UN Ambassador’s Acting Chief of Staff Has Her Security Clearance Revoked

RedState

In a little-noticed story that broke on Friday night, it was reported that Jennifer Davis, Chief of Staff to UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield (pictured above), has been reassigned because her security clearance was revoked.

According to the Politico article, Davis is a career foreign service officer, having worked for 18 years in the State Department with previous assignments in Mexico, Turkey, and Colombia.

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.

According to Politico, the issue involves an interview Davis gave to a reporter, Amberin Zaman of the Middle Eastern-focused news outlet Al-Monitor.  At the time Davis was serving as General Counsel in the US Embassy in Istanbul, and one subject in the interview involved questions about US officials in Turkey being “hassled and detained” by Turkish government authorities.  In his article, Zaman called it a pressure campaign that would likely cause the United States to prevent Turkish government officials from visiting the U.S. in the future.  Zaman reported that a list of officials likely to be affected had already been drafted, and in doing so he cited “sources close to the Donald Trump administration.” read more