Was There a Spy at State?

The FBI searched the Northwest Washington home of Robin L. Raphel last month, and her State Department office was also examined and sealed, officials said. Raphel, a fixture in Washington’s diplomatic and think-tank circles, was placed on administrative leave last month, and her contract with the State Department was allowed to expire this week.

Two U.S. officials described the investigation as a counterintelligence matter, which typically involves allegations of spying on behalf of foreign governments. The exact nature of the investigation involving Raphel remains unclear. She has not been charged.

[...]

At the time of the raid, Raphel was a senior adviser on Pakistan for the office of the special representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan. In that job, she was chiefly responsible for administering nonmilitary aid such as U.S. economic grants and incentives. The 67-year-old longtime diplomat was among the U.S. government’s most senior advisers on Pakistan and South Asian issues. She is a former assistant secretary of state for South Asia and a former ambassador to Tunisia. At the time of the FBI search of her house, she had retired from the Foreign Service but was working for the State Department on renewable, limited contracts that depended in part on her security clearances.

[...]

[Raphel] served 30 years in the Foreign Service and retired from the State Department in 2005. She returned to the State Department in 2009.

[...]

Prior to returning to the State Department, Raphel worked as a lobbyist for Cassidy & Associates, a Washington-based government relations firm. She represented Pakistan, Equatorial Guinea and Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government, according to federal disclosure forms.

  WaPo

Very mysterious. And this is not the first mystery in Ms. Raphel’s life. Her husband was a diplomat, and died in an unresolved case.

Arnold Raphel was U.S. ambassador to Pakistan when he was killed aboard a plane carrying then-Pakistani President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq in 1988. The cause of the mysterious plane crash has never been proved, but the crash is widely assumed to have been an assassination of the military dictator.