Two months into Secretary of State John Kerry's tenure, a large number of senior State Department positions remain vacant, and the process to fill them seems indefinitely stalled, officials inside the department tell The Cable.

COMMENTS (0) SHARE:

Twitter

 

Reddit

 

 

More...

When Kerry's predecessor, Hillary Clinton, came into office, she negotiated for herself 100 percent control over State Department appointments and largely kept Obama campaign officials at arms' length. Kerry has no such deal with the White House, and his office is only one voice in a White House-managed appointment process that is moving as slowly as molasses, several State Department officials and insiders say.

As Kerry prepares to travel to East Asia next week, his third major overseas adventure in his short time in Foggy Bottom, the most glaring opening at State is the post of assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs (EAP), which was vacated by Kurt Campbell in February. NSS Senior Director for Asia Danny Russel has been long assumed the leading contender, but Kerry is said to prefer a non-White House staffer. Meanwhile, Deputy Assistant Secretary Joe Yun has been running the EAP shop.

But the EAP is only one of nearly a dozen bureaus that are working without politically appointed leaders and there are several reports of angst that the vacancies are being left unfilled for so long.

"We must report rising anxiety at senior policy levels at what players characterize as virtual indifference by Sec. St. Kerry and his inner-circle to moving on the Asst. Secretary appointments needed to properly run the Department's many bureaus," reports Chris Nelson of the Nelson Report, an insider's newsletter on Asia policy.

All of the regional bureaus are now being run by acting assistant secretaries or assistant secretaries that come from the Foreign Service ranks, Nelson notes.

"In short, neither White House nor Kerry people are now running the store," he writes. "The system isn't designed to work that way. No matter what the White House may think, it and the NSC can't run everything... Unsurprisingly, some folks now speculate this means Obama and his team are determined to control it all."

Our State Department sources report that there is increasing concern that Kerry is spending so much time out of the building (although his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry has been spotted in the Truman Headquarters on several occasions), leaving the day-to-day management to a select group of senior officials.

The handful of people who are running the show at State these days is largely limited to the very few senior staffers Kerry brought in with him: Chief of Staff David Wade, Deputy Chief of Staff Bill Danvers, Policy Planning Director David McKean, and senior communications advisor Glen Johnson, along with the few holdover senior officials who have regular direct access to Kerry: Deputy Secretary Bill Burns, Undersecretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, and Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

Nuland especially is said to have risen in influence since Clinton, and her longtime communications aide Philippe Reines, departed. A power struggle inside the State Department's public affairs office between Nuland and Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Mike Hammer, along with his deputy Dana Smith, has largely been won by Nuland, several State Department sources said. 

Although Hammer is technically the head of the bureau, Nuland runs the daily meetings, often travels with Kerry, takes the lead on forming the messages and talking points, and has emerged victorious in several internal battles, including a dispute over who would be on the plane with Kerry during his first trip as secretary. Smith wanted her own people to travel but Nuland insisted on choosing the traveling personnel and got her way.

Nuland, who was recently elevated to the status of career ambassador, the highest rank in the Foreign Service, is expected to be nominated to replace Philip Gordon as assistant secretary of state for Europe. Hammer is expected to be given an ambassadorship soon. Smith is known to want Hammer's job, but the model of having an assistant secretary who is not also the spokesperson is under review, and incoming spokesperson Jen Psaki could be tapped for both jobs. 

Psaki was a White House and Obama campaign staffer, but also has longstanding ties to Kerry. Stephen Krupin, the head speechwriter for Obama for America, has begun work as Kerry's chief speechwriter, and the rumor is that the White House is seeking to place more Obama campaign hands at State -- potentially bad news for the Kerry staffers left waiting over at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Meanwhile, a host of State Department offices and bureaus are functioning with temporary leadership. 

In the Africa bureau, Assistant Secretary Johnnie Carson's last day was March 29. He had been hoping to retire in January but was asked to stay longer by Kerry's staff. That bureau is now being run by Acting Assistant Secretary Don Yamamoto, a Foreign Service officer who has been an ambassador three times. NSS Senior Director Gayle Smith is rumored to be in the running for Carson's job.

The related special envoy for Sudan job is also vacant since Princeton Lyman stepped down last December.There are some names being bandied about, such as former Ambassadors Tim Carney and Cameron Hume, although Sudan advocacy groups are warning the White House against choosing Carney, whom they see as too cozy with Khartoum. 

There's also no special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, following the return of Amb. Marc Grossman to the private sector last December. Acting SRAP David Pearce is running the office but there's no word on whether Kerry intends to replace Grossman or when.

The position of assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs has been filled in an acting capacity by Foreign Service officer Beth Jones ever since Jeff Feltman departed for the U.N. last year. The rumor had been that Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson was in line for that job, but lately State Department sources report that there are no firm indications of who might get it.

Rose Gottemoeller is serving as acting undersecretary for arms control and international security while also technically still serving as the assistant secretary for arms control, verification, and compliance. She will have to be nominated again for the undersecretary slot soon, but there's no schedule for what could be a very contentious confirmation process in the Senate.

Michael Posner has left his job as assistant secretary of state for democracy, leaving long time Foreign Service officer Uzra Zeya as acting head of that bureau. There's no word about his replacement, although we hear rumors that Human Rights Watch's Washington director, Tom Malinowski, may be in contention.

The Diplomatic Security Bureau has been leaderless since its top three officials were placed on paid administrative leave following the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Greg Starr is the nominal official in charge.

Melanne Verveer, the ambassador at large for global women's issues, left the department Feb. 8. Sharon Weiner, a career Foreign Service officer, is acting ambassador, but the White House has announced its intention to nominate Cathy Russell to replace Verveer.

There's no word on who will replace Deputy Secretary for Management Tom Nides, who left the department in February to return to Wall Street. There's also no assistant secretary for legislative affairs, which could be a disadvantage for State in the upcoming budget fights.

The State Department also does not have an inspector general to oversee its operations, but that is not the fault of Kerry's team. The last time the State Department had a full-time inspector general was Feb. 6, 2008.

A secret State Department cable has concluded that the Syrian military likely used chemical weapons against its own people in a deadly attack last month, The Cable has learned.

COMMENTS (0) SHARE:

Twitter

 

Reddit

 

 

More...

United States diplomats in Turkey conducted a previously undisclosed, intensive investigation into claims that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons, and made what an Obama administration official who reviewed the cable called a "compelling case" that Assad's military forces had used a deadly form of poison gas.

The cable, signed by the U.S. consul general in Istanbul, Scott Frederic Kilner, and sent to State Department headquarters in Washington last week, outlined the results of the consulate's investigation into reports from inside Syria that chemical weapons had been used in the city of Homs on Dec. 23.

The consul general's report followed a series of interviews with activists, doctors, and defectors, in what the administration official said was one of the most comprehensive efforts the U.S. government has made to investigate claims by internal Syrian sources. The investigation included a meeting between the consulate staff and Mustafa al-Sheikh, a high-level defector who once was a major general in Assad's army and key official in the Syrian military's WMD program.

An Obama administration official who reviewed the document, which was classified at the "secret" level, detailed its contents to The Cable. "We can't definitely say 100 percent, but Syrian contacts made a compelling case that Agent 15 was used in Homs on Dec. 23," the official said.

The use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime would cross the "red line" President Barack Obama first established in an Aug. 20 statement. "We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation," Obama said.

To date, the administration has not initiated any major policy changes in response to the classified cable, but a Deputies Committee meeting of top administration officials is scheduled for this week.

The report confirms the worst fears of officials who are frustrated by the current policy, which is to avoid any direct military assistance to the Syrian rebels and limit U.S. aid to sporadic deliveries of humanitarian and communications equipment.

