Afghanistan: Former Envoy Reported Facing a Federal Inquiry --- The Austrian weekly newsmagazine Profil reported that the cache of papers included a document from the Justice Department, citing its investigation of Mr. Khalilzad, 63, concerning accounts belonging to Mr. Khalilzad’s wife, the social scientist and author Cheryl Benard. -- Ms. Benard has dual American and Austrian citizenship and earned her doctorate at the University of Vienna. It was unclear whether Ms. Benard herself was being accused of wrongdoing by the Justice Department. -- Nina Bussek, a spokeswoman for the Vienna state prosecutors’ office, confirmed only that there was a case underway involving Ms. Benard, but declined to comment further. The find is an embarrassment for the Austrian authorities, who Profil said had been asked by American officials to preserve the utmost secrecy. -- A lawyer for Ms. Benard, Holger Bielesz, said an unspecified number of his client’s accounts were frozen in February under the Justice Department order dated May 2013. He declined to confirm the amount frozen. -- Mr. Bielesz, who appealed the block on the accounts in March, said in a telephone interview that “we are confident” that a higher court in Vienna will rescind the order soon. “The position of the state prosecutors’ office is not easy to follow,” Mr. Bielesz said, asserting that the United States did not request that the accounts be closed. Any suspicion seems to be founded only on the basis of Ms. Benard’s marriage to Mr. Khalilzad, the lawyer told Profil. -- Telephone calls to Mr. Khalilzad’s Washington office and his cellphone went unanswered, as did an email sent to him. -- Hours later, Mr. Bielesz released a statement stressing that no charges had been brought against the couple, in the United States, Austria or anywhere else. --- In May 2013, the Justice Department “sent a routine request to the Austrian authorities for records for certain bank accounts in Vienna in the name of Ms. Benard,” the statement said. The request “did not seek the seizure of assets belonging to Ms. Benard or Ambassador Khalilzad,” the statement said, nor did it “contain evidence of money laundering or other offenses.” It remained unclear why the state prosecutor nonetheless “ignored the plain language of the D.O.J. and froze Ms. Benard’s accounts,” the statement said. -- The couple are now focused on unfreezing the assets and are upset by the “gross invasion of privacy” caused by the careless release of information, the statement said. It was signed by Mr. Bielesz and Robert B. Buehler, a New York lawyer with the firm Hogan Lovells.