Pompeo the loose-lipped diplomat
US State Dept Secretary Pompeo is on Putin’s State TV: “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole”. How patriotic! pic.twitter.com/zIzlajhkTf— Max Howroute▫️ (@howroute) December 31, 2019
Pompeo actually made the remark in Texas and it was shown on RT. Nonetheless, it’s more than a little bit disturbing to see the US Secretary of State say such a thing in public.
But consider that he might have just been talking about his wife and himself:
Susan Pompeo, wife of Central Intelligence Agency chief Mike Pompeo, has taken on an unusually active role for a CIA spouse in agency affairs since he started the job in January 2017, regularly spending her days at the agency, traveling with her husband, and attending agency social events — seven sources with knowledge of the matter told CNN…
While Pompeo does not technically have her own office, she frequents the seventh floor director’s suite at CIA’s campus in Langley, Virginia, where CIA employees often “assist Mrs. Pompeo in various ways,” said Trapani. This includes preparing “materials, briefings, meeting agendas and so forth for our programs assisting spouses traveling overseas.” She also works on projects for the Family Advisory Board, as well as providing support services to relocate CIA officers around the world.
Pompeo should not say what he said. But that’s what happens when Republican presidents inevitably try to put wingnut politicians in charge of the CIA. (Remember Porter Goss?)
It is simply not a good idea to pluck some partisan ideologue with no serious experience out of the House and put him in charge of that big, secretive bureaucracy. That Pompeo was taken so seriously simply because he graduated first in a military academy, did a short stint at the CIA and went to Harvard years ago is proof that the GOP bench is very, very thin.
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