Lee Smith
Tablet, July 23, 2023
“Malley must have shared something really bad with his Iranian associates because otherwise the Tehran Times account makes no sense.”
In late June, reports started circulating that White House heavy Robert Malley had been suspended from his job in the Joe Biden administration. That was surprising. Before he was pushed out, Malley had been seen as the visionary architect of the Democratic Party’s Middle East policy. He’d been Barack Obama’s conduit to Iran before Biden named him to do the same thing for his White House. For someone in his position to lose that job amid renewed talks with Iran was notable, but the most intriguing detail, hidden by the Biden team for months, was the reason why he was sidelined: He had reportedly mishandled classified documents.
So what was Malley doing that compelled the Bureau of Diplomatic Security to open an investigation on him before passing it to the FBI? Security clearances are a kind of currency in Washington and it’s unusual for a senior official to lose access to his colleagues’ secrets, especially a policymaker of Malley’s status. Had he been amassing boxes of documents in his home like former President Donald Trump? Had he taken classified documents from secure facilities and moved them to private work and residential spaces like Biden?
A large part of Malley’s work was to circulate information throughout the U.S.-based Iranian diaspora that eventually found its way to Tehran. According to Iran press reports that have foreign policy circles talking, those contacts are what got him in trouble. And the fact that the details about Malley’s suspension are coming from Iranian rather than U.S. media is a big clue that something big is missing from the White House’s highly minimized account.
At the beginning of July the Tehran Times, an Iranian regime English-language media outlet, published an article with insider details but no definite answer to the central mystery. According to the article, Malley’s clearance was suspended on April 21, two months before the news went public. Since then he’s met with CIA Director William Burns and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to try to resolve his situation but, according to the article, has not yet been granted an audience with Secretary of State (and high school classmate) Antony Blinken.
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