Many believe that Assad is testing U.S. red lines.

"This reflects the concerns of many in the U.S. government that the regime is pursuing a policy of escalation to see what they can get away with as the regime is getting more desperate," the administration official said.

The consulate's investigation was facilitated by BASMA, an NGO the State Department has hired as one of its implementing partners inside Syria. BASMA connected consular officials with witnesses to the incident and other first-hand information.

The official warned that if the U.S. government does not react strongly to the use of chemical weapons in Homs, Assad may be emboldened to escalate his use of such weapons of mass destruction.

"It's incidents like this that lead to a mass-casualty event," the official said.

Activist and doctors on the ground in Homs have been circulating evidence of the Dec. 23 incident over the past three weeks in an attempt to convince the international community of its veracity. An Arabic-language report circulated by the rebels' Homs medical committee detailed the symptoms of several of the victims who were brought to a makeshift field hospital inside the city and claims that the victims suffered severe effects of inhaling poisonous gas.

Activists have also been circulating videos of the victims on YouTube and Facebook. In one of the videos, victims can be seen struggling for breath and choking on their own vomit. (More videos, which are graphic, can be found here, here, here, here, here and here.)

Experts say the symptoms match the effects of Agent 15, known also by its NATO code BZ, which is a CX-level incapacitating agent that is controlled under schedule 2 of the Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Syria is not a party.

"The symptoms of an incapacitating agent are temporary. If someone is exposed to BZ, they are likely to be confused, perhaps to hallucinate," said Amy Smithson, a senior fellow with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. "While it is not good news that a chemical agent of any kind may have been used in the Syrian conflict, this Agent 15 is certainly on the less harmful end of the spectrum of chemical warfare agents believed to be in the Syrian arsenal."

The Cable spoke with two doctors who were on the scene in Homs on Dec. 23 and treated the victims. Both doctors said that the chemical weapon used in the attack may not have been Agent 15, but they are sure it was a chemical weapon, not a form of tear gas. The doctors attributed five deaths and approximately 100 instances of severe respiratory, nervous system, and gastrointestinal ailments to the poison gas.

"It was a chemical weapon, we are sure of that, because tear gas can't cause the death of five people," said Dr. Nashwan Abu Abdo, a neurologist who spoke with The Cable from an undisclosed location inside of Homs.

Abdo said the chemical agent was delivered by a tank shell and that the range of symptoms varied based on the victim's proximity to the poison. The lightly affected people exhibited gastrointestinal symptoms, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain, he said. Victims who received a higher concentration of the poison, in addition to the gastrointestinal symptoms, showed respiratory symptoms as well.

"The main symptom of the respiratory ailments was bronchial secretions. This particular symptom was the cause of the death of all of the people," he said. "All of them died choking on their own secretions."

The doctors said their conclusion that the poison was a chemical agent and not tear gas was based on three factors: the suddenness of the deaths of those who were directly exposed, the large number of people affected, and the fact that many victims returned with recurring symptoms more than 12 hours after they had been treated, meaning that the poison had settled either in their nervous systems or fat tissue.

"They all had miosis -- pinpoint pupils. They also had generalized muscle pain. There were also bad symptoms as far as their central nervous system. There were generalized seizures and some patients had partial seizures. This actually is proof that the poison was able to pass the blood-brain barrier," Abdo said. "In addition, there was acute mental confusion presented by hallucinations, delusions, personality changes, and behavioral changes."

The doctors on the scene said they were not able to pinpoint the poison because they lacked the advanced laboratory equipment needed. They took blood, hair, saliva, and urine samples, but those samples are no longer viable for testing because too much time has passed, they said.

"We took many samples, we kept them, but we cannot get them anywhere because we are in the besieged Homs area," he said. "We are not 100 percent sure what poison was used, but we can say with firm statement that it was not tear gas, that's for sure."

The State Department, in response to inquiries from The Cable, declined to comment on the secret cable from Istanbul or say whether or not chemical weapons were used in the Homs attack, but said that the administration believes Assad's chemical weapons are secure.

"I'm not going to comment on the alleged content of a classified cable," State Department Spokesman Patrick Ventrell told The Cable. "As you know, the United States closely monitors Syria's proliferation-sensitive materials and facilities, and we believe Syria's chemical weapons stockpile remains secured by the Syrian government. We have been clear that if Assad's regime makes the tragic mistake of using chemical weapons or failing to secure them, it will be held accountable."

Shifting red lines

The White House's threats to react to Assad's WMD activity have softened over time. In Obama's Aug. 20 statement, he indicated that "a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around" would trigger U.S. action.

Obama then shifted his warning to Assad about red lines in December, after intelligence reports stated that the Syrian regime had moved some precursor chemicals out of storage and mixed them, making them easier to deploy. Now, Obama's red line is that the United States will react if Syria uses these weapons.

"The use of chemical weapons is and would be totally unacceptable," Obama said Dec. 3, directing his comments at Assad. "If you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons, there will be consequences and you will be held accountable." That same day, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton added: "we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur."

Outside analysts worry that the administration's red line may have shifted again.

"Given the fact you have that in a cable, this indicates that the Obama administration may not simply jump into the conflict because chemical agents are used," said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "Assad has a much better idea now of what he can do and get away with."

"This shows that actually the red line on chemical weapons is not clear and that the regime may be able to use some chemical agents, and the response might not be immediate," he said.

On Jan. 11, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey said that the U.S. government and the international community doesn't have the capability to prevent Assad from using chemical weapons if he chooses to do so.

"The act of preventing the use of chemical weapons would be almost unachievable... because you would have to have such clarity of intelligence, you know, persistent surveillance, you'd have to actually see it before it happened, and that's -- that's unlikely, to be sure," Dempsey said. "I think that Syria must understand by now that the use of chemical weapons is unacceptable. And to that extent, it provides a deterrent value. But preventing it, if they decide to use it, I think we would be reacting."

Abdo, the Syrian neurologist, said that the doctors treating civilians inside Homs have run out of even the basic medicines they have been using to bring a level of comfort to the victims, such as the drug atropine.

"We hope this information will reach the people in the American government so maybe they will help us," he said. "If the regime does this one more time, we don't have the antidote in our hands anymore and we can't treat it. It's very urgent."

Former Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel is being vetted for a possible top national security post in the Obama administration, multiple sources told The Cable.

COMMENTS (0) SHARE:

Twitter

 

Reddit

 

 

More...

Hagel, who co-chairs President Barack Obama's Intelligence Advisory Board, which provides independent advice on the effectiveness of the intelligence community, could be in contention for either secretary of state or secretary of defense, people familiar with the vetting process say.

Hagel, a moderate realist on foreign policy, would be a comfortable ideological fit for the president. He has publicly supported many of the administration's foreign-policy moves from his perch at Georgetown University, while often excoriating the GOP for what he sees as a takeover by "the extreme right."

Hagel was a harsh critic of George W. Bush's foreign policy, especially his decision to invade and occupy Iraq, which he once called "an absolute replay of Vietnam."

In the years since, he's remained a strong critic of Republicans in Congress.

"Now the Republican Party is in the hands of the right, I would say the extreme right, more than ever before. You've got a Republican Party that is having difficulty facing up to the fact that if you look at what happened during the first 8 years of the century, it was under Republican direction," Hagel told The Cable in a May interview. "The Republican Party is dealing with this schizophrenia. It was the Republican leadership that got us into this mess. If Nixon or Eisenhower were alive today, they would be run out of the party."

"Reagan would be stunned by the party today," Hagel said.

