Pompeo promises to restore State Department's 'swagger'

Pompeo told hundreds gathered in the department's formal entrance that he was there to pump new life back into the oldest US Cabinet agency, at a time when the US faces serious foreign policy challenges in Asia and the Middle East.

"My mission is to lead you," Pompeo said, adding that he was humbled to take up the position. "America can't achieve its objectives, absent you all," he told the crowd. "I am looking forward to helping you all achieve that."

"I know we will deliver for this President and this country," Pompeo said. He told the crowd that President Donald Trump and some of his Cabinet members would visit the State Department Wednesday to formally swear him in.

Standing above the crowd on a staircase, he joked that, "one of my most important rules is don't talk down to people, so I'll talk to you all up here."

The 70th top diplomat's debut at his agency was delayed because he launched himself into his first international trip immediately after being sworn in, traveling to Belgium and the Middle East to shore up key alliances and discuss the Iran nuclear deal.

Pompeo is inheriting a badly bruised agency after the administration under former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson moved to cut the budget by about 30% and left dozens of senior positions unfilled, essentially handicapping a central part of the national security apparatus.

His goal, he has said, it to return some "swagger" to the department. Asked what his first steps will be to turn things around, Pompeo talked about meeting some State Department diplomats while on the trip and offered promises, not specifics.

"They may have been demoralized, but they seemed in good spirits," Pompeo said Friday at a press conference in Brussels. "They are hopeful that the State Department will get its swagger back, that we will be out doing the things that they came onboard at the State Department to do: to be professional, to deliver diplomacy, American diplomacy around the world."

"My mission set," Pompeo added, "is to build that esprit and get the team on the field so that we can effectuate American diplomacy. I know that the State Department and the people there can do that."