State Department Failed Americans, House Members Charge

Key members of Congress strongly criticized the State Department on Tuesday for failing to take adequate precautionary measures to protect American citizens now trapped in Kuwait or held hostage in Iraq.

At a joint hearing before two House panels, Elizabeth Tamposi, assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, was pressed to explain why the State Department did not advise Americans to leave Kuwait in the days immediately before Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion.

“We didn’t issue any warnings to Americans to get out. We didn’t help them to get out. We did zero,” said Rep. Larry Smith (D-Fla.).

“There has been a pattern of misjudging one event after another over a whole decade with regard to Iraq,” added California Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), who asked Tamposi why Americans were not urged to leave Kuwait when Iraqi troops were massing on the border and American intelligence was warning of a possible invasion.

Visibly shaken by the barrage of criticism from members of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittees on international operations and Europe and the Middle East, Tamposi defended the department’s response by noting that the “prevailing consensus” at the time was that Iraq would not invade.

“I know our response has not been perfect. . . . But no problem was a result of our not trying,” she told lawmakers attending the joint hearing. “My sense is we are miles ahead of where we were when we started to take steps to improve our crisis management system.”

The crisis management system, designed to help Americans caught in threatening situations abroad, was overhauled and greatly expanded in the wake of widespread criticism of the State Department’s failure to warn Americans of the terrorist threat that existed before the bombing of Pan American Airways Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, two years ago.

However, Rep. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Me.), joining the criticism led by Democrats Lantos, Smith and another Californian, Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), said testimony by several Americans who escaped from Iraq suggested that the “system is still not working well.”

One of those escapees, Illinois businessman Michael P. Saba, told the subcommittees that he and other Americans trapped in Iraq during the early stages of the crisis were frustrated by the U.S. Embassy’s inability “to act on its feet . . . in this crisis situation.”

Saba said he and other Americans stranded in Iraq sought the embassy’s help in leaving by land after Iraq closed its airport to departing foreigners in the wake of the invasion. But despite requests for information, the embassy was not able to ascertain whether Iraq’s land borders with Turkey and Jordan were still open, he said.

With the Embassy unable or unwilling to offer more assistance, Saba said, he and several other Americans hired a taxi and drove to the Jordanian border Aug. 8. Once across the border, the group found itself stranded because the U.S. Embassy in Amman, which was supposed to have sent a car to meet them, was never informed of their departure.

Saba said he and the others eventually hitched a ride to Amman. There, U.S. officials said they could not assist him in arranging his return to the United States.

Saba also said the State Department task force set up to keep family members informed of their captive relatives’ whereabouts told his wife that he was still in Baghdad even after she had called the State Department to tell them that he had reached Amman.