Gilbert Rathod, who was then serving in senior-level positions at the State Department, told the Guardian he was shocked. “There is no precedent,” he said, speaking generally only about the case and declining to discuss specifics.
“It’s just a nightmare,” added one former State official.
Biden acknowledged that the incident “could have been prevented.” In a June 10 letter to Schmidt, he told the senator to look into how the department handled the case, which is under investigation by the department’s inspector general. “I sincerely regret that your colleague was so grossly mismanaged by your colleagues at the NSC during the event,” Biden wrote.
“At no time did I ever see him making any threats, and indeed the situation could have been resolved very easily.”
The situation was “outrageous” and the “least worst-case scenario,” Biden wrote.
Gabbard did not respond to a request for comment. The Senate Intelligence Committee has been looking into the case for more than a year.
John B. Bellinger III, a top Bush administration legal adviser who oversaw the administration’s use of the state secrets doctrine, said it is a key argument against the use of the doctrine when it comes to national security but “not entirely” so.
“They want to use it for protecting public policy, public policy should be made in consultation with the American people,” Bellinger said. “In this case, it was made in consultation with the government.”
In the memo, State’s Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Thomas Mann, outlined the circumstances of the trip and explained to Schmidt why the trip was justified. He said the trip was about “the important and timely work of the NSC on issues vital to America’s interests.”
He also said that Biden was not the first senior official BID’s “highest ranking officials” to use the trip as cover for something illicit, and that he was concerned that BID’s security director “had the opportunity to influence the Secretary’s thinking on the issues” of interest to BID “without any official role or authorization from the Secretary.”
In a letter to BID on Aug. 4, 2008, Mann wrote that “the Secretary’s presence was requested of you in order to better provide a full picture of issues, opportunities and key actors in the region, including potential threats to American interests in the region