MIKE POMPEO’S VERY BAD NO GOOD WEEK: To say Mike Pompeo is taking a little heat for opting to not defend career State Department officials embroiled in the Ukraine-gate mess would be something of an understatement. Asked at a press briefing if he agreed with President Trump’s tweet attacking Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, Pompeo said he would “defer to the White House about particular statements and the like. I don’t have anything else to say about the Democrats’ impeachment proceedings. New York Time columnist Tom Friedman authored a blistering piece calling Pompeo “last in his class at West Point in integrity.” Foggy Bottom-focused blog Diplopundit posted a brief item titled: “Swagger Mike’s Spine Still Missing, If Found Please Call @StateDept.”
THE BEST AMBASSADORS MONEY CAN BUY: With career civil servants like Ambassadors Marie Yovanovitch and Bill Taylor so much in the news, CBS found a different kind of presidential envoy. San Diego real estate developer “Papa Doug” Manchester donated $1 million to President Trump’s inauguration and shortly thereafter was nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas. But the nomination stalled for two-and-a-half years and had not been confirmed. While waiting, Manchester donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to disaster relief to the Bahamas after it was devastated by a hurricane. Shortly thereafter Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel hit him up for a $500,000 donation. Manchester replied that he was not supposed to make political contributions while awaiting confirmation but that his wife would donate $100K and assuming he would get confirmed his family would respond. Unfortunately, Manchester copied Senate Foreign Relations Committee members on his response – making the quid pro quo pretty explicit. Last week, the President withdrew Manchester’s nomination for the Bahamas post. Former career Ambassador Douglas Jett, posted a piece in the euphoniously titled “CrooksandLiars.com” giving a breakdown of the career vs. political nominees for ambassador over the last eight administrations. Only 26% of President Carter’s ambassadorial nominees were political (he was lowest), President’s Ford and Reagan were at 38%. In the current administration, 45% of the nominees have been political – an all-time high.
CHANGE FOR CHANG: In last week’s Dead Drop we mentioned an NBC News story which pointed out that a State Department political appointee named Mina Chang had inflated her resume. This week she resigned “two and a half hours after NBC News went to her spokesperson about newly discovered false claims she had made about her charity work.”
TIC TAC, OH-OH: The strange case of UFOs spotted by the U.S. Navy in 2004 just got a bit stranger. According to a lengthy article in Popular Mechanics, two “unknown individuals” ordered several naval personnel who witnessed the sightings to hand over all evidence of them. The mysterious craft (some said to be the shape of “Tic Tacs”, zoomed around off the coast of Southern California and were spotted by pilots from USS Nimitz and on shipboard radar on USS Princeton.
OH, THE HUMANITY: Associated Press broke the news last week that the last remaining survivor of the Hindenburg disaster has died. Werner Gustav Doehner was 8 years old and a passenger on the zeppelin on May 6, 1937 when it burst into flames on arrival at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. The images of the incident are unforgettably captured here.
TEST YOUR “HOMELAND” IQ: How closely have you followed the Showtime TV series “Homeland”? One way to find out is to take the 15-question online quiz. In anticipation of the final season of the series – you can see if you have kept up with the adventures of Carrie Mathison and company.
BAD REPORT ON “THE REPORT”: How is that new movie whose hero is the guy who wrote the 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee majority report on CIA interrogation practices? We don’t know. We haven’t seen it. Apparently hardly anyone else has either. “The Report” opened in “select theaters” on November 15th. There are a couple websites that track U.S. box office results on a daily basis. “Box Office Mojo,” for example, lists 79 films showing last weekend. Topping the list was “Ford v. Ferrari” which was shown in 3,528 theaters and grossed $31,474,958. Rounding out the list at number 79 was “Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool” which was showing at a grand total of one theater and pulled in $135. For some reason, “The Report” didn’t crack the list at all. BTW, last week we mentioned that the WWII movie “Midway” got some pretty bad reviews but apparently audiences didn’t care. It came in second on the weekend hauling in a healthy $8.5 million.
JACK RYAN, GOVERNMENT TOOL? Speaking of movies – some chap named Tom Secker has produced a 30-minute-long video expressing horror that the CIA and Pentagon have worked with the producers of the various Jack Ryan movies, video games, and TV series. The video is part of a website called “Shadowproof” which says it is a “press organization driven to expose systemic abuses of power.” The video shows clips from the shows along with snippets of various cast members, producers etc. saying nice things about the Agency. Even if you don’t listen to the breathless narration – the spooky music in the background conveys the impression that something evil is afoot. The narration ends with: “So, regardless whether you enjoy Jack Ryan, regardless of whether you like the series or not, do not buy into the paranoid, bigoted, state-sponsored, militarized mind-F@#$ of a world view.”
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
SPAM, SPAM, SPAM: For little apparent reason, the Navy Times newspaper included in their “Salute to Veterans” section an ode to how “the military made Spam an iconic American brand.” For our younger readers – the “spam” they are talking about is NOT annoying email – but instead is a canned meat product that has been around for almost 82 years. More than eight billion cans of the stuff have been sold. Open a container and you might think the pork was canned 82 years ago but probably not. There is something memorable – and not in a good way – about the stuff that was also immortalized in an iconic Monty Python sketch.
SURPRISE VISITOR GIVES SECRET SERVICE THE WILLIES: Back in May we told you about the arrest of a 58-year-old woman who kept trying to get into CIA HQ, asking to speak with “Agent Penis.” Now we hear she is in trouble again, this time for violating a court order to stay away from all government-related facilities for showing up at former President Barack Obama’s Washington, DC residence. No word on whether she was asking for anyone in particular during that visit.
THERE IS A MUSEUM FOR EVERYTHING: A new museum has opened in Bangkok, Thailand dedicated to one of the city’s most notorious red-light districts – known as “Patpong Road.” According to CNN, the museum’s “most fascinating: displays detail Patpong’s “unofficial ties to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s deadly activities in Laos during the U.S.-Vietnam War.” The article is a little sketchy on the CIA’s connections to the sketchy area but says Patpong once housed a “U.S. Information Service library” and “a CIA safe house” above a bar. The museum also has a display of fake rubber ears symbolizing human ears cut off by Hmong fighters allegedly at the direction of CIA officials during the Southeast Asia war.
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