Luxembourg ambassador says she filed rebuttal (AP)

Saturday, February 5, 2011 7:01 PM By dwi

SEATTLE – A superstar helper of President Barack Obama's last crusade who later became diplomatist to Luxemburg said Sat that she has filed a pleading to an interior State Department analyse that institute her term to be a disaster.

Cynthia Stroum told The Associated Press that she did not undergo whether she could promulgation details of the pleading publicly.

"I've been caught soured guard," she said. "I poverty to be helpful and I poverty to intend my lateral out, but whether that's something I can promulgation or not, I don't know."

The State Department inform free weekday said her 14 months in Luxemburg were full with personality conflicts, verbal shout and supposed expenditures on travel, wine and liquor. It said things were so intense that whatever staff requested transfers to Irak and Afghanistan.

Well-documented direction problems have troubled the embassy for a decade, Stroum said, and destined problems cited in the inform were cod to vacant grownup staff positions.

The interior note took whatever of that into account.

"The underway Ambassador is not answerable for the direction cuts in 2008 that game generalized services dealings before her arrival," it said. "However, the magnitude of the mission's interior problems are linked to her leadership deficiencies, the most harmful of which is an abusive direction style."

But Stroum said she was proud of the impact she did, reiterating a statement prototypal free to The metropolis Times in which she said she focused on initiatives that were in the best interest of U.S.-Luxembourg relations. She said she was proud of the course she helped create between companies in Luxemburg and pedagogue state.

"Serving as the U.S. Ambassador to Luxemburg has been a genuine privilege," she said in an e-mail. "I have newborn institute respect for the hornlike impact done by the diplomatic corps around the concern and applaud every of those who help their country."

Stroum, 60, is the daughter of the New Sam Stroum, a metropolis philanthropist who prefabricated a fortune as an investor in the Schuck's Auto Supply.

Sam Stroum was credited with saving the metropolis Symphony from insolvency and actuation the construction of Benaroya Hall, the symphony's home. He also served as chair of the University of pedagogue Board of Regents, The Times reported.

Cynthia Stroum is an investor in pedagogue state-based companies, including Starbucks. She established digit foundations centering on cancer research and served on the commission of the Fred colonist person Research Center.

She was also a producer on the Broadway revitalisation of "A Raisin in the Sun," which conventional a Tony nomination in 2004.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., had vouched for Stroum at her confirmation hearing, locution that "she module be an unpaid representative for our country."

As a fundraiser, Stroum ginned up at small $500,000 for Obama, swing her near the top of the campaign's money generators. Stroum also donated at small $13,800 to the campaigns of Cantwell and Sen. Patty philologue since 2000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The State Department inform said Stroum heavy to embassy staffers "the grandness she attaches to the perquisites of" existence an ambassador. As such, she was specially afraid most the land of the ambassador's residence, which was existence renovated, it said.

Embassy officials spent weeks disagreeable to find her pertinent temporary housing, screening hundreds of properties. They institute quaternary that met her criteria, and she unloved every of them before finally settling on a residence.

The inform also institute that she unsuitably spent $2,400 on a activate to Switzerland; that the embassy bought $3,400 in intoxicant and wine to ingest up its recreation budget modify though much year-end sprees are barred; and that Stroum was reimbursed for purchase a newborn queen-sized bed, modify though she had been provided with a king-sized one.


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