U.S. President George has just dropped this notice:
The President intends to nominate Carol A. Rodley, of Virginia, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Kingdom of Cambodia. Ms. Rodley, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, currently serves as a Faculty Advisor at the Foreign Service Institute. Prior to this, she served as Counselor for Political Military Affairs at the United States Embassy in Afghanistan. Earlier in her career she served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research. Ms. Rodley received her bachelor’s degree from Smith College.
People with more experience than I can read this sort of language easily. Not me – I have to actually try and figure it out. So, who is Carol Rodley? Most immediately, Carol Rodley used to be the Deputy Chief of Mission for the US Embassy in Cambodia, from 1997-2000. Her official (out of date) biography page says she speaks Khmer. Those might be good things.
According to the Australian Broadcasting Service, she’s a “senior spy.” Hmm. That’s not positive.
According to Hon. Arthur Chesterfield-Evans, stated in the Parliament of New South Wales, Carol Rodley is not only a “senior spy,” but has been serving
as the head of the USA State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. That department is the spy agency for America’s diplomats. She has access to America’s most tightly guarded secrets about Al Qaeda and the global war on terror. Ms Rodley’s job will involve liaising with Australian intelligence and law enforcement officers on terrorist threats in Asia and to Australia. She is part of the inner circle of Washington’s top spies, which includes the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte.
Hmm…That’s not positive either. Other sources point out that Rodley has been influential in determining the intelligence and counter-insurgency policies of the United States since September 11, 2001. She led a group and gave testimony to Congress on putting together a “Team Al-Qaida.” In a 2005 US National Intelligence Estimate (what the US uses to determine whether or not to go to war, e.g.) on Iran’s potential for developing nuclear weaponry, Rodley not only joined in the alarm-raising, but one-upped her fellows, by insisting that not knowing that Iran didn’t have nuclear weapons was, in effect, a victory for Iran:
MS. RODLEY: I don’t disagree with anything that’s been said. I would merely add that another element that makes this harder to get at is the advantage of ambiguity when it comes to nuclear programs. The Iranians don’t necessarily have to have a successful nuclear program in order to have the deterrent value. They merely have to convince us, others and their neighbors that they do. This is a lesson that hasn’t been lost on them, and it merely complicates both the collection and the analysis on this issue.
That’s precisely the sort of thinking that got us into Iraq, right? In a separate Intelligence briefing (largely a response to the hugely critical 9/11 commission) in which she assisted John Negroponte, these statements on Southeast Asia were made:
Jemaah Islamiya (JI) is a well-organized group responsible for dozens of attacks killing hundreds of people in Southeast Asia. The threat of a JI attack against U.S. interests is greatest in Southeast Asia, but we assess that the group is committed to helping al-Qa’ida with attacks outside the region.
and,
SOUTHEAST ASIA
Southeast Asia includes vibrant, diverse, and emerging democracies looking to the United States as a source of stability, wealth, and leadership. But it is also home to terrorism, separatist aspirations, crushing poverty, ethnic violence, and religious divisions. Burma remains a dictatorship, and Cambodia is retreating from progress on democracy and human rights made in the 1990s. The region is particularly at risk from avian flu, which I will discuss at greater length in a moment. Al-Qa’ida-affiliated and other extremist groups are present in many countries, although effective government policies have limited their growth and impact.
The prospects for democratic consolidation are relatively bright in Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population. President Yudhoyono is moving forward to crack down on corruption, professionalize the military, bring peace to the long-troubled province of Aceh, and implement economic reforms. On the counterterrorism side, Indonesian authorities have detained or killed significant elements of Jemaah Islamiya (JI), the al Qa’ida-linked terrorist group, but JI remains a tough foe.
The Philippines remains committed to democracy despite political turbulence over alleged cheating in the 2004 election and repeated rumors of coup plots. Meanwhile, Manila continues to struggle with the thirty-five year old Islamic and Communist rebellions, and faces growing concerns over the presence of JI terrorists in the south.
Thailand is searching for a formula to contain violence instigated by ethnic-Malay Muslim separatist groups in the far southern provinces. In 2005, the separatists showed signs of stronger organization and more lethal and brutal tactics targeting the government and Buddhist population in the south.
Oh no. That’s not good at all. And given Mussomeli’s speech in Washington against the increasing tide of Islamic radicalism among Cambodia’s Cham muslims, I think we can safely assume that her posting to Cambodia is part and parcel of her life in the last eight years – as a spy devoted to counterintelligence and counterinsurgency. Cambodia’s Chams had better get ready for a whole new level of surveillance, methinks.
