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The GOP-only appointment rules that DeLay tried to enforce on K Street now seem to be spreading. Knight Ridder reports that the State Department has been using political "litmus tests" before sending American representatives overseas, to see if they have ever said a word critical of the Bush administration's Iraq policy:
Hey, is there an 800 number where informers get to call in? David Phillips and Barack Obama are hardly crazy radicals whose views are outside of the mainstream. If the State Department has a problem with them, it would really be worthy of a Senate Foreign Relations committee investigation (which Obama sits on) to figure out precisely why and what political litmus tests are being carried out and under whose orders. This just smells like Liz Cheney to me, but it'd be worth figuring out.The State Department has been using political litmus tests to screen private American citizens before they can be sent overseas to represent the United States, weeding out critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, according to department officials and internal e-mails.
In one recent case, a leading expert on conflict resolution who is a former senior State Department adviser was scheduled to participate in a U.S. Embassy-sponsored videoconference in Jerusalem last month, but at the last minute he was told that his participation no longer was required.
State Department officials explained the cancellation as a scheduling matter. But internal department e-mails show that officials in Washington pressed to have other scholars replace the expert, David L. Phillips, who wrote a book, "Losing Iraq," that's critical of President Bush's handling of Iraqi reconstruction.
"I was told by a senior U.S. official that the State Department was conducting a screening process on intellectuals, and those who were against the Bush administration's Iraq policy were not welcomed to participate in U.S. government-sponsored programs," Phillips said.
"The ability of the United States to promote democracy effectively abroad is curtailed when we curtail free speech at home, which is essential to a free society," he said.
In another instance of apparent politicization, a request by the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, to arrange a visit by Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who lived in Indonesia when he was young, was delayed for seven months. The visit never occurred.
A prominent translator of Islamic poetry who toured Afghanistan to rave reviews last March fell out of favor when he later criticized the Iraq war in front of a department official, two U.S. officials said.
The practices appear to be the latest examples of the Bush administration's efforts to tightly control information, maintain "message discipline" and promote news about the United States and its policies. ...
Current and former officials involved with the State Department's overseas speakers program said potential candidates were vetted -- via Internet searches, for example -- for any comments or writings that criticized White House policy. ...