Is Trump Destroying-- Or Has He Already Destroyed-- U.S. Foreign Policy And Trade Consensus?

The week started with Señor Trumpanzee announcing an expansion of his trade war antics against Brazil, Argentina and France (and its only Wednesday!)-- followed by grandstanding self-destructive nonsense about trade with China that caused domestic and world markets to crash.

Bloomberg reporters Derek Wallbank and Jordan Fabian: "Stocks dropped in Europe and U.S. equity futures sold off as Trump’s comments indicated no urgency to reach a deal by Dec. 15, which U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Monday called a 'logical deadline.' The Trump administration has threatened to impose tariffs on more Chinese imports starting that day. Those levies would hit American consumer products such as smartphones, toys and childrens’ clothing just before the Christmas holiday... A flurry of U.S. trade moves in the past 24 hours has eroded investor optimism that Trump would ease up on tariffs that have slowed the global economy. Rather than ratcheting down trade tensions, Trump is indicating confidence that his import taxes are good for America... Speaking to reporters on a trip to attend a summit for the 70th anniversary of NATO, Trump suggested that in some ways, it might be better to wait until after the U.S. presidential election next November. 'I like the idea of waiting until after the election for the China deal. But they want to make a deal now and we’ll see whether not the deal is going to be right. It’s got to be right,' he said. 'The China trade deal is dependent on one thing: Do I want to make it? Because we’re doing very well with China right now and we could do even better with the flick of a pen.'"

Trump's crude, manipulative attacks on Macron, just before his one-on-one meeting with Macron yesterday, were some kind of boorish justification for his threats to slap a punitive 100% tariff on French champagne, cheese, cosmetics and handbags worth around $2.4 billion. Trump says he's retaliating against a digital services tax he claims hurts Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. (Italy, Austria and Turkey have the same tax.)

Tuesday morning Reuters reported that the EU would retaliate if Trump levied the tariffs against France. Does Putin give Trump bonuses for this kind of behavior?

Ivan Krastev, author of The Light That Failed: A Reckoning, penned an OpEd for the New York Times yesterday, Will Europe Ever Trust America Again?. My guess is yes-- as soon as the whole world breathes a collective sigh of relief on November 4, 2020, but Krastev seems less sanguine. He wrote that "Trump has insulted international institutions and abandoned allies from Syria to the Korean Peninsula, policymakers on this side of the Atlantic have found themselves trying to walk a fine line: On the one hand, they want to hedge against Washington turning its back on Europe; on the other, they want to ensure that their hedging doesn’t push the Trump administration even farther away. Consequently, European policies toward the United States have been oscillating between grandstanding about our ability to do everything on our own and panicked pretending that everything is as it used to be. See, for example, when President Emmanuel Macron of France recently proclaimed that NATO was experiencing 'brain death' and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany quickly responded by insisting that 'NATO remains vital to our security.'"

As the leaders of NATO countries meet this week in London, much attention will focus on the disagreements between Mr. Macron and Ms. Merkel. But beneath the surface, a new European consensus on trans-Atlantic relations is emerging and it represents a huge change. Until recently, most European leaders’ hopes were bound up with the outcome of America’s presidential elections. If Mr. Trump were to lose in 2020, they believed, the world would somehow return to normalcy.

All of that has changed. While Trump-friendly governments in Europe, like Poland’s and Hungary’s, still follow the polls and cross their fingers that Mr. Trump will get four more years in office, European liberals are giving up hope. It is not that they are no longer passionate about American politics. On the contrary, they religiously follow Congress’s impeachment hearings and pray for Mr. Trump’s defeat. But they have finally started to realize that a proper European Union foreign policy cannot be based on who is in the White House.

What explains this shift? It is plausible that European liberals are unconvinced by the foreign policy visions of Democratic hopefuls and detect isolationist tendencies in the party as well. Europeans are still struggling to understand how it was that Barack Obama-- probably the most European-minded American president and one most loved by Europeans-- was also the one least interested in Europe. (At least until Mr. Trump came along.)

Europeans are also scared by the prospect of a Cold War-style clash between the United States and China. A recent poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations found that in conflicts between the United States and China, a majority of European voters want to remain neutral, finding a middle way between the superpowers. There’s good reason for this: Europe remains economically tied to China in ways that Washington doesn’t seem to appreciate, as evidenced by the recent spat over the Chinese telecom giant Huawei’s plans to build 5G networks across the Continent.

But putting that aside, I believe there is a more fundamental change: European liberals have come to understand that American democracy no longer produces a consensual politics with a predictable foreign policy. The change of the president means not only a new figure in the White House but also, in fact, a new regime. Were the Democrats to triumph in 2020 and a Europe-friendly president to take the helm, there is no guarantee that in 2024 Americans will not elect a president who, like Mr. Trump, will see the European Union as an enemy and will actively try to destabilize relations with Europe.

The self-destruction of the American foreign policy consensus was powerfully demonstrated not only during the recent impeachment hearings, which have seen the politicization of policy toward Ukraine, but also by the fact that the specter of Russian subversion did not provoke a bipartisan allergic reaction. When Trump voters were told that President Vladimir Putin of Russia supported their candidate, they started admiring Mr. Putin rather than abandoning Mr. Trump.

For the past 70 years, Europeans have known that no matter who occupies the White House, America’s foreign policy and strategic priorities will be consistent. Today, all bets are off. Although most European leaders were appalled by Mr. Macron’s derisive comments about NATO and the United States, many still agree with him that Europe needs more foreign policy independence. They want Europe to develop its own technological capabilities and to develop the capacity for military operations outside of NATO.

Could this week’s NATO summit change Europe’s current state of mind when it comes to the future of trans-Atlantic relations? It is easier to hope for than to bet on. In the aftermath of the Cold War, Vice President Dan Quayle promised Europeans that “the future will be better tomorrow.” He was wrong. And Europe’s leaders are coming to realize that the future was actually better yesterday.

With Pompeo about to bail from his job heading the State Department so he can prevent neo-fascist crackpot Kris Kobach from losing the Kansas Senate seat to newly minted Democrat-- another Schumer special, a Republican pretending to be a Democrat-- Barbara Bollier, the completely demoralized and decimated department, is in for more turmoil. When Rex Tillerson became secretary of state in early 2017, he set about slashing the ranks of the State Department, both through attrition and through proposed budget cuts. The first few months of Tillerson’s tenure was marked by an across-the-board hiring freeze and an exodus of senior, high-profile foreign service officers.

