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Michael McFaul, U.S. ambassador to Russia
The Obama administration has complained to Russia about harassment of the American ambassador to Moscow and will raise concerns about his security, a U.S. official said Friday.
The official said recent instances of anti-Americanism directed at Ambassador Michael McFaul had prompted the complaints to the Russian foreign ministry. The official added that McFaul has reported that his every move seems to be followed by crews from a government-controlled television station, prompting security concerns.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said the administration is taking the security concerns seriously and plans to raise them with the foreign ministry.
In a series of tweets on Thursday, the outspoken McFaul said he encounters crews from NTV, a government-controlled TV channel, wherever he goes and suggested that his email and phone calls may be being intercepted.
"Wonder who gives them my calendar? They wouldn't tell me. Wonder what the laws are here for such things?" he wrote.
In another, he asked, "Do they have a right to read my email and listen to my phone?"
A spokesman for NTV, which is owned by an arm of the state natural gas monopoly, said the presence of camera crews "is explained by a wide network of informers," according to the Interfax news agency.
NTV claims a lot of the footage it records is for no specific purpose, Maria Lipman, an expert at the Carnegie Endowment Moscow Center, told msnbc.com. It's possible that the footage of McFaul could end up in one of NTV's notorious documentaries, she said. A recent NTV documentary called "Anatomy of Protest" caused a stir after it showed footage of people allegedly receiving money to attend street protests against the rule of President-elect Vladimir Putin.
Lipman characterized the documentary as "sloppy journalism" and "very crass work."
Anti-American propaganda was rampant before the recent presidential elections, Lipman said, and it doesn't appear to have stopped after Putin was re-elected.
On Thursday, the station showed video of McFaul and its reporters verbally sparring as he arrived for a meeting with Lev Ponomarev, one of Russia's most prominent human rights activists. In the five-minute clip, the reporter peppers him with questions about his meeting, and after answering, McFaul complains about their following him.
US Ambassador Mike McFaul vents on Twitter about Russian media
"Your ambassador in our country goes around all the time without this sort of thing, not interfering in his work. You're with me everywhere, at home — it's interesting. Aren't you ashamed to be doing this? It's an insult to your country when you do this," McFaul said in Russian, smiling but clearly irritated.
At another point, McFaul says: "Every time I come here, it seems like a wild country. It's not normal."
When one journalist objected to that characterization, McFaul replied: "No, it's not normal. It doesn't happen with us, not in England, not in Germany, not in China -- only here and only with you."
On Friday, McFaul, a prolific Twitter user since he arrived in Moscow in January, tweeted that he had misspoken in bad Russian and did not mean to say Russia was "wild." Rather, he said he meant to say that the actions of NTV were "wild."
Then he engaged in a back and forth about the situation with a person whose Twitter handle is "prostitutkamila."
State Department officials on Thursday described McFaul's tweets as rhetorical and said they did not necessarily reflect formal concerns over surveillance by the Russian government or media.
"A rhetorical question, in and of itself, is not directed at anyone," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.
This is a challenge for the ambassador, but he is equipped to handle it, Lipman, who has known McFaul for about 20 years, told msnbc.com. "He's so familiar with Russia," she said, adding that McFaul is known to be open and friendly.
Lipman recalled the case of former British ambassador to Russia Tony Brenton, who served in this position from 2004 to 2008 and publicly spoke about the harassment he endured in Moscow.
"Occasionally the surveillance and harassment were merely funny, such as when a female colleague spotted a handsome man three times in the course of the same day before realizing this was the FSB (the KGB's successor) trailing her," Brenton wrote in 2011. "More often it ranged from the depressing to the actively nasty."
Brenton went on to describe being followed around by thugs in the Kremlin-backed youth movement Nashi and having his phone tapped.
"Should you get home to find the door to your flat unlocked from the inside, that's just the FSB letting you know they called," he wrote.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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The political elite in Russia consists of 90% ex-members of the Communist Party of USSR and 65% officers of the KGB or FSB. Accordingly, system which they created on the basis of decaying soviet socialism named “Chekism-Bolshevism” (“CheKa” is the first name of KGB from 1918). So, they are chekisty-bolsheviky.
CheKa-NKVD-MGB-KGB-FSB is an instrument of torture the people of Russia. With this sophisticated mechanism Russian elite was destroyed in 1917, 1937, 1954, and 60th years. The rest of the elites are squeezed out of the country or contained in an alcoholic anabiosis. While working in Kremlin chekisty-bolsheviky protect new social order - Chekism-Bolshevism. The Lustration Law should pass not only them but also all former members of the Communist Party. That’s why the KGB-FSB now protected without rules. They’re in panic like Nazi in 1945.
