Muzzle Slapped On Diplomat -- Ambassador To Iraq Is Scapegoat For U.S. Policy Failure, Officials Say

WASHINGTON - When April Glaspie was named U.S. ambassador to Iraq in 1987, she was, it seemed, a rising diplomatic star. Only 45 and one of a handful of U.S. experts on the Arab world, she was the first woman to head a U.S. embassy in the Middle East.

Today, Glaspie is a bureaucratic nonperson. Although the State Department maintains she is handling important special assignments, Glaspie is effectively being held incommunicado - forbidden to talk to the media and Congress.

The ambassador's dramatic slide began last July 27 when, according to an Iraqi transcript that leaked out later, she told Iraqi President Saddam Hussein the United States would not take a position in the growing border dispute between Iraq and Kuwait.

Less than a week later, Saddam's troops poured across that border and swallowed up Kuwait.

Glaspie's friends insist the transcript was garbled and inaccurate, and it is disputed by a report that Glaspie herself sent to Washington within hours of her meeting with Saddam. But the State Department has refused to set the record straight.

One knowledgeable government official says the main reason the department decided not to put out Glaspie's version of the meeting was that it hoped to avert recriminations and to focus on what the allies were doing to end Iraq's aggression.

``She suffered because of that decision,'' the official says.

But former diplomats generally agree that Glaspie is being made a scapegoat for the failure of the White House and the State Department to understand Saddam's intentions and then take steps to deter him before Iraqi tanks rolled into Kuwait on Aug. 2.

If Washington's relationship with Iraq smacked of appeasement before the invasion, they argue, the fault should lie with top policy-makers, not the ambassador.

``When things get too uncomfortable for the secretary (of state) or the president, then somebody must be hung out there,'' one former ambassador says. ``When you become an ambassador, this can happen to you. . . .''

Indeed, even if the Iraqi transcript proves to be totally accurate, Glaspie's defenders argue, the ambassador would have been merely repeating U.S. policy.

In the context of the transcript, Glaspie's reported statement was designed to signal only that the United States would not take sides in an inter-Arab dispute over a few square miles of territory.

It could hardly be read to indicate that the United States was giving a green light to an Iraqi plan to seize Kuwait, they say.

For Glaspie to have done anything more - say, by threatening a U.S. military response should Iraq use force against Kuwait - would have been unthinkable, they contend. President Bush had not yet decided whether he would send troops or, if he had, he had not yet told U.S. diplomats of his decision.

Further, Glaspie's meeting with Saddam followed years in which the United States had sought to improve its relationship with Iraq despite Saddam's ambition.

A former high-ranking State Department official says the department received Glaspie's report of her meeting with Saddam about five days before the invasion - leaving the administration time to correct any mistake or confusion.

By now it seems clear that Saddam was so determined to invade Kuwait that even forceful words from a U.S. ambassador would not have dissuaded him.

``If Saddam Hussein . . . intended to invade Kuwait thinking that we would not interfere, then nothing she could have said would have made any difference,'' says Robert Neumann, director of Middle East Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

A 1963 graduate of Mills College in Oakland, Calif., Glaspie joined the Foreign Service in 1966 after receiving a master's degree from Johns Hopkins University.

Before her appointment as ambassador to Iraq, Glaspie served in a variety of key jobs including a brief stint as a special envoy, during which she helped negotiate a halt to Lebanon's civil war.

``April is a thoroughly decent person - well-liked and respected, especially among people who are familiar with the area,'' an administration official says. But he said Glaspie's career is on hold.

``Another ambassadorial post would involve congressional testimony,'' the official notes. ``Probably, at least for the time being, there is a desire to keep her away from the Congress. They don't want to get involved in that discussion about what led up to Aug. 2.''

Secretary of State James Baker last fall dismissed as ``ludicrous'' the suggestion that the United States invited Iraqi aggression, and he condemned as ``retroactive scapegoating'' speculation that Glaspie had contributed to the move.

But when questions focused on Baker's policy, the secretary seemed to distance himself from Glaspie.

``What you want me to do is say that those instructions (to Glaspie) were sent specifically by me on my specific orders,'' Baker said. ``There are probably 312,000 or so cables that go out under my name.''

Theodore Wilkinson, president of the American Foreign Service Association, concedes that Baker's comment was ``off-putting'' but says he does not believe Glaspie will be seen as a scapegoat.

``April Glaspie was carrying out orders at all times and did not depart at any time from official policy and therefore doesn't deserve blame any more than any other senior official,'' he says.

William Quandt, the National Security Council's Middle East expert during the Carter administration, says Glaspie is ``getting a bad rap, and she has not been in a position to respond to this because she is a disciplined Foreign Service officer and she can't talk much.

``There was a breakdown in policy - that seems clear,'' Quandt says. ``There was an inclination to let someone take the blame for this and no one came to her defense. I can't say why. I would have expected the State Department to say that the transcript is not accurate.''