Hillary Clinton’s departure for the State Department was meant to end the era of Clinton drama, and to leave the turmoil of her campaign behind. But one former Clinton aide, now a senior adviser to Secretary Clinton, has brought at least some of that drama along with him.
State Department reporters and observers have been buzzing about the brewing conflict since her second foreign trip, earlier this month, to Europe and the Middle East. On that trip, her longtime Senate press secretary Philippe Reines – one of the combatants in Hillaryland’s long civil wars – took over as the political staffer charged with handling the press.
The trip was marked by tussles over information and access, but it became known for a high-profile blunder in Geneva on March 6. There, Clinton met Sergei Lavrov, the dour Russian Foreign Minister, and cheerily presented him with a large red button in a yellow case, with the words “Reset” and “Peregruzka” written on it.
“We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” Clinton asked.
“You got it wrong,” said Lavrov.
The error appalled some in the State Department, because the button – which was inscribed in Latin script, not Cyrillic – hadn’t been assembled with the help of State’s cadre of Russian speakers and professional translators, but rather by Clinton’s small political team. The day of the event, people involved said, Reines showed the finished product to officials who spoke Russian, but who weren’t native, or up-to-date enough to catch the error in a word out of computer terminology.
One of those was the senior director for Russia at the National Security Council, Michael McFaul, a well-known Russia scholar. Three people familiar with the incident said that, in its aftermath, Reines sought to place public blame on McFaul, a former Stanford professor.
Pressed Monday on the button incident, Reines denied that he’d ever blamed McFaul, and sent over a joking statement taking responsibility for the gaffe.
“Ultimotely [sic], this was my soul [sic] risponsibility [sic], nobody else's in or out of the building. While the Russians laughed off the error and accepted the gift in the spirit of cooperation that it was meant, I've been sic [sic] about the mistake since, especially that I let down the Secretary and the fine professionals at the State Department,” he e-mailed.
McFaul didn’t respond to e-mail seeking comment, and National Security Council official Denis McDonough brushed a question about it off as a “typical Washington story.”
A McFaul ally said that “the notion that it was all on him, if that’s what they’re saying, is clearly unfair. He was asked to look at it.”
Clinton and Lavrov publicly laughed off the gaffe, though Lavrov happily rubbed the American’s nose in it a bit when asked at the press conference after their meeting. It was also a source of great schadenfreude in the Russian press, and of concern to some American analysts.
“This is a pretty tough crew, and to come up with a naïve and childish way of talking about the relationship is probably the wrong signal to be sending to Moscow,” said Gary Schmitt, a Russia analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) also raised an eyebrow at the incident.
"If I gave him a reset button, I'd find someone in the State Department who understands Russian," he told the Financial Times. - Politico Story
I had heard about this some time ago. What a dumb idea. Did you catch the writing in the email, seriously, use the spell check button. Where do people come up with these gift ideas.
By the way, how about the movies Obama gave as a gift that don't work?
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