.@SecPompeo breaks his silence on claims that Marie Yavanovitch was surveilled before she was recalled as US Ambassador to Ukraine. Says while he suspected “much of what’s been reported will ultimately be proven wrong,” State is evaluating and investigating:
“We do everything we can to ensure that our officers, not only our ambassadors but our entire team, has the security level that’s appropriate... We will do everything we need to do to evaluate whether there was something that took place there...
"I suspect that much of what’s been reported will ultimately prove wrong, but our obligation... is to make sure that we evaluate, investigate. Any time there is someone who posits that there may have been a risk to one of our officers, we’ll obviously do that.”
A few points, after speaking to former senior State Department officials: Diplomatic Security takes all threats seriously, and apparently, DS and/or FBI agents visited Robert Hyde's home yesterday.
They are not allowed to talk about that investigation, especially as it concerns US citizen, until it gets to the point where an Assistant US Attorney actually agreed there was a case and launched one. But nobody is predicting is will get to that.
The former senior officials echoed @SecPompeo's skepticism: if there had been a real threat to Yavanovitch, Diplomatic Security would have changed her security posture before she was recalled, and she would have been recalled by a different person than she actually was.
One former senior official called Robert Hyde "moron." "'Surveillance' could be calling her phone and seeing if it’s on or not." Another: "If there were a real threat, they would have cut events, asked for additional help from Ukrainian security. No evidence any of that happened"
Which gets to their bottom line: the threat against Yavanovitch, according to these senior officials, was likely not a security one. It was, the whole time, a political threat.
All that said, the dozen former and current State Department officials I have spoke to all said they wished the statement made by @SecPompeo today had been made immediately after the story broke.
