Before serving as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs from 2013 to 2016, Richard Stengel edited Time, a perch that surely provided an exceptional window into how governments around the world thwart freedom of speech and of the press. Earlier in his career, Stengel reported from apartheid South Africa, a place notoriously inhospitable to such freedoms, where he eventually collaborated with Nelson Mandela on his autobiography.
You’d think that a man who worked so closely with the most famous political prisoner in the world would be the last person to advocate criminal prosecution of his fellow Americans for their expression.