Oct 26, 2011 State Dept. buys $70K of Obama books
By David Jackson, USA TODAY
Updated 2011-10-26 5:32 PM
Readers in China peruse Barack Obama books in 2009
CAPTION
By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY
Obama administration officials are defending the State Department's decision to buy more than $70,000 of President Obama's books, saying individual embassies provide books to help advance U.S. foreign policy.
"It's the embassies themselves that make the decisions what American books to buy, and they make these decisions based on the interest in the country where they are," said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
"These are not decisions that are made in Washington, and they are not decisions that are directed by Washington," she said.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said, "It was an embassy-based decision."
The Washington Times reported today, "The State Department has bought more than $70,000 worth of books authored by President Obama, sending out copies as Christmas gratuities and stocking 'key libraries' around the world with Dreams From My Father more than a decade after its release.
The report said:
The U.S. Embassy in Egypt, for instance, spent $28,636 in August 2009 for copies of Mr. Obama's best-selling 1995 memoir. Six weeks earlier, the embassy had placed another order for the same book for more than $9,000, federal purchasing records show.
About the same time, halfway around the world, the U.S. Embassy in South Korea had the same idea and spent more than $6,000 for copies of Dreams From My Father.
One month later, the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, spent more than $3,800 for hardcover copies of the Indonesian version of Mr. Obama's The Audacity of Hope, records show. ...
Leslie Paige, a spokeswoman for Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group, said if the federal government is looking to cut costs, eliminating purchases of Mr. Obama's books is a good place to start.
"It's inappropriate for U.S. taxpayer dollars to be spent on this," she said. "This sounds like propaganda."
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