Brett McGurk appeared to have reassured Republican senators who questioned whether he has the diplomatic experience to serve as U.S. ambassador to Iraq - but then the emails surfaced.
Mr. McGurk traded several saucy messages with Wall Street Journal reporter Gina Cohn when she was covering Iraq and he was negotiating with Iraqi officials in 2008. At the time, Mr. McGurk was a national security adviser to former President George W. Bush.
The emails suggest a sexual relationship and hinted that Mr. McGurk offered to share information with Miss Cohn, although there is no evidence he did anything illegal. They later got married.
Many of the messages appeared to be flirtatious teasing, and Mr. McGurk expressed his sexual frustration in a couple of them. In one, he sent Miss Cohn a phone number for receiving text messages.
“It’s a better way to engage in sensitive deliberations like ours,” he said.
She called him “poor baby” in one message, and in others they joked about her hiding in his briefcase so she could record high-level meetings with Iraqi officials.
In another email, Miss Cohn referred to reporters as “vultures,” and he replied that she could be the “chosen vulture” if he treated her “to many glasses of wine.”
The emails had been lingering on the Internet for most of last week until reporters began to discover them, after Mr. McGurk appeared for a confirmation hearing Wednesday at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
After ABC News first reported on the emails Friday, the story has appeared as far from Washington as New Zealand, where the Herald newspaper wrote about the “flirty emails” Saturday.
One Senate staffer told a reporter that the emails shocked several senators who had been impressed by Mr. McGurk’s performance at the hearing.
Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, a senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, canceled a scheduled meeting with Mr. McGurk after the emails surfaced. His spokesman said the sexually charged messages raised “concerning issues.”
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the senior Republican on the same committee, already had expressed doubts about Mr. McGurk’s ability to manage America’s largest and most expensive embassy. He also had criticized Mr. McGurk for failing to persuade Iraq to allow U.S. troops to stay past last year’s withdrawal.
The State Department on Friday defended Mr. McGurk as “uniquely qualified” to serve as ambassador. Mr. McGurk, a lawyer, has advised all five U.S. ambassadors to Iraq since 2003, when U.S. forces overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein.
MEXICO FURIOUS
Mexico is conducting its own investigation into the “Fast and Furious” U.S. gun-running operation that allowed thousands of firearms to cross the border, the Mexican ambassador told a Washington forum.
Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan said his government had no idea the Obama administration was engaged in the operation to allow gunrunners to purchase weapons in the U.S. and “walk” them into Mexico, where U.S. officials hoped to track them to drug smugglers.
The scheme run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives showed an “outstanding lack of understanding” about how drug gangs work, the ambassador told the New Democrat Network at a recent forum.
The ATF lost track of most of the guns, and some ended up being used in crimes in Mexico and the United States, where a Border Patrol agent was killed with one of the weapons.
DIPLOMATIC TRAFFIC
Foreign visitors in Washington this week include:
Monday
• President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, President Atifete Jahjaga of Kosovo, President Joyce Banda of Malawi, and Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland. They attend a forum sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
• Gen. Alvaro Baltodano, Nicaragua’s presidential delegate for investment, who addresses the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
• Philipp Rosler, Germany’s vice chancellor and federal minister for economics and technology. He addresses the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.
Friday
• Gov. Geraldo Alckmin of the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo. He addresses the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
• Call Embassy Row at 202/636-3297 or email jmorrison@washingtontimes.com. The column is published on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
• James Morrison can be reached at jmorrison@washingtontimes.com.
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