How they protected themselves today, in XXI century? Primitively, like Stalin with NKVD in the XX century. They killed opposition journalists, politics and economic leaders, for example Kholodov, Listyev, Litvinenko, Politkovskaya, Magnitsky. While Russia does not pass the crucible of lustration and purified from Chekism-Bolshevism, reforms will not work. The Germans drove the country through lustration twice: denazification in 1940th - 1950th and purification of communism in the 1990th.
Lustration is not the fight with specific concrete crimes. For this purposes there are laws. Lustration is a system of measures aimed at not a recurrence of these phenomena in future. But while USA, EU, Commonwealth are flirting with Putin and do not adopt the strongest Law of Magnitsky - the dictatorship of the chekisty-bolsheviky will flourish in Russia.
Europe and the U.S. will pay highest price of their weakness and indecision in politics against the dictatorship of the KGB, which eventually lead the world to World War III. On the establishment of Western countries fault lies as well as for the Munich Agreement in 1938 with Hitler. You can afford to flirt with Iraq or Iran for decades, North Korea or Cuba, Siria or Livia. But not with such a powerful actor in international geopolitics as Russia. Putin's KGB junta has long abandoned plans to wage war in its ordinary sense. They began a long-term economic sabotage war for global energy dominance. This is the secret weapon of Russia - its natural resources.
Of course, Putin will be forced under pressure from the West TEMPORARILY make concessions in order to legitimize his imperial ambitions. Chekisty-bolsheviky after elections 2011-2012 will be little relief in korruptsionomike. But in general, these antics will not affect the malignancy of perverted principle of society. In Russia, the policy defines an economy, in the rest of the world – economic is policymaker.
Russian democratic opposition can not afford to act in appropriate ways as KGB. This junta of chekisty-bolsheviky STOKE democracy and liberals in the blood, pushing them to the nationalists, drowns cynically manipulating information. Corruption and incompetence of officials as a phenomenon are the two biggest and most obvious threat to Russian national security. We are seeing in terms of currency flow from Russia, the number of departing into exile, and the shaft of man-made disasters. Falls civil and military aircrafts, space rockets and satellites, burn and explode nuclear submarine, bases and arms. Everything will clear up when the new authority of Russia will investigate with the help of the International Criminal Court crimes of chekisty-bolshevikys, committed last 20 years against the citizens of Russia and the world.
BUT before that time, world can be blown up with a Russian chemical and bacteriological weapons and nuclear missiles, including by accident.
The question of democracy in Russia today is self-preservation matter of the WHOLE PLANET, the World tomorrow. Think, gentlemen, with a strong social imperialism. YOUR tomorrow may never come! The sooner you accept the Law of Magnitsky in the EU, U.S. and Commonwealth - the faster you will protect yourself and your future!
We, Russian democratic opposition, are preparing a draft of Lustration Law. This Law will demand from the candidate to state or municipal office to open for public belonging to the Communist Party or the KGB-FSB. Citizens are entitled to know that their mayor, police chief, the Minister of Health, the school director or the Chief doctor of the hospital supported this ideology and promoted it. If they vote for him with such baggage - then it's a clear choice. The Germans after the WWII twenty years cleaned themselves from Nazism. After German unification in 1989 is still working Gauck Commission. If Yeltsin did not show cowardice, not afraid and then banned completely in the 1990s Communism and Chekism, we would not have NOW hemorrhoids with the dictatorship in Russia.
I’m not interested was my neighbor in past security officer, a Communist informer or "snitch". But for me is very important to know, the history teacher at the school of my children what would tell about the policies of Stalin and Putin! I need to know, the Minister of Culture “knocked” at the KGB or not. I need to know, the nurse in a kindergarten went to the “Komsomol bath” or not, etc.
We are preparing a draft of Lustration Law. When draft will be ready and published, I'll be glad to hear even the MOST unflattering comments. At present, the remaining members of the Communist Party in Russia, about 5 million We sure that in the power of about 1 million. They are 90% higher officials, 70% of federal civil servants, and 55-60% of municipal employees. We have a hard thankless job. But we do it!
The Art of Strategy is the ability to wait. After March 2012, when “the Iron Curtain” will only have a small hole, we'll find support of the millions. We are not in a hurry. We are building a NEW RUSSIA. Suppose that it is decades away.
Russia has the right to a civilization as well as all the countries. Our children and grandchildren need a “New life” in an evolutionary way - through work, respect, tolerance, equity and spirituality. Drive efficiency 100% (CPD 100%)!
Good Luck and God Bless You and your group.
Difficult to wrap your head around, but to move foward in a more concious direction requires listening to the ideas of others.
don't like it ... leave ... maybe tv, crews should follow ALL elected officials ... maybe that will end worldwide corruption
Why should he leave? It's his f*cking country. If he want's to fight to make it better, who are you to tell him not to? You are welcome to roll over on your back, belly up, and be the submissive little puppy. But don't expect the rest of us to.
