How a think-tank grievance with no record became the charge that ended a nuclear official's career
Before the accusation, Frank Rose had a resume that opened doors.
He was not a crank or a drifter.
In Washington, careers like Rose's are built by accretion: Arms control. Nuclear policy. Missile defense.
Four presidents. Two departments. Congressional committees. A title, a clearance, a committee post.
The kind of career that made people return calls and take meetings. It took 30 years to build and a single allegation to undo.
The record certified that he belongs in the rooms where weapons, treaties, and nations are discussed. Rose's record would prove less durable than a single accusation.
Under Clinton, Rose entered the Defense Department as a presidential appointee.
Under Bush, Rose became a Defense Department policy adviser, then moved to Capitol Hill as professional staff on the House Intelligence and Armed Services Committees.
From 2009 to 2014, Rose served at the State Department as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Space and Defense Policy. Satellites, missiles, deterrence, alliances.
In 2011, he was the lead American negotiator on the missile defense basing agreement. He was trusted to speak for the United States on a matter involving weapons, territory, allies, and adversaries.
The Defense Department gave him its Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service. The State Department gave him its Superior Honor Award.
Then came Senate confirmation. Under President Obama, Rose served as Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance from 2014 to 2017. He had been vetted, approved, and placed in one of the most sensitive jobs in government.
Later, when the accusation came, verification would be the one thing missing.
Brookings
When the Obama administration ended in January 2017, Rose left government for The Aerospace Corporation, where he became chief of government relations.
In 2018, he went to Brookings, one of Washington's prominent think tanks.
He arrived as a senior fellow and rose to co-director of the Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology in the Foreign Policy program.
He wrote on nuclear policy, arms control, deterrence, space, and defense. He testified before Congress as an expert witness. He taught, as an adjunct professor, in the security studies program at Georgetown.
At Brookings, Rose had a research assistant named Kathryn "Kate" Hewitt, who was one year out of graduate school.
At Brookings, Rose had an office. Hewitt worked in an open bullpen of cubicles, colleagues nearby, the co-director's office close enough to make secrecy a more complicated claim than it might later sound.
A Pattern of Going Around the Rules
Hewitt had a pattern.
According to Rose's sworn account, when a supervisor told her no, she went around him.
Brookings had a rule. Research assistants were acknowledged in the report but not credited on the cover.
The rule was general. Her objection was personal.
Hewitt wanted her name on the cover.
When Robert Einhorn, her supervisor, denied the request, Hewitt did not accept the answer. She went directly to Bruce Jones, the Vice President for Foreign Policy.
She wanted to attend an external conference and be paid for it. She wanted to be paid for the pleasure.
Again, there was a rule.
Kevin Scott, the chief administrative officer, told her she had to use personal leave. Hewitt bypassed him and appealed to Jones again.
Rose counseled her about it twice, in private sessions. He told her she needed to respect the chain of command.
Her answer, according to Rose's declaration, was that she "didn't need the administrative staff to tell her what to do."
Rarely does entitlement save the biographer so much labor.
Hewitt was not against rules. She was against rules that applied to her.
She was a particular product of Washington: ambitious, credentialed, and alert to the uses of identity. She learned that being a woman could be turned from a fact into an instrument, used not merely for protection but for leverage.
In her way of seeing the world, help from a man was natural, even owed. Resistance was patriarchy, obstruction, a structure to be named and, if necessary, defeated.
When Rose helped her, his authority was legitimate. When he enforced rules, that same authority became suspect. Or worse, it became a reason for damaging a man.
She was not MeToo. It was me first.
Hers was the identity politics of advantage: the claim of oppression used not to correct injustice but as a tactic.
The pattern set at Brookings — go around the man who says no — would, five years later, end Frank Rose's career.
The Gospel According to Kate: Rules Are for Others
One did not have to guess at Kate Hewitt's philosophy. She announced it.
On a panel about women in national security, in remarks recorded and posted to YouTube, she explained the rules as she understood them.
The system, she explained, "was not built by women, with women in mind. So the rules that we have to operate by were not made for us. And so I don't feel like we should be held to them, to be totally frank with you. Women should not be held to the rules… you don't have to play by the rules."
It was not a joke or a stray phrase. Women, she said, "should not be held to the rules."
