Diplomats Lash Out at Gingrich
U.S. diplomats have hit back at former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, likening his attack on the State Department this week to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt for Communist infiltrators in the 1950s.
“You have essentially accused these employees of treason .... However, you do not have proof. Your charges are spurious,” the American Foreign Service Assn. told Gingrich in a letter dated Wednesday and released Friday.
“As such, they will be consigned to the dustbin of history where they belong, along with that paper Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy held up claiming to ‘have in my hand a list’ of traitors in the State Department,” said the letter, signed by association president John Naland.
Gingrich, in a speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute on Tuesday, said the State Department was “pursuing policies that will clearly throw away all the fruits of hard-won victory” in Iraq and was trying to undermine the Middle East policies of President Bush.
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