State Department: We weren’t part of the Qaddafi-Welch meetings
The State Department is denying any knowledge or connection to the meetings this month between senior Qaddafi officials and former State Department official David Welch. Al Jazeera reported today that files found in Muammar al-Qaddafi‘s intelligence bureau after the fall of the regime show that Abubakr Alzleitny and Mohammed Ahmed Ismail, two top Qaddafi officials, ...
The State Department is denying any knowledge or connection to the meetings this month between senior Qaddafi officials and former State Department official David Welch.
Al Jazeera reported today that files found in Muammar al-Qaddafi‘s intelligence bureau after the fall of the regime show that Abubakr Alzleitny and Mohammed Ahmed Ismail, two top Qaddafi officials, met with David Welch, former assistant secretary of state under George W Bush, on Aug. 2, 2011, in Cairo. Welch was the man who brokered the deal to restore diplomatic relations between the United States and Libya in 2008.
"During that meeting Welch advised Gaddafi’s team on how to win the propaganda war, suggesting several ‘confidence-building measures’, according to the documents," Al Jazeera reported, noting that the meeting was held at the Four Seasons hotel, only blocks from the U.S. embassy.
The minutes of the meeting also include Welch’s purported advice that Qaddafi should feed the Obama administration damaging intelligence on the rebels by laundering it through allied governments and that Qaddafi should take advantage of the "double standard" in U.S. policy toward Libya and Syria.
"The Syrians were never your friends and you would lose nothing from exploiting the situation there in order to embarrass the West," Welch reportedly told Qaddafi’s officials. Welch, who now works for Bechtel, did not return requests for comment. But Nuland confirmed that the trip occurred.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at today’s briefing that Welch was acting on his own. "David Welch, a former assistant secretary, is now a private citizen. This was a private trip. He was not carrying any message from the U.S. government," she said.
Al Jazeera also found a memo of a conversation between an intermediary for Qaddafi’s son Saif Al-Islam and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (R-OH). The memo included a request from Kucinich to Saif asking for dirt on the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC), such as evidence of corruption or links to al Qaeda.
"Al Jazeera found a document written by a Libyan bureaucrat to other Libyan bureaucrats," Kucinich said in a statement e-mailed to The Cable. "All it proves is that the Libyans were reading the Washington Post, and read there about my efforts to stop the war. I can’t help what the Libyans put in their files."
Kucinich chief of staff Vic Edgerton would not confirm or deny that Kucinich did in fact have a conversation with a Qaddafi official.
"My opposition to the war in Libya, even before it formally started, was public and well known," Kucinich said. "My questions about the legitimacy of the war, who the opposition was, and what NATO was doing, were also well known and consistent with my official duties. Any implication I was doing anything other than trying to bring an end to an unauthorized war is fiction," Kucinich said.
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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