I know Maura Harty. We entered the State Department at about the same time.
I realize this will infuriate many Freepers, but Maura is a top-notch professional. She rose swiftly through the ranks because she’s brilliant, hardworking, and knows how to run an organization. She’s a true American patriot.
She hasn’t “broken the law,” as Joel Mawbray (a well-known Foreign Service antagonist) alleges in the Washington Times article. In the hectic months after becoming Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs in early 2002, Maura was immersed in navigating a complicated political path of competing proposals on Capitol Hill on how to restructure the visa function of the US government to tighten security and scrutiny of visa applicants while at the same time not shutting down normal, legitimate travel to the US. Maura worked with Republicans and Democrats to achieve that goal. Today, getting a tourist visa is definitely more lengthy, expensive, and cumbersome for an applicant than it was pre-9/11. Background checks and screening of applicants, particularly from the Middle East, has been strengthened greatly. Lots of legitimate applicants get refused visas due to the stricter standards applied for issuing visas. Unfortunate, but that’s part of our new post 9/11 era of security consciousness.
As for the passport “scandal” of this past year: sure, Maura’s bureau didn’t accurately forecast how many applicants there would be, but they were under the gun to implement a law Congress passed mandating new passport requirements. This wasn’t something Maura just dreamed up on her own. What tripped up her bureau was not forecasting how many people, hearing of the new requirement to have a passport in order to travel to Canada or Mexico, would apply for a passport even when they had no travel plans — just to have one in case.
So I urge my fellow Freepers (those who have some wider perspective of US interests) to lay off the attacks on Maura and recognize that she did a pretty good job of running State’s consular affairs at a time when there was plenty of confusion and disagreement in Washington about what to do. Maura is a patriot and a credit to the US and the Foreign Service.
“European” is the euphemism given to me by a Congressional staffer when he politely wanted to point out the unrepentant Socialists in Foggy Bottom.
Based on Mary’s resume, she was promoted by x42, who IMO never promoted except based on political viewpoint.
Is this a case of smearing Maura by media association?
I also note that Maura may well be conservative, since she actually resigned rather than milking the system for all she could get, and back-stabbed the President along the way.