Conor Clarke ran into Chas Freeman on the 42 bus this morning:

I introduced myself and told him I was sorry that he resigned. He recoiled only slightly when I mentioned I worked for the Atlantic, then smiled broadly. “Shit happens.” He added a little wistfully: “I wasn’t so eager to go back to the government, anyway.”

I asked him what he thought of his critics. “I don’t pay much attention to the blogosphere. But I did read Jim Fallows. Fallows actually seemed to have read what I said.”

The woman next to me suddenly pieced it together. “Now I know who you are!” She hesitated for a second. “I still disagree with you.” Others on the bus started to look confused, even a little worried.

Freeman smiled again, and laughed. “I guess now I’m a notorious personality.” He went back to reading his novel. A few stops later, he got off the bus.

And, indeed, shit does happen.

Chas Freeman is withdrawing himself from consideration for the National Intelligence Council job. Chinese human rights activists everywhere are now high-fiving.

Another good post from James Fallows on the Chas Freeman issue. A taste:

The two people whose views I quote below have absolutely unquestionable standing to speak on this subject. One is Sidney Rittenberg, who first went to China with the US Army in 1945 and end up spending 35 years there, 16 of them in solitary confinement for alleged espionage and disloyalty to the Mao regime. The other is Jerome A. Cohen, of NYU Law School and Paul Weiss, who has been tireless in his efforts for legal reform in China and was instrumental in freeing John Downey, who had been held in Chinese prison for two decades after the Korean War.

Both of them strongly support the expansion of individual liberties and civil society in China. Both of them strongly support Chas Freeman and his candidacy for his now-disupted job.

You’ll have to click the link to read the actual letters. Then see Josh Marshall on this. Josh has personal beef with Freeman over an unrelated issue that led Freeman to tag him as a purveyor of “slime journalism.” But also says that “the whole effort strikes me as little more than a thuggish effort to keep the already too-constricted terms of debate over the Middle East and Israel/Palestine locked down and largely one-sided.” You can see Andrew Sullivan’s timeline for more on this.

Meanwhile, Ezra Klein observes that whether or not Freeman gets the job in the end, the message has been sent:

But for Freeman’s detractors, a loss might still be a win. As Sullivan and others have documented, the controversy over Freeman is fundamentally a question of his views on Israel. Barring a bad report from the inspector general, Chas Freeman will survive and serve. But only because his appointment doesn’t require Senate confirmation. Few, however, will want to follow where he led. Freeman’s career will likely top out at Director of the NIC. That’s not a bad summit by any means. But for ambitious foreign policy thinkers who might one day aspire to serve in a confirmed capacity, the lesson is clear: Israel is off-limits. And so, paradoxically, the freethinking Freeman’s appointment might do quite a bit to silence foreign policy dissenters who want to succeed in Washington.

Still, I would say that would-be government officials have already internalized the lesson that drawing outside the lines on the Arab-Israeli conflict is not the way to get jobs. But the Obama administration has already put in place quite a few officials—James Jones, Samantha Power, George Mitchell—who didn’t exactly come with the kosher stamp of approval.

James Fallows has a characteristically judicious take on the Chas Freeman situation:

Again, I don’t know Freeman personally. I don’t know whether the Saudi funding for his organization has been entirely seemly (like that for most Presidential libraries), which is now the subject of inspector-general investigation. If there’s a problem there, there’s a problem. [...] So to the extent this argument is shaping up as a banishment of Freeman for rash or unorthodox views, I instinctively take Freeman’s side — even when I disagree with him on specifics. This job calls for originality, and originality brings risks. Chas Freeman is not going to have his finger on any button. He is going to help raise all the questions that the person with his finger on the button should be aware of.

To offer another word, I think it’s fair that people who don’t like Freeman’s views on Israel are going after him with the kitchen sink—comments about China, vague allegations of financial improprieties, etc. Politics ain’t beanbag and you go after your enemies with what you can find. But the habit of turning around and acting indignant when people point out that what’s motivating this fight is Freeman’s views on Israel is really pretty silly. When you hear that indicted former AIPAC director Steve Rosen, The New Republic, Commentary, Eli Lake, and Chuck Schumer are spearheading opposition to something you don’t say to yourself “they must be concerned about the human rights situation in China!” This is an organization dedicated to human rights in China and this is a good government group, and they don’t seem very interested one way or another in Freeman. You don’t need to read the minds of the individual members of the anti-Freeman coalition, or question the sincerity of any individual person’s statements on any particular issue, to see that Israel is what’s driving and uniting the coalition as a whole.

Chas Freeman, designated head of the National Intelligence Council, has all the right enemies. And his enemies are going after him because they don’t like the fact that he’s criticized Israel in strong terms in the past. But that said, just because his enemies are bad people delving into his financial ties to China and Saudi Arabia in bad faith doesn’t mean that his enemies don’t have the goods. Apparently there’s going to be an independent Inspector General looking into some of the financing behind the Middle East Policy Council and Freeman’s service on the board of a Chinese oil company. I’m not thrilled to see things take this turn, but at the same time I don’t think this is the hill I want to die on. Randy Scheunemann’s foreign lobbying was a problem, the lack of transparency around the Clinton Global Initiative’s finances was a problem, and I think it’s legitimate to see problems in Freeman’s relationships, too.

The flipside is that you have Jamie Kirchick persecuting Freeman in bad faith while deeming it “contemptible” to have raised questions about Scheunemann. Ultimately, if Freeman goes down it won’t, unfortunately, be because a brave new era of good government and clean dealings has arisen; it’ll be a politically motivated neocon hit job. But as I say, if they have the goods they have the goods.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was clearly reluctant to answer David Gregory’s question about the contrasting leadership styles between President Bush and President Obama. But when pressed he explained that Obama is “more analytical” and goes further out of his way to hear from diverse viewpoints:

GATES: I think that probably President Obama is somewhat more analytical, and he makes sure he hears from everybody in the room on an issue. And if they don’t speak up, he calls on them.

Q: A marked difference from his predecessor?

GATES: President Bush was interested in hearing different points of view but didn’t go out of his way to make sure everybody spoke if they hadn’t spoken up before.

This is a reminder of a point that I think’s been difficult to fully articulate in the Chas Freeman debate. I think there’s truth to the criticisms of Freeman’s hard-bitten strain of realpolitik. But no administration is monolithic, and given the disastrous consequences of our 2002-2006 flirtation with total irrealism I don’t think it’s a bad idea at all to have some Freeman-style ballast on the ship. If Obama seemed to be assembling an entire administration that was unconcerned with human rights abroad, that would be another thing, but that’s not what’s happening here.

Ben Smith reports that congress has been officially notified that Chas Freeman now chairs the National Intelligence Committee, thus indicating that the effort by Israel hawks to spike his nomination has definitively failed.

I doubt Freeman will be making any particularly crucial contributions to Israel policy. But, like the brushoff of the earlier, less-vigorous, campaign against George Mitchell, it’s an indication of where the administration’s head is politically—not that scared of Steve Rosen and Marty Peretz.