienced many presidential transitions and i never saw anything like this dangerous purge of public servants now under way at state. now under aat state ahead of rex tillerson taking over. another former assistant secretary of state tweeted today specifically about the suddenness, the sudden rush to get all the top-level people out of the state department. tom countryman, foreign service officer acting t at state that means he was the person in charges of arms control and international security. according to this one report he was told the leave the state department tomorrow. he was given that instruction today. he was on a plane flying to rome for a nonproliferation meeting.
u.s. state department. the state department that rex tillerson is about to take over. people who have been there since the 1970s, people who have been there since the 80s. career senior management. career foreign service officers. career diplomats. one former high-ranking career diplomat first appointed by george w. bush said today as a career diplomat, i experienced many presidential transitions and i never saw anything like this dangerous purge of public servants now under way at state. now under aat state ahead of rex tillerson taking over. another former assistant secretary of state tweeted today specifically about the suddenness, the sudden rush to get all the top-level people out of the state department. tom countryman, foreign service officer acting t at state that means he was the person in charges of arms control and international security. according to this one report he was told the leave the state department tomorrow. he was given that instruction today. he was on a pla
for a nonproliferation meeting. he was ordered to turn around and fly back and be gone from the state department by tomorrow. a career foreign service officer. somebody operating at such a high level of american diplomacy he s identified by one letter. right now tom countryman is listed on the state department web site. read it yourself. it lists his service at u.s. embassy going back to 1982. serving everywhere from serbia to egypt to greece to italy. it says at the bottom his foreign languages are serbo croatian, arabic, italian, greek and german. yeah, we better get that guy out of there quick. couldn t possibly imagine we d need him or anything. and there s no one left to replace him but that guy among others, out. they took him off a plane, told him to turn around and get out according to this report. why the rush? well, we re also getting first reports tonight, including from a reporter at politico.com who
tom countryman, who served as a senior official until forced out by the trump administration. tom, nice to see you again. welcome back. thank you, brooke. it s an honor to be here. we wait it out, here we have president trump on the phone with vladimir putin. the day the photos come out of a warm and cozy relationship with assad. we heard assad refer to assad as a butcher. and that russia interfered with the election. the points are overwhelming. that s absolutely correct, of course any contact between president trump and president putin occurs under the cloud under the recently documented web of context that the trump campaign had with russian government officials and their surrogates. but in the case of syria, what this demonstrates, i think, this phone call, although i don t know the content any more than you do, but coming just a day