In 2008, the incoming Obama transition team offered Hagel several high-level jobs, all of which he turned down, including secretary of homeland security, director of national intelligence, and ambassador to China.

If appointed, he would likely be the lone Republican in the Obama administration's second-term cabinet: The president's first defense secretary, Bob Gates, is long gone, ex-CIA director David Petraeus is out after a sex scandal, and former congressman Ray Lahood, the current secretary of transportation, is expected to depart next year.

Both Hagel's office and the White House declined to comment on Hagel's potential nomination.

But former Senate staffer Steve Clemons, now editor-at-large at the Atlantic, said that Obama would be smart to pick Hagel.

"Hagel hides his keen understanding of complex strategic realities beneath an every-guy, aw-shucks veneer. He is one of the shrewdest, most well-informed, experienced national security hands who has served as a major force in GOP land in the legislative branch," Clemons said.  "Hagel has been feeding tough-love messages to Obama for some time on the Middle East, on Russia, on China, on the design and missions of the armed forces and the intelligence ecosystem surrounding them."

Hagel and Obama have been close since Obama was a candidate for president. His wife Lilibet endorsed Obama in 2008 and Hagel traveled with candidate Obama to Iraq that summer, along with Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI). If selected, Hagel would bring his independent streak into an administration that looks increasingly packed with Obama loyalists, as compared to the "team of rivals" Obama surrounded himself with in 2009, which included outsiders like Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his primary campaign adversary.

"He is not a yes man," Clemons said. "[Obama and Hagel] have maintained a disciplined, honest relationship about real issues. Picking Hagel means Obama is not going to sit on his laurels for round two of his presidency."

The fact that Hagel is being vetted does not ensure that he will be nominated for any job, but it adds his name to a short list of those being considered for top-level national security positions.

Sen. John Kerry's name has also been floated for defense secretary. Inside the Pentagon, most believe the job will go to Deputy Secretary Ash Carter or former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy.

Kerry is also said to be in contention for the secretary of state job, but the consensus among administration watchers is that the White House's vigorous defense of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice in the face of harsh criticisms from several GOP senators indicates that the president intends to pick Rice to replace Clinton in Foggy Bottom.

Rice has been on Capitol Hill this week meeting with Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Bob Corker (R-TN), and Susan Collins (R-ME), almost all of whom declared they were more inclined to oppose Rice's potential nomination after meeting with her. Many in Congress are expecting a secretary of state nomination to come as early as this week.

Collins said Wednesday that Rice's answers to questions regarding the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi had an "eerie echo" of the twin attacks on two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, when Rice was assistant secretary of state for African affairs.

"Those bombings in 1998 resulted in the loss of life of 12 Americans as well as many other foreign nationals, and 4,000 people were injured," Collins told reporters today. "And what troubles me so much is that the Benghazi attacks echoes the attacks on those embassies in 1998 when Susan Rice was head of the African region for our State Department. ... She had to be aware of the general threat assessment and of the ambassadors' request for more security."

If the White House decides not to nominate Rice, some observers speculate, Rice could be appointed national security advisor, a position that requires no Senate confirmation. If that were to occur, current National Security Advisor Tom Donilon could be promoted to be White House chief of staff to replace Jack Lew, who is rumored to be in contention to become Treasury secretary.

Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough, who could also replace Donilon, could be moved over the Foggy Bottom as the new deputy secretary of state should Rice move to the White House. That maneuver would allow McDonough to receive a promotion while keeping a close Obama confidant roaming the halls of Foggy Bottom.

Current Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns is rumored to be in contention to replace Rice as U.N. ambassador. Other names that have been floated for that post include Vice President Joe Biden's national security advisor Tony Blinken, White House advisor Samantha Power, and former Congressman Howard Berman.

Former World Bank President Bob Zoellick has begun work as the head of national security transition planning for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, causing an uproar inside the campaign's foreign-policy advisory team and spawning concern in parts of the greater Republican foreign-policy establishment.

Zoellick, who already moved to Boston to take up a position at Harvard University, is the new head of the team planning national-security appointments in a potential Romney administration, four advisors to the campaign told The Cable. The campaign officially declined to comment on what is known internally as the "Readiness Project," led by Mike Leavitt, former Health and Human Services Secretary under George W. Bush. But several advisors said that top campaign officials are working hard behind the scenes to assuage Republican concerns both inside and outside the campaign about what Zoellick's new and important role would mean for them, for Romney's foreign-policy identity, and for the potential next administration.

The chief complaint among critics is that Zoellick, who served as deputy secretary of state under Bush before being appointed to head the World Bank, is a foreign-policy realist who has seemed too friendly toward China and, as a disciple of former Secretary of State James Baker, not friendly enough toward Israel. Romney's vows to be tougher on China and closer to the Israeli government are key pillars of his foreign-policy platform.

"Bob Zoellick couldn't be more conservative in the branch of the GOP he represents," said Danielle Pletka, vice president at the American Enterprise Institute. "He's pro-China to the point of mania, he's an establishment guy, he's a trade-first guy. He's basically a George H.W. Bush, old-school Republican."

Zoellick declined to comment for this story, but some say he has a reputation for butting heads with others in the GOP national security community, including his former boss Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, two officials often mooted as potential cabinet picks in a Romney administration.

"There aren't too many people who can bring together Condi Rice and John Bolton, but they were united in their dislike of Bob Zoellick," one Romney foreign-policy advisor said. Both Rice and Bolton did not respond to requests for comment.

Zoellick's selection to the new job, which will ramp up after Labor Day when the Romney transition team opens up an office in Washington, caused severe blowback within the campaign's policy team. That team is filled with experts and former officials who disagree with one other and are unhappy with the process run by policy director Lanhee Chen and foreign-policy coordinator Alex Wong. But the Zoellick choice had several advisors up in arms to the point where the political leadership of the campaign went into damage-control mode.

"Mitt Romney's made clear that he has conservative views on foreign policy and defense and those aren't the views of Pragmatic Bob," one campaign foreign-policy advisor who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the issue told The Cable. "I've been reassured that this is walled off from policy, but he's an aggressive guy and he has his sights on being secretary of state, so there is obviously suspicion among people who were close to Romney before he was the presumptive nominee."

The idea that Zoellick will be not be involved in setting campaign policy before the election is central to the campaign's internal argument for keeping him in his new post. Several sources close to the campaign told The Cable that Chen and other top campaign officials have been calling Republican experts and former officials to assure them that Zoellick's role will be firewalled off from the campaign's other activities and will only focus on what happens after Romney's inauguration.

"Zoellick has no influence in the campaign and his appointment really means nothing for anything that happens over the next two and a half months in terms of the campaign," Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol told The Cable. "Bob Zoellick is an extremely able guy who is willing to do this and that's great. The enemies of Zoellick are scared it means something big, but I think it's being way overblown."

Inside the campaign, foreign-policy hands aren't so sure. They say that Zoellick is an extremely ambitious Washington insider who badly wants to run the show in Foggy Bottom. Zoellick reached out to several campaigns during the primaries, even when he was still head of the World Bank, only cozying up to Romney senior staffers once it became apparent the former Massachusetts governor would get the nomination.

"Senior advisers to the campaign are at pains to argue that his role will be ministerial," wrote the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin in a blog post Wednesday. "For foreign policy hawks, Zoellick is an anathema."

Several advisors told The Cable that Brian Hook, former foreign-policy advisor to Tim Pawlenty, will be Zoellick's deputy on the Romney national-security transition team.

Zoellick's critics are still struggling to process what his reemergence as a key player means. But many say that the Romney campaign's apparent lack of awareness and preparedness for the blowback shows that top advisors are still giving short shrift to national security issues.

