Diplomatic storm leads to question: what was Wisner?

Frank Wisner created a bit of a diplomatic tempest when he went off message in Munich on Saturday and said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak should stay in place to oversee the transition. “We need to get a national consensus around the pre-conditions for the next step forward. The president (Mubarak) must stay in office to steer those changes.”

That set the State Department and White House into scramble mode, trying to downplay Wisner’s role, after actually sending him on Jan. 31 to personally deliver a U.S. government message to Mubarak to take more action in response to mass protests.

Administration feathers got so ruffled that the White House tried backpedaling on whether Wisner had actually in fact been an envoy.

More at this link: http://blogs.reuters.com/frontrow/2011/02/08/diplomatic-storm-leads-to-question-what-was-wisner/

I thought the whole point of the replacement government was that nobody wanted him "steering" anything?