WASHINGTON - A White House insider in the thick of negotiations over nuclear issues with Iran was fired after he was exposed as the voice of a Twitter feed that for more than two years criticized public figures and colleagues, a White House official confirmed late Tuesday.
Jofi Joseph, formerly the director of nuclear nonproliferation issues on the National Security Council staff at the White House, was @NatSecWonk, who took anonymous and often caustic digs at officials such as former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Ben Rhodes, the National Security Council spokesman; and U.S. Rep. Darrell R. Issa, R-Calif., a nemesis of the administration as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Administration officials said Joseph was fired last week after he was unmasked as the Twitter account’s author. The White House official emailed to confirm “he no longer works at the White House. Beyond that not going to get into personnel matters.”
The firing was first disclosed by the website The Daily Beast and its reporter Josh Rogin, who was one of the subjects of Joseph’s tweets.
“Just a hunch, but I have the sense lots of people would like to punch joshrogin in the face,” Joseph wrote on the social-networking site after news reports that Rogin had been hit by a comedian at a Washington club.
Joseph was generally respected and popular within the White House, so his secret life took colleagues by surprise. On @NatSecWonk, which has now disappeared, he called himself a “keen observer of the foreign policy and national security scene” who “unapologetically says what everyone else only thinks.”
In that self-described spirit, Joseph made Hillary Clinton a particular target. As secretary of state in President Barack Obama’s first term, she “had few policy goals and no wins,” he wrote. And he called Issa “an ass,” then added, “but he’s on to something here with the Hillary Clinton whitewash of accountability for Benghazi,” referring to the killings in Libya of four Americans, including the ambassador, last year.
After Obama’s surprise decision in late August to seek congressional authorization for military strikes against Syria as punishment for a chemical-weapons attack, Joseph took aim at Obama as well as Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
“That Obama only called Kerry/Hagel AFTER he made decision with his WH aides on going to Hill underscores how all foreign policy is WH-based,” one tweet said.
Joseph could not be reached Wednesday for comment. No one answered the telephone at a number believed to be his.
But Joseph apologized in remarks to Politico, the politics website.
“What started out as an intended parody account of DC culture developed over time into a series of inappropriate and mean-spirited comments,” he told the site. “I bear complete responsibility for this affair, and I sincerely apologize to everyone I insulted.”
Joseph began working at the State Department in 2009. Deputy State Department spokesman Marie Harf said he was assigned to the National Security Council in 2011 and became a council employee last August.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday that he had no additional information to provide.
He said staff members cannot access social media sites such as Twitter from the White House unless they have official, authorized accounts. Carney and many other senior administration officials have official Twitter accounts and often post several tweets a day.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 10/24/2013