In a harassment case, the first rule is simple: the accusation must be true. Remove that, and what remains is not feminism, not justice, not even due process.
It is a weapon.
In his lawsuit filed against her, Rose said of her YouTube advice that women did not have to play by the rules:
"She means what she said."
Two Years After
When Hewitt left Brookings in April 2019, she made no complaint against Rose, though she would later claim he had harassed her there.
She left for a contractor position at the National Nuclear Security Administration through Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
It paid nearly double her Brookings salary.
She admits Rose helped her.
She wrote, "I sought and obtained a recommendation from Frank Rose, in his capacity as my supervisor, to get a new job."
For the next two years, from 2019-2021, she kept coming to Rose to ask for help.
She confided to Rose that her job at NNSA wasn't the right fit. She was weighing a move to the Center for Naval Analysis.
In November 2020, she suggested they get together for a virtual coffee. She messaged him for career advice.
In her LinkedIn messages to Rose, he appears as a useful adviser.
When Hewitt sought a permanent federal position in NNSA's Office of Public Affairs, she asked Rose for a reference. He did, and she got the job.
When her job required a security clearance, she asked him to vouch for her. He did, and she was cleared.
Despite what she said about him later—that he sexually harassed her—she acted as though he was a friend who could help her, and did.
About two years after she left Brookings, Rose left Brookings too.
President Biden nominated Rose to be the second-ranking official of the National Nuclear Security Administration.
The US Senate confirmed him as the Principal Deputy Administrator by voice vote, without opposition.
Rose entered his new job, where he helped oversee a $24 billion budget and 60,000 personnel, including his former research assistant, Kathryn "Kate" Hewitt.
At this time, she did not level the accusation that would end his career.
He was now at the pinnacle of his career.
Before the Senate confirmed him, the FBI conducted a background investigation.
Agents went to former employers, colleagues, and references. Their task was not to admire the candidate but to find any derogatory facts, if any existed.
When the FBI began their investigation, Rose was still at Brookings, the place Hewitt would later say Rose harassed her — the cubicles, the close standing, the comments, the rental car.
It is also the place where the FBI's agents interviewed people who worked alongside Rose, reviewed his employment record, and asked the questions a background check is meant to ask.
If a sexual-harassment complaint against Rose existed in Brookings's files, the FBI Senate confirmation process might have found it.
The Senate Armed Services Committee reviewed the FBI results. The full Senate confirmed Rose by voice vote. No one objected. No one dissented.
The FBI is not infallible. The point is that the FBI investigated Rose's employment at Brookings. The allegation that would later end Rose's career left no obvious record at the place where it allegedly happened.
At NNSA
When Rose arrived at NNSA, he was not Hewitt's direct supervisor. He was not the person assigning her tasks or reviewing her day. He was the supervisor of her supervisor.
By her own admission, from August 2021 until the fall of 2023, when Rose and Hewitt were both NNSA employees, they had no direct contact.
She worked in communications as one of the employees in an office of about ten.
In April 2022, she was detailed to the Pentagon, where she remained, still on NNSA's payroll.
She Liked It Better at the Pentagon
When the detail expired in 2023, Hewitt wanted to stay at the Pentagon while NNSA continued to pay her. She hoped to obtain a permanent position there.
Until then, she wanted the temporary arrangement extended.
The NNSA communications office expected her return, as offices tend to do when they are paying for an employee they do not have.
She asked her supervisor to let her remain at the Pentagon.
She also asked Rose, her former supervisor from Brookings. She wanted the rule waived.
Rose declined to extend the Pentagon detail because NNSA Public Affairs, her home office, was down to five people doing the work of ten, and NNSA was paying her salary while she worked somewhere else.
In fall 2023, he said no. She went around him.
She asked Vipin Narang, a senior Defense Department official, to press Rose to reconsider.
It was the Brookings pattern repeated. Einhorn said no, and she went to Jones. Scott said no, and she went to Jones. Now Rose said no, and she went to Narang.
Rose ultimately granted a capped six-month extension as a courtesy to Narang. He gave Hewitt six months to find a permanent position at DOD. After that, she would have to either get the Pentagon job or return to NNSA.
His answer was final. Six months.
But six months was not enough. Federal hiring does not move that fast, and converting a detail into a permanent slot can take far longer.
The extension was a courtesy, but it was also a deadline she was unlikely to make.