"It's quite possible they did this without any thought to what that meant," one outside advisor to the campaign told The Cable. "I'm not sure if they had any clue what the reaction would be from everybody."

Republican candidate Mitt Romney's policy on the future of U.S.-led war in Afghanistan war is unclear and confusing, complicating attempts to either support or criticize it during the campaign, according to leading senators from both parties.

On Romney's website, the campaign criticizes President Barack Obama for announcing a "timetable" for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and accuses the administration of placing politics over the advice of military commanders by withdrawing 30,000 surge troops by September.

"Gov. Romney supports the 2014 timetable as a realistic timetable and a residual force post-2014. But he would not have announced that timetable publicly, as President Obama did, as doing so encourages the Taliban to wait us out and our allies to hedge their bets," a Romney campaign spokesperson told The Cable.

But when it comes to what a President Romney would do differently from Obama on Afghanistan if and when he became president, the details remain sketchy.

"Mitt Romney will never make national-security decisions based upon electoral politics," the campaign website reads. "Upon taking office, he will review our transition to the Afghan military by holding discussions with our commanders in the field. He will order a full interagency assessment of our military and assistance presence in Afghanistan to determine the level required to secure our gains and to train Afghan forces to the point where they can protect the sovereignty of Afghanistan from the tyranny of the Taliban. Withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan under a Romney administration will be based on conditions on the ground as assessed by our military commanders."

Last week, The Cable asked several senior senators from both parties whether they supported Romney's plan for Afghanistan. None was able to articulate exactly what that policy is or what the U.S. force in Afghanistan might look like if Romney is elected.

"What is it?" said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a Romney supporter and senior member of the Armed Services Committee. "I think [Romney's policy is] ‘listen to the commanders' and if it's that, that's OK with me."

Graham agreed with Romney's criticism of Obama's plan to withdraw the 30,000 surge troops by September, which means the bulk of them will not be around for this summer's fighting season. But overall, Graham supports the Obama plan to adhere to a 2014 deadline for handing over control to the Afghans while keeping a significant U.S. troop presence there afterwards.

"Generally speaking, the only problem I have with President Obama is the acceleration of the withdrawal of the surge forces," Graham said.

Graham wants Romney to publicly endorse a continued U.S. force presence in Afghanistan after the full handover of power in 2014. Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in May signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement that would extend the presence of U.S. troops another 10 years, an agreement Graham helped to negotiate.

"I hope Romney will tell the American people that we are going to have a follow-on force in Afghanistan." Graham said. "It's in our interest to do it."

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) said he wasn't sure exactly what Romney's Afghanistan policy entailed and didn't want to get into it.

"You would have to tell me what exactly you mean by ‘his policy.' That's a long discussion that I don't want to get into," Kyl told The Cable.

Part of the challenge for the Romney team is that Republican voters are split on Afghanistan, with 48 percent supporting withdrawing all troops as soon as possible  and nearly as many, 45 percent, supporting leaving a follow-on force there until the country is stabilized. The electorate as a whole favors bringing the troops home quickly (60 percent) over keeping troops there longer (32 percent).

"These numbers point to Romney's political bind," wrote James Lindsey, vice president of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, in an online commentary. "He has talked tough on Afghanistan ever since last June, when Republican national security conservatives blasted him for what they saw as his insufficient commitment to the mission there. Romney responded with much tougher rhetoric even though the policies he favors look a lot like Obama's."

For the Obama team and for Senate Democrats, Romney's apparent unwillingness to get more specific on Afghanistan represents a good opportunity to call into question his foreign-policy bona fides and present Obama as tougher on national security because he has committed to another decade of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

"Without getting into the campaign rhetoric of what [Romney]'s asserting, I think you've got 50 nations in NATO that agree to a plan in Afghanistan," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on ABC's This Week in May. "It's the Lisbon agreement, an agreement that, you know, others, President Bush, President Obama, everyone has agreed is the direction that we go in Afghanistan."

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) told The Cable that the issue is just one more example of the Romney campaign avoiding tackling tough issues.

"I sure don't know what [Romney's Afghanistan policy] is," Levin said. "From what I've read, I can't fathom his position on Afghanistan any more than I can fathom his position on a whole bunch of other things."

"I don't know that he's flip-flopped on Afghanistan. I don't know that he's ever taken a clear position. It's not like some of the other positions he's so consistently flip-flopped on," Levin said. "Here, I don't know what the flip is or the flop."

For years, a slew of advocates - many of whom have been paid for their services -- have flooded U.S. airwaves on behalf of the Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK), a State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization opposed to the Iranian regime.

After months of difficult negotiations, the MEK has finally begun moving out of its secretive Iraqi home near the Iranian border, called Camp Ashraf. But the group's American advocates have now become a major obstacle in the international effort to move the MEK to a new home in Iraq and avoid a bloody clash with the Iraqi military, officials say.

U.N. special representative in Iraq Martin Kobler, with help from the U.S. Embassy in Iraq and the State Department, has organized efforts to relocate the MEK to Camp Liberty, a former U.S. military base near the Baghdad airport. The first convoy of about 400 MEK members arrived there last month. The second convoy of about 400 MEK members arrived Thursday at Camp Liberty, Reuters reported.

The United Nations and the U.S. government have worked tirelessly in recent months to avoid a violent clash between the MEK and the Shiite-led Iraqi government, which is determined to oust the MEK from Camp Ashraf, where more than 3,000 members of the group, many of them suspected to be armed, have lived for years. Two previous attempts by the Iraqi government to enter the camp resulted in bloody confrontations.

But the U.N. and the State Department's efforts have been made exponentially more difficult due to the MEK's surprisingly strong base of support in Washington. In recent weeks, retired U.S. officials and politicians -- many of whom admit to being paid by the MEK or one of its many affiliates -- have mounted a sophisticated media campaign accusing the U.N. and the U.S. government of forcing the group to live in subhuman conditions against its will at Camp Liberty, an accusation U.S. officials say is as inaccurate as it is unhelpful.

"This is tough enough without paid advocates making it worse," one official told The Cable.

"Camp Liberty: A Prison For Iranian Dissidents in Iraq," reads a March 3 full-page ad in the New York Times, leveling the surprising accusation that the former U.S. military base is unfit for human occupation. The ad quotes former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani calling Camp Liberty "a concentration camp" -- a charge Giuliani made at an MEK-sponsored conference late last month in Paris. The ad also quotes former Democratic National Committee chairman and Vermont Governor Howard Dean, former Homeland Security secretary and Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz trashing Camp Liberty.

However, according to an Obama administration official who works on the issue, it's actually the MEK that is trashing Camp Liberty -- literally. According to this official, the U.N. has reported that MEK members at Camp Liberty have been sabotaging the camp, littering garbage and manipulating the utilities to make things look worse than they really are. While there are some legitimate problems at the camp, the official admitted, the U.N. has been monitoring Camp Liberty's water, sewage, and food systems on a daily basis and the conditions are better than the MEK is portraying.

The New York Times ad is only the latest in a years-long, multi-million dollar campaign by the MEK and its supporters to enlist famous U.S. politicians and policymakers in their efforts to get the group removed from the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations and resist Iraqi attempts to close Camp Ashraf, which the new government sees as a militarized cult compound on its sovereign territory.

The campaign has included huge rallies outside the State Department, massive sit-ins at congressional hearings, and an ongoing vigil outside the State Department's C Street entrance.  MEK supporters there tout the support of a long list of officials, including Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former Sen. Robert Torricelli, former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, former National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers, former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, former Rep. Lee Hamilton, former CIA Director Porter Goss, senior advisor to the Romney campaign Mitchell Reiss, retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, and former Sen. Evan Bayh.

