State Department impugns critics. (Insider Report).

Stung by criticism that the department's visa system facilitated the infiltration of our nation by al-Qaeda terrorists, State Department consulate personnel circulated e-mails denouncing their critics as "neo-Nazis." The missives were prompted by the firing of Consular Affairs chief Mary Ryan, and focused particularly on Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) and other congressional critics of the State Department.

"We assume Mary's replacement will not be a career officer with a balanced approach but a neo-Nazi who views us as incompetent or criminal," sneered consular official Colombia A. Barrosse in one e-message. In another, Chuck Keil, consul general in Rome, insisted that the furor over the department's visa policies "smacks of the days of Senator Joe McCarthy, when a witch hunt conducted in the name of protecting Americans from the communist menace ruined the careers of Foreign Service Officers who had allegedly lost China to the Reds, or else helped Communist and Communist sympathizers obtain visas to enter the United States." After the July 18th Washington Times publicized the e-mails, Keil announced his immediate retirement.

Keil may have a point, but it's not the one he intended. Senator McCarthy's findings regarding Communist subversion in the federal government have been vindicated in every particular. In fact, recent revelations from Soviet and U.S. archives illustrate that the senator's supposedly irresponsible charges regarding the extent of internal subversion were entirely too modest.