Mark Hemingway revisits James Baker's The Politics of Diplomacy and finds two references to Chas Freeman. The first has Freeman pleading with Baker to lay off the Saudis as Baker lobbies for more Saudi money to fund U.S. operations as U.S. forces began their buildup in the Gulf as part of Desert Shield:
I was urged by our ambassador, Chas Freeman, to go easy on the numbers. "They're strapped for money," he told me before the meeting. "Don't press for too much right now." I disagreed.
The second reference is much the same.
Our ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas Freeman, suggested to me that perhaps we shouldn't ask quite so much of the Saudis. As a result of their previous commitments to Desert Shield, he said, they had a liquidity shortage that Saud hadn't wanted to admit to me. It seemed to me to be a classic case of clientitis from one of our best diplomats. "I'm going in front of the Congress and I'm asking them to go ahead and fund this effort," I said, "and I've got to explain that American blood will be spilled. If you think we're not going to ask the Saudis to pay for this, you've got another thing coming." It was the last I ever heard from him about going easy on the Saudis in terms of the costs of the operation. (p. 373).
Hemingway quotes a "foreign policy expert" friend of his who suggests that Baker's description of Freeman as "one of our best diplomats" is just Baker being, well, diplomatic. But given Baker's reputation of cozy relations with the Saudis, how far gone must Freeman have been for Baker to accuse him of "clientitis"? And Freeman was wrong. His analysis was wrong. He would have left this country holding the bag had Baker not intervened. This is the man who should write our intelligence estimates? Or will Freeman's supporters now accuse James Baker of being a tool of the Jews?