Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressed his fight with NPR, saying he hopes the reporter he berated “finds peace” without apologizing to her.
NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly conducted an interview with Pompeo last week, after which she repeatedly asked questions about Ukraine and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. During a private moment that followed, which Pompeo claimed was off the record, he yelled at her and asked her if she could locate Ukraine on an unmarked map of the world.
The secretary of state spoke about the debacle on his plane to London Wednesday morning, saying there is “a lot of history with NPR and Mike Pompeo and Iran.”
“[NPR] took money from Ploughshares and were part of the Ben Rhodes echo chamber, and they ultimately had to go on air and say, ‘Yup, it’s true. We took money from Ploughshares and didn’t disclose [it] after enormous pressure from congressman Pompeo.’ So there’s a lot of history there,” Pompeo stated, according to Los Angeles Times reporter Tracy Wilkinson.
As the secretary referenced, former President Obama’s deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes revealed in a 2016 New York Times Magazine profile that the administration used outside groups, including Ploughshares, to test out how best to sell the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, according to an explanatory piece by NPR.
Around the same time, NPR had scheduled an interview with then-Rep. Pompeo of Kansas, who opposed the Iran deal, but later canceled it. While NPR claimed it had not been in touch with the congressman, it later admitted the interview was nixed because “there were too many other interviews scheduled.” The outlet also acknowledged that Ploughshares Fund had given grants to NPR for years.
After the interview last week, the State Department issued a blistering rebuke of NPR and Kelly personally, in which Pompeo accused her of “violat[ing] the basic rules of journalism and decency.” The State Department went on to block a different NPR reporter from flying with the secretary on his upcoming trip to Europe and Central Asia. The State Department Correspondents’ Association and NPR in turn accused Pompeo of “retaliating” against the outlet.
Pompeo concluded his Wednesday statement saying, “So I took a leap of faith with Mary Louise, invited her to the State Department back in December. We had a great conversation. She asked me if I’d do her the favor of granting her an interview. I said sure: There’s a lot of history to fix. Let’s talk about Iran. She agreed that we would talk about Iran, and we set up an interview. I hope she finds peace.”
