"How the State Department Came After Me"

Here is a very interesting case that is developing between a current member of the State Department and his freedom to criticize his own organization.

Peter Van Buren spent some time in Iraq and subsequently wrote a piece criticizing some of the ridiculous expenditures, but more importantly, fundamental failures of post-war Iraq "reconstruction." His story was published in Foreign Policy, read here.

Then some controversy ensued, and you can read about Van Buren's response here. It essentially boils down to the State Department's hypocracy in criticizing foreign governments for censoring media while the Department engages in the same practices at home, including intimidating its own employees, threatening them, and stifling innocuous speech just to save some face.

I included, in my opinion, the most eloquent passages from the article  below:

"We have been battered to death with public statements from the Secretary of State on down demanding the rights of bloggers and journalists in China, Burma and the Middle East be respected. While the State Department does not lock its naughty bloggers in basement prison cells, it does purposefully, willfully, and in an organized way seek to chill the responsible exercise of free speech by its employees. It does this selectively; blogs that promote an on-message theme are left alone (or even linked to by the Department) while blogs that say things that are troublesome or offensive to the Department are bullied out of existence. This is not consistent with the values the State Department seeks to promote abroad. It is not the best of us, and it undermines our message and our mission in every country where we work where people can still read this.


I have a job now at State that has nothing to do with Iraq, something I enjoy and something I am competent at. To me, there is no conflict here. I'd like to keep my job if I can, and in the meantime, I'll continue to write. I have no need to resign in protest, as I don't think I've done anything wrong absent throwing a few pies at some clowns and bringing to daylight a story that needed to be told, albeit at the cost of some embarrassment to the Department of State. That seems to me compatible with my oath of office, as well as my obligations as a citizen. I hope State comes to agree with me. After all, State asks the same thing of governments abroad, right?"