The administration official told The Cable that, as delicate negotiations between the U.N., the United States, the Iraqis, and the MEK continue, the role of these often paid advocates is becoming even more unhelpful and potentially dangerous.

"The Americans who ought to know better and claim to be on the side of good solutions are really damaging it. Either they are too lazy or too arrogant to actually do their homework. They don't spend the time to learn facts, they just pop off. They accept the MEK line without question and then they posture," the official said. "We have a plan that has a chance to work and the Iraqis want it to work. The MEK ... it's not clear. And in this situation they are being badly advised by the people whose names appear in these ads."

 "Whether the MEK wants a resolution or wants a confrontation is something we're still debating. It's that bad," the official said.

The relationship between the American advocates and the MEK leadership, led by the Paris-based Maryam Rajavi, has led both to pursue strategies that neglect the dire risks of sabotaging the move from Camp Liberty to Camp Ashraf, the official said. Rajavi is said to have created a cult of personality around herself and to rule the MEK as a unchallenged monarch.

"The not-too-stable Queen [Rajavi] hired a bunch of court flatterers to tell her that she's great, which is fine, except that she has now forgotten that these are hired court flatterers. She thinks they are actual advisors," the official said. "Meanwhile her wise counselors are being marginalized by those who are saying ‘Oh Queen, your magnificence will cause your enemies to fall on their knees.' And she's beginning to believe them."

"By enabling Rajavi to indulge her worst instincts and encouraging her to think she has more power and leverage she does, they may precipitate a crisis, which is exactly what we are trying to avoid," the official said.

Another example of the American advisors' unhelpfulness was the MEK's recent public call to be relocated en masse to Jordan, an idea the U.S. official said came from the group's American friends. There was just one problem: Nobody had asked the Jordanians.

"To announce it publicly as a demand without checking with the Jordanians is the sort of thing you do to destroy it," the official said. "Why the hell should the Jordanians buy trouble like this by giving these people an autonomous militarized camp?"

U.N. and U.S. officials had been hoping to keep discussions open with Jordan about the possibility of hosting some MEK members in the event of an emergency, such as a renewed outbreak of violence. But U.S. officials now think that the MEK's actions have made that much more difficult.

"Whoever advised them has done actual demonstrable damage to a possible humanitarian solution. They're not helping. It's remarkable," the official said.

The arrival at Camp Liberty Thursday of the second convoy may signal that the MEK is coming around to the realization that the Iraqi government will never allow it to stay at Camp Ashraf. But the U.S. official warned that the group may have more tricks up its sleeve.

"The MEK will delay, confuse, deny, and spin until faced with an imminent disaster, and then they give only enough to avoid that disaster," the official said. "And the problem is: If you play chicken enough, eventually you will get into a head-on collision."

The Russian government is following the path of the deposed regimes of Hosni Mubarak and Muammar al-Qaddafi and is setting itself up for a fall from power, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said in an exclusive interview with The Cable.

"You need to listen to what Russian leaders themselves are saying. They say ‘We are not Libya, we are not Egypt, Russia will not go down this road,'" Saakashvili said. "I've heard that from other leaders before. I heard it from Soviet leaders. And once you start saying those things it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and then you start to do certain things and to not allow certain things, and those are exactly the kind of actions that promote further sliding down this road [toward losing power]."

Not only is Russia denying the desires of its own people by suppressing protests and real democracy, it is now leading the opposition to the wave of popular revolutions that the world witnessed over the past year, said the Georgian president, who fought a five-day war with Russia in 2008. The latest and greatest example, he said, is Russia's support for the brutal Syrian regime led by President Bashar al-Assad.

"Syria stands as a symbol," Saakashvili said. "[The Russians] fully identify themselves with Libya but they thought that in Libya they were a fooled into action.  And now with Syria they think that if Syria falls, it's the last bastion before Moscow. And this is exactly the kind of attitude that will bring problems closer home to Moscow. It's not going to help Syria in any way, but it's certainly damaging Russia a lot."

The anticipated return of Vladimir Putin to the presidency later this year is significant because his term will be marked by opposition to real reform both inside and outside Russia, Saakashvili said.

"Unlike Westerners who think in terms of superficial symbols that he's returning, the middle class in Moscow knew that he never went away," said Saakashvili. "It's not about returning Putin to the presidency, it's about what he said. And what he said was ‘I'm returning because I should stop any attempt to reform and crack down on any mode of reform,' and that's what the middle class in Russia heard."

U.S. engagement with Moscow is useful and efforts to continue the "reset" policy should continue, but all the signals from Russia indicate that it is returning to a pre-reset policy, the Georgian president added. He made the case that Russia showed real flexibility during its drive to get into the World Trade Organization in 2011, but now that it has achieved that goal, its attitude has reverted to one of confrontation.

One example is Russia's constantly stoking the rumor that the United States is planning to deploy missile defense elements to Georgia, something Saakashvili said simply isn't true.

"Vladimir Putin is talking about this all the time. Either he is strongly misguided or he's looking for reasons to say nasty things," he said.

Just minutes before his interview with The Cable, speaking in front of a packed audience in the sparkling new auditorium of the United States Institute of Peace headquarters in Washington, Saakashvili contrasted the reactions of Russia and Turkey to the Arab Spring.

"Two radical different attitudes have emerged, offered by two specific regional powers. On one hand, the Russian Federation reacted with outrage and panic to the Arab Spring and tries to do anything they can to prevent any international support to the democracy movements anywhere. On the other hand, Turkey asserts itself as the model for the post revolutionary countries," he said.

"On the one hand, the government of Vladimir Putin desperately tries to hold back the progress of history. On the other hand, the government of Prime Minister [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan tries to embrace the revolutions of the world. Two very different prime ministers," he said.  "It's not a coincidence that Russian influence is decreasing while Turkish leadership is growing in the region every day."

Saakashvili also talked about Georgia's struggles following its separation from the Soviet empire, and the lessons he might offer to new governments undergoing similar difficulties.

"Georgia's experience does not provide a transferable model for many countries that have known or will sooner or later know progressive uprising. There was no freedom textbook for us, and no textbook for our friends was ever written. The real revolution occurs after the cameras from CNN, BBC, and the others have left the country. It consists of the long and difficult process of reform that follows," he said.

"This is a lesson and a message of hope. There is no future for global powers playing against the will of their own people."

The Cable also asked Saakashvili for his opinion of actor Andy Garcia's portrayal of him in the movie Five Days of War, the 2011 film about the Russian-Georgian conflict.

"I only saw parts of it, but what I know is that my English was a little better than his and that was very reassuring," he said.

Obama confidant Mark Lippert has been nominated to become the Pentagon's top Asia official, but before he can be confirmed, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) wants answers on Lippert's internal feud with Gen. Jim Jones when they both worked at the National Security Council (NSC).

"In several passages of his book Obama's Wars, published in 2010, Bob Woodward discusses your official relationship with [National Security Advisor] General James L. Jones and offers a disturbing portrayal of your actions that could be described as arrogant and disloyal," McCain wrote to Lippert today, in a letter obtained by The Cable.

McCain didn't say outright that he wants to hold up the Lippert nomination, but he strongly implied that his support depends on Lippert's explanations of what went on during his tenure at the White House.

"Your actions while working at the NSC are an important indicator of your fundamental qualification to carry out the duties of the critically important position for which you have been nominated," McCain wrote.

He then listed 21 specific questions for Lippert to answer in written form, dealing with almost every juicy anecdote related to White House infighting found in Woodward's book. McCain wants to know exactly how Lippert interacted with Jones, as well as with political advisors at the White House. He also wants to know if Jones had power over Lippert -- or if it was the other way around.

