POINTING FINGERS

State Dept. Officials Accuse Tillerson of Breaking Law on Child Soldiers

A confidential internal “dissent” memo claims he violated the Child Soldiers Prevention Act.

About a dozen U.S. State Department officials have formally accused Secretary of State Rex Tillerson of breaking a federal law that aims to stop foreign militaries from using child soldiers. Reuters reports the officials signed onto a confidential “dissent” memo claiming that Tillerson violated the Child Soldiers Prevention Act in June, when he excluded Myanmar, Iraq, and Afghanistan from an annual list of offenders in the use of child soldiers. Tillerson’s omission allegedly went against a unanimous recommendation by the department’s own in-house lawyers, the U.S. envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the State Department’s human-rights office, and its regional bureaus overseeing embassies in the Middle East and Asia.