Roundtablers say the U.S. should keep a low profile in Egypt

After the Roundtable on terrorism and foreign affairs, we asked the guests what the U.S. should do about the violence in Egypt.

Brian Atwood:

[We should] be very careful about what we say in a very sensitive situation. I think what John Kerry said the other day warning the military to be careful about how it approaches this was the right kind of advice, but we really should not have a high profile. We should have a low profile.

John Radson:

It shows the importance of the intelligence community and the need for secrecy.

We have important interests there, but you don’t want what we’re doing to be known necessarily by the Egyptian people or by the world. And in doing that--in gathering information and trying to affect it--it’s a delicate balance. And I don’t think the president has figured out where our interests lie. What do we want the situation in Egypt to be? So if they don’t know what our goal is, it's difficult to arrange your tactics for the situation. So they are probably gathering as much information as they can. And they hope to do better than the news sources in providing information to the president. But this is one of those [times] when CNN is as useful as the intelligence community to provide information on what’s going on on the ground.

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