Hillary: Why wait for my coronation? Why not launch some scandals now?

In one of the Eisenhower administration's rare foreign-policy blunders, the United States rebuffed Fidel Castro's early pleas for American aid. What we denied him, Nikita Khrushchev was happy to supply. Thus Cuba entered the Soviets' orbit, inviting the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis, and a vast array of breathtaking superspook stupidities. And we've only gotten dumber ever since, treating Castro's tiny, poverty-ridden island as a mammothly threatening outpost of antiAmerican hostility.

Now enter Hillary Clinton, and plenty of questions about her reign at the State Department, under which the U.S. Agency for International Development created a loopy, anti-Castro "Twitter" operation called Zunzuneo, which was designed to amplify domestic Cuban discontent and undermine the regime. "It is unclear whether the scheme was legal under U.S. law," reports the Associated Press, "which requires written authorization of covert action by the president and congressional notification. Officials at the USAID would not say who had approved the program or whether the White House was aware of it."

It's all very dark, very vague, and quite sketchy. "The estimated $1.6 million spent on ZunZuneo was publicly earmarked for an unspecified project in Pakistan." At the top of it all, though, was Hillary, who must now clarify her role in a possibly illegal operation that chairman of the Senate foreign operations subcommittee Pat Leahy finds "troubling":

There is [he told the AP] the risk to young, unsuspecting Cuban cellphone users who had no idea this was a U.S. government-funded activity. [And t]here is the clandestine nature of the program that was not disclosed to the appropriations subcommittee with oversight responsibility.

The AP ends with a beaut of an observation: "ZunZuneo vanished abruptly in 2012, and the Communist Party remains in power--with no Cuban Spring on the horizon."

What are we left with? A pre-Clinton II Administration scandal. Another question ... Why are we not surprised? 

 

Comments

[Peter G]

1.6 million huh? Scandalous. I doubt the Republicans would make much of any anti-Castro program except that it wasn't well enough funded or last long enough. If this one blows up at all it will be the anti-Clinton lefties who drive this bus.

[Lovepolitics2008]

Wow.

The big questions are obviously if 1) Hillary was in the loop or if it was something a rogue group within the State Department kept it from her.

And 2) If Hillary was in the loop, was this operation approved by President Obama.

Call me a blind supporter of President Obama, but my supposition is "yes" to the first answer and "no" to the second. I've always had an uncomfortable feeling that the State Department under Hillary wasn't totally "in tune" with the President's wishes. During the Arab spring in particular I sensed something was wrong…

Nowadays with John Kerry at the helm, I get the impression that the coordination between State and the Oval is better. Kerry and President Obama are true allies. No power struggle there.

Maybe I'm totally unfair to Hillary; I hope so.

[Lovepolitics2008]

Problem is mainly about process. If the president approved of the operation and if there was notification to Congress. Granted these days notifying Congress means risks to national security because republicans who are briefed on covert operations can't be trusted to keep their mouth shut.
Although in that case I don't see that big a risk on national security...

[Peter G]

The chicken shit nature of this operation (stretching the definition of "operation" a bit)leads me to suspect that the level at which such asinine decisions are made would be somewhere near the mailroom level.

[Lovepolitics2008]

Apparently the head of USAID was on Andrea Mitchell's show and said the AP report was full of errors and Congress had been notified.

Pat Leahy certainly hasn't been notified.

What is going on here ??

I'll wait and see for more info.