(AP) A career U.S. diplomat indicted this week for sending threatening messages to an Arab political organization has retired from the foreign service, the State Department said Thursday.
Patrick Syring retired last month, about a year after he allegedly left racist and intimidating phone and e-mail messages with the Arab American Institute, but before his Wednesday indictment on federal charges of threatening and violating civil rights laws, spokesman Sean McCormack said.
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It was not clear if Syring’s resignation was related to the incidents with which he is charged, which are alleged to have occurred last summer during Israeli military strikes on the militant Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.
Federal prosecutors charged in an indictment that Syring had left multiple expletive-laced messages with the Arab American Institute whose founder, James Zogby, had criticized the government for not doing enough to protect U.S. citizens visiting family members in Lebanon.
“The only good Lebanese is a dead Lebanese. The only good Arab is a dead Arab,” Syring is alleged to have said, accusing Zogby of being anti-Semitic, prosecutors said.
“You wicked evil Hezbollah-supporting Arabs should burn in the fires of hell for eternity and beyond,” Syring wrote in one e-mail, according to the prosecutors. “The United States would be safer without you.”
Syring, whose tenure in the foreign service was not immediately available, also praised Israeli forces for “bombing Lebanon back to the Stone Age where it belongs” and said “Arabs are dogs,” according to an e-mail cited in the indictment.
It’s hard to believe he was stupid enough to leave traces, but I suppose he was pretty stupid anyway. Even so, some people mount a pseudo-defense of what he did as a freedom of speech case.
Perhaps the most astonishing thing is that Patrick Syring was a commercial officer in Lebanon in the mid-1990s. There’s a little more info about past abusive messages about Arabs over at Josh Marshall’s TPM, which headlines its post rather appropriately: Didn’t get the whole ‘diplomacy’ idea.
“Some people” don’t recognized the threat part. The harassment is clear cut, but at what point does this idiot threaten to harm the people he was contacting? He insults them repeatedly, and he takes enjoyment out of their suffering, the same stuff we see from jihadists on a regular basis. I don’t consider those threats either, unless they actually say they’re going to carry out a planned attack. Replace the word “Arab” for “Christians” or “Americans”. Does it sound like a threat to you then? It still doesn’t sound like a threat to me. This is America. It’s legal to be an asshole. Not legal to threaten to physically harm somebody else, which luckily for Syring he apparently did not do.
I think he’s broken some laws against harrassing, but I haven’t seen anything that would be considered a threat in a court. Offending you doesn’t equal a threat.
Beyond the whole argument about whether aggressive language constitutes a threat, which I will leave to the courts, surely he could not as a US diplomat be engaging in this kind of activity. It’s surprising he wasn’t fired over the whole affair, and considering his long career I would not be surprised if he was pressured into resigning as a more graceful alternative (and perhaps one less damaging to his pension.)
You’re probably right about him being forced to retire, but his chances of being fired are almost zero. It’s extremely difficult to fire State Department employees. They are protected to keep changing adminstrations from changing the entire department every 4 years. His pension is probably safe no matter how the trial, if there is one, turns out.
[…] Some press reports note him as having served in the Middle East (one site identifies him as a Commercial Officer in Lebanon in the mid-90s). If that is so, I’ve not run across him in my […]
Syring’s crime was that his attacks were personalized. If he had broadcast “Death to Arabs” over the radio, that would be reprehensible speech but not directed at specific persons or property; hence, as public debate, it might be protected under U.S. law. But Syring sent these words directly to individual’s mailboxes. That would be like the KKK burning a cross on your lawn: they didn’t actually say a threat of violence was directed at you, but there can be no doubt that that is what was meant. Syring goes down.
It is people like Syring who cause the US problems. His idiotis tirade shows he needs mental treatment, he is seriously demented.
The United States needs people like this non-entity like a hole in the head. It just proves extremists are present in every society.
God help the ordinary ones like us who just want to live a normal life.