When Tillerson was fired by tweet and his successor, Mike Pompeo, vowed to bring the “swagger” back to the State Department, he reversed many of Tillerson’s slash-and-burn policies. Still, foreign service veterans say, the damage was done.

What’s more, the attrition continues unabated. Career foreign service officers work long hours in difficult conditions, making less money than they would in the private sector. Often, they are driven by their sense of mission-- say, promoting American values abroad-- but when President Trump began attacking the pillars of American national security and smearing diplomats by name on Twitter, “suddenly,” says one senior foreign service officer who was pushed out on a scheduling technicality, “the equation didn’t make sense anymore.” What had started as a trickle of people leaving at the highest levels-- often, people who were close to retirement-- has turned into a flood of mid-career and junior officers heading for the door. The departure of top talent, people who had decades’ worth of wisdom that could have passed on to people below them, as well as the exodus of mid-level officers who had years to go before their retirements, will continue to resonate for quite a while, says Nicholas Burns, a retired career foreign service officer who is now at the Harvard Kennedy School. “That gap will show up years later,” he told me.

“What’s striking is both the decapitation of the State Department and the loss of people who should have been the next leadership of the department,” says the foreign service officer who was forced out. “It’s a hollowing out of the foreign service. You can’t replace those mid-level people easily at the numbers at which they’re losing them. That will take a generation to rebuild.”

Previously unpublished data from the AFSA shows that the foreign service is losing people at an alarming clip. In the first two years of Trump’s presidency, nearly half of the State Department’s Career Ministers retired or were pushed out. Another 20 percent of its Minister Counselors, one rank level down, also left.

There are no official numbers yet for 2019, but one former career foreign service officer I spoke with offered a telling piece of data that speaks to the unease. Last December, this ex–foreign service officer created a Facebook group aimed at connecting fellow FSOs looking to transition out of the service and into the private sector. In less than a year, this former FSO told me, the group has accumulated over 1,000 members. In the two months since the impeachment inquiry began and Trump started smearing career FSOs like Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and Jennifer Williams, more foreign service officers have begun looking for an exit. Another 100 FSOs have requested to join the Facebook group since the impeachment proceedings began, the source told me, asking other group members to help them dust off their résumés or meet them for informational interviews.

“We’re worried about the effect this can have on recruitment, where people say, ‘Is this what could happen to me?’ ” says Rubin. “People think, ‘I could be subpoenaed, I could be ruined with legal bills, I could end up vilified on TV when all I did was my job.’”

This comes on top of American diplomats feeling like the Trump administration has been even more focused on controlling foreign policy than past administrations, pushing foreign service professionals to the side using a variety of methods. “The administration’s strategy is to isolate career people from the policymaking process as much as possible, and where that’s not possible, to stifle dissent through character assassination and to let that have a chilling effect,” says the foreign service officer who was forced out, adding, “God, it makes me want to vomit. Because what country are we talking about?”

In fact, recruitment has already fallen off dramatically. Ten years ago, in 2009, about 21,000 people took the test to join the American foreign service. Today, according to AFSA’s analysis of internal State Department data, that number is just over 9,000-- less than half. And that was before the impeachment inquiry began.

All of this has created alarming gaps all over the world. Trump was slow to fill diplomatic appointments, and with time a clear preference has emerged for “acting” secretaries and ambassadors who are accountable not to the Senate but to him. According to AFSA, 20 ambassadorships remain unfilled. One-third of foreign service jobs in overseas U.S. embassies and consulates sit empty. The work of filling those jobs has ground to a halt because of impeachment proceedings.

There’s a hope that, if Trump doesn’t win re-election, many of the departed foreign service officers will return to the State Department. Elizabeth Warren’s plan for restructuring the State Department includes a provision to lure back diplomats who have left or were pushed out during the Trump years. “The practical reality is it’s hard to bring people back,” says a senior foreign service officer. “There’s a reason they left; they’ve rebuilt their lives. Some proposals, including Warren’s, are not realistic.”

Meanwhile, China continues staffing up across the world, including in Africa, where the U.S. has an especially high number of unfilled jobs. According to Australia’s Lowy Institute, which issues an annual Diplomacy Index, China just surpassed the United States in diplomatic muscle. The United States, which for decades after World War II had the highest number of embassies and consulates, has been outpaced by a rising adversary.

American diplomatic strength, foreign service veterans say, is further undercut by the high number of political appointees Trump has named to ambassadorships. While many political appointees are quick studies and do a good job of representing American interests abroad-- career FSOs point to Kay Bailey Hutchison, Trump’s ambassador to NATO, as an example of excellence-- many others are woefully unprepared for the job. Unlike career foreign service officers who are often experts in the country in which they are stationed, political nominees are usually top campaign donors and lack the knowledge of either the country to which they’re posted or the diplomatic protocols on which host countries insist. One foreign service officer described a politically appointed ambassador inquiring about the difference between the NSA and CIA.

And yet Trump has appointed more political allies to ambassadorships than any other postwar president. According to AFSA, 52 percent of America’s ambassadors are political appointees. This is the highest proportion since AFSA started keeping count in 1960. The last time the number of politically appointed ambassadors was this high was Ronald Reagan’s second term, when the proportion of political ambassadors peaked at 37 percent. “We are concerned that the percentage of political appointees is the highest it’s ever been,” says Rubin, the AFSA president. “This really hurts us overseas to carry out the president’s policy and to defend national security interests.”

After all, these political appointees, who are often diplomatic novices, are usually facing off against highly trained, disciplined, professional diplomats from countries like Russia and China, which don’t have any politically appointed ambassadors. “China has only professional, not political appointees, and our ambassadors are not always taken seriously,” says one current foreign service official. “We are very often outmatched and outgunned and frequently outmaneuvered these days.”

