WASHINGTON, 4 May — “No sooner had senior Bush administration officials announced in March that they had pulled the plug on the CIA’s high-profile role in the Middle East peace process than the agency was back arranging talks between the Palestinian and Israeli security services,” the Washington Post reports.
“CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin told the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia last week that the White House had recently asked the agency to convene a couple of meetings between Palestinian and Israeli intelligence officials.
“Our role is not to negotiate; it is not to mediate. It is to provide a venue and invite people to come to a meeting hosted by someone who does not have an ax to grind,” McLaughlin said.
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Feeling better at State Department
On his first day as Secretary of State, Colin Powell promised a cheering audience of hundreds of State Department employees that he would change their lives for the better. It was not just an empty boast. In the administration’s first 100 days, Powell has boosted the morale at the State Department from the dismal depths of the Clinton administration, a career diplomat told the Washington Times.
The diplomat, speaking privately, said Powell has surprised lower-ranking diplomats by seeking their expertise.
He sometimes asks them to conduct policy briefings. He visits desk officers who specialize in the different countries of the world.
Powell’s right-hand man, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, is also popular because he is concentrating on improving the management of the department. The diplomat contrasted Powell’s style with former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and former deputy Strobe Talbott.
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Nader loses a debate
The right of private companies to fund presidential debates that exclude third-party candidates got a big boost yesterday when the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the system by Ralph Nader.
Nader, who carried the Green Party banner in 2000, attacked the funding mechanism of debates as part of his assault on a system he considers unfair to candidates other than those from the Democratic or Republican parties.
He said the system tolerates “impermissible corporate influence.” The Justice Department urged the court not to interfere in Federal Election Commission rules that do not require including fringe-party candidates but ban debate sponsors from using membership in a specific party as “the sole objective criterion” for choosing debaters. The court did not comment on its refusal to hear Nader’s appeal.
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Hillary: Maybe the press isn’t so bad after all
Surrounded by a pack of reporters in the Capitol last week, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton didn’t grimace and duck into the nearest “Senators Only” elevator.
No, that would be the old Sen. Clinton, reporter Mary Jacoby writes in the St. Petersburg Times.
The new Hillary stopped, grinned and talked exuberantly about her “fabulous” Easter vacation in Costa Rica walking on the beach and playing cards with her husband, the former president.
It was a breakthrough of sorts for Clinton, whose loathing of the press is legendary and who has avoided, as much as she could, the national spotlight since being sworn in four months ago as New York´s junior senator.
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Gore’s return
Those hankering for Al Gore to return to the political stage probably will have to wait a while longer.
“Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, had dinner with Gore last week and said the former vice president seemed inclined to wait until the fall before speaking out,” New York Times reporter Katharine Q. Seelye writes.
However, “Allies fear that Gore’s silence is leaving a void in party leadership, and they are watching other presidential aspirants like Senators Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and John Kerry of Massachusetts try to fill it,” the reporter said. “The longer Gore stays silent, they say, the stronger those rivals become and the harder it is for Gore to maintain his base.”
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Into the wilderness
“The Democrats and their allies in the press were able to demons Newt Gingrich — vetoing his bill to keep the government open and blaming him for closing it, and drumming on ethics charges ultimately found to be groundless,” Wall Street Journal Editor Robert L. Bartley writes.
“They’re trying with President Bush, but had to give up trying to smear him as a dunce or electorally illegitimate.
Now it’s the environment, over an unratifiable Kyoto treaty, endangered species lawsuits even the Clinton administration wanted to limit, arsenic standards deemed excessive by the communities threatened,” Bartley said.
