Chen's comments portray the U.S. as manipulating him, cutting him off from outside communication and encouraging him to leave the embassy rather than seek asylum. He said he was denied his requests to call friends. He said he felt the embassy officials had lied to him.

"The embassy kept lobbying me to leave and promised to have people stay with me in the hospital. But this afternoon as soon as I checked into the hospital room, I noticed they were all gone," he said. "I'm very disappointed at the U.S. government. ... I don't think [U.S. officials] protected human rights in this case."

When asked why he had left the embassy rather than staying and perhaps seeking asylum, Chen seemed to blame the embassy officials. "At the time I didn't have a lot of information. I wasn't allowed to call my friends from inside the embassy. I couldn't keep up with news so I didn't know a lot of things that were happening," he said.

Chen agreed when Jiang asked him, "If you stay in China, is there no future?" He also said that he had tried calling two U.S. embassy officials "numerous times" but that no one had answered. "I told the embassy I would like to talk to Rep. [Chris] Smith but they somehow never managed to arrange it. I feel a little puzzled."

He described the Chinese police's brutal treatment of his wife while he was in detention, which appears to have been a tool for coercing his departure from the embassy. "[My wife] was tied to a chair by police for two days. Then they carried sticks to our home, threatening to beat her to death," he said, adding that they told her she would be sent home to Shandong province and beaten there if Chen did not leave the embassy.

The activist pleaded with the U.S. to remove him and his family from China. "I want them to protect human rights through concrete actions. We are in danger. If you can talk to Hillary [Clinton], I hope she can help my whole family leave China," he said. "I would like to say to [President Obama]: Please do everything you can to get our whole family out."

A statement this morning from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton read, "I am pleased that we were able to facilitate Chen Guangcheng's stay and departure from the U.S. Embassy in a way that reflected his choices and our values. I was glad to have the chance to speak with him today and to congratulate him on being reunited with his wife and children."

If Chen's story is true, it suggests that U.S. officials manipulated him in an effort to defuse what could have become a tense stand-off between the U.S. and China. That would have been just the sort of mess that the U.S. doesn't need as it prepares for this week's U.S.-China summit on economic and geopolitical issues. The Obama administration needs China's support not just for its most pressing foreign policy issues -- Iran, North Korea, Syria, etc. -- but for domestic issues too. Obama is facing reelection in a few months, and his prospects then are dependent on U.S. economic growth, which is in turn at least partially dependent on Chinese economic policies.