The U.S. ambassador to Russia implied that certain forces may be spying on his email and listening in on his phone calls, a premise that State Department officials in the U.S. rejected.
Ambassador Michael McFaul recently tweeted his frustration at the state-sponsored Russian media, which routinely stalks him.
"I respect the press right to go anywhere & ask any question. But do they have a right to read my email and listen to my phone?" McFaul tweeted, according to reports.
The Washington Times reports on the State Department’s efforts to downplay McFaul’s tweets:
State Department spokesman Mark Toner dismissed the notion that Mr. McFaul was insinuating that he's being spied on and said the U.S. ambassador was merely "raising a rhetorical question" in his tweets.
The microblogging website Twitter is a means of "informal communication" engaged in by U.S. diplomats, Mr. Toner said. …
Pressed on whether the U.S. officials are concerned that Mr. McFaul's comments could trigger a negative wave of attention, a State Department official said, "We have every confidence that he knows what he's doing when he types in his Twitter, or his tweets."