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Just as troubling were statements made by Freeman through the years that call into question his values, judgments and biases.

There were reports of statements that were construed as arguing that China had failed to crack down hard enough on the demonstrators at Tiananmen Square. Freeman claims these were taken out of context. You can decide for yourself. Here is a comment (web site) in an email he reportedly sent out to members of the China Security Listserv on China and the crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989:

"I find the dominant view in China about this very plausible, i.e. that the truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud, rather than―as would have been both wise and efficacious―to intervene with force when all other measures had failed to restore domestic tranquility to Beijing and other major urban centers in China."

In case it's still not clear whether he is talking about his own view, he added this:

"For myself, I side on this―if not on numerous other issues―with Gen. Douglas MacArthur. I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be."

According to the Washington Times, Freeman wouldn't confirm or deny that he wrote the email, but he seemed to confirm it when Fareed Zakaria raised this issue on his show on CNN after Freeman's appointment was withdrawn. Freeman used the taken-out-of-context defense:

ZAKARIA: What about China? One of the statements of yours that people bring up is a statement that you made about Tiananmen Square, in which it sounded like you were saying that the Beijing government was doing the right thing.

FREEMAN: The statement that was circulated omitted the first part of the sentence, which was the subject of the sentence, which was "the predominant view in China." Meaning that I was describing the dominant view of the Chinese leadership after they had conducted an after-action review of the whole event. And their...

ZAKARIA: Not―in other words, not your own views, but the views of the Chinese government.

FREEMAN: Exactly. And that, of course, I don't think very many in the China field would dispute that. That is, a weak and divided and indecisive Chinese government in 1989 allowed demonstrators to occupy the center of their government facilities and to disrupt the normal functioning of government for five or six weeks, while they dithered. And the result of this was, they believe, that it made a bloody outcome almost inevitable. And the setback to reform that that caused was also an inevitable consequence of this.

But in the end, what garnered most of the attention was the issue of Israel, and the so-called Israel Lobby. Caroline Glick dissected this part of the story in her column (web site) in the Jerusalem Post. She documented that the Washington Post and the New York Times deliberately avoided writing about the controversy surrounding Freeman's appointment until his name was withdrawn. The Washington Post acknowledged that it chose to stay out of the controversy. So what had Freeman said? For one thing he blamed U.S. ties with Israel for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. "We have paid heavily and often in treasure for our unflinching support and unstinting subsidies of Israel's approach to managing its relations with the Arabs," said Freeman in 2006. "Five years ago, we began to pay with the blood of our citizens here at home."

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