We recieved this letter commenting on our coverage of Ed Peck:

It is a rare thing for me to write to a political blog.  However, the subject article raised my hackles.  In my nearly 30 year foreign service career I was fortunate to meet some outstanding foreign service officers.  Many courageous, some brilliant and most dedicated to advancing United States interests abroad.  Ed Peck is not among those just mentioned.
 
In the early 1980's I was dispatched on an interim basis to bring order to our badly mismanaged  USAID programs in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.  Upon arrival in country I immediately undertook a series measures to track the status of various development assistance projects and match this status to funds expenditures.  In short order a number of financial anomalies were discovered.  Accordingly I called in officers from the USAID Regional Inspector Generals office.  In turn they discovered widespread corruption and major waste of U.S. government resources.  Much of this corruption lead directly to Mauritanian officials including a senior government Minister.
 
It was in the midst of this unpleasantness that Ed Peck arrived as Ambassador.  To smooth out ruffled relations with the Mauritanian government Peck's answer to the problem was to agree to expel the USAID officers that uncovered the corruption.  When USAID Washington discovered what Peck had agreed to Washington informed him that if the concerned officers were forced to leave country, the entire USAID office would be closed and all USAID funding would be removed.  This type of outrageous behavior is indicative of the type of individual that Ed Peck is, and further explains his misguided ramblings concerning Hizbollah.
 
For the record I did leave Mauritiania some time later and was appointed head of the Office of Food for Peace.  Later I served as the Assistant Coordinator, Office of Counterterrorism, Department of State.
 
Sincerely,
 
Terry L. Lambacher