The political appointees are also usually President Trump’s ideological allies, who see the deep state everywhere. Before Ambassador Johnson called [deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in London, Lewis] Lukens in and fired him, Lukens told me that embassy staffers had heard the ambassador tossing the term “deep state” around, questioning the patriotism of employees he didn’t feel were sufficiently loyal to the president. Lukens was already suspect because, in June 2017, when he was the acting ambassador (Trump still hadn’t named anyone for the job), a terror attack hit London: A man with a knife and a truck mowed down pedestrians on London Bridge, killing eight and injuring 48 more. Trump immediately lashed out at Sadiq Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor, and Lukens used the U.S. Embassy Twitter account to send a message of support to Londoners and their mayor in fairly mild diplomatic language. “I commend the strong leadership of the @MayorofLondon as he leads the city forward after this heinous attack,” Lukens wrote. Breitbart immediately spotted the tweet, and Lukens says he was subjected to several days of virtual abuse.

“There’s a higher level of mistrust from political ambassadors of career FSOs than I’ve ever seen in my life,” Lukens told me. “Many of Trump’s political ambassadors have an unfounded belief that government bureaucrats are overwhelmingly Democrats and liberals and working against Trump’s agenda, and that’s just not the case.”

It didn’t help that, when Trump attacked then prime minister Theresa May, Lukens also passed along a message to the White House from the highest levels of the British government. “The message was, ‘Can you guys cut it out?’ ” Lukens recalls. “The response from Washington was that, short of taking the president's phone away, we don’t really have anything we can do.”

More and more, American diplomats abroad find themselves cleaning up the fallout from the president’s tweets or off-the-cuff remarks. When Trump said he didn’t want any immigrants from “shithole countries,” several ambassadors in Africa were called in by their host countries’ foreign ministries and asked for an official explanation.

“We’re punching below our weight and not taken seriously,” says a senior foreign service officer. “We’re getting into squabbles with the host country, which is one thing if it’s Russia and China. It’s another if it’s our allies.”

Under The Bus! And Don't They All Deserve It!

Trump is hardly the first corrupt politician who greased his way into the White House and then illegally sold position, particularly ambassadorships to countries that matter very little. But only Trump was stupid enough to leave a written trail for law enforcement. And, of course, Trump has done it more than any other White House occupant. Most presidents use some ambassadorial posts to reward supporters, the way Trump has with the latest wealthy skank Newt Gingrich married (Vatican City). But yesterday CBS News exposed a pay-to-play scheme that could land some people in prison and has already ended the still-born diplomatic career of Doug Machester.

Papa Doug

Manchester is a wealthy and crooked developer in San Diego with the reputation of as a shady wheeler-dealer, so... right up Trump's alley. He's been bribing Republicans for years:

• September 30, 2015- $50,000 to a Trump's shady superPAC
• August 31, 2011- $25,000 to a Mitt Romney SuperPAC
• October 16, 2014- $10,000 to the NRCC
• May 6, 2015- 10,000 to a Carly Fiorina SuperPAC
• March 21, 2016- $10,000 to the San Diego County Central Committee
• May 15, 2014- $10,000 to the Republican Party of San Diego
• June 10, 2016- $5,000 to the Republican Party of San Diego
• August 28, 2013- $5,000 to a Marco Rubio SuperPAC

He also maxed out to Darrell Issa (at least 6 times), Scott Walker, Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio (3 times) and several others. But Trump doesn't sell ambassadorships for $50,000. Trump had Ronna Romney (AKA- RNC chair Ronna McDaniel) hit Manchester up for another half million dollars, after he wrote a check to Trump's inauguration committee, money that is unaccounted for and widely believed translated right into Trump's own bank account.

Trump offered Papa Doug," as Manchester was known in GOP circles, the ambassadorship the day after the inauguration. BUT... while the confirmation was working its way through the Senate, McDaniel told him to write another $500,000 check, this one for the RNC. He refused and that was the end of the nomination, which stalled for 2-and-a-half years in MoscowMitch's corrupt sewer-Senate. "That’s part of politics. It’s unbelievable. You give and you give and you give and you give some more and more and more," Manchester told CBS News. He offered McDaniel a $100,000 check from his wife instead... if MoscowMitch had him confirmed. That never happened and Trump withdrew the nomination last week. Once Manchester basically ratted McDaniel out, to CBS she had the RNC return a small part of the money Papa Doug has given them.

OK, so Trump is selling ambassadorships. Big surprise! Not. Right now about half of the U.S. ambassadors bought their posts, including putting money into Trump's pockets directly (via Mar-A-Lago memberships) and schemes like that. And Pompeo seems perfectly fine with it. Maybe he'll change his tune now that Trump is increasingly turning venomous towards him.

Under The Bus by Nancy Ohanian

An all-star NBC News team-- Carol E. Lee, Courtney Kube and Andrea Mitchell-- reported that Trump is getting on Pompeo's case over the diplomats testifying against him in the House. "Trump," they wrote, "has fumed for weeks that Pompeo is responsible for hiring State Department officials whose congressional testimony threatens to bring down his presidency, the officials said. The president confronted Pompeo about the officials-- and what he believed was a lackluster effort by the secretary of state to block their testimony-- during lunch at the White House on Oct. 29, those familiar with the matter said. Inside the White House, the view was that Trump 'just felt like, rein your people in,' a senior administration official said. Trump particularly blames Pompeo for tapping Ambassador Bill Taylor in June to be the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, the current and former senior administration officials said."

A crack in the seemingly unbreakable bond between Trump and Pompeo is striking because Pompeo, a former Kansas congressman, is viewed as the “Trump whisperer” who has survived-- and thrived-- working for a president who has routinely tired of and discarded senior members of his team.

But the impeachment inquiry has put Pompeo in what one senior administration official described as an untenable position: trying to manage a bureaucracy of 75,000 people that has soured on his leadership and also please a boss with outsized expectations of loyalty.

“He feels like he's getting a bunch of blame from the president and the White House for having hired all these people who are turning against Trump,” an official familiar with the dynamic said of Pompeo, “and that it's the State Department that is going to bring him down, so it's all Pompeo's fault.”

...Trump has hinted publicly at tensions with Pompeo, and while the comments might go unnoticed by the untrained ear they’ve been heard loudly by people close to the president.

The first was on Oct. 23, officials said, when Trump wrote on Twitter: “It would be really great if the people within the Trump Administration, all well-meaning and good (I hope!), could stop hiring Never Trumpers, who are worse than the Do Nothing Democrats. Nothing good will ever come from them!”

Trump followed up with another tweet specifically calling Taylor, and his lawyer, "Never Trumpers."

Two days later, Trump said Pompeo “made a mistake” in hiring Taylor.

