Foreign Policy reports that “Secretary of State John Kerry has tapped one of Congress’s longest serving overseers of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to become the State Department’s new gatekeeper of arms sales to foreign countries.”  

“The hiring of Bill Monahan, which has not previously been reported, removes the veteran staffer from the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he has been knee-deep in scrutinizing the Pentagon’s conduct of the twin conflicts as well as the U.S. military’s coordination with governments in Europe and South Asia. The new position at the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs will put Monahan in charge of managing the sale and transfer of U.S. arms to foreign governments and about $6 billion in U.S. military grants to American allies.”