A private conservative group’s involvement at the State Department has alarmed veteran diplomats and congressional Democrats who say it has established a worrisome degree of influence.
The concern focuses on the Ben Franklin Fellowship, a Washington-based nonprofit group founded two years ago by three former U.S. diplomats. Describing itself as a venue for “networking” among U.S. officials, academics and strategists, critics say the invitation-only group is helping the State Department identify and recruit diplomats based on ideology.
The group says it is nonpartisan, even as its founders and members aim to promote conservative policy ideas and combat pro-diversity policies that they assert have undermined merit-based hiring and promotion within the diplomatic corps.
The fellowship holds public and private events, including with Republican elected officials, conducts outreach to colleges and universities, and posts regular pro-Trump commentary on its website.
Critics have likened the fellowship to a secret society that is trying to seed Trumpian ideas throughout the department by helping the office of Secretary of State Marco Rubio promote career diplomats who exhibit conservative ideology — including many of the group’s members. Unlike political appointees, career diplomats have traditionally embraced a culture of nonpartisanship.
Simon Hankinson, a retired foreign service officer of 23 years who helped found the group, which is named after the first American diplomat, dismissed such talk as “paranoid.” He said critics have exaggerated the influence of a group with just one full-time employee and that diplomats who have lost jobs and influence are “looking for someone to blame.”
Many current and former diplomats accuse Mr. Rubio of weakening and demoralizing the department by firing deeply experienced officials and experts while appointing and promoting Trump supporters, including many Ben Franklin fellows, with thin diplomatic credentials.
While even many veteran diplomats concede that the department’s bureaucracy can be sclerotic, and some say its pro-diversity efforts may have caused more backlash than benefit, they insist the changes under Mr. Rubio have gone too far. They say they do not feel trusted and that their opportunities for advancement have stalled.
On Tuesday, the State Department finalized the termination of more than 200 Foreign Service officers who had been on paid administrative leave since their layoffs last June.
Critics also question some changes pushed by Trump officials who say they are on a mission to correct a “woke” liberal mind-set in the department. Last year, Mr. Rubio said that a decision to switch the typeface used in official department paperwork was intended to “restore decorum and professionalism.”
Some current and former diplomats have also denounced a new State Department video recruiting campaign with imagery that almost exclusively features white men. It includes many black-and-white photographs of early- and mid-20th century workers, recalling an era when the diplomatic corps was mockingly known for being “pale, male and Yale.”
A founding principle of the Ben Franklin Fellowship, whose invitation-only membership of 92 is overwhelmingly white and male, is that diversity policies meant to change that image and present a more representative face to the diplomatic world were carried too far.
On Monday, Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sent Mr. Rubio a letter requesting “immediate clarification” of the group’s relationship to the department, according to a copy seen by The New York Times.
The letter noted that at least 25 of the group’s members, known as fellows, hold senior State Department jobs. The highest ranking fellow in the agency is Christopher Landau, the deputy secretary of state.
In a recent essay, Eric Rubin, a retired diplomat of more than 40 years who recently led the American Foreign Service Association, wrote that the fellowship “functions as the equivalent of a Communist Party cell in Soviet government ministries.” Mr. Rubin noted that Mr. Landau gave remarks at an official department event last May that included an entreaty for employees to join the group.
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“We must reject the notion that senior officials, from the deputy secretary of state on down, can urge career employees to associate themselves with one side of the political divide in our country in order to advance their careers,” Mr. Rubin wrote in the March-April issue in the Foreign Service Journal, which the association publishes.
Tommy Pigott, the State Department spokesman, said in a statement that “the same folks claiming to be concerned about supposed ideological litmus tests should be thanking this administration for reversing the destructive D.E.I. policies forced on the State Department under Biden” — a reference to diversity initiatives.
“We have one fundamental goal: to implement President Trump’s America First foreign policy to make our nation safer, stronger and more prosperous,” he added.
The group’s membership is mostly a mix of career diplomats and political appointees from Republican administrations. A new member, Nick Adams, is a right-wing influencer and self-declared “alpha male” whom Mr. Trump nominated last year to be ambassador to Malaysia.The White House recently pulled his nomination from the Senate confirmation process and instead appointed him to be a special envoy for tourism.
As a 501(c)3 nonprofit group, the group is not required to disclose its funding sources publicly. It was the recipient last year of a financial “innovation prize” from the Heritage Foundation, which hailed it for “rejecting ideological conformity” and “producing a new generation of diplomats committed to an America First vision.”
At the top of a list of core principles on the fellowship’s website is “the primacy of American sovereignty and the obligation to defend national borders.” Among Mr. Trump and his supporters, that language refers to severe limits on immigration.
The website has some articles on foreign policy issues, but the group seems most interested in reversing what Mr. Hankinson called “grossly unfair” department hiring and promotion policies intended to foster diversity.
Mr. Hankinson, who is a research fellow on immigration at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy group, allowed that the “pale, male and Yale” label was once justified and that the State Department made appropriate efforts to change it — up to a point.
“I really felt that around 2020 they overcorrected so massively,” he said. “It was blatantly obvious that the way they were trying to hire and assign people jobs was blatantly biased — except that it was biased against white men instead of women of color or other groups,” he said in an interview.
However, John R. Bass, a career diplomat and three-time ambassador who retired last year after serving in two under secretary roles, said the Ben Franklin Fellowship was “the opposite of a meritocracy.”
“Its selection process is nontransparent, its application process is nontransparent, its funding is nontransparent,” he said.
Mr. Rubin noted that several active-duty foreign service officers who are also fellows have published opinion essays or columns praising Mr. Trump’s domestic political agenda, which he called “unprecedented.”
For much of last year, the acting director general of the Foreign Service, a position typically reserved for a highly seasoned diplomat, was Lew Olowski, a Ben Franklin fellow whose experience included serving as general counsel for Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller News Foundation.
In 2020, before joining the foreign service, Mr. Olowski wrote an opinion article for The Baltimore Sun arguing that Mr. Trump should be re-elected and criticizing “unelected bureaucrats,” including career diplomats, who testified against the president during his first impeachment.
Mr. Olowski is now the top official in the office of foreign missions, which oversees U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide.
A larger critique of Mr. Rubio’s State Department holds that veteran diplomats and policy experts have been sidelined as Mr. Trump runs an unconventional foreign policy through pronouncements on his social media account and personal envoys from outside the department.
Mr. Hankinson attributed that to Mr. Trump’s style and said that it was important to ensure that bureaucratic veterans opposed to Mr. Trump “aren’t going to try to undermine the agenda.”
Even so, it is “important to work in experts,” he said, adding: “It’s possible there’s some baby being thrown out with the bath water.”
Mr. Meeks’ letter to Mr. Rubio underscored the concern that employees might feel pressure to affiliate with Ben Franklin Fellowship, whose members hold senior posts in such key State Department offices as policy and planning, public diplomacy, civil rights and consular affairs. In many cases, critics say, those officials are strikingly less qualified than their predecessors.
Mr. Meeks also said he was concerned by the fellowship’s creation of an anonymous tip line meant to expose what the group calls “leakers” to journalists within the department. A “special project” page on the group’s website lists a few news stories that cited cables and anonymous sources, and accuses offices or embassies of being the “likely source” of a so-called leak.
Mr. Meeks’ letter also criticized what the fellowship calls “national interest diplomacy awards.” The cash prizes are meant to recognize diplomatic performance in support of the fellowship’s priorities, including the restriction of illegal immigration and the deportation of illegal migrants from the United States to their home countries.
Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy for The Times. He has reported from nearly three dozen countries and often travels with the secretary of state.
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