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The recent appointment and ultimate withdrawal of Chas Freeman to head the National Intelligence Council has exposed much that is wrong with President Barack Obama's first months in office, both in terms of policy and vetting, as well as the media coverage surrounding both. Many of Obama's supporters said it was unfair to criticize Obama's associations with people like the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers and the anti-Semitic preacher of hate, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and called it guilt by association. It is now becoming clearer why those sorts of associations matter.

On February 26, Chas W. Freeman Jr. was named by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair as the Obama administration's choice to head the Council, which has the job of filtering the intelligence from 16 agencies and presenting it to the President. Though Freeman had been ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, and had clearly seen intelligence reports and provided information for them, he had never actually worked in an intelligence agency, according to reports.

It turned out that the nomination was highly controversial. As pointed out in an article (web site)by Eli Lake of the Washington Times, which did the most aggressive reporting on this story of any major newspaper, Freeman has been involved in a number of activities with financial ties to China and Saudi Arabia. There were several issues that might have emerged if the White House had properly vetted Freeman. But a spokesperson for Mr. Blair's office said that Freeman was named without prior White House approval, and without being asked to provide financial documents that are standard for such high level appointments. With this White House's brief and messy history of vetting―of Tom Daschle, Bill Richardson, Nancy Killefer, Hillary Clinton and Timothy Geithner―it is not clear whether or not vetting would have made any difference. Vetting includes examining past indiscretions and potential conflicts of interest. It has been a huge failure of the early months of the Obama presidency.

Among the concerns was Freeman's position on the board of international advisers for the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC). According to Lake, he joined the board in 2004, a year before its unsuccessful attempt to purchase Unocal, a U.S. energy company. "The Chinese government and other state-owned companies own a majority stake in the concern," said Lake, "which has invested in Sudan and other countries sometimes at odds with the United States, including Iran." CNOOC was investigated by the U.S. State Department for a possible violation of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act in late 2007, for its agreement to develop a large gas field in Iran.

And Mr. Freeman was the president of the nonprofit group Middle East Policy Council (MEPC) up until his appointment. He was paid $87,000 by them in 2006. The MEPC has received at least $1 million from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. These financial connections raised the possibilities of financial and political conflicts of interest, which could have called into question the judgments provided to the President, or require Freeman to recuse himself on important issues.

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