U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic Andrew Schapiro has become the latest American envoy to find himself or herself at odds with foreign leaders over pushy interventionist comments and activities not commensurate with their diplomatic status.
Czech President Milos Zeman banned Schapiro from Prague Castle, the official residence of the Czech president, over undiplomatic comments made about the president’s trip to Moscow to attend the May 9 anniversary of Victory Day over Nazi Germany. The Moscow ceremony, featuring a military parade in which the soldiers of 11 nations will march, is the 70th commemoration of the Allied defeat of Adolf Hitler’s forces. Schapiro said that Zeman’s presence in Moscow would be “awkward” since he would not be adhering to a NATO boycott of the ceremony in Russia over Ukraine.
Zeman angrily responded with the following: “I can’t imagine the Czech ambassador in Washington would give advice to the American president where to travel . . . I won’t let any ambassador have a say about my foreign travels.”
For a Jewish American ambassador like Schapiro to urge leaders not to participate in an event celebrating the Allied victory over Nazism is yet additional proof of the close ties that many American Jewish leaders have to reactionary rightist forces, whether they are neo-Nazi mercenary battalions fighting for the Kiev regime or George Soros-funded politicians in Eastern Europe who want to ignore Russia’s role in defeating the Nazis. Schapiro, a Chicago attorney, was a campaign “bundler” for Barack Obama and whose mother, Raya Schapiro, was a survivor of the Holocaust. Her son is now engaged in historical revisionism by erasing from the historical record the role of Russia in defeating Nazi Germany. Schapiro also served on the Harvard Law Review with Obama and he was a partner of the Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan law firm where he represented casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and the Philip Morris tobacco company.
Schapiro is not alone in being singled out by European countries for intervention in the domestic affairs of the countries to which they are posted. U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt and his State Department bureau supervisor, Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, took part in the Kiev protests that resulted in the overthrow of that nation’s democratically-elected government and its replacement by a regime that includes neo-Nazis and U.S. citizens. Pyatt and Nuland even handed out pastries to protesters in Kiev’s Central Square.
U.S. Ambassador Jess Baily has been accused by the Macedonian government of working with his British counterpart in Skopje to attempt a Ukrainian-style coup d’état in the country by trying to have the democratically-elected government of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski resign and have the pro-U.S. opposition leader Zoran Zaev participate in forming a new government under European Union supervision. To help coup plans along, Baily arranged for National Security Agency FIVE EYES wiretapped conversations among government officials, including Gruevski, to be leaked to Zaev and the pro-U.S. media in Macedonia. The U.S. wants to remove Macedonia as a transit nation for Russia’s Turkish Stream pipeline that will bring natural gas to Hungary via Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, and Serbia.
Schapiro, Pyatt, and Baily represent a string of U.S. interventionist ambassadors who have introduced a lack of tact and diplomacy to U.S. embassies around the world. In the late 1990s, the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, Donna Hrinak,. was chastised by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for criticizing Venezuela’s foreign policy. After Hrinak personally upbraided Chavez for condemning a U.S. cruise missile attack on Afghanistan, Chavez told her, “You are talking to the head of state. Regarding your position, you do not behave in a proper way, please, leave the room now.”
In 2002, U.S. ambassador in Caracas Charles Shapiro was caught providing assistance to coup plotters, including a number of Zionist businessmen, who unsuccessfully attempted to oust Chavez in a coup. Shapiro’s successor, William Brownfield, was discovered to be providing funding for secessionists in the oil-rich state of Zulia. Patrick Duddy, who succeeded Brownfield, was found to be supporting the theft of the 2008 presidential election by Chavez opponents. When U.S. ambassador to Bolivia Philip Goldberg was expelled from La Paz by Bolivian President Evo Morales, for supporting coup plotters and secessionists in four Bolivian provinces, Chavez gave Duddy 48 hours to pack up and leave Venezuela. Upon leaving Bolivia, Goldberg issued a veiled threat to Morales, saying that the expulsion would have “serious consequences of several sorts.”
While Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul irritated the Russian government by allowing Russian opposition leaders from neo-fascist politician Alexei Navalny to various LGBT activists to use the U.S. embassy as a conference center in the heart of Moscow.
There was a time when such undiplomatic behavior by U.S. ambassadors were the exception rather than the rule. In 1969, Richard Nixon’s ambassador to Jamaica, wealthy New York businessman Vincent de Roulet, a college roommate of Nixon aide Bob Haldeman, arrived in Kingston with his 90-foot yacht, herd of race horses, and wife—Lorinda Whitney de Roulet—a member of the wealthy Whitney family of New York and owner of the New York Mets. The history books claim that de Roulet was expelled by Prime Minister Michael Manley for interfering in the socialist policies of the Jamaican government, including plans to nationalize the bauxite industry. It was not exactly the case. De Roulet had ordered the restrooms located in the embassy’s lobby to be closed to Jamaicans, including U.S. visa applicants, because he said, “These niggers come into the embassy to take a shit,” adding, “Jamaicans take pleasure in flooding our toilets.” De Roulet was a trustee of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System. His son now serves as chairman of the board of the hospital system. Today’s U.S. ambassadors are not that far removed from the untactful and vile de Roulet.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2015 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
