Comment on The Belmont Club,"Wings over Liberty"

Just read the memo and by the standards of historical white-wash it is pretty low. Someplace I have a copy of Lord Denning’s Report on the Profumo Scandal. Now that was a fine bucket of white-wash. The best bit in today’s offering is that the current Acting Director of the WHMO is really a Mulligan. The report includes the Deputy Director’