Stardate 20030426.1200

(On Screen): I'm no fan of Newt Gingrich, to say the least. Which is why I cringed when I read about his speech condemning the State Department and demanding major reforms there.

It's not that I fundamentally disagree with him. On the contrary, I think it's clear that the Department of State is long overdue for major Congressional scrutiny, major house-cleaning, and major reorganization. The problem is that with Gingrich being the one to raise that issue, it gives those who wish to maintain the status quo a way of sidetracking the argument. Instead of talking about State, they can talk about Newt.

The problem with State is that sometimes it seems as if they've forgotten just who they work for and whose interests they're supposed to be representing. It's almost the diplomatic equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome, where the people in the various bureaus in State identify more with the nations they're assigned to than they do with the US. And there seems to be a strong and very unhealthy strain of post-nationalism there, to the point where in some cases they seem to agree with the French that America is actually the problem.

Case in point: during the talks in Beijing this week, a representative of North Korea made clear that NK had working nukes and was prepared to start selling them to the highest bidder. They may have been lying (though the consensus is that they were not) but it was still something of a shock, and caused the US to quit the talks before they were scheduled to end.

Was this actually a surprise to the US government? Yes and no. What part of the US government?

It seems it was a surprise to a lot of it, but State had already been told the same thing by NK in March, through diplomatic channels in New York associated with the NK delegation to the UN. And this article says that the information was not distributed widely.

There's confusion, or maybe lying, about just what did happen and why. The sympathetic explanation is that State got the information, didn't think it was credible, and didn't think it was particularly important, so included it in some low level briefings to other parts of the Executive branch but didn't make a big deal out of it. No red flags were raised because there wasn't any reason to do so.

I'm afraid that this seems a bit too glib. I don't find it convincing.

The unsympathetic explanation is that State fully understood the significance of the revelation, and deliberately suppressed it because it feared that if it got wide play, the US would refuse to begin diplomatic reengagement with NK. Basically, that stupid simplisme cowboy would fixate on this and come to the wrong conclusion about how to deal with NK – which is to say, that he wouldn't be willing to buy them off again.

If the latter explanation is correct, then State has crossed the line. State has a duty to provide clear and complete information to the White House and to offer recommendations for policy, but the decisions should be made by our elected officials. That's what we elect them for. If State is engaged in deliberate distortion in its reports, and deliberate suppression of important information, it's crossed the line.

Bureaucracies always engage in some degree of distortion; it's inevitable. But to deliberately ignore what was clearly a red-flag event goes way beyond distortion.

This is a symptom of a greater problem. The dismal record of accomplishment by the State Department during the last year and a half in particular certainly strongly suggests that someone (which is to say, Congress) needs to start looking into why it was that State's policies were so consistently internationalist – and so consistently disastrous for us. How was it that we managed to get blindsided diplomatically so often?

Unfortunately, since Newt Gingrich got involved, I'm afraid that such an honest investigation into State's failures won't be possible for a long time. They'll have to wait until such an investigation no longer seems to be inspired by his comments and criticisms.