IP: now the Bush admin is even "detaining" National Review writers

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Jim Warren <jwarren@well.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 09:03:56 -0700
To: nobody@well.com
Subject: now the Bush admin is even "detaining" National Review writers

Geee ... I thought National Review was vehemently pro-conservative.
Guess not "conservative" enough.  Perhaps the often tongue-tangled
Bush's administration had confused the concept of "conservative" with
"obedient".  Or "subservient."  Or ... perhaps they knew exactly what
they were doing.  Step by step!  --jim

>http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.asp?ref=/nr_comment/nr_comment07
1202.asp
>
>July 12, 2002, 6:00 p.m.
>Free Joel Mowbray!
>A wild afternoon at the State Department.
>By National Review Online Staff
>
>Would that the State Department were as tough on the Saudis.
>NRO contributor Joel Mowbray was detained this afternoon at the State
>Department after an acrimonious exchange with top Foggy Bottom press
>flack Richard Boucher.
>
>Mowbray had challenged Boucher on his account of events at State this
>week, which had to fire its longest-serving career diplomat in response
>to the congressional uproar created by Mowbray's reporting on the "Visa
>Express" program (the program gives the Saudis easy access to U.S. visas
>- see Mowbray's reporting here
><http://www.nationalreview.com/mowbray/mowbray061402.asp> .
>
>Mowbray read from a classified cable that had been leaked to him and
>that contradicted Boucher's spin (both Mowbray
><http://www.nationalreview.com/mowbray/mowbray071002.asp>  and the
>Washington Post quoted from the cable earlier this week). State
>Department officials were not amused. Very not amused.
>
>When Mowbray was leaving the briefing, a State Department official,
>accompanied by four guards, asked him to stay to answer a few questions.
>Mowbray said he could come back later. The official said, no, they
>wanted him to answer a few questions immediately.
>
>When Mowbray began to get the feeling that he couldn't leave even if he
>wanted to, he asked, "Am I being detained?"
>
>When a diplomatic security official - who had showed up on the scene -
>told him "no," Mowbray announced that he was leaving.
>
>At which point, the guard stepped in front of Mowbray and said, "Now,
>you're being detained."
>
>The guards wouldn't let him leave until Mowbray had called a lawyer from
>his cell phone and National Review had called the State Department's
>press office to ask what was happening - about a half-an-hour after the
>run-in began.
>
>When NRO contacted an official in the State Department's press office
>later this afternoon to ask if State had a comment on the incident, she
>said, "He wasn't detained!"
>
>Asked to elaborate, the press official continued, "I wasn't there! I
>don't know what happened!"
>
>But for at least a few minutes, Mowbray had a harder time leaving the
>State Department than many Saudis have had entering the country.
>


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