More specifically, McCain wants Lippert to spell out whether any of the charges of insubordination found in Woodward's book are true, whether Lippert ever leaked to the press about Jones, and whether he tried to cut off Jones' access to President Barack Obama, as Woodward reported. McCain also wants Lippert to detail any and all conversations he may have had with Jones regarding their contentious time working together.

In one part of the letter, McCain asks Lippert to comment on Woodward's contention that Jones viewed him and Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough as "major obstacles to developing and deciding on coherent national security policy."

McCain also wants Lippert to answer charges found in Woodward's book that he cut NSC Senior Coordinator for Iraq and Afghanistan Gen. Douglas Lute out of important discussions as well.

Behind the McCain inquiry might lie a bit of political revenge, however. Lippert was one of Obama's earliest and closest advisors on foreign policy, having been with Obama since his days as a senator. He was a key figure in Obama's presidential campaign, leading the foreign policy advisory team, and then served as chief of staff of the NSC, a position that had not existed in George W. Bush's administration but which Obama resurrected in 2009.

According to Woodward's book, Lippert was pushed out of the White House after an internal struggle with Jones, who blamed Lippert for a series of negative leaks to the press about Jones' mismanagement of the NSC.

"In July [2009], Jones laid out his case to Obama and others. All seemed to agree that it was rank insubordination. Obama promised to move on Lippert," Woodward wrote. "On October 1, the day of the McChrystal speech in London, the White House press secretary issued a three-paragraph statement that Lippert was returning to active duty in the Navy. The statement made it sound as though this had been Lippert's choice. ‘I was not surprised,' Obama said in the statement, ‘when he came and told me he had stepped forward for another mobilization, as Mark is passionate about the Navy.'"

Jones was later pushed out himself, after being blamed by top White House officials for a series of his own leaks to the press about the White House's top advisors, whom he called "the water bugs, the "Politburo," "the mafia," and the "campaign set."

The Lippert nomination was an open secret in Washington as early as April, but was delayed for months. The rumor was that Defense Secretary Robert Gates did not want Lippert, a close confidant of the White House clique, burrowed inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

At Lippert's Nov. 17 nomination hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain also brought up Lippert's initial opposition to the surge in Iraq, an issue that was front and center during the feisty 2008 presidential campaign between Obama and McCain.

"Mr. Lippert appears to be qualified and I praise his service in uniform. I have serious concerns regarding his nomination. At a meeting in my office I asked Mr. Lippert his views on the success of the surge in Iraq and I find his answers to be less than satisfactory," McCain said on Nov. 17.

Lippert testified at his hearing that he never leaked to the press about Jones and that his departure from the White House was due to his own personal desire to return to active duty military service.

"In terms of the press accounts, I did not leak to the press about General Jones. My departure from the White House was voluntary. I actually turned down a promotion at the White House to return to active duty," Lippert said at the hearing. "General Jones and I worked collaboratively on many issues and I'm proud of what we accomplished, but there was also times we disagreed, but I knew General Jones was the boss."

McCain pressed Lippert to admit that his departure had anything to do with Jones, but Lippert would only say that he left voluntarily after being offered a "promotion" to serve in the White House Military Affairs office.

In addition to McCain, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) has also indicated he might oppose the Lippert nomination, due to Cornyn's ongoing unhappiness with the administration's refusal to sell Taiwan new F-16 fighter planes, which are built in Cornyn's home state. Cornyn had filed an amendment to the defense policy bill aimed at forcing the administration to make the sale, but that amendment was spiked this week.

On Oct. 10, Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz dropped a bombshell: Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, he alleged, had offered to replace Pakistan's military and intelligence leadership and cut ties with militant groups in the wake of Osama bin Laden's killing in Abbottabad.

Ijaz also alleged in his op-ed in the Financial Times that Zardari communicated this offer by sending a top secret memo on May 10 through Ijaz himself, to be hand-delivered to Adm. Michael Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a key official managing the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. The details of the memo and the machinations Ijaz describes paint a picture of a Zardari government scrambling to save itself from an impending military coup following the raid on bin Laden's compound, and asking for U.S. support to prevent that coup before it started.

Mullen, now retired, denied this week having ever dealt with Ijaz in comments given to The Cable through his spokesman at the time, Capt. John Kirby.

"Adm. Mullen does not know Mr. Ijaz and has no recollection of receiving any correspondence from him," Kirby told The Cable. "I cannot say definitively that correspondence did not come from him -- the admiral received many missives as chairman from many people every day, some official, some not. But he does not recall one from this individual. And in any case, he did not take any action with respect to our relationship with Pakistan based on any such correspondence ... preferring to work at the relationship directly through [Pakistani Army Chief of Staff] Gen. [Ashfaq Parvez] Kayani and inside the interagency process."

Mullen's denial represents the first official U.S. comment on the Ijaz memo, which since Oct. 10 has mushroomed into a huge controversy in Pakistan. Several parts of Pakistan's civilian government denied that Ijaz's memorandum ever existed. On Oct. 30, Zardari spokesman Farhatullah Babar called Ijaz's op-ed a "fantasy article" and criticized the FT for running it in the first place.

"Mansoor Ijaz's allegation is nothing more than a desperate bid by an individual, whom recognition and credibility has eluded, to seek media attention through concocted stories," Babar said. "Why would the president of Pakistan choose a private person of questionable credentials to carry a letter to U.S. officials? Since when Mansoor has become a courier of messages of the president of Pakistan?"

On Oct. 31, Ijaz issued a long statement doubling down on his claims and threatened to reveal the "senior Pakistani official" that purportedly sent him on his mission. Ijaz quoted Gordon Gekko from the movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, telling Zardari and his staff, "If you stop telling lies about me, I might just stop telling the truth about you."

The Pakistani press has given credence to Ijaz's story because it was published in the Financial Times. "The FT is not likely to publish something which it cannot substantiate if it was so required, so any number of denials and clarifications by our diplomats or the presidency will only be for domestic consumption and would mean nothing," wrote one prominent Pakistani commentator.

This is only the latest time that Ijaz has raised controversy concerning his alleged role as a secret international diplomat. In 1996, he was accused of trying to extort money from the Pakistani government in exchange for delivering votes in the U.S. House of Representatives on a Pakistan-related trade provision.

Ijaz, who runs the firm Crescent Investment Management LLC in New York, has been an interlocutor between U.S. officials and foreign government for years, amid constant accusations of financial conflicts of interest. He reportedly arranged meetings between U.S. officials and former Pakistani Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

He also reportedly gave over $1 million to Democratic politicians in the 1990s and attended Christmas events at former President Bill Clinton's White House. Ijaz has ties to former CIA Director James Woolsey and his investment firm partner is Reagan administration official James Alan Abrahamson.

In the mid-1990s, Ijaz traveled to Sudan several times and claimed to be relaying messages from the Sudanese regime to the Clinton administration regarding intelligence on bin Laden, who was living there at the time. Ijaz has claimed that his work gave the United States a chance to kill the al Qaeda leader but that the Clinton administration dropped the ball. National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, who served under Clinton, has called Ijaz's allegations "ludicrous and irresponsible."

Then Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Susan Rice, now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has previously acknowledged that Ijaz brought the Clinton administration offers of counterterrorism cooperation from Sudan but said that actual cooperation never materialized.

So why is Ijaz's story so popular in Pakistan, despite his long history of antagonizing the Pakistani government with such claims? According to Mehreen Zahra-Malik, who wrote about the Ijaz scandal on Oct. 29 in Pakistan's The News, it's all part of the culture of secrecy and conspiracy in Pakistani politics that the current civilian and military leadership in Islamabad has only continued to foster.