I wasn’t in Cambodia from 1997-2000: but I KNOW some people occasionally read this blog who were, or who at least know an awful lot about her. Please speak your minds, either anonymously, or in the full light of day, in the comments (for extra anonymity, send it to me via email at erik.w.davis [at] gmail.com and I will strip identifying information before posting). Is she going to be good for Cambodia? Is the spy stuff even relevant to what her work will be like in Cambodia? What’s the what, y’all?
That statement about Iran and nukes is pretty uncontroversial and incontrovertible if you ask me, and actually should have exactly the opposite effect to the one you’re implying. Your implication is that she’s adding to the drumbeat for war with Iran. What she actually said is that since it is in Iran’s interest for everyone to think they have nukes, that any evidence that they might have nukes (including powerpoints presented by people like Colin Powell) must be taken with an bigger grain of salt than one would normally apply to intelligence findings. In other words:
Also note that INR (the spy agency in question) is a consumer of intelligence generated by other agencies and (contrary to Australian tabloid reporting) not a spy agency in and of itself. It has no assets. And if you Google the INR during her tenure you’ll find that they were right-er about almost everything than all the other agencies involved.
Two cents from someone who knows less than nothing about Cambodia.
Hi Anonymous, I think you may be right on that quote: reading it by itself certainly could give that impression. My implication (which you read correctly) was informed by the context of the statement as much as by the statement itself. Anyway, I’m hardly devoted to the idea that Carol Rodley is a ‘baddy’ for Cambodia – indeed, I hope that she’ll be great. On the other hand, I *am* concerned by the things I’m seeing here, and the timing of her appointment right after Amb. Mussomeli’s statement about foreign extremists funding Chams. Thanks for the input!
How much of Mussomeli’s parting statement do you think is him, and how much is simple repetition of official US policy which, as we all know is completely unhinged vis-a-vis Islamic extremism at the moment? I don’t find any references to him anywhere, and his bio paints a picture of a standard FSO who states official policy at the appropriate moments. Especially in this administration, but equally so in almost all Republican administrations, the professional State Department is viewed as a bastion of liberalism and thus kept on an extremely short leash when it’s not being ignored entirely.
I would think that, from a Cambodians perspective, the really important distinction between the types of ambassadors you can get is between pure political appointees (crackpot Republican millionaires) and career diplomats. Rodley’s a career dip.
@anonymous: That’s a good set of questions/points, and I’m not sure I have good answers to them. My sense of Mussomeli is that he’s pretty much a tool – a career diplomat. On the other hand, he’s much less culturally sensitive and appropriate than the former ambassador, Charles Ray, who had a longer history in the region, and seemed personally inclined to do good work. I don’t hear a lot of positive scuttlebutt on Mussomeli. He’s also much more aggressive – in my impression – than Ray was, in terms of trumpeting and beating local heads with administration rhetoric.
Rodley seems like a combination of the two, on paper – she has a longer history in the region, and is supposed to speak some Khmer (we’ll see, I suppose), which I take as a good sign. On the other hand, even as a career diplomat, her specific offices have been pretty disturbingly ‘dark-side,’ in my opinion.
As for Mussomeli’s comments on Islamic terror groups, I can’t say with any certainty at all whether that was him running his big mouth, or something he was told to put out there in the media world just prior to appointing Rodley, whose most recent posts are specifically targeted to terrorism issues. The coincidence made me suspicious.
Should be an interesting change, regardless.
This is interesting blog to read. I don’t know much about Charles Ray, but heard alots good about Mussomeli. He have done a good job for the poor. He traveled from place to place to see and speak out for the people of Cambodia. However, he more likely working for Hun Sen instead of for US government. Hope Carol Rodley do better in improving demoncratic in Cambodia and speak out more for the poor of Cambodia people.
@anonymous KHMER: Thanks so much for contributing to this conversation. I share your hopes. I would be grateful if you’d be willing to take a moment and tell me what positive things Mussomeli has done for the poor in Cambodia: I have no wish to misrepresent him, but my own perception of him has been that he has acted like a complete tool of American economic and political interests, and had no genuine interest in the realities of poor Cambodians. I also wonder what you mean by him working for Hun Sen?
I’d love to hear more. Best,
Erik