“Here’s the problem: He's a never Trumper, and his lawyer is,” the president told reporters about Taylor. “The other problem is-- hey, everyone makes mistakes-- Mike Pompeo. Everybody makes mistakes.”


The next day, Oct. 26, Pompeo was notably absent as the president sat with his national security team during the U.S. military raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Pompeo was not informed about the raid until late Friday after he was home in Kansas for his son’s friend’s wedding, officials said.

Throughout the impeachment inquiry, Pompeo and Trump have maintained their weekly lunches at the White House, according to the president’s public schedule.

But the president was angry when he arrived in his private dining room on Oct. 29, two officials said. Pompeo defended himself, officials said, by telling Trump he doesn’t know who half of these State Department officials are, officials said. He also noted that there are thousands of employees at the agency, explaining that he can’t control them, those familiar with the matter said.

...The tension with Trump comes as Pompeo weighs whether to leave the administration to run for Kansas’ open Senate seat.

Pompeo has served in the administration since its start. Trump tapped him as CIA director, then moved him to secretary of state after he fired Pompeo’s predecessor, Rex Tillerson. For almost three years, Pompeo seamlessly navigated a finicky president. He’s remained, and became more influential, as Trump churned through two chiefs of staff, three national security advisers, an attorney general, and secretaries of defense, state, labor, homeland security, interior, veterans affairs and health and human services.

But in recent weeks Pompeo has been under steady fire over his role in the Ukraine scandal, as well as his handling of it.

Initially when the Ukraine controversy became public, Trump wanted Pompeo to publicly defend him against the State Department bureaucracy, officials said. But the White House thought Pompeo appeared unprepared in his television interviews, and his performance only fueled the president’s frustrations, they said.

Pompeo has faced criticism for saying, during an interview on ABC’s This Week, that he didn’t know anything about the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that is at the center of the controversy. Pompeo didn’t disclose until more than a week later that he had listened in on that call.

Like the White House, he has attempted to block State Department officials from testifying. And he has refused to turn over State Department documents related to Ukraine.

His decision last week, however, to allow the State Department to help pay for the legal fees that officials ensnared in the impeachment inquiry are accruing could further strain his relationship with the president.

That decision underscores the balance Pompeo is trying to strike between the president and the department he leads.

State Department officials had thought Pompeo’s move to the agency in April 2018 would be a welcome antidote to what they viewed as the bureaucratic fecklessness of Tillerson, given Pompeo’s unfettered access to Trump and their close relationship.

But morale at the State Department has sagged for months, and it plummeted further as the Ukraine scandal unfolded, according to multiple officials.

State Department officials are critical of Pompeo for buckling to pressure from the president and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and abruptly recalling Yovanovitch while she was serving as U.S. ambassador in Ukraine. Yovanovitch had been vilified by Giuliani, who convinced the president she was working against his interests.

Criticism of Pompeo inside the State Department escalated when he refused to publicly defend Yovanovitch after a reconstructed transcript of the July 25 call revealed Trump disparaged Yovanovitch to Zelenskiy, administration officials have said. Pompeo’s closest aide, Ambassador Mike McKinley, resigned over the secretary’s refusal to defend Yovanovitch.

Testimony from Taylor and others show Pompeo was keenly aware of the concerns his top officials had about Giuliani’s efforts and his handling of Yovanovitch.

In public testimony on Friday, Yovanovitch appeared to excoriate Pompeo for “the failure of State Department leadership to push back as foreign and corrupt interests apparently hijacked our Ukraine policy.”

“It is the responsibility of the department's leaders to stand up for the institution and the individuals who make that institution the most effective diplomatic force in the world,” she said.

According to administration officials, Pompeo’s refusal to publicly defend Yovanovitch cemented a wider view within the State Department that he has enabled some of Trump’s impulsive foreign policy decisions, such as the withdrawal of U.S. special forces from Syria after a phone call with Turkey’s Erdgoan.

“Pompeo is hated by his building,” a person close to the secretary said, adding that he “feels the heat a great deal and feels it’s personal at state.”

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

The fact that the U.S. State Department has shutdown their conference on border security due to the Trump shutdown of our government over the fight about his wall is not only full of irony, it is also a prime example of Republican logic and governance at work. That's not at all surprising when you realize that the bulk of Republican thought comes from Republican Bizarro World, a world where every day is upside down and backwards knuckle-dragging day.

Another Whacky Day In The Life Our The Illegitimate "President"

Fresh from what he sees as a great victory in Singapore, where Kim Jong-Un pantsed him, Trump's Wednesday was pretty crazy. ZTE, which he promised China he would save, tanked-- 40% tanked ($3 billion)-- as Congress threatened to block Trump's deal.

Polling shows that although self-identified Republican voters are still behind Trump, normal people don't think he's doing a good job and think the most important opportunity in the midterms is to elect a Congress that will act as a check on him. Earlier, we looked at polls from Suffolk and Quinnipiac showing that Ohio Republican candidates are suffering because of Trump's toxicity. George Washington University also released one showing that Trump is inspiring a big turn out. In Wisconsin Tuesday, Democrats and independents rushed to the polls in a very red state Senate district Scott Walker had won by 24 points in 2014 and Trump had won by 18 points in 2016, where the Democrat beat a Republican 51.4% to 48.6%. The George Washington University poll warns that this is going to happen across the country, where 53% of voters-- 46% strongly-- think Trump is doing a bad job.

Americans are overwhelmingly engaged in the upcoming 2018 congressional elections, and are poised to split with the president on a number of high-profile policy issues. In the inaugural edition of the George Washington University Politics Poll more than three-quarters (78 percent) of registered voters said they definitely will vote in the November general elections; another 15 percent said they probably will. Only 2 percent said they would definitely not vote. On a generic ballot for U.S. House, voters chose Democrats over Republicans, 45 to 38 percent. Voters also indicated they think their members of Congress care about their political careers and political parties’ agendas more than local communities or “people like you.”

“In two respects, the poll suggests some Democratic advantages that are less visible on the surface,” John Sides, associate professor of political science and a poll co-director, said. “Democratic voters remain more politically engaged than Republican voters on several dimensions-- including their willingness to do the spadework of an election campaign. And Democratic incumbents in the U.S. House are perceived more positively than Republican incumbents. Whether that will add up to a veritable ‘wave’ remains to be seen.”

