The Big Olowski Has Left the Building
Lew Olowski, the State Department’s wacky, polarizing head of H.R., is said to have imploded at his farewell party when he learned that he wasn’t getting a coveted assignment.
On December 23—the day of his farewell party and his last day at PERT, as State’s H.R. department is now called—Olowski was told that he would not, in fact, be appointed to head O.F.M. Instead, he would be transferred to the Office of the Undersecretary for Management (or “M,” in Foggy Bottom parlance), which handles budget, H.R., and diplomatic security—in other words, everything that makes the department run. But Olowski’s assignment at M would be “special projects,” a hazy, ill-defined mission. Olowski understood that this was a demotion, and refused.
But by then he’d discovered that his things had already been cleared out of his PERT office and placed in a cubicle in the hallway. At this point, Olowski, according to all three sources, began yelling and throwing things. A senior official suggested calling diplomatic security, but Olowski, according to one source familiar, left the building on his own and diplomatic security did not get involved. Olowski is now on leave and a State Department spokesperson told me he was coming back to work—at some future date, at some other spot at State. The spokesperson disputed the story, but when pressed on the details, said, “I’m not going to get into specifics because we don’t talk about personnel. That’s a long-standing policy.” Olowski, whose auto-responder directs people to his personal cell phone, did not pick up when I called this number several times.
Olowski, it seems, had made quite a few enemies, even among the MAGA team that had taken over Foggy Bottom. “Lots of people at the senior level, even people who came in with this administration, don’t like him,” said the source who worked closely with him. “Because he goes too far, because he’s such a zealot. Because, frankly, he’s just so fucking weird.” Olowski, as I reported last summer, quickly developed a reputation for his rambling, Jesus-imbued speeches, which combined everything from ill-fitting hip-hop quotes to invocations of dolphins’ verbal abilities, and for his energy drink–fueled rants in meetings with subordinates. (“A coked-out raccoon” is how one of them described him to me.)
According to one source, Olowski gave his powerful enemies an opening when, in late November, he sent out a department-wide cable announcing that he was reexamining 2024 promotions and would be unilaterally promoting those he believed had been passed over because of D.E.I. during the Biden administration. The cable said that strict and scientific criteria were applied to determine whose D.E.I. scores had wrongly held them back. But a senior State Department source told me that Olowski’s list of names had been delivered to the responsible H.R. office as a fait accompli with no insight into how the recalibration had been done. “It was really shady,” the source said. Moreover, according to this source, Olowski hadn’t first cleared this with the seventh floor before sending it out. “He went rogue,” the source said. “That’s why he lost his job. He has friends in high places, but he doesn’t have friends in the right places.”
In the last few days, the story of Olowski’s dramatic departure has gone absolutely viral among State employees, current and former, ricocheting all over the world. Staties have shared memes portraying Olowski as a dolphin or, in one case, as a blindfolded Maduro in a grey sweatsuit. One comic-book rendition of the firing dubbed his reaction, “The Meltdown Heard ’Round the World.” “I’ve never seen a story like this spread so fast and so globally,” said the source who worked with Olowski. “He has wrought untold damage on thousands and thousands of people who just wanted to do their jobs with professionalism. He just walked in and assumed we were all traitors. I find it difficult to think there is anyone who doesn’t take a fair amount of glee in his downfall.”