John Kerry

He does head the department and he should work to determine the atmosphere and the tone. Rereading the article and your post, I see what you mean. I was looking at it as to whether they were undermining Kerry --- and missed that they were undermining Obama, which is worse.

I do think it strange that they thought that the WH itself should have written the State Department talking points. It is possible that this is a change from Hillary to Kerry - that suggests he is more trusted and maybe more involved in policy.. Kerry was very trusted in both campaigns as a surrogate and he - unlike many other surrogates for Obama and others - remembered his role as a surrogate when he was a surrogate - which, to some degree he is when speaking publicly now.

The consistency - as things changed rapidly - of the Obama/Kerry/Hagel comments was impressive and suggested that they were working closely together. Only when you take comments from different times are there any detectable differences. As Kerry's own comments were in sync with Obama's, there likely was trust that he and his team would write the talking points for the State Department.

I do agree that Kerry or David Wade probably should signal that this behavior is not acceptable. The down side of this is that these are senior enough people with their own media contacts - and likely the ones complaining about Kerry not having filled all the positions.