Yes, it's another installment of "Know Your U.S. Public Servants": "Ambassador" Sam Fox shares the spirit of Christmas with 1,700 of his best buds

As you sort through your Christmas loot, perhaps coming to grips with the wreck of a life you’ve led, to be filled with such a sad lot of cheap, thoughtless gift-givers, this little item from our pal Al Kamen’s last Washington Post column before taking off on vacation last week may bring a tear to your eye.

You remember "Ambassador" Sam Fox, right? You know, the Swiftboaters’ sugar daddy, who was rewarded with the ambassadorship to Belgium (and if financing a band of sociopathic liars to help steal an election doesn’t earn a fellow an ambassadorship, what does?), only his nomination couldn't get out of Senate committee and so had to be end-arounded with a recess appointment? In case you missed it, here’s how the "ambassador" sent greetings from Belgium to his 1,700 nearest-and-dearest:

Merry Xmas From Belgium

GOP mega-contributor Sam Fox, the Swift boat backer who received a controversial recess appointment to be ambassador to Belgium, has arranged for special, one-kilo (2.2-pound) bars of superb, dark Belgian chocolate, stamped with the State Department seal, to be given as Christmas presents.

The Belgians are speculating that President Bush, a renowned chocophile who shopped for chocolates on trips to Belgium in 2001 and 2005, will most surely find one of these under the tree Christmas morning.

That bar would be part of a 1,700-bar order that Fox placed with famed Antwerp chocolatier Erik Goossens, whose company specializes in high-end chocolates. Most likely, several other White House aides and administration officials will be getting the prized chocolates.

"It was quite difficult to do," Goossens told us, requiring "special molds and special boxes." It was all "very fancy. We did our best." That should be more than delicious.

How much would all this cost? Goossens wouldn't touch that one, though he noted that his 52-year-old family company considered it a "prestige project." That probably means Fox got something of a break on the price. And this is a nearly two-ton purchase.

Let's do some cogitating. Goossens's chocolates sell for a little more than $50 a pound in this country. So each bar would cost about $110.

Perhaps Fox could make such a bulk purchase for $150,000. Maybe he will send some chocolate to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Democrats, who are still furious at the White House for pulling back his nomination at the last minute and giving him the ambassadorship?

AND IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO ENTER AL'S
"WHAT WAS IN THAT OFFICE, ANYWAY?" CONTEST

Did you hear about the fire in Vice President "Big Dick" Cheney's Eisenhower Executive Office Building lair a week ago Wednesday? "Naturally," says Al, it "has everyone in Washington speculating about its origin. Arson might seem a bit far-fetched to folks outside the Beltway, but it would not be the first time a small conflagration was planned by a White House official."

Which sends Al strolling down Memory Lane, to the crackpot plot hatched by G. Gordon Liddy to firebomb the Brookings Institution--

"as a diversion," he writes in his memoirs--to get into the security vault and steal Daniel Ellsberg's Vietnam War papers.

"We devised a plan that entailed buying a used but late-model fire engine of the kind used by the District of Columbia fire department," Liddy wrote, "and marking it appropriately." The plot included "uniforms for a squad of Cubans" and adequate "training so their performance would be believable."

The firebomb would go off at night "so as not to endanger lives needlessly," Liddy wrote. "The Cubans in the authentic-looking fire engine would 'respond' minutes [later] . . . hit the vault, and get themselves out in the confusion" as real fire equipment arrived. "The bogus engine would be abandoned at the scene."

The decision from higher-ups, Liddy wrote, "was swift. 'No.' Too expensive. The White House wouldn't spring for a fire engine." (Pikers!)

"And now," writes Al, "we have this curious, possibly successful fire Wednesday. So the obvious question is: What did they try to burn? [Emphasis added.] (We'll let the appropriate authorities find the perps.)"

Yes, it's the final In the Loop Contest for 2007. Simply guess what documents or other materials the arsonists were trying to destroy. Could it have been a secret legal opinion from Cheney Chief of Staff David Addington, giving the vice president the inherent authority to set the fire?

Send your entries to hitthevault@washpost.com. Winners will receive an In the Loop T-shirt. You must include your name and telephone number (home, work or cell) to be eligible. And of course, administration officials and Hill folks may opt to enter "on background." Deadline is Jan. 9. Don't delay.

Man, we'd love one of them T-shirts. If you've got any ideas that you'd like to have ripped off--I mean, that you'd like to share--just fire away.

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