State Department Defends Right of U.S. Citizens to Criticize Government

The State Department today firmly defended the right of American citizens to criticize and question policies of their government and of foreign governments to brief their diplomatic representatives here on those governments’ policies. The matter arose when reporters raised questions at the State Department about the legality of Israeli officials and Americans sympathetic to Israel to criticize the Carter Administration’s Middle East policies.

Assistant Secretary of State Hodding Carter, the Department’s chief spokesman, declared that foreign governments have a right to inform their representatives of their positions and Americans can take whatever view they like about a government’s policy. Carter said he was expecting questions relating to the Logan Act which concerns the representation by American citizens of a foreign government.

One reporter asked whether the U.S. government would protest to Israel over the “activities” of Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan which included a meeting with 24 Israeli Consular officials purportedly to “map strategy” to block the Carter policy. Hodding Carter replied that what Dayan has done with Israeli officials here are “after all” within “his province.” He added, “It is not the first time in history that an official explained in full” his government’s policy to its representatives “so that they might make it publicly evident.”

When the reporter referred to visits Dayan is to make to several American cities accompanied by Rabbi Alexander Schindler, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the State Department spokesman replied: “American citizens have a right to oppose, support or be neutral about any policy of this government. If their views happen to coincide with somebody else then it happens to coincide. I would not suggest any American has to endorse wholeheartedly what obviously is correct and good policy enunciated by this Administration.”