Reporters and observers have been buzzing about the brewing conflict since her second foreign trip. Reines storm: Clinton conflict brews

Hillary Clinton’s departure for the State Department was meant to end the era of Clinton drama, and to leave the turmoil of her campaign behind. But one former Clinton aide, now a senior adviser to Secretary Clinton, has brought at least some of that drama along with him.

State Department reporters and observers have been buzzing about the brewing conflict since her second foreign trip, earlier this month, to Europe and the Middle East. On that trip, her longtime Senate press secretary Philippe Reines – one of the combatants in Hillaryland’s long civil wars – took over as the political staffer charged with handling the press.


The trip was marked by tussles over information and access, but it became known for a high-profile blunder in Geneva on March 6. There, Clinton met Sergei Lavrov, the dour Russian Foreign Minister, and cheerily presented him with a large red button in a yellow case, with the words “Reset” and “Peregruzka” written on it.

“We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” Clinton asked.

“You got it wrong,” said Lavrov.

The error appalled some in the State Department, because the button – which was inscribed in Latin script, not Cyrillic – hadn’t been assembled with the help of State’s cadre of Russian speakers and professional translators, but rather by Clinton’s small political team. The day of the event, people involved said, Reines showed the finished product to officials who spoke Russian, but who weren’t native, or up-to-date enough to catch the error in a word out of computer terminology.

One of those was the senior director for Russia at the National Security Council, Michael McFaul, a well-known Russia scholar. Three people familiar with the incident said that, in its aftermath, Reines sought to place public blame on McFaul, a former Stanford professor.

Pressed Monday on the button incident, Reines denied that he’d ever blamed McFaul, and sent over a joking statement taking responsibility for the gaffe.

“Ultimotely [sic], this was my soul [sic] risponsibility [sic], nobody else's in or out of the building. While the Russians laughed off the error and accepted the gift in the spirit of cooperation that it was meant, I've been sic [sic] about the mistake since, especially that I let down the Secretary and the fine professionals at the State Department,” he e-mailed.

McFaul didn’t respond to e-mail seeking comment, and National Security Council official Denis McDonough brushed a question about it off as a “typical Washington story.”

A McFaul ally said that “the notion that it was all on him, if that’s what they’re saying, is clearly unfair. He was asked to look at it.”

Clinton and Lavrov publicly laughed off the gaffe, though Lavrov happily rubbed the American’s nose in it a bit when asked at the press conference after their meeting. It was also a source of great schadenfreude in the Russian press, and of concern to some American analysts.

“This is a pretty tough crew, and to come up with a naïve and childish way of talking about the relationship is probably the wrong signal to be sending to Moscow,” said Gary Schmitt, a Russia analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) also raised an eyebrow at the incident.

"If I gave him a reset button, I'd find someone in the State Department who understands Russian," he told the Financial Times.

The incident’s aftermath was one in a series that roiled the State Department press corps as it adjusts to a new administration whose tendencies – in this one area – are more restrictive than its predecessors. This may not be by accident: One government official said State and the White House have been discussing reducing the amount of information the State Department releases about the secretary’s words and meetings, which by long tradition is more expansive than what’s released by some other agencies.

Reporters who deal with the State Department wouldn’t voice their complaints on the record. Those who spoke on background said they had enjoyed what they saw as excellent access to Clinton during a previous trip to Asia.

But the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler let some of the dissatisfaction show on his blog during the trip to Europe and the Middle East.

He reported from Sharm el-Sheikh that Clinton was the first secretary of state in seven years not to brief reporters at the beginning of a trip. “We got off the plane, wordless. This was a big deal for the press corps,” he wrote.

Kessler declined to comment and referred to his blog items, but others on the trip said they blamed Reines, who remains the press corps’ main point of informal contact for Clinton, for the tightening of information and access.

The president of the State Department Correspondents Association, Matthew Lee of the Associated Press, offered a short statement on the group’s behalf:

“The Association is working with the State Department to ensure that the press get appropriate access to the secretary and her senior staff,” he said.

And one reporter, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, wrote off any bumps to the transition, which she said was at least as smooth as past transitions.

“I’ve found them remarkably accessible,” she said of Clinton’s team. “It’s a completely different approach to the media since they hit the State Department.”

Reines, who worked for Clinton through most of her Senate career, was a controversial figure inside Clinton’s world. As Senate staffer, he was kept out of the campaign by her senior political aides, who dislike him intensely. He was nearly fired, two senior aides said, for a key early mistake – telling Maureen Dowd, on background, that McCain’s alliance with the White House left the Republican “looking similar to the way he did on those captive tapes from Hanoi.” Clinton was forced to promptly apologize.

But Reines also has maintained Clinton’s trust, and was a fierce defender of her public image while in the Senate. He also was able to avoid some of the bitter infighting that tore Clinton’s campaign apart, and cemented his status with the Clintons by serving as Chelsea Clinton’s shepherd in her early political forays. He was one of a small handful of political staffers Clinton took with her to Foggy Bottom, leaving most of her campaign team behind.

Other changes may be afoot: People familiar with the plans said P.J. Crowley, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs in the 1990s, is expected to take the permanent assistant secretary post.

Clinton, meanwhile, departs on a third trip, for Mexico, on Wednesday.