Officer’s CYA Memo: State Department Withheld Info From CongressMaj. Larry Harrison told his military commanders back in April that State Department officials might be concealing information from Congress.
Harrison was working in the U.S.embassy at Tirana, Albania, when he saw the U.S. officials there help Albanian officials conceal the origin of a weapons shipment that might be illegal, he told House investigators.
When Congress started asking questions about the weapons deal, Harrison suggested that the embassy officials be upfront about the late-night meeting they had in November 2007 with the Albanian defense minister when they talked about how to repackage the Chinese ammo.
But the embassy officials didn’t take his advice. And it looks like Harrison sent a C-Y-A memo to his military bosses at European Command on April 16:
Although I provided input to the third question, the Political—Economic Officer, the Deputy Chief of Mission and the Ambassador did not accept my input. The answers were forwarded to the committee with my name on the memo as having cleared the memo, or in other words, approved the content.I did not approve of the content of the answers and I am concerned that information may have been omitted relevant to the question.
The memo was disclosed today by Rep. Henry Waxman’s oversight committee.
A spokesman for the State Department told me this morning said they were still reviewing Waxman’s documents. We asked a Defense Department spokeswoman what European Command officials did with Harrison’s memo. We’ll let you know when we hear back from her.