Not long after she’d taken over for Secretary of State Colin Powell in 2005, Condoleezza Rice’s chief of staff walked into her office late one evening with a message about one of her bureau leaders.
Bobby Charles, the assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement, had gone behind her back to complain to allies on Capitol Hill after resisting overhauls she wanted to implement, Rice wrote in her 2011 memoir.
“I decided that the bureau needed new leadership,” she wrote. “The message had to be clear that I encouraged open disagreement but that this kind of behavior was unacceptable.”
Now Maine’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, Charles has staked much of his bid on his State Department tenure. Rice’s account, an earlier book and a former colleague who delivered news of Charles’ ouster to staff offer a portrait of his exit that hasn’t been reported during the governor’s race. The candidate disputed both accounts.
Charles has often cited his State Department record as the brand of leadership he’d bring to the Blaine House. He faces frontrunner Democrat Hannah Pingree and independent state Sen. Rick Bennett in five days. The attorney and former naval intelligence officer became assistant secretary in October 2003, overseeing counter-narcotics efforts and police-training programs in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Rice’s account echoes one published nearly 20 years ago by former Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler. In his 2007 book on Rice, Kessler wrote that she fired Charles, a former aide to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, after learning he “had tried to drum up support on the Hill for a position he was advocating on Afghanistan.”
Kessler also wrote that the firing came “within days” of Rice becoming secretary. But Charles stayed until March 15, 2005, seven weeks after Rice was sworn in, according to his State Department biography.
Charles disputed those accounts. In a statement, he said he was not fired “within days” of Rice taking office and that Powell had asked him in December 2004 to stay through the transition.
When differences with Rice over programs he’d built under Powell became clear, he resigned in mid-March 2005 after consulting Powell and then-Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage, he said. He denied going behind Rice’s back, saying lawmakers reached out with questions and the bureau “had an obligation to be transparent with them.”
“When you disagree with the direction of a new boss, you have two choices: change your views to keep your job, or leave,” he said. “I left. Integrity comes before position.”
Neither Rice nor her former chief of staff, Brian Gunderson, responded to requests for comment. Powell died in 2021, and Armitage died last year.
Rice’s memoir did not name Charles or specify their disagreements. But she wrote that his bureau was overseeing huge expenditures to train police in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“The recordkeeping, though, and thus the accountability for that work was less than adequate,” she wrote. “The serving assistant secretary was resistant to the changes that needed to be made.”
More than a dozen federal audits criticized the bureau during Charles’ roughly 18 months in charge, finding poor management, billions spent without accountability and failure to accomplish primary foreign policy goals, the BDN reported in May. Charles has said the BDN cherry-picked the audits. Supporters have credited him with bringing fiscal responsibility to the bureau.
“While his aggressive push for accountability may have ruffled the feathers of those comfortable with the old way of doing things, his results were undeniable,” William E. Todd, a career diplomat and former ambassador to Brunei and Cambodia who worked with Charles from 2003 to 2005, wrote in a public letter.
A retired longtime official in Charles’ bureau who told staff he had been asked to step down, granted anonymity because family members feared retaliation for weighing in on a political campaign, said “nobody was terribly surprised” at the news.
The official described Charles as charming and well liked by staff and credited him with standing up for the State Department as Gen. David Petraeus’ role in Iraq grew, but he was a disorganized manager and “kind of a loose cannon.”
Charles said the race is about Maine’s future, not a 2005 personnel decision.
“I’ve led a global bureau, managed large teams and budgets, served in the armed forces and made hard decisions under pressure,” he said. “Among the candidates running for governor, I am the only one who has done that.”