She was on borrowed time. She needed to take the decision out of his hands.
The Charge That Ended a Career
Hewitt made a harassment complaint against Rose. She did not accuse Rose of sexual misconduct at NNSA.
By her own admission, they had no direct contact during the two years they both served there.
At Brookings, they had worked closely — supervisor and research assistant, side by side. That is where she said the harassment happened.
A retaliation theory did the rest.
Her story became this: she had reported him at Brookings.
He knew it. And now, years later, when he had power over her at NNSA, he punished her by first denying her an extension and then failing to give her a sufficient one.
The Brookings claim supplied the original harm. The denied transfer supplied the retaliation. Alone, each was weak. Together, they formed the accusation.
Had she really reported Rose for harassment when they worked at Brookings, something he would have known about and could therefore have had a motive to retaliate against her?
No Record to Find
After Rose lost his job, he sued Hewitt for lying and defamation. Her attorney, Mary E. Kuntz of Kalijarvi, Chuzi, Newman & Fitch, admitted in writing: "Ms. Hewitt did not file a formal complaint of discrimination" at Brookings.
In her own sworn declaration, as part of the lawsuit, Hewitt used different language. "Over time," she said, "I made several reports … about Frank Rose's harassment of me."
But she admits she never put it in writing at Brookings.
She told someone. There was no HR record. There was no paper trail. There was nothing that could have been investigated, tested, or verified.
No note, email, HR intake, or memo.
There is this fact: in January 2020, nine months after Hewitt left Brookings, the institution promoted Rose to Co-Director of the Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology.
Brookings promoted the man Hewitt said she was reporting for harassment throughout her time there.
Institutions do not ordinarily promote employees who are the subjects of active and repeated harassment complaints.
Rose denied under oath that he had ever harassed Hewitt.
What She Said He Did
When Rose sued Hewitt, she was finally forced to say what she alleged he had done. In a sworn declaration filed in the lawsuit against her, Hewitt was forced to describe the alleged harassment.
Frank Rose finally learned what he supposedly had done that ended his career.
Hewitt said that at Brookings, Rose came to her cubicle multiple times a day and stood "uncomfortably close."
She said he read over her shoulder with his face inches from hers. She said he complimented her legs, compared her looks to women he found attractive, and told her she reminded him of Kirstjen Nielsen.
She said he asked almost daily about her dating life, stared at her legs or chest in meetings, touched her knee or leg, or came behind her and touched her shoulder or back.
She said he would joke, "Don't report me!"
She said that on a work trip, in a rental car, he told her he had "inappropriate thoughts about you all the time, but I would never tell you about them."
Rose denied touching her, leering at her, commenting sexually on her appearance, telling her to keep quiet, or saying he had inappropriate thoughts about her.
He admitted he read over her shoulder, but only to help her edit documents. He said the Nielsen remark was not sexual, only a comparison of resemblance. He described every interaction as professional and aimed at helping her succeed.
Even if one accepted Hewitt's account, these were not allegations of assault. There was no claim of criminal groping and no claim that Rose conditioned her job on sex. They were allegations of words, posture, looks, and gestures.
They were five years old and surfaced only after Rose denied her transfer.
Hewitt's own attorney did not present them as a settled fact.
In court papers, Mary Kuntz conceded that Hewitt never filed a formal complaint of discrimination and acknowledged that reasonable people might look at the same interactions and not see harassment.
Hewitt's claim that Rose stood "uncomfortably close," her lawyer wrote, was "personal, may not be shared by others, and must be considered an opinion."
The lawyer posed the rest as questions, not conclusions: were Rose's inquiries about her dating life "sexual harassment or courtesy"?
Was he "really staring" at her legs or chest?
These are not the words of a side confident it can prove intent. They are the words of a side conceding that the same conduct might be read as harassment or as nothing at all.
And yet it was enough to end his career.
Kate Hewitt had said it plainly: the rules were not made for her, and she did not have to play by them.
What she could not have known is that she had found the one place in government that agreed.
The Energy Department had rules too — a written policy, the proper offices, the promise of notice and a hearing before a man's career was taken from him.
When Hewitt's complaint arrived, the Department decided those rules did not apply to Frank Rose.
The accuser believed the rules were not made for her. So, as it turned out, did the institution that destroyed him.
That is the next story, which will be covered in Part 2.