Vocal Anti-War Treasury Official Is Back on the Job

A senior bureaucrat who went to Baghdad to protest the Bush Administration’s “imperialist war” against Iraq is back on his job at the Treasury Department with no apparent repercussions.

Anthony Lawrence, a $70,000-a-year economist, took off for Baghdad without leave last December. He joined an international group of peace advocates who ultimately established a “peace camp” on the Iraqi-Jordanian border as the United States and its allies launched an all-out military campaign to force Saddam Hussein’s withdrawal from Kuwait.

Lawrence, 44, returned to Baghdad to witness the destruction of the city and was interviewed on CNN on Jan. 30, when he denounced the war as “an imperialistic attempt to wrest the oil resources of this region.”

A Treasury spokesman stiffly hinted at an administrative inquiry into Lawrence’s conduct on his return. Lawrence said, however, that nothing happened after he returned to Washington on Feb. 26.

“I had talked with the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), and they said, ‘Stand by,’ ” he said. “When I went into the office (earlier this month), I told my boss, ‘I just want to go back to work and do economics.’

“I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d come back and faced disciplinary action or reassignment to Nome, Alaska. I think the attitude was kinder and gentler because we had such a big win,” he said.

Treasury colleagues, he said, and friends in the Capitol Hill neighborhood where he lives took his publicized opposition to the war in stride. “Most professional people in Washington are liberal in the sense that a classical conservative is liberal--you do what you believe you should do,” he said.

However, it was different when he visited his home town of Lake Placid, N.Y.: “I had to face a real inquisition when I went up and saw a lot of the people I ski with. They focused not so much on the political aspect as, ‘How can you risk your job and leave the country at such a time?’ I told them that if you want to follow your conscience, everything else takes second place.”

Lawrence received no pay during his unauthorized absence.

The overwhelming U.S. victory has not lessened Lawrence’s opposition to war, and he said he is actively engaged in organizing a “Parents Against War” movement. He has a son in the Marine Corps who is serving in Japan and another son in the Army air cavalry who fought in the Persian Gulf.

Lawrence said he hopes to publish a portfolio of photographs of Baghdad taken before the war.