Chas Freeman and the perils of articulate partisanship.

• Author: Jones, David T.

Editor's Note: A retired Foreign Service Officer and frequent American Diplomacy contributor who, like the subject of this essay, frequently offers "contrarian views in ... glittering, memorable prose," examines the aborted nomination of Chas Freeman (also an American Diplomacy contributor) to be Director of the National Intelligence Council. He finds the abortion to be appropriate.--Ed.

"Chas" Freeman is not my friend. Honestly, other than sharing the same profession in roughly overlapping periods, we are barely colleagues. Thus, should he sit down beside me and introduce himself, my reaction would likely be "Oh, you're Chas Freeman. Pleased to meet you. I've heard a lot about you."

And indeed I have; we all have heard a lot about Chas--especially recently. In one sense, that "heard a lot about him" element is remarkable in its own right. Freeman never held the most senior State Department positions, e.g., Under Secretary for Political Affairs such as did Tom Pickering. He wasn't closely associated with a noteworthy negotiating success such as completing a major treaty (INF arms control--Mike Glitman; Panama Canal--Ellsworth Bunker) or a noteworthy disaster (Tehran embassy seizure--Bruce Laingen). He was not one of our most senior ambassadors (Beijing, Moscow, Tokyo, London, Bonn, Mexico City); Riyadh is certainly important, but second tier. Nor did Freeman write a know all/tell all book such as Dennis Ross's The Missing Peace about the Middle East, despite his pivotal position as our ambassador in Saudi Arabia during the Desert Shield/Desert Storm Gulf War. His slight (140 page) Arts of Power published in 1997 was listed 155,959 in sales on Google.

What has gained Freeman his high-visibility profile both within and without the Foreign Service is a combination of his exceptional intelligence, superb language skill (Nixon's interpreter during the 1972 opening to China), and contrarian attitude toward that at which he takes umbrage. And he says and writes these contrarian views in vivid, articulate speech and glittering, memorable prose at a time when bureaucratic writing is deliberately opaque and official speech scrubbed of any nuance that might cause offense.

And now with the explosive contretemps over his nomination for and withdrawal from the directorship of the National Intelligence Council, we have heard much, much more of Ambassador Freeman. A man, who was a Foreign Service semi-legend, has become a poster child nationally (and internationally) for politicized foreign policy. Thus there have been back and forth surges/charges of McCarthyism and/or woe-is-us lamentations that the Foreign Service's best and brightest are being trashed for expressing their views. Our chattering class has opined over "the country's loss," and even Canadians have chimed in, noodling about the "Israel lobby" and "Republican neocons."

But, as is often the case, there is a need for context.

Two Substantive Cases: China and Israel

Freeman's expertise in and post-retirement association with the People's Republic of China is undoubted. Although he...