In a very troubling press release from the office of the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the possibility someone in Biden’s Department of State could be leaking information to Iran came to light. If true, is anyone surprised? Very little about the president’s administration instills confidence in competence. This latest revelation is more evidence that the folks at Foggy Bottom do not have the interests of the American people at the top of their worry list.
Iran Continues Its Bad Behavior
Iran has been a bad actor in the Middle East for decades, and the new revelation confirms that the US diplomatic team is at a loss to deal with Tehran effectively. Chairman Mike McCaul of the House Foreign Affairs Committee was among the first to sound the alarm concerning the leak of a sensitive State Department memo. “This latest chapter raises serious questions about how the regime obtained this potentially authentic document and what other sensitive or classified information they may have,” McCaul explained in an August 28 press release.
In this case, two issues are at stake for the Biden administration. First, the obvious problem of the leaked memo marked “Sensitive But Unclassified,” published April 21, 2023 in the Tehran Times with the laughable subtext “Straight Truth.” The document was Director of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security correspondence to Special Envoy to Iran Dr. Robert Malley, DPhil. The memorandum, printed in its entirety, informs Dr. Malley:
“…the Director of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Office of the Personnel Security and Suitability, have determined that your continued national security eligibility is not clearly consistent with the interests of national security. Your national security eligibility, including you Top Secret security clearance is suspended pending an ongoing investigation…The DS (Department of State) Office of Personnel Security has received information regarding you that raises serious security concerns and can be disqualifying…”
Considering the source, the first thought was that the memorandum was bogus. However, former State Department official Gabriel Noronha tweeted on August 27, “The letter looks authentic to me. Indicates Malley also lied about not knowing why his clearance was pulled.” Handling classified information has been a problem for the Biden administration lately. The security disclaimer “Sensitive But Unclassified” may give those in the State Department the idea that handing the memorandum to the world’s number one sponsor of terrorism isn’t a big deal. After all, it is marked “unclassified.” But that belies the fact that it’s also marked sensitive.
What that means is the State Department may not have classified the document as “Secret” or “Top Secret,” but Foggy Bottom surely would not want the information in the memorandum spread around the world in the press. Oh, wait, that’s precisely what happened, and one of its own in the diplomatic corps probably did it.
Iran Envoy Malley May Not Have Been the Best Choice
The second issue, and maybe the more troubling one, is why Malley was chosen to represent the US to Iran in the first place. It’s not hard to ferret out. A Yale University graduate, Dr. Malley has been a fixture in liberal foreign policy circles prominently since “Under the President Barack Obama, he served as Special Assistant to the President, Senior Advisor to the President for the Counter-ISIL campaign, and White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and Gulf Region in 2015-2016 and, before that, as Senior Director for the Gulf Region and Syria” his official State Department biography reads.
His foreign policy work in the Obama administration might account for the meteoric rise of the Islamic State and the plummeting of US prestige in the Middle East. He was one of the lead negotiators on the flawed 2015 Iranian nuclear deal. “Malley is under investigation from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for allegedly mishandling classified information while he attempted to restart negotiations with Iran as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal agreed to by the Obama administration,” according to the Daily Caller. So, naturally, he would be the odds-on favorite to be the Special Envoy to Iran. Malley was also the special assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs. Of course, he was.
Joe Biden (Photo by Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images)
The State Department’s suspension of Malley’s security clearance also caught the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee’s attention. With Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) in the forefront, “led his colleagues in sending a letter to Acting Inspector General Diana Shaw call for an independent investigation into whether State Department officials complied with all appropriate laws and regulations with respect to the suspension of Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley’s access to classified information,” Hagerty’s July 13, press announcement stated.
But Dr. Malley’s performance recently has raised serious doubt about his suitability for future employment. Having his security clearance pulled and lying about it may have more personal consequences. While under the cloud of the security investigation, Yale University decided to grant Malley a teaching position at the Jackson School of Global Affairs. Some are questioning the wisdom of this decision.
“Yale should ask itself why a man under FBI investigation should teach young students about national security. This is a great disservice to the students and terrible for Yale’s reputation.” former senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense Democracies and Iran specialist Alireza Nader explained to Ben Raab, writing for the Yale Daily News. With the unpaid suspension in which Dr. Malley finds himself and with the Biden administration’s demonstrable reluctance to censure and hold accountable its own, there is probably a lot more to this security investigation. Nonetheless, with Dr. Malley out of the picture, Americans may have dodged a big Iran foreign policy bullet.
