Josh Rogin
reports out the background on the US Embassy in Cairo’s
moment of shame:
One staffer at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was responsible for the
statement and tweets Tuesday that have become grist for the
presidential campaign, and that staffer ignored explicit State
Department instructions not to issue the statement, one U.S.
official close to the issue told The Cable…
President Obama commented on the
controversy in
an interview to be aired Wednesday evening on 60
Minutes.
“In an effort to cool the situation down, it didn’t come from
me, it didn’t come from Secretary Clinton. It came from people
on the ground who are potentially in danger,” Obama said. “And
my tendency is to cut folks a little bit of slack when they’re
in that circumstance, rather than try to question
their judgment from the comfort of a campaign office.”
But Obama’s remarks belie the enormous frustration of top
officials at the State Department and White House with the actions
of the man behind the statement, Cairo senior public affairs
officer Larry Schwartz, who wrote the release
and oversees the embassy’s Twitter feed, according to a detailed
account of the Tuesday’s events…
Before issuing the press release, Schwartz cleared it with just
one person senior to himself, Deputy Chief of
Mission Marc Sievers, who was the acting
charge d’affairs at the embassy on Tuesday because
Ambassador Anne Patterson was in
Washington at the time, the official said.
Schwartz sent the statement to the State Department in
Washington before publishing and the State Department directed him
not to post it without changes, but Schwartz posted it anyway.
“The statement was not cleared with anyone in Washington. It was
sent as ‘This is what we are putting out,’” the official said. “We
replied and said this was not a good statement and that it needed
major revisions. The next email we received from Embassy Cairo was
‘We just put this out.’”…
Despite being aware of Washington’s objections, the embassy
continued to defend the statement for several hours, fueling the
controversy over it, a decision the official again attributed to
Schwartz.
“Not only did they push out the statement but they continued to
engage on Twitter and retweet it,” the official said. “[Schwartz]
would have been the one directing folks to engage on Twitter on
this.”
Is Obama’s response really going to be “cut folks a little bit
of slack?” So far, yes:
Despite his disregard of Washington’s instructions and his
actions throughout the day Tuesday, Schwartz has not yet been
disciplined in any way and is still the lead public affairs officer
at the embassy.
“He remains at post at the same capacity as he was,” the
official said.
That’s simply not acceptable. If issuing and repeatedly
defending an unauthorized statement in the name of the United
States government that condemns “those who abuse the universal
right of free speech” isn’t enough to get a diplomat in trouble,
what exactly would be? This was a statement that went
well beyond distancing the embassy from a YouTube video that caused
offense; it was an attack on First Amendment principles. The
potential danger on the ground (which, remember, became more
acute after the statement was issued) is no
excuse.
If is the Obama administration is at all serious about defending
American values, Larry Schwartz must be fired.