If that doesn't give Trump enough to yell and scream about, ABC News reported that Cohen is likely to flip as the law firm representing him bails. "[T]he law firm handling the case for Cohen is not expected to represent him going forward... Cohen, now with no legal representation, is likely to cooperate with federal prosecutors in New York, sources said."

Trump wasn't even able to bask in the glory of having destroyed Mark Sanford's career on Tuesday night before finding out that his order-- over a month ago-- to promote Rudy Giuliani's son was circumvented by Chief of Staff John Kelly. In fact, instead of being promoted, Andrew Giuliani's West Wing pass was rescinded.

Kelly and others, including Office of Public Liaison director Justin Clark, won't promote Andrew because they think he "subverts the chain of command" and claim he had other issues in the workplace that they weren't happy about, according to two sources familiar with the situation.

According to a source familiar, Kelly took away Andrew's blue staff pass about two weeks ago, revoking his West Wing access. He now only has a green pass, which means he can’t enter the West Wing without an escort.

To top it all off and get Trump flipping out over fake news again, Foreign Policy ran 3 articles that must be driving Trump crazy, one asserting that if anyone deserves a Nobel it's South Korean President Moon Jae-i and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, not Trump. "Talk of the peace prize is obviously premature. Trump’s meeting with Kim had great visuals, but there was no real deal struck and certainly no pledge of denuclearization from the North. And this isn’t the first summit to cause hopes to soar for inter-Korean reconciliation."

Even worse was Kim Got What He Wanted in Singapore. Trump Didn’t. The point is that "The G-7 and Singapore summits have put on display breathtaking strategic incoherence and appalling moral vacuity on the part of the Trump administration... Kim made only a vague promise to 'work towards' the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, with no details on timing or verification. This commitment is far less specific even than the past promises the North has broken,' but got all that he could have hoped for.

Even more embarrassing-- if Trump was capable of being embarrassed: Mari Stull, a former food and beverage lobbyist-turned-wine blogger under the name 'Vino Vixen,' who Trump game a señor just in the State Department 2 months ago is skulking around try to determine whether employees of the State Department are loyal to Señor Trumpanzee and his absurd political agenda. She's been reviewing the social media pages of State Department staffers for signs of ideological deviation. She has researched the names of government officials to determine whether they signed off on Obama-era policies-- though signing off does not mean officials personally endorsed them but merely cleared them through the bureaucratic chain. And she has inquired about Americans employed by international agencies, including the World Health Organization and the United Nations, asking their colleagues when they were hired and by whom, according the officials."

Her motto seems to be "Global swamp will be drained." Several staffers want to leave the Department because of her. One official told FP that "I have in my entire federal career never experienced anything at this level of chaos and dysfunction."  

The turmoil comes at a time when the secretary is trying boost morale at the State Department, which took a sharp plunge under his predecessor, Rex Tillerson. The exodus in the international organization bureau underscores the continuing struggles of career diplomats in an administration whose president has repeatedly shown disdain for traditional American diplomacy.

Stull was largely unknown in diplomatic circles in Washington until her appointment in April. Her bio cites her work as a lobbyist in the food and beverage industry, which included work for the Grocery Manufacturers of America. More recently, she served as a senior fellow at American Opportunity, a Virginia-based conservative group affiliated with former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore.

She also previously worked for the Food and Agriculture Organization as a partnerships and outreach advisor. But several diplomatic sources said that she left the organization on contentious terms.

Stull’s conservative politics can be gleaned from her decade-old wine blog, where one trip to the wine store for bottles of Veuve Clicquot champagne became a vehicle for knocking former President Jimmy Carter and promoting the expansion of oil drilling sites in the United States.

On her Twitter feed, Stull has criticized the U.N. as “bloated” and “biased,” dismissed the U.N. Human Rights Council as an “abject failure,” and derided UNESCO, the organization that supports international education, culture, and history, as the U.N.’s “seedy underbelly.”

She has also said the budget for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election would be better spent on storm victims in Texas and Florida.

In response to a tweet by former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, a controversial law enforcement figure and high-profile Trump supporter, promising to poke the press “in the eye with a sharp stick and bitch slap these scum bags til they get it,” Stull replied: “@SheriffClarke has spoken. #StandDown #FakeNews #Fierce.”

Trump-- Already Making America Less Safe With His Adderall-Fueled Twitter Feuds

Wednesday, Mexico's president, Enrique Peña Nieto, announced he was thinking about canceling his meeting with Señor el Presidente Trumpanzee in Washington next week, as a matter of Mexican national pride. Within hours, Thursday morning, he tweeted that he canceled the meeting with the deranged, Adderall-addicted orange orangoutang. Trumpanzee, a pathological liar unable to control himself even at this high a level, claims the idea to cancel the meeting was his own since Peña Nieto was once again refusing to pay for Trump's foolish and absurd wall.

Today's Wall Street Journal slammed Trumpanzee as a pathetic and dangerous amateur: "The world is not a Republican primary. President Trump’s Twitter broadsides against Mexico have unleashed a political backlash that has now become a diplomatic crisis with a friendly neighbor." The editorial board tried to remind the idiot that "With a population of 128 million, Mexico is America’s second-largest export market for goods. Some six million U.S. jobs depend on trade with Mexico."

Trump, in a freak-show display of his brand of twitter-diplomacy tweeted that "The U.S. has a 60 billion dollar trade deficit with Mexico. It has been a one-sided deal from the beginning of NAFTA with massive numbers of jobs and companies lost." Moments later, Josh Rogin reported that the entire senior management team at the State Department had just resigned en masse, unwilling "to stick around for the Trump era." He was still at it this morning, tweeting that "Mexico has taken advantage of the U.S. for long enough. Massive trade deficits & little help on the very weak border must change, NOW! Maybe it wasn't just because of Trumpanzee's twitter diplomacy; aftern all, T-Rex had just spent Wednesday meeting with them the day before.

Undersecretary for management, Patrick Kennedy, Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Ambassador Gentry O. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Missions, handed in their resignations. All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. A few days earlier Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr and the director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, Lydia Muniz, quit as well.

“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” said David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry. “Department expertise in security, management, administrative and consular positions in particular are very difficult to replicate and particularly difficult to find in the private sector.”

