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Probe claims State Department sidelined Iran expert in politicized smear campaign

The State Department's Office of the Inspector General finds that “improper considerations played a role" in the removal of a career employee's assignment to the department's policy planning office.
People enter the State Department Building in Washington, U.S., January 26, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts - RC1D48272C00

A senior Donald Trump administration official cut short a career civil servant's assignment to the State Department policy planning office following a smear campaign involving misinformation about her political loyalties and Iranian heritage, a long-anticipated report released today by the State Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) concluded.

The 54-page report, “Review of Allegations of Politicized and Other Improper Personnel Practices Involving the Office of the Secretary,” said that in April 2017, then State Department policy planning chief Brian Hook (now the US special envoy on Iran), terminated the assignment to the department's policy planning office of an unnamed “Employee One,” a career civil servant who has been identified in media reports and who confirmed her identity as Sahar Nowrouzzadeh. The report describes how a group of Trump administration political appointees in the White House and then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s office circulated an article published on March 14, 2017, by the right-wing Conservative Review that smeared Nowrouzzadeh, who began her civil service career during the Republican George W. Bush administration, as an “Obama holdover” who had promoted “initiatives that pushed the Iran deal,” and discussed possible pretexts to remove her from her job.

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