Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, has written an open letter to his colleagues, questioning whether they stand behind the State Department's efforts to deny an American citizen the internationally-recognized right to asylum.
Van Buren, author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, begins his letter by pointedly asking the following question:
To my State Department colleagues: Did you really sign up to help restrict the rights of an American to speak freely and to seek asylum?
The letter is well worth reading, for he follows his question by chronicling
legislative efforts to punish nations that fail to extradite Snowden, the State Departments
efforts to subvert a citizen's asylum requests by pressuring Russia to hand over Snowden, and the Obama administration's
opposition to allowing Snowden speak with human rights groups.
Then, he addresses his colleagues at the State Department directly:
I understand we all were hired to represent the views of the U.S. government overseas, and that part of the deal is of course we may not always agree with those views. I publically supported the USG’s position under multiple presidents, Reagan, through to Obama, for 24 years, though I blew the whistle on State mismanagement of the Iraq reconstruction at the end as an act of conscience, and gave up my career in return.
We also were hired to protect American citizens abroad, even though we may not always agree with their views.
Of course, the central conflict that Van Buren highlights here is the dual role of those working for the State Department and Foreign Service to simultaneously represent U.S. interests while also protecting the rights or American citizens.
Typically, those go hand-in-hand. In the case of Snowden, they are in opposition as an American citizen seeks the internationally-sanctioned right of asylum.
It's this conflict which is at the heart of Van Buren's letter. A conflict at the heart of the Obama administration's war on whisteblowers in general.