In the New York Sun, Eli Lake covers critical reaction to the State Department’s decision to grant a visa to former President of Iran Muhammad Khatami. I called the State Department to ask a few follow-up questions relating to State’s “press guidance” that we posted yesterday. When the State Department press officer returned my call, she told me that she could not say anything beyond the uninformative comments made over the past few days in the department’s regular press briefings (here and here).
I told her that I had a few questions based on the department’s press guidance document. She told me that the press guidance was not a public document and repeated that she could not say anything beyond what had been said in the press briefings. I asked her for her name, having missed it when she introduced herself at the beginning of the call (she was returning my call pursuant to State Department procedure). She declined to give me her name again and said she wouldn’t say anything more.
UPDATE: Don’t miss the utterly on-target comment by our friend Hugh Hewitt: “Cancel the visa.”
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