Several senior foreign service officers in the State Department’s regional bureaus have also left their posts or resigned since the election. But the emptying of leadership in the management bureaus is more disruptive because those offices need to be led by people who know the department and have experience running its complicated bureaucracies. There’s no easy way to replace that via the private sector, said Wade.

“Diplomatic security, consular affairs, there’s just not a corollary that exists outside the department, and you can least afford a learning curve in these areas where issues can quickly become matters of life and death,” he said. “The muscle memory is critical. These retirements are a big loss. They leave a void. These are very difficult people to replace.”

Or maybe they didn't like the idea of advocating for the illegal use of torture. Was this part of the Resistance? Trumpanzee, of course, claims he fired them all... the same way he claims it was his idea it cancel the meeting with the President of Mexico.

And speaking of torture, I was putting my shoes and socks on and switched on the TV. Andrea Mitchell was on with a former Bush Regime torture advocate and she asked him if Trump openly advocating torture-- not even calling it "enhanced interrogation" the way Cheney and Bush and their stooges used to-- was giving "the bad guys" a propaganda tool. Why are Andrea Mitchell and the rest of the media hacks unable to realize that Trump and his team of miscreants ARE the bad guys?

CAVEAT: Silver Lining

One of the State Department officials who resigned is Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, wife of notorious neocon Robert Kagan and one of the worst of the Cold War neanderthal hold-overs, someone Clinton was said to be considering for a top post.

State Dept. to Reopen Suspended Clinton Email Investigation

State Dept. Inspector General Steve Linick

by Gaius Publius

The State Dept. has announced that it's reopening the suspended Clinton email-and-server investigation, now that the FBI investigation is concluded. (For my analysis of the Comey announcement, see this: "Picking Up James Comey’s Pieces — What He Did, What He Should Have Done & Why".)

The AP reports:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department is reopening an internal investigation of possible mishandling of classified information by Hillary Clinton and top aides.

Spokesman John Kirby says the emails probe is restarting now that the Justice Department isn't pursuing a criminal prosecution. The State Department suspended its review in April to avoid interfering with the FBI's inquiry.

Kirby set no deadline for the investigation's completion. ...

Which means there will be more from the State Dept. IG. Apparently, at least from this, the State Dept. investigation was never closed. I don't think that hit most people's radars, likely because it was not widely reported that way.

Many view the original State Dept. IG report on Clinton's email and server usage as damaging to her reputation, if not damaging to her chances of winning the election. It will be interesting to see what else they discover, if anything. (The original report is available for reading or download here.)

Trouble for Clinton's Aides?

The AP goes on to note there could be trouble ahead for Clinton's top aides:

Kirby said this week former officials [i.e., Clinton's former top aides in the State Dept.] can still face "administrative sanctions." The most serious is loss of security clearances, which could complicate Clinton's naming of a national security team if she becomes president.

Beyond the Democratic front-runner, the probe is most likely examining confidants Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan and Huma Abedin.

According to this, loss of security clearance could pose a problem for members of a future President Clinton's national security team.

Or maybe not. In a Washington Post article entitled "I’m a lawyer specializing in security clearance cases. Hillary Clinton got off easy." writer John V. Berry, a "Virginia lawyer who specializes in cases involving security clearances" notes the following:

Security clearances are ultimately governed by presidential executive order, which means that a president can decide who does and doesn’t get a security clearance, and can change the rules. Thus, as a practical matter, a President Clinton would not face a problem obtaining access to classified information, and she could overrule any recommendations denying clearances to her trusted aides.

In order to get to the point where she could make those rulings, her candidacy will need to survive through November. Another State Dept. IG report could present another hurdle in that long march.

GP
 

Three Data Points Regarding Clinton's Email Server and the Law

"Lady Justice" atop the Old Bailey, carrying the scales of even-handedness and the sword of punishment, should it be needed. Some remember this as Rumpole's old hangout.

by Gaius Publius

I've been writing for weeks that there are two aspects to the Clinton "secret server" issue — the way the server was handled, and the content of the messages it contained. Regarding the way the server was handled, almost everything needed to determine criminal liability is already in the public record and has been for a while.

So here are three data points, just three. They line up perfectly so the main idea is easy to grasp. (Consider this the first in a series, "The Clinton Server Story for Progressives." If events move too quickly, it will be the last, as everyone from Time to the Washington Post will be telling you what's what and you won't need me at all.)

◾ The server's email system was apparently unencrypted for the first two months of use when Clinton was Secretary of State.

This means that email going to and from the server was unencrypted during transmission. Messages were sent and received in plain text. This is the Washington Post from last March (my emphasis):

The server was nothing remarkable, the kind of system often used by small businesses, according to people familiar with its configuration at the end of her tenure. It consisted of two off-the-shelf server computers. Both were equipped with antivirus software. They were linked by cable to a local Internet service provider. A firewall was used as protection against hackers.

Few could have known it, but the email system operated in those first two months without the standard encryption generally used on the Internet to protect communication, according to an independent analysis that Venafi Inc., a cybersecurity firm that specializes in the encryption process, took upon itself to publish on its website after the scandal broke.

Not until March 29, 2009 — two months after Clinton began using it — did the server receive a “digital certificate” that protected communication over the Internet through encryption, according to Venafi’s analysis.

It is unknown whether the system had some other way to encrypt the email traffic at the time. Without encryption — a process that scrambles communication for anyone without the correct key — email, attachments and passwords are transmitted in plain text.

“That means that anyone could have accessed it. Anyone,” Kevin Bocek, vice president of threat intelligence at Venafi, told The Post.

The system had other features that made it vulnerable to talented hackers, including a software program that enabled users to log on directly from the World Wide Web.

Four computer-security specialists interviewed by The Post said that such a system could be made reasonably secure but that it would need constant monitoring by people trained to look for irregularities in the server’s logs.

“For data of this sensitivity . . . we would need at a minimum a small team to do monitoring and hardening,” said Jason Fossen, a computer-security specialist at the SANS Institute, which provides cybersecurity training around the world.

The man Clinton has said maintained and monitored her server was Bryan Pagliano, who had worked as the technology chief for her political action committee and her presidential campaign. It is not clear whether he had any help. Pagliano had also provided computer services to the Clinton family. In 2008, he received more than $5,000 for that work, according to financial disclosure statements he filed with the government.

The Post article is much longer and contains a great deal of information. If this subject interests you, I encourage you to click through.

