Ronan Farrow - War on Peace - The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence

Raphel, then still Johnson, started dating a young Rhodes Scholar and fellow University of Washington graduate, Frank Aller, and befriended his roommates: Strobe Talbott, who would go on to become a journalist and deputy secretary of state, and an aspiring politician named Bill Clinton. In their modest house at 46 Leckford Road in North Oxford, the friends spent hours agonizing over the threat of the draft. Clinton and Aller were both classified as “1-A”—available to be drafted—and both opposed the war. Clinton considered various strategies for avoiding the draft but ultimately decided against them, as he put it, “to maintain my political viability within the system.” Aller, on the other hand, stayed in England, on the run from the draft and agonized by the resulting stigma. A year later, he went home to Spokane, put a .22-caliber Smith & Wesson in his mouth, and blew his brains out.

I asked Raphel how Aller’s death, so soon after they dated, affected her. “Oh,” she said, as if I’d asked her about a fender bender. “I was very upset, needless to say!” She paused, realizing how she’d sounded. “As you’ve no doubt noticed, I’m passionate about being dispassionate.” Robin Raphel wasn’t about to let emotion be an obstacle to the life on the world stage she was, even then, beginning to craft. In the following years, her path would wind from Tehran to Islamabad to Tunisia.

OVER THE COURSE of that journey, Raphel’s critics would not share her dispassion. By the end of her career, she would be called a traitor, a turncoat, and a terrorist sympathizer. In the Indian press, she was called, with delight, “Lady Taliban.” The astonishing nadir would come during the Obama administration. Four years after our run-in in Islamabad, Raphel arrived at her desk on the first floor of the State Department, in a sea of cubicles not far from the cafeteria. She checked her email and took a few routine meetings. It was early afternoon when she saw the missed calls. The first was from Slomin’s Home Security; someone had been trying to get into Raphel’s house. The next call was from her daughter Alexandra, who was panicked. Raphel had to get home immediately, Alexandra said. Raphel got into her Ford Focus and drove the twenty-minute route to her home in Northwest Washington, DC.

What she arrived, she saw a dozen FBI agents crawling over her modest two-story Cape Cod–style house. Two earnest-looking agents in plainclothes approached her and showed her their badges. Next they handed her a warrant.

It specified that Robin Raphel was being investigated under 18 U.S.C. Section 793(e), a criminal statute that covers the illegal gathering or transmission of national security information:

Espionage.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.