Scott Gration

Jonathan Scott Gration (born 1951) is a former United States Air Force officer who worked as a policy advisor to President Barack Obama.

Born in Illinois, Gration then grew up in Central and East Africa with his missionary parents. He studied at Rutgers University and Georgetown University before joining the Air Force. He remained in the Air Force for three decades, flying 274 combat missions and being awarded the Legion of Merit, a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, and various other decorations. He was also found guilty by the Inspector General's Office of mistakenly falsifying at least 3 combat missions while commander of the 39th Wing. He later advised and stumped for the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama.

In 2009, Obama named Gration as the United States Special Envoy to Sudan. Gration subsequently worked as United States Ambassador to Kenya from 2011 to 2012 before resigning in the face of potential disciplinary action for unclassified email use and other issues. Since 2012, he has worked in the private sector and released a memoir about his military and public service. He spent his early childhood in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo (then the Belgian Congo, later Zaïre) and Kenya, while his parents worked as missionary teachers. The first sentence he ever spoke was in Kiswahili, and he has been a Kiswahili speaker his entire life.

After his family returned to the United States, he studied at Rutgers University, where he enlisted in the ROTC program and earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. He earned a master's degree in national security studies from Georgetown University in Washington in 1988.

Military career Upon graduating from Rutgers, his "low draft number" motivated him to join the United States Air Force in September 1974.

Military Promotion dates

Second Lieutenant Jan. 24, 1974 First Lieutenant July 24, 1976 Captain July 24, 1978 Major May 1, 1985 Lieutenant Colonel June 1, 1988 Colonel Jan. 1, 1995 Brigadier General Oct. 1, 1999 (original line number cancelled) Major General April 1, 2003 In 2006, he traveled to Africa on a five-nation, fifteen-day, fact-finding tour, accompanying Senator Barack Obama as an "African expert". He later endorsed Obama's presidential campaign, citing that Obama had the "judgment, wisdom, courage, experience, and leadership capability that we desperately need."

In 2007, the Obama campaign "begn sending Gration out on the stump . . . in an effort to improve the inexperienced senator's image on national security."

Civil service After retiring from the Air Force, Gration served as CEO of Millennium Villages, an organization dedicated to reducing extreme poverty. He then joined the Safe Water Network where he helped to provide safe water to vulnerable populations in India, Bangladesh, and Ghana.

In January 2009 it was speculated that he would be nominated to be the 12th administrator of NASA, replacing Michael Griffin. Gration's nomination became difficult because the law requires that the space agency chief be appointed from civilian life by the president by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Science and Space, a key NASA oversight panel, strongly advised then President-elect Obama to avoid selecting Gration as the space agency chief due to his lack of NASA experience.

Sources close to the Obama transition, however, said Gration helped write the seven-page space policy paper the Obama campaign released in the August supporting the goal of sending humans to the Moon by 2020 and calling for narrowing the gap between the retirement of the space shuttle and the first flight of its successor system. The paper stood out as the most comprehensive policy statement on NASA released by a major presidential candidate in recent history.

United States Special Envoy to Sudan

On March 17, 2009, Gration was named U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan. He took a conciliatory approach to the regime of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, and downplayed reports of ongoing genocide in the Darfur conflict. Gration's comments that the International Criminal Court's indictment of al-Bashir made his mission "more difficult and challenging" drew criticism. He clashed with United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice over his approach.

Gration and his team were able to coordinate an end to the Chad-Sudan conflict, unify most of the Darfur rebel groups and encourage their participation in the Doha peace talks, and assist the 2010 Sudanese national elections and the 2011 Southern Sudan referendum on independence.

On appointing Ambassador Princeton Lyman to replace Gration as special envoy, on April 1, 2011, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recognized Gration as a "dedicated public servant," saying "Scott has been instrumental to our work in Sudan over the last two years. We are absolutely delighted that the President has nominated him to be our next Ambassador to Kenya, and we will continue to rely on his passion and skills for the people of the region and we thank [him] for [his] service."

In a March 2013 speech at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson called U.S. efforts led by Gration and Lyman "a major accomplishment" of the Obama administration. Carson said: "Under the leadership of President Obama's special envoys, first General Scott Gration and now Ambassador Princeton Lyman, the United States led international efforts to reinvigorate the CPA. President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and Ambassador Susan Rice's leadership kept the 2011 referendum on South Sudan's independence on track, and led to South Sudan's independence in July 2011."

United States Ambassador to Kenya

President Obama announced his intent to nominate Gration as United States Ambassador to Kenya on February 10, 2011.

Gration described media reports describing various theories as to why he resigned his post as "silliness". In an interview with The Cable, Gration insisted that his one-year tenure as the U.S. envoy in Nairobi was a success. Speaking in 2015, Gration attributed his resignation to "the use of Gmail in the US Embassy, my insistence on improving our physical security posture, and other twisted and false allegations".

The Inspector General's report on Gration's behavior stated that "The Ambassador has lost the respect and confidence of the staff to lead the mission" and that his leadership had been "divisive and ineffective." It found that he directed staff to work on projects with "unclear status and almost no value," did not read classified front channel messages, used commercial e-mail systems instead of secure government ones for official and sensitive business, and ignored U.S. government policy.

The potential action against Gration became a talking point in the Hillary Clinton email controversy during her 2016 presidential campaign as part of the attempt to establish whether the State Department had official guidelines on personal email accounts during her tenure. He also released a memoir, Flight Path: Son of Africa to Warrior-Diplomat (Mulami Books, 2016), telling his life story and defending himself against the charges that led to his resignation.