THE HARDEST WORKING PERSON IN THE PENTAGON: No, its not the guy who sweeps the floor in the Pentagon barbershop, or the woman who decides who, among the 23,000 employees get parking passes. Nope. Our nominee is whomever is responsible for ensuring that the right pictures of the chain of command are displayed at the entrances and major offices. Just this week he or she had to put up the photo of the new Acting Secretary of Defense, Richard Spencer, replacing the one of the previous acting secretary, Mark Esper, who had to step aside while the Senate was considering his nomination. So, Esper’s photo went back into the Secretary of the Army slot. And, we would argue – that not only is the picture hanger’s job hard – but it is important. You’ve gotta know who is in charge. The message in offices all around the Defense Department is: If the Secretary of Defense calls, get his name.
BYE-BYE DNI? One of the recurring rumors in the Trump administration is the one about the president getting ready to fire Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. The speculation surfaced again last week. Unlike previous “Dan’s gotta go” stories – there didn’t appear to be an obvious public trigger for Trump’s motivation to hang up Coats. Axios was first to report the latest rumor and added speculation that ex-John Bolton aide Fred Fleitz might be in line for the job. Fleitz, a former CIA analyst who spent a very short time on the Trump NSC staff, is currently president of the Center for Security Policy. Since Bolton himself is sometimes reported to be on shaky ground with the president – being a former aide to the current national security advisor may not be a résumé builder for Fleitz. According to Fox News, another candidate for the job may be outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Joseph Dunford. “Fightin’ Joe” has a possible advantage over Fleitz in taking over the intelligence community bureaucracy – Dunford has actually run large organizations before. On the other hand, Bill Gertz, in his “Inside the Ring” column in the Washington Times, reminds us that in 2016 Fleitz wrote that Donald Trump could “make America great again” by doing away with the DNI. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry once campaigned for president on the promise of eliminating the agency he now heads, so giving Fleitz a job he recently advocated for eliminating may not be out of the question. Other pundits around town speculate that if Coats were shown the door – the administration might promote his deputy, Sue Gordon, to the job or, as is so often the case these days – give her an “acting” job.
PLENTY POTENTIAL: Some parts of the administration may be having trouble filling important positions and keeping people in those jobs, but elsewhere the work of government goes on. Just the other day, for example, we noticed that the President has sent to the Senate the nomination of Carmen Cantor, of Puerto Rico, a career member of the Senior Executive Service, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the U.S. to the Federated States of Micronesia (AKA “FSM.”) In the event you are not fully up to speed on the FSM – here are a few fun facts courtesy of the CIA’s World Factbook: it is a group of islands about three quarters of the way from Hawaii to Indonesia. Among the islands are the Pohnpei, Chuuk (AKA Truk) and Yap islands. The population is about 100,000, half of whom are from the principle ethnic groups of Chuukese and Mortlockese. Still to be filled: the U.S. embassy post in Wakanda.
NOTE TO SELF FOR SENIOR OFFICIALS: If you carry notes with you when going out in public to address journalists – expect the pesky media to take close ups of your talking points. That is what happened to President Trump who addressed media on the White House grounds this week following his controversial tweets suggesting that four female members of congress, all women of color, “go back” to where they came from. In justifying his remarks, Trump said he was unhappy with the way one of them, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, speaks about al-Qaida. Sharped-eyed observers noticed that the photo of the president’s notes show that in the hand-written addition to his talking points about the terrorist group – he spelled al-Qaida as “Alcaida.” There are probably a dozen ways to spell the outfit – but that was a new one to us.
AN HONOR OF NOTE: The Bank of England has just announced that the newly re-designed £50 bank note will bear the face of Bletchley Park codebreaker Alan Turing. The nerds among us might remember that Turing was played by actor Benedict Cumberbatch in the 2014 movie The Imitation Game. He became famous for leading the way on cracking German codes during World War II and did groundbreaking work on computers and artificial intelligence. After the war he was prosecuted for homosexuality and posthumously pardoned. So, his appearance on the fifty quid note is a landmark for both the codebreaking and LGBTQ communities. In case you were wondering, the current £50 note bears the mugs of steam engine industrialists Matthew Boulton and James Watt. On the obverse side of all U.K. notes is the image of the reigning monarch, Elizabeth II, who has been gracing the currency for six or seven decades.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
AN OUT OF THIS WORLD OPPORTUNITY: It started out on social media. An upcoming event was posted on Facebook called “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us.” We’re guessing it was a joke since the originator called themselves “Shitposting cause im in shambles.” The Air Force was not amused. Apparently over a million people were, however, having indicated plans to attend – looking for aliens. In a statement, the Air Force said: "The Nevada Test and Training Range provides flexible, realistic and multidimensional battlespace to test and develop tactics as well as conduct advanced training in support of U.S. national interests," using the full name of a site that includes Area 51. "Any attempt to illegally access the area is highly discouraged." Always in the spirit of aiming high, we think the Air Force should consider staking off a large piece of land, testing out a high-frequency crowd control device (we suggest Bono if he's available), inviting in some vendors to sell ‘Alienade’ and asking a well-known alien expert to deliver some remarks. (Where’s Fox Mulder when you need him?) That might be a way to make the natives happy while raising some money, which in turn, could be used to fund Space Command. What’s the old saying? When life gives you Aliens…
OVER THE MOON: The 50th anniversary of the first manned landing on the moon has sparked a lot of media retrospectives. It seems everyone wanted to hijack the buzz over Armstrong and Aldrin’s giant leaps for mankind. The folks at Muckrock.com got into the act too – pulling out of the archives of previously withheld CIA documents, a 1961 translation of a Soviet paper called “Atlas of the Far Side of the Moon.” It was marked “For Official Use Only” but kept in the dark by the Agency until 2010.
007 (RET.) - Word is out that James Bond is being pensioned-off. Well, sort of. It seems in the forthcoming 25th movie in the Bond franchise, Bond, played by Daniel Craig, retires from MI6 and British actress Lashana Lynch, 31, takes over the 007-number. The thought of a young black woman taking over for the venerable old white man’s gig is causing a few heads to explode in social media-land. That’s probably just the kind of buzz the producers were hoping for. Rumor has it there are generations of women out there looking to see what ‘romantic’ story lines might be written for the new 007. Payback, anyone?
JACK REACHER TV: There have been a couple dozen “Jack Reacher” novels and a couple movies about the former Army MP who wanders around the U.S. solving crimes and occasionally committing them. In the books, U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies tend to be skeptical of the hero. Many motion picture goers were generally unconvinced of the wisdom of casting 5’7” Tom Cruise in the role in two films in 2012 and 2016 – since the character is described in the books as being 6’5’ and having hands the size of dinner plates. Now Amazon is developing a TV series based on the character – with the same team that is behind the “Jack Ryan” series. They are reportedly looking for a star with claws the size of crockery to lead the effort.
SHIA-BS TV: As goofy as some U.S. television shows might be – it is a mistake to assume Hollywood leads the world in oddball TV series. For example, consider “Gando” a series on Iranian state TV which is a drama based on Tehran imprisoning Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian for 544 days. The Associated Press says the show features a blond Iranian female spy who works in the White House. There is also a reporter character based on Rezaian who meets with President Obama and gets promised the job of U.S. ambassador to Iran as soon as the regime there is overthrown. The reporter in the series instead gets tossed into a comfy jail in Tehran and complains that the food is too good and is making him fat. We couldn’t make this stuff up.
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