"When secrecy and conspiracy are part of the very system of government, a vicious cycle develops. Because truth is abhorrent, it must be concealed, and because it is concealed, it becomes ever more abhorrent. Having power then becomes about the very concealment of truth, and covering up the truth becomes the very imperative of power -- and the powerful," she wrote. "The end result: a population raised on a diet of conspiracy."

Attempts to reach Ijaz for comment were unsuccessful.

The Obama administration has now met with the North Koreans twice and appointed two new top envoys for North Korea policy, but it has not yet consulted with Capitol Hill and has no plans to seek confirmation of the two new officials.

Glyn Davies, the newly appointed special representative for North Korea policy, attended the Oct. 24 and Oct. 25 talks in Geneva with North Korean government officials, along with his predecessor, outgoing Ambassador Stephen Bosworth. But Davies, who previously served as  ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will not have his title of "ambassador" carry over to his new position, because the State Department has no intention of putting him before the Senate for confirmation.

Clifford Hart is the new special envoy to the (now defunct) Six Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear program, the second-ranking U.S. diplomatic position toward North Korea. He also does not enjoy the title of ambassador, because he was not put before the Senate for confirmation. His predecessor, Sung Kim, was confirmed as ambassador to South Korea, and is now on his way to Seoul.

All of the previous top diplomats dealing with the North Korea issue were ambassadors. Robert Gallucci, Chuck Kartman, Jim Kelly, Jack Pritchard, Joe DeTrani, Chris Hill... you get the idea. Not all went through Senate confirmation for their North Korea jobs; some, like Bosworth, were able to keep their ambassador titles from previous gigs if they had reached a certain rank. Davies hasn't reached that level.

But regardless of whether Davies and Hart will actually hold the ambassador title or face a Senate confirmation process, many on Capitol Hill concerned with U.S. policy toward Northeast Asia are unhappy with the fact that neither Davies nor Hart has met with any senators, that there have been no Hill briefings on the administration's new engagement with the North Koreans, and that Senate staffers who have worked on the issue for years had to learn about the new developments through the press.

"State has not reached out to us on these appointments," one Senate aide told The Cable. "They have responded to our requests for briefings on food aid, and they have generally been responsive for briefings when we asked.  But there has been no outreach at their initiative ... which helps explain, I think, why they had the House move to prohibit food aid and why they now face a lack of confidence up here, more generally, about their approach."

After multiple rounds of negotiations between The Cable and various State Department offices, State declined to give us a comment for this story.

The law doesn't require that the North Korea special envoy be confirmed. There are laws that require other envoys be confirmed, such as for the special envoy for North Korean human rights, now filled by Ambassador Bob King, and the special representative and policy coordinator for Burma, now held by Derek Mitchell.

Hill aides point out that the jobs of North Korea special representative and special envoy for the Six Party Talks came out of what's known as the Perry Process, an interagency policy review of U.S. policy toward North Korea in 1998 that was led by then-State Department counselor and now Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman.

One of the key recommendations that came out of the Perry Process was that the U.S. government should have "a small, senior-level interagency North Korea working group ... chaired by a senior official of ambassadorial rank, located in the Department of State, to coordinate policy."

Another recommendation of the Perry Process was that the administration should develop its North Korea policies on a bipartisan basis, in consultation with Capitol Hill.

"Just as no policy toward the DPRK can succeed unless it is a combined strategy of the United States and its allies, the policy review team believes no strategy can be sustained over time without the input and support of Congress," the Perry review team, led by Sherman, wrote.

So why won't the administration keep Congress in the loop on what it's doing with the North Koreans? One Asia hand in Washington told The Cable that the administration doesn't want a public debate over its North Korea engagement, which is not likely to produce dramatic results and could be a political liability in an election season.

"They're definitely avoiding going to the Hill with these guys because they're afraid of criticism and they're afraid the senators are going to use it to criticize where the policy is now," the Asia hand said. "It's all part of their management approach, where you keep everything low key and don't want everybody to know what you're doing."

Former National Security Council Senior Director for Asia Mike Green argued in an article for Foreign Policy last week that the Obama administration is downgrading the prominence of its North Korea diplomats in order to lower expectations for the new engagement, and to keep the podium away from more senior diplomats who might act more independently.

"High profile special envoys and message discipline tend not to go together, and the Obama White House is clearing the decks for a major fight for the presidency next year," Green wrote. "Lower key professionals make sense at a time when North Korea is unlikely to yield much ground."

Perhaps the administration doesn't want senators to bring up this 2008 column by the Washington Post's Al Kamen, where he reveals that Davies worked to water down language criticizing North Korea in an internal e-mail. Here's the relevant portion of the column:

So on Friday, Glyn Davies, the principal deputy assistant secretary in the East Asia bureau, sent an e-mail to Erica Barks-Ruggles, a deputy assistant secretary in the DRL bureau, regarding some changes in the introductory language of a report on North Korea.

"Erica," he wrote, "I know you are under the NSC [National Security Council] gun," apparently to get the report done so the NSC can review it, "but hope given the Secretary's priority on the Six-Party Talks, we can sacrifice a few adjectives for the cause.

"Many thanks. Glyn."

And the changes? Eliminated words are in brackets, and additions are in italics:

"The [repressive] North Korean government[regime] continued to control almost all aspects of citizens' lives, denying freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association, and restricting freedom of movement and workers' rights. Reports of extrajudicial killings, disappearances, and arbitrary detention, including of political prisoners, continue to emerge [from the isolated country]. Some forcibly repatriated refugees were said to have undergone severe punishment and possibly torture. Reports of public executions continued to surface[were on the rise]."

As Hemingway might have written: For Whom the Kowtows?

In August, consultant and former Navy officer J.D. Gordon was ready to launch a new foreign policy and national security think tank called the Center for Security and Diplomacy...and then he got a call from Herman Cain.

"We were a few days away from making CSD's website public. Now most of the think tank is being absorbed by the Cain campaign," Gordon told The Cable in an interview. The Cain team saw Gordon on one of his many Fox News appearances, where he served as an expert commentator. He joined the campaign on Sept. 1 as the vice president for communications and senior advisor for foreign policy and national security.

Now, about two months into his time with Cain, Gordon is leading the expansion of the campaign's national security infrastructure, drawing heavily from the think tank he had been developing before Cain brought him on.

Gordon, who served 20 years on active duty in the Navy, worked at the Pentagon from 2005 to 2009 in the public affairs section of the Office of the Secretary of Defense under Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates. For four years he was, among other things, the Pentagon's lead spokesman on detainee issues and led media tours to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Since leaving government, he has been running a consulting firm with his former business partner Lee Cohen, a former staffer for House Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL).

Now, Gordon is tapping many of the people who were involved in his think tank and consulting firm to support his candidate, who is admittedly not a foreign policy expert -- but says he is reading up on the issues now.

"The central tenets of the Center for Security and Diplomacy were restoring U.S. leadership, maintaining a strong military and getting tough on terrorism," Gordon said. "That matches exactly with Herman Cain's views on foreign policy. His overarching philosophy is an extension of the Reagan doctrine: peace through strength and clarity."

Several of the people who have been involved in CSD have already joined the Cain campaign. Robert Brockhaus, who was community relations manager at the Heritage Foundation and one of the founders of CSD, is now the campaign's assistant vice president for communications and writes "Cain connections," a weekly summary of events that is sent to over 200,000 people.  CSD's former vice president for policy and research Matt Martini, a former legislative correspondent for former Rep. Mark Green (R-WI), is the campaign's new assistant vice price for communications handling TV and radio booking.

