Name: State Department revokes security clearance for acting chief of staff to UN ambassador
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State Department revokes security clearance for acting chief of staff to UN ambassador

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Jennifer Davis, a career Foreign Service officer, is returning to her previous role but will “aggressively appeal this decision.”Jennifer Davis, the de facto chief of staff to Amb. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, has stepped aside. | Mary Altaffer/AP PhotoA top aide to the U.S. envoy to the United Nations has stepped aside after her security clearance was revoked, according to two people familiar with the matter.Jennifer Davis, the de facto chief of staff to Amb. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, is a career Foreign Service officer who has worked at the State Department for 18 years, with previous postings in Colombia, Mexico and Turkey.The decision to revoke Davis’s clearance came after a three-year administrative investigation conducted by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which conducts security background investigations to assess whether an individual should have access to classified information.Davis “strongly contests the determination” and is “going to aggressively appeal this decision as quickly as possible,” a person close to her said.The investigation concerned Davis’s tenure as consul general of the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, where she served from August 2016 to August 2019.In that role, she had a conversation with a reporter, Amberin Zaman of the Middle Eastern-focused news outlet Al-Monitor, about the problem of local staff being hassled and detained by Turkish authorities, according to the person close to her.Zaman that the Turkish pressure campaign was likely to expedite U.S. government plans to use visa sanctions to block certain Turkish officials from visiting the U.S. and said that a list of such officials had been drafted, citing “sources close to the Donald Trump administration.”Not only did she speak to Zaman with the knowledge and at the direction of her superior, according to the person close to Davis, the information she shared was “not at all sensitive” and was declassified soon after their discussion.A spokesperson for the U.S. mission at the U.N. declined to comment, citing its policy of not sharing information on personnel matters. Davis had no comment. Zaman also declined to comment, other than saying: “As a colleague surely you understand that I would not reveal who I speak to unless I am quoting them by name.”Thomas-Greenfield had hoped to formally name Davis as the chief of staff, but the Diplomatic Security investigation prevented that from happening: A high-level security clearance is required for the job, given the amount of sensitive national security information that passes through the ambassador’s office.After Davis recently lost her security clearance, she continued working for Thomas-Greenfield but from home instead of in the office, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. She officially stopped working for the ambassador on Tuesday.According to the person close to Davis, she decided on her own to step back from her work helping Thomas-Greenfield “to avoid any distractions” and because she “didn’t want to do anything to hurt the ambassador and the mission.”During her career at the State Department, Davis has also served as vice consul and special assistant to the ambassador at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, worked at the U.S. mission to NATO and was deputy political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia, according to which was taken down after POLITICO started reporting this story. Early in her career at Foggy Bottom, she was a special assistant to then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.Losing access to classified information can be a devastating career blow to those who work in sensitive positions in the U.S. government, especially to those aspiring to reach the senior ranks of the national security bureaucracy.Davis has some options for overturning Diplomatic Security’s decision, however. She can appeal to the assistant secretary for diplomatic security to make another determination.Then, if the security concerns have still not been resolved, State Department employees like Davis have 30 days in which they can appeal to a three-member body called the Security Appeals Panel. After a hearing, the panel makes a final decision, though if she loses her clearance Davis will still have the chance to re-apply for a clearance after waiting a year.In the meantime, Davis plans to return to her full-time job at the Foreign Service Institute while the appeals process plays out. In fact she never officially left it, as she was never formally tapped to be Thomas-Greenfield’s chief of staff. No new chief of staff at the U.S.-U.N. mission, either acting or permanent, has been announced yet.Davis is the second person in a chief of staff role to a high-profile appointee in the Biden administration to leave their spots recently. Jennifer Van der Heide, who was the chief of staff to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, by the White House last week after she planned a 50-person indoor party that the White House cancelled after that a party she had planned to celebrate Haaland’s confirmation would become a superspreader event. She remains as a senior counselor at the department.

Jennifer Davis, a career Foreign Service officer, is returning to her previous role but will “aggressively appeal this decision.”Jennifer Davis, the de facto chief of staff to Amb. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, has stepped aside. | Mary Altaffer/AP PhotoA top aide to the U.S. envoy to the United Nations has stepped aside after her security clearance was revoked, according to two people familiar with the matter.Jennifer Davis, the de facto chief of staff to Amb. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, is a career Foreign Service officer who has worked at the State Department for 18 years, with previous postings...

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State Department revokes security clearance for acting chief of staff to UN ambassador

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