Long story short is that I discovered they are an incestuous little club who almost all graduated from the same handful of colleges and worked for the media before they became State Department employees.
They mostly hold the same political views and do not want anyone in their club who might disturb their convenient arrangement. Administrations come and go, but their inner workings change very little because the type of people change very little.
The club that you describe is the bureaucracy. The members are interested in only sucking on the government teat and then retiring. Some have jobs that are no longer useful of needed.. but, would take an act of Congress to terminate.
These leeches are the SWAMP. Fire them all, save Billions, and yes, the Sun will rise tomorrow. We don’t need this “white collar welfare,’ any longer.
Had the same experience in 1993. Out of about a dozen who participated in the process only one advanced and he apparently was a legacy right out of an ivy league grad school.