More Kerry Recruits Fill State Department Posts

More orbiters of Planet Kerry are slated to fill up some of the vacancies at the State Department. On Friday, the White House sent two new nominations to the Senate for assistant secretary of state for Arms control, Verification and Compliance and assistant secretary of state for Legislative Affairs. A State Department official tells The Cable the two new recruits were hand-picked by Kerry.

First off, there’s Frank Rose, a former Senate staffer for Kerry and a Massachusetts native. If confirmed, Rose will takeover on the arms control beat, which recently saw the departure of Robert Einhorn at the now-dissolved post of special advisor for nonproliferation and arms control. Always something of a nat sec geek, a 17-year old Rose made his first impression on Kerry during his 1990 re-election campaign “thanks to an odd question” he asked Kerry about his position on U.S. strategic missile defense, according to an aide to the Secretary of State. Apparently it wasn’t a deal-breaker.

Rose is currently deputy assistant secretary of state for Space and Defense, which he took over after serving as a professional staff member of the House Armed Services Committee. He’ll report to Acting Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Affairs Rose Gottemoeller, who’s overseeing a range of thorny issues from North Korea and Iran’s nuclear program, Syria’s alleged chemical weapons use, and South Korea’s civilian nuclear program.

As for the next assistant secretary for Legislative Affairs, Kerry is also raiding the upper chamber with the selection of Julia Frifield, chief of staff to Senator Barbara Mikulski. Although he technically poached Frifield away from Mikulski, an aide says the hire was amicably arranged last spring. “I want someone who has been chief of staff to someone like Barbara,” Kerry said at the time. “Or why don’t we just recruit Barbara’s chief of staff — if she’ll let me.”

The two new recruits follow the April selection of Kerry advisor and biking buddy Danny Sepulveda as deputy assistant secretary of state and U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs. Other folks from Kerry Land include chief of staff David Wade, Deputy Chief of Staff Bill Danvers and senior communications advisor Glen Johnson, among others.