At the State Department in late May 2017, a reporter asked Acting Assistant Secretary of State Stuart E. Jones—a career Foreign Service officer in a post to which no permanent appointee had been nominated—how the administration reconciled a record-setting $110-billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia with that regime’s abysmal human rights record. Jones sighed heavily. “Um. Um . . .” he muttered, glancing around, knitting and re-knitting his fingers. Then he froze for twenty seconds, his face slackened into a thousand-yard stare. He offered a few halting sentences about fighting extremism and
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