The Defense Intelligence Agency may have one of the most boring Twitter feeds in Washington. The spy agency that operates inside the Pentagon carries out such secretive work that its Twitter feed really is just a way to publicize events. Things took a different turn on Saturday, when the verified account sent out a sarcastic tweet: “Classy as always China,” read the message that linked to a New York Times piece about the tensions that flared between U.S. and Chinese officials when Barack Obama landed in Hangzhou.
The tweet was quickly deleted and the DIA then apologized: “Earlier today, a tweet regarding a news article was mistakenly posted from this account & does not represent the views of DIA. We apologize.”
Some were quick to criticize the DIA “squares” for deleting the tweet.
The tweet itself though served to highlight the tensions between Beijing and Washington on the eve of the G20 summit. Tempers appeared to be running particularly high when Obama arrived in Hangzhou and there was no red carpet to greet him. “A member of the Chinese delegation was screaming at White House staff from the moment pool got onto the tarmac. He wanted [the] US press to leave,” the Wall Street Journal’s Carol E. Lee, who was working as a pool reporter, wrote. That was shocking to all those present. “In six years of covering the White House, I had never seen a foreign host prevent the news media from watching Mr. Obama disembark,” wrote the New York Times’ Mark Landler. When a White House official noticed what was going on, and pushed back saying that “this was our president and our plane,” a Chinese official yelled: “This is our country!”
A Chinese official put the blame on the United States, telling the South China Morning Post it was the White House that had “insisted that they didn’t need the staircase provided by the airport.”
Obama said tensions with China are normal, “so I wouldn’t over-crank the significance of it” although he did acknowledge that “the seams are showing a little more than usual.”