I hope you noticed the name "Bryan Pagliano" above. He's among the key people the FBI are talking to. In March, Pagliano was granted immunity in exchange for information. Pagliano is also the subject of a Judicial Watch FOIA request, and he's on the Judicial Watch deposition list. (For more on Pagliano, see below.)

Your first takeaway — Unless there was encryption employed by Clinton's private email service that no one knows about, email communications to and from it were readable as plain text. Certainly not deliberately so, but a fact nonetheless.

◾ The above-mentioned Bryan Pagliano has announced he's taking the fifth in his Judicial Watch deposition. He's going to refuse to speak when deposed.

The Hill:

Clinton IT aide to plead Fifth in email case

The man believed to have set up and maintained Hillary Clinton’s private email server will assert his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refuse to answer questions as part of an open records lawsuit against the State Department.

Bryan Pagliano will decline to answer questions from Judicial Watch, the conservative legal watchdog group, during a deposition scheduled for Monday, his lawyers wrote in a court filing on Wednesday afternoon.

The move forecloses the possibility that Pagliano would break his months of silence about the server issue, even as scrutiny has intensified on his role.

Pagliano’s lawyers told Judicial Watch more than a week ago that he would not be answering any questions, they claimed in their filing on Wednesday, and asked that it drop its subpoena. The organization refused.

"Taking the fifth" is an admission of guilt of something (who knows what?), but it's an absolute protection from prosecution by evidence from his own mouth. (The ability to "take the fifth," by the way, is important — it's our protection against evidence produced by torture. Still, it's damning, not just of Pagliano, but of that whole crew.)

Your second takeaway — Pagliano thinks he can be prosecuted for something if he speaks about the Clinton email server in his FOIA deposition. Check the first story above to review what he can speak about.

There will perhaps be political consequences from this. Will there be legal consequences? Keep reading.

◾ One of the laws that may have been broken is 18 U.S. Code § 793 - Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information.

Note first that the information listed below doesn't require a formal "classified" designation to be relevant, and second, that "intent" is not necessary to trigger the law's penalties. "Gross negligence" is sufficient. Again, my emphasis below:

(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

(g) If two or more persons conspire to violate any of the foregoing provisions of this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy.

Your third takeaway — Unless this law doesn't apply for some other reason, it seems perfectly applicable for the reasons noted above. All sorts of State Department business and communications could be considered "relating to the national defense," including simple travel itineraries of top officials, such as President Obama's.

"Gross negligence" in allowing such documents to be "lost" or "stolen" is, under this law, a criminal act subject to fines, imprisonment, or both. If the server was hacked, broken into, the above law appears to apply.

Was This Law Actually Broken?

Were documents related to the national defense in fact stolen from Clinton's "home-brew" server through negligence? I think that's the piece we don't know. Will we ever find out? That's the other piece we don't know. Still, these data points have been on my mind since I discovered them.

(By the way, the list of laws that may have been broken, not to mention State Department practices and guidelines ignored, is proffered to be long, at least according to the Internet. I've seen a list, and this is just one item on it. It's also the one I find least controvertible, since the meaning of "classified" is a mine field, depending on how each law is written, and this law isn't limited to "classified" material. I don't envy the FBI in sorting through all this.)

I'm not saying Clinton committed a crime; I'm not a lawyer, just a political observer. But as an observer, I do observe these data points, and suspect that they're related. And again, this is all from the public record, and every piece but the middle one has been there, out in the open, for a while.

Stay tuned. This may be nothing or not-nothing. But if it turns into something, you'll at least have heard about it.

GP
  

A Day of Tidbits: Did Clinton Help Kill the Public Option? Which Reporter Has the Wall Street Speeches?

Lee Fang interviews Hillary Clinton about her Wall Street speeches (source)

by Gaius Publius

It's been a day of fascinating small bits of news. Let's look at just two that have caught my eye.

Did Hillary Clinton Help Rahm Emanuel Kill the Public Option?

For example, did you know Hillary Clinton may have helped the Senate reject the public option during the ACA debate? Read this FOIA-released email exchange between Neera Tanden ("a former Obama administration senior adviser") and Hillary Clinton from 2010 and decide for yourself (h/t Stuart Zechman):

(Click to enlarge.)

It almost reads like Tanden was working for Clinton as well, but I could be wrong. The key sentences are: "The one question I wanted to ask you is about your idea on using FEHBP as a kind of public option. I know you gave that to Rahm [Emanuel] last August, and then mysteriously, it was in the Senate Finance package like a month later."

FEHBP is the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. It was dangled in front of us as a substitute for a while. Here's what the people at the Kaiser Health Network had to say at the time (my emphasis):

10 Experts Weigh In On Plan To Replace Public Option In Health Bill
By KHN Staff December 14, 2009

Can a spinoff of the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program which is the health insurance coverage for eight million federal workers and their families, as well as members of Congress, help some of the country’s uninsured?

Many Senate Democrats are betting it would and have proposed that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which manages the FEHBP, oversee national health plans as part a Senate health bill compromise reached late Tuesday to replace the public option.

Although the specifics of the proposed spinoff have not yet been released and could change, it would likely include at least two national plans from private insurers. These plans would be administered by OPM....

If I read this right, it doesn't look good for Clinton, especially in light of this, from  Politico very recently:

Clinton revives support for health care 'public option'

Hillary Clinton wants to bring back the public option, offering a competing vision to Bernie Sanders’ support for a more progressive health care system.

Clinton's campaign has updated its website to note her continued support for the government-run health plan that was dropped from Obamacare during the law's drafting. The idea was popular among progressives who prefer a single-payer plan -- like the one Bernie Sanders is touting.

Clinton supported the public option in her 2008 presidential campaign, and during the drafting of the Affordable Care Act a year later, Congress debated allowing a government-run plan to compete with private insurers. However, the public option was eliminated from the legislation because of objections from moderate Senate Democrats who opposed a greater government role in providing health care.

"Clinton supported the public option ... during the drafting of the Affordable Care Act" — except that, apparently, she didn't. Just the opposite in fact. She appears to be the source of the bait-and-switch that Rahm Emanuel passed to those "moderate Senate Democrats" who tanked it.

I'd love to hear the explanation of that one. Maybe some reporter would do something like was done in the clip at the top.

