A Hero Is Born as Masha Yovanovitch Gives Voice to Widespread Rage at State

In contrast to the appearances of State Department officials William Taylor, whose deep baritone launched a thousand tweets about his radio career, and George Kent, with his flashy bow tie and matching pocket square, Marie Yovanovitch cut a subdued figure before the House Intelligence Committee on Friday. Testifying before lawmakers about her politicized ouster from her post as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Yovanovitch was soft-spoken—if firm—throughout. Sedate though she was, however, diplomats mostly saw her as the week’s hero. “Masha’s testimony was a powerful moment in the impeachment drama,” Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, told me Friday afternoon. “She was compelling and utterly persuasive in asking how the president permitted corrupt individuals to convince him to fire her. ‘How could our system fail like this?’ she was right to ask.”

More in sadness than in anger, she laid the failure to insulate her against the Trump administration’s politicization of diplomacy in Ukraine at the feet of her bosses at the State Department, starting with Mike Pompeo. “I remain disappointed that the department’s leadership and others have declined to acknowledge that the attacks against me and others are dangerously wrong. This is about far more than me or a couple of individuals. As Foreign Service professionals are being denigrated and undermined, the institution is also being degraded. This will soon cause real harm, if it hasn’t already,” she said in her opening statement. “The attacks are leading to a crisis in the State Department…This is not a time to undercut our diplomats. It is the responsibility of the department’s leaders to stand up for the institution and the individuals who make that institution the most effective diplomatic force in the world.”

Since her removal from her post in Kiev in May, long before the notorious phone call was uncovered, Yovanovitch has become a standard-bearer at State, both a martyr and someone capable of speaking truth to power in a demoralized, bifurcated department. Friday morning the moment arrived. “I thought she was right in taking Secretary Pompeo to task. He has failed in this most basic of his responsibilities,” Burns continued. “Her testimony illuminated how capricious the president has been and how he has abused the power of his office. Her courage in facing her accusers was simply inspiring.” Yovanovitch’s disappointment in Pompeo was palpable when she was asked by Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney if she expected the secretary of state to have “had her back.” She responded with a shrug and solemn head nod.

As I have previously reported, as the secretary of state’s complicity in Trump’s attempt to pressure the Ukrainian government into investigating both Joe Biden, a top political rival, and an unfounded conspiracy theory about the 2016 election, has become clearer, a deep disappointment in his leadership has beset the bureau. “It’s truly a striking failure on the part of Pompeo that illustrates in full color just what the Trump administration has done to governance: loyalty to the chief over service to common interests and values,” a former senior U.S. official told me. “This is the way gangsters operate, and Masha was one of the brave people who has spent her career working hard to fight gangsters overseas in post-Soviet space—never imagining, I’m sure, that she might find herself working for gangsters here in America.”

It is hard to say what the impeachment inquiry will portend for Pompeo’s tenure at the State Department. He dismissed reports of plummeting morale within the bureau as “more Washington insidery stuff” in an interview with Hugh Hewitt. “It’s a big organization,” Pompeo said. “I’m sure there’s lots of different thoughts. But suffice it to say, the American people should be comfortable knowing that we are continuing to do the hard work to deliver good policy outcomes for President Trump and the United States.” At the end of the day, Pompeo’s fate rests with Trump, something even diplomats concede.