Mark Pfeifle, who worked with Gordon at the Pentagon and then served as deputy assistant for strategic communications in President George W. Bush's National Security Council, was a CSD board member. He's now senior advisor for the Cain campaign, in charge of rapid response. Expect to see him on television speaking for the campaign more and more in the coming weeks.

Roger Pardo Maurer is another CSD board member who is now advising the Cain campaign. He was deputy assistant secretary of Defense for the Western Hemisphere from 2001 to 2006 under Rumsfeld, brought in by the late former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security affairs Peter Rodman. He is originally from Costa Rica.

Maurer is a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- he did a year-long tour in each country as an enlisted Special Forces reservist. But having attended Yale and Cambridge and being well into his 40s, he wasn't the typical Army private. Rumsfeld personally promoted him to specialist in the field in Afghanistan. He's advising Cain on the wars in the Middle East.

Manny Rosales, another CSD board director, is another new member of the Cain foreign policy team. He was assistant administrator at the Small Business Administration during the Bush presidency, and then served as deputy director of coalitions at the Republican National Committee under Michael Steele, in charge of Hispanic outreach. He's advising Cain on immigration.

On international economics, Cain is taking advice from Joseph Humire, a former Marine and senior fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which works to establish free market think tanks in foreign countries. Humire was an advisor for CSD; Atlas is a client of Gordon's consulting firm.

One way in which Cain's foreign policy team has already shaped the candidate's agenda is by promoting the idea of using the Chilean social security model, a privatization scheme once floated by Bush, as an example for the reform of the U.S. entitlement system.

Cain was even contemplating a trip to Chile, but the schedule doesn't permit it right now, Gordon said.

"People are complaining if we're not in the early primary states, let alone a foreign country," he said.

Gordon and the rest of the foreign policy team work with Clark Barrow, the campaign's coordinator on policy matters. Barrow gives Cain his daily briefing on all domestic and international news. Gordon chips in on most days with one-page briefs on specific foreign policy issues.

The Cain team knows their candidate has some studying to do on foreign policy, but, "once he gets briefed on something he learns and he retains it. He's been getting smarter on foreign policy every day," Gordon said.

There have been some early stumbles, however. Earlier this month, Cain told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that he would consider releasing all the prisoners at Guantanamo in a prisoner swap. Gordon attributed the comment to fatigue, the pace of the campaign, and a misunderstanding of Blitzer's question.

And after Cain famously announced this month he did not know the name of the president of "Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan," the campaign made up a list of over 20 foreign leaders for Cain to commit to memory.

"He was just trying to make a joke out of the fact that he doesn't know the name of the every world leader right now," Gordon said. "He was trying to disarm that before it was inflated into an issue."

Broadly speaking, Cain's foreign policy stances aren't so different from other leading candidates such as Mitt Romney or Rick Perry. They include a focus on relationships with allies, strong advocacy for maintaining defense spending, impassioned support for the U.S.-Israel relationship, and skepticism of providing foreign aid to countries that don't support U.S. policies.

Like Romney and Perry, Cain also doesn't have a lot of foreign policy experience, although he has traveled to 20 countries on six continents, said Gordon. His campaign is aware that travel alone doesn't equal experience, and is using Gordon's connections to make up ground fast.

"The staff is rapidly expanding," Gordon said, acknowledging that the other campaigns have been a bit quicker setting up their foreign policy brain trusts. "It's been about 100 to one, but now we're beefing up."

Top Obama administration officials have divided up responsibilities for applying pressure and offering an outstretched hand to the Pakistani government, in a new diplomatic strategy that some officials have dubbed "coercive diplomacy."

"The Obama administration is totally fed up and have decided to up the ante," said one official familiar with the new approach, explaining that inside the administration, "pressing for Pakistani behavior change is the new mantra."

Outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, who has visited Pakistan 27 times since 2008, clearly assumed the role of "bad cop" when he testified on Sept. 22 that the U.S. government believes the Pakistan-based Haqqani network, with the help of Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was responsible for the recent bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kabul. Mullen upped the ante further, saying the Haqqani network was a "veritable arm" of the ISI, a charge anonymous U.S. officials walked back on Tuesday.

Also heading up the "bad cop" team is new Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who seemed to threaten increased U.S. military incursions into Pakistan on Sept. 16. An official familiar with the strategy said that even more threatening statements by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who declared on Sept. 25 that there would be broad bipartisan support for U.S. military attack on Pakistan, were coordinated with the administration as part of their new campaign to apply pressure on Pakistan. The State Department is also considering whether to add the entire Haqqani network to its list of foreign terrorist organizations, but no decision has yet been made.

The administration may also be using the media as part of its new campaign to exert new pressure on Pakistan. On Monday, a story appeared in the New York Times with an excruciatingly detailed account of a 2007 ambush of American officials by Pakistani militants.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is leading a parallel "good cop" effort with the Pakistani government. She has sought ways out of the current diplomatic crisis by increasing her personal engagement with her Pakistani counterparts, as evidenced by her three-and-a-half hour meeting with new Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar on Sept. 18 on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

According to one official inside the meeting, Clinton told Khar, "We want this relationship to work. Give us something to work with."

"The secretary's message was that, given the efforts of the Haqqani Network on the 13th of September [the day of the assault on the U.S. embassy in Kabul], that this was an issue that we had to deal with and that this is a threat to both Pakistan and the United States," a senior State Department official said about the meeting. "That part of the conversation concluded that joint efforts need to be made to end this threat from the Haqqanis, and that Pakistan and the United States ought to be working together on this and not separately."

Other U.S. officials inside that meeting included Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman and his deputy Dan Feldman. Afghan reconciliation was also a main topic of the meeting.

In her meeting with Khar, Clinton tried to find specific ways to address the threat of Pakistan-based extremists operating with impunity in Afghanistan.

"It is possible for the United States and Pakistan to work together to identify those interests that we have in common and then figure out how to act on them together," the State Department official said. "And I'd say that that if that could be the overriding philosophy or kind of headline that came out of this meeting, that'd be a very good thing for both sides."

After initially making some harsh statements against the U.S. Khar has now settled on a message that mixes her desire to defend Pakistani pride with the need to project the Pakistani civilian government's willingness to find a way out of the crisis.

Khar said this morning on NPR that the U.S. and Pakistan "need each other" and "are fighting against the same people" but "Pakistan's dignity must not be compromised."

Clinton's strategy is also reflective of the feeling of some inside the administration that the late Special Representative Richard Holbrooke's drive to transform the U.S.-Pakistan relationship from a "transactional" one to a "strategic" relationship is now a lost cause.

"The strategic relationship is over, we're back to transactional with Pakistan," one U.S. official recently told The Cable. "We can call it ‘long-term transactional' if we want, but that's the way it is now."

Amid all the tough talk, on-the-ground intelligence cooperation between the United States and Pakistan continues. CIA Director David Petraeus and ISI chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha met in Washington on Sept. 20 and put into force a new intelligence sharing agreement, an official briefed on the agreement said. Pasha also reportedly met with top White House officials at the residence of Pakistani Ambassador Husain Haqqani.

Inside Pakistan, there is speculation that the United States may be bluffing about its threat to increase military strikes inside Pakistan.  The Pakistani government is also grappling with a fervent anti-U.S. media and a realization that its control over the ISI, much less the Haqqani network, is ultimately limited. But U.S. aid to Pakistan will never be effective leverage in convincing Pakistani to change its basic approach to dealing with groups like the Haqqani network, the official said.

"Pakistan is unwilling to align its strategic vision with America's worldview," the official said. "Meanwhile, the mood toward Pakistan in Washington is the worst it's ever been."