About the Author: Jeffrey Feltman serves as Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.

When I served as Political-Economic Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia in the late 1990s, noisy and crowded diplomatic events — dinners, receptions, national day parties — were the best place to meet with Tunisians who assumed that President Ben Ali’s mukhabarat had bugged all offices. They believed the safety of the noise and crowds at diplomatic events protected candid conversations. But sometimes, even diplomatic receptions didn’t work out as planned: one night, my wife and I hosted a reception at our residence in Gammarth, where a large number of human rights and civil society activists showed up, probably to the horror of the few Tunisian government officials who dared attend. At the end of the reception, the mukhabarat arrested a number of guests whom we had gathered in one location, inadvertently facilitating a crackdown.

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