What on earth was President Obama thinking to send Frank Wisner to Egypt to talk President Mubarak into stepping down when Wisner's firm works for the current Egyptian government?
Frank Wisner, President Barack Obama's envoy to Cairo who infuriated the White House this weekend by urging Hosni Mubarak to remain President of Egypt, works for a New York and Washington law firm which works for the dictator's own Egyptian government....the litigation firm Patton Boggs, which openly boasts that it advises "the Egyptian military, the Egyptian Economic Development Agency, and has handled arbitrations and litigation on the [Mubarak] government's behalf in Europe and the US"...
So why on earth was he sent to talk to Mubarak, who is in effect a client of Mr Wisner's current employers?
Patton Boggs states that its attorneys "represent some of the leading Egyptian commercial families and their companies" and "have been involved in oil and gas and telecommunications infrastructure projects on their behalf". One of its partners served as chairman of the US-Egyptian Chamber of Commerce promoting foreign investment in the Egyptian economy. The company has also managed contractor disputes in military-sales agreements arising under the US Foreign Military Sales Act. Washington gives around $1.3bn (£800m) a year to the Egyptian military.
Wisner joined Patton Boggs two years ago, after 36 years with the State Department. Surely both the State Department and the White House must have been aware of the obvious conflict of interest involved in sending him to Egypt as President Obama's envoy in the current crisis.
And why isn't it even being seen as an issue?
The New York Times ran a glowing profile of Mr Wisner in its pages two weeks ago – but mysteriously did not mention his ties to Egypt.
Nicholas Noe, an American political researcher now based in Beirut, has spent weeks investigating Mr Wisner's links to Patton Boggs. Mr Noe is also a former researcher for Hillary Clinton and questions the implications of his discoveries.
"The key problem with Wisner being sent to Cairo at the behest of Hillary," he says, "is the conflict-of-interest aspect... More than this, the idea that the US is now subcontracting or 'privatising' crisis management is another problem. Do the US lack diplomats?
As Noe points out, when presidents send people close to a foreign leader on a mission like this, they don't usually send people who are being paid very handsomely by the very leader they were sent to squeeze out.
So what's going on here? Kabuki? Deliberate undermining of Obama? Simple incompetence?
UPDATE:
HuffPo:
For more on this story, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman interviewed Trinity College Professor Vijay Prashad, who has written about Wisner's history with the U.S. Department of State and his close relationship with Mubarak.