McClatchy Newspapers is reporting the State Department has been screening the views of individuals for criticism of the Bush administration before sending them on foreign speaking assignments. The State Department Inspector General says the practice amounts to: “virtual censorship.” In one case, a conflict resolution expert was excluded from a videoconference in Jerusalem after it was discovered he wrote a book critical of the US-led reconstruction of Iraq. The screenings could violate federal guidelines that mandate the State Department to provide a broad range of speakers abroad that are: “not limited to the expression of US government policies.”