ENEMY OF THE STATE

A recurring post-Sept. 11 sidebar is criticism of the State Department for its kid-glove policies regarding Saudi Arabia, particularly the shocking Visa Express program and the failure to even politely object to the captivity of American women held against their will there by Saudi husbands or fathers. A persistent critic of these soft-touch policies is the high-spirited, conservative publication National Review and its dogged reporter Joel Mowbray.

It is Mr. Mowbray who exposed Visa Express, a little known program that allows Saudis (including, as it turned out, three of the Sept. 11 hijackers) entry into the United States without so much as a perfunctory interview, a revelation that caused considerable public and congressional ire. It is Mr. Mowbray who caught State fibbing to Congress early this month that Visa Express had been scrapped when, in fact, its name had merely been changed. And it is Mr. Mowbray who, after catching State fibbing again at a press conference last Friday about the internal rift over Son of Visa Express, was detained by armed guards for questioning about the sources of his (invariably correct) information.

State says Mr. Mowbray was not detained. It has yet, however, to come up with the term it prefers to describe an American citizen being prevented by four uniformed security personnel from leaving a public building in the nation’s capital and being subjected to a half-hour grilling by bureaucrats. Deferred egress, perhaps.

There is a bright side. Earlier last week, Mary Ryan, the nation’s longest-serving career diplomat, was pinned with the blame for Visa Express and fired in an attempt to mollify Congress as it considered revoking State’s visa-granting authority. This scapegoating, combined with the attempt to intimidate a reporter doing a good and perfectly legal job, suggests that the gloves are off and this get-tough approach has at least something to do with policies regarding Saudi Arabia.