Must suck to be an honest, intelligent Russian, living in Russia !
Maybe we should just hire Blackwater (or whatever they call themselves these days) to provide protection for the embassy and its staff in Moscow. They will simply shoot all the news vans that get too close.
This is Russia, not the occupied country of Iraq/Afghanistan. Not Blackwater allowed.
McFaul is a persona non grata. He should not poke his nose in somewhere he does not belong.
Do you understand what you just said here? You just showed your complete ignorance wrapped in big-a.. words.
Seems the US guy does not like getting the same treatment that the US government gives to the Russian and Chinese diplomats in Washington.
Have you been to Washington to see the reporters following around diplomats, Foreigner? I can assure you reporters in the U.S. are more worried about Beyonce than any diplomats. They wouldn't waste a second on them. It doesn't pay
Your comments shows niavety. We hope that Amb. McFaul is kept save!
"Your ambassador in our country goes around all the time without this sort of thing, not interfering in his work."
I don't think the Russian Ambassador in Washington would be meeting with dissidents like OWS or neo-Nazi militia groups in the US. An Ambassador is officially the accredited representative of their government,TO THE GOVERNMENT,of the host country. And is not supposed to be conspiring with opponents of that government. That's how you get Ambassador's kicked out,and relations broken off.The one's that should be complaining are the Russians to us. BTW a Russian poster on another thread after watching the video said what he said in Russian to the reporter was calling Russia a "savage country" not a wild country as he says. I'm sure that stupid remark made him just as popular with the Russian government as a Russian Ambassador would be here,if he said something like that about us.
deryl -638200 I think Uncle Bob 512 explained perfectly. If you behave like a criminal/spy you would be followed/harassed.
To Uncle Bob and romilio. He is not behaving like a criminal -- he is meeting with human rights activists, folks that no government is supposed to call dissidents. We have plenty of them here. Sometimes we like what they're doing, sometimes we don't. But they are not being branded as dissidents by the government and the media (be that Republican-supportive media, or Democrat-supporting media) is not harassing anybody who wants to be in contact with them.
Maybe Obama can get them to lay low until after the election.
In another, he asked, "Do they have a right to read my email and listen to my phone?"
Probably the same right the US has for reading anyones email and tapping phones. AKA: Patroit Act
America has the tradition to go after its interests with brute force if the opposing countries are weak, and with other dirty means involving the CIA & mountains of CASH in order to install the governments it can manipulate. Ambassadors are in the forefront to see that the agenda of WORLD DOMINATION is achieved by any means possible. As proud as they are in their tradition & culture do not expect the Russians to tow the line or accept the design of Imperial America. In a way we need countries like China & Russia to restrain America's madness to wage wars all over the world.
The majority of the time the madness to wage wars come when the people elected a pigbag to the oval office.
Countries like Russia, China, etc., one may only be able to appeal to their Demons, not their Angels.... they don't seem to have any left - they've kill them off.
Since at least the beginning of the Cold War, if not earlier, US officials screamed for the freedom of press in Russia at every opportune moment, and at many not so opportune moments, too. Finally it was achieved after the fall of Communism. But freedom of press is a double-edged sword, so McFaul should really not complain when such a freedom inconveniences him personally. Can one spell "hypocrisy"?
That doesn't seem to be a very diplomatic expression. But then, when the boss doesn't qualify for the job, so seem to be his underlings he picks. Apparently the job of community organizer in Chicago doesn't provide a lot of relevant experience in foreign diplomacy.
One thing is freedom of press, quite the other thing is freedom of government-controlled press, and yet another thing is when an ambassador of a foreign country is being harassed with government-controlled press. And, BTW, the country is wild and what they are doing over there is not normal. Perhaps, the Ambassador should have made a better choice of words for expressing his irritation, but on the general content I'm with him.
fear brings control.
This is to be expected from the Russian Nashi Part. I say bring him home and cut off all politcal ties with them.
Doe Know "cut off all political ties with them", then half of the supplies to Afghanistan are going to flow through which country smarty pants?
If we're going to befriend anybody in that neck of the woods it should be Russia,not China.Let's court them awhile .I bet most of us would rather have cheap russian crap than chinese
McFaul is a cocky snobish fool who is trying to patronize and teach Russia a democracy.So he is getiing treatment he triggered and deserved.Russians hate cocky idiots, you know, the same way americans do
@Nirbijan nirvichara. Do you know Mr. Ambassador personally do make such statements? Do you think he's acting totally in a vacuum and isolated from the rest of the State Department? He is doing his job and since the State Department found him qualified for the job, let's assume he is, and he is better at it than any of us would have been. He is not on his own over there -- he is our country on the Russian soil and should only be viewed as such, not as an individual. The treatment he receives reflects Russian sentiment towards our country -- I would be very careful endorsing it as something we deserve.