BEIJING – The diplomatic disarray deepened Thursday after a blind activist reversed course and asked to leave China with his family, abandoning an arduously negotiated agreement even though he had left the protection of the U.S. Embassy and was in a Beijing hospital ringed by Chinese police.

Bewildered and alone with his wife and children, Chen Guangcheng periodically switched on a cellphone to tell friends and foreign media he felt scared and wanted to go abroad, and that he had not seen U.S. officials in over a day.

He even called in to a congressional hearing in Washington, telling lawmakers he wanted to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “I hope I can get more help from her,” Chen said.

Chen’s high-profile effort to keep his case in the public eye served to increase pressure on Washington and embarrass Beijing as it hosted Clinton and other U.S. officials for annual talks on global hotspots.

Taken aback at Chen’s change of heart, U.S. diplomats spent much of Thursday trying to confirm that the family wanted to leave, and they eventually said they would try to help him. Still, it remained unclear how they might do so now that he has left the embassy, or whether the Chinese would be willing to renegotiate a deal that both sides thought had been settled a day earlier.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner confirmed U.S. officials weren’t able to see Chen in person Thursday but spoke twice with him by telephone, and once with his wife, Yuan Weijing, outside the hospital.

“It’s our desire to meet with him tomorrow or in the coming days,” Toner said. “But I can’t speak to whether we’ll have access to him. I just don’t know.”

Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s handling of the case drew sharp criticism from Mitt Romney and Republican lawmakers. Campaigning in Virginia, the Republican presidential candidate said reports that American officials allowed Chen to leave the embassy represented a “dark day for freedom” and a “day of shame for the Obama administration.”

Rep. Frank Wolf, a fierce Beijing critic, told the congressional hearing held to discuss Chen’s case that the Obama administration’s handling of it was “naive,” adding that “a purported diplomatic triumph evolved into a diplomatic fiasco.”

In a phone call from his hospital room in Beijing, Chen told lawmakers: “I want to meet with Secretary Clinton. … I want to thank her face to face.”

He also expressed fears for the lives of his other family members, including his mother and brothers, and voiced concern that people in his home village were suffering retribution for helping him.

“I want to thank all of you for all your care and all your love,” he concluded, speaking in Chinese that was translated into English by a rights activist at the hearing.

A self-taught lawyer, the 40-year-old Chen became an international human rights figure and inspiration to many ordinary Chinese after running afoul of local government officials for exposing forced abortions and sterilizations carried out as part of China’s one-child policy. Until his escape last week, his nearly seven years in prison and abusive house arrest with his wife, 6-year-old daughter and mother fueled outrage and added to his stature — and in turn upped the stakes for Washington in helping him.