By the way, the Washington Post, which has spotted the same email, has spun its contents this way (h/t Lee Fang):

Former Obama health adviser sought to credit Clinton with ACA reform ideas, per e-mails

Neera Tanden, a former Obama administration senior adviser on health-care reform, was working to push the impression that many of the health-care ideas proposed by the administration were in fact part of Clinton’s 2008 campaign platform, according to e-mail correspondence released Friday between her and the former secretary of state.

Credit Clinton with "ACA reform ideas" — including the public option? According to the Post article, "Tanden also remarked that a proposal to open the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program to all Americans was initially proposed by Clinton during her first bid for the presidency." If Clinton did indeed propose, in 2008, opening FEHBP to the public — and that needs to be checked — it had to be as an addition to the public option, which she then supported. Because after the election, Clinton apparently proposed it as a replacement for the public option. Not the same thing.

I think there's a larger story here, and the Post hasn't found it. Just the opposite in fact — they appear to have buried it.

Which Reporter Has a Copy of Clinton's Goldman Sachs Transcripts?

And then there's this. Apparently, according to Morning Joe's Mika Brzezinski, some reporter has the Clinton speeches after all. From Gawker:

In defiance of her supporters’ wishes, her critics’ open calls, and even her own promises, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton continues to block the publication of transcripts from the speeches she gave to several banks, including Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, in 2013 and 2014. According to MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski, however, Clinton may no longer have much of a choice.

As the Nevada caucuses were wrapping up on Saturday, Brzezinski mentioned off-handedly that she “[knew] a print reporter who has the actual transcripts, and they are working on this.”... Brzezinski did not elaborate on the identity, employer, or motivations of the unnamed reporter who apparently obtained access to the speech transcripts.

Gawker speculates that this may all be a "carefully orchestrated" leak by Clinton’s own press team, but I'm not sure. Unless the reporter has just the most boring speeches, of course, in which case, never mind.

Stay tuned.

GP

"I'm a senior State Department official": WaPo's Philip Bump treats us to "the parody-but-it's-not-a-parody that is Official Washington"

Just call him (or her?) "Senior Administration Official."

by Ken

With the craziness mounting all around us, we need the occasional guffaw, don't we? Even if it's just guffawing at some of the craziness around us?

In a "Fix" blogpost yesterday afternoon, the Washington Post's Philip Bump treated us to a snatch of a transcript posted on the State Department website:

QUESTION: Who are you today? Senior State --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: I’m a senior State Department official, and you guys can report this as -- any of this as soon as we land.
QUESTION: We can’t?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: You can. Can.
QUESTION: (Off-mike.)
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Everything I say is newsworthy. I’ll let you be the judge.

Now are you going to tell me that there isn't at least a full RDA day's worth of guffaws here? We even get to make up for ourselves the question that prompted the immortal "Everything I say is newsworthy." (It's a sort of press-briefing Mad Libs.)

Ah, life in the Village we call Washington, DC. "I'm a senior State Department official"? "Everything I say is newsworthy"? Plus, the reporters either can or can't report it as soon as they land. If, one is impelled to add, they ever do.

Enough already! My sides are aching.

The transcript that the above excerpt comes from, FYI, is a "background briefing on travel to Switzerland." (Actually, if you check out the link above, you'll find that officially it's a "Special Briefing" by "Senior State Department Official En Route to Switzerland.") Let Philip take the story from here:

For those unfamiliar with public-relations-ese, a "background briefing" is information provided to a reporter that's meant to flesh out details of a story without being attributed back to source. In other words, then, this is information from someone at State who won't give his or her name because it's not technically official on-the-record information -- posted verbatim on the State Department's website as a press release, with everything but the person's name included.

It's a game. The reporter asks, so, who are you today? And the "senior State Department official" says who he or she is today, himself or not, and off they go.

(Editor's note: And, yes, certain members of The Fix team have taken part in this ritual too.)

BONUS -- YES, THERE'S MORE!

Philip offers us two more samples of Transcript Madness.

(1) This is from yet another "Special Briefing," from Feb. 23, 2015, starring a new character, Senior Administration Official, who's in Geneva, Switzerland." We're not going to get quite to him/her, though. We're not actually going to get that far, though. This is just the preliminaries of a conference call that's being moderated.

Moderator: Secretary Moniz is going to stay upstairs with Secretary Kerry. [Senior Administration Official] and [name withheld], who everyone knows, are going to brief you all. We’ll do this for about 20 minutes so we can make our flight. So [Senior Administration Official] will do a few opening remarks. As always, this is on background to a senior Administration official. There’s obviously no embargo on it.

To which Philip notes: "As always."

(2) This is another "Special Briefing," again from Switzerland, specifically Lausanne, this past March 17. Apparently, though, it features an at least slightly different -- or perhaps merely augmented -- cast of characters, identified in the script as Senior Administration Official One and Senior Administration Official Two. Except,as you'll see, it's not quite that simple.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: All right. Sounds like we’re ready to kick things off. So as you all know, this is a background briefing. [Senior Administration Official Two] will be Senior Administration Official, and same ground rules as yesterday, embargoed till the end of the briefing.

And Senior Administration Official One will just, er, disappear? Why, it's as if he or she was never there! In case you're curious, although Philip doesn't quote any further, Senior Administation Official Two, aka Senior Administration Official, indeed proves to be a take-charge type. Here's how he starts:

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO [except we know that he/she "will be Senior Administration Official"! -- Ed.]: I’ll just say a few words to open it up, and especially, specifically, in terms of kind of the DOE role in these negotiations. And I think many of you are familiar with that, but let me say -- just say a few more words.

"A few more words?" A few more words? Who is this clown kidding? You couldn't shut him/her up with a shovel. And remember, if Senior Administration Official is anything like Senior State Department Official, everything he/she says is newsworthy.


PHILIP OFFERS THIS TAKE ON THE ABOVE

The Post has written repeatedly about the frequent distance between the Obama administration's pledge to embrace transparency and how it does in practice. The use of "administration officials" in lieu of a real name isn't new; the term began appearing frequently in the New York Times in the 1980s and has been a constant since.

But, I don't know. Maybe once all the information is approved for global web publication, at least, we can say who's who? Or at least cut out the parts where everyone is joking about how ridiculous it is.

The first paragraph, by the way, contains two links (which I've eliminated) that didn't take me anywhere. (They seemed to be trying, unsuccessfully, to re-create searches.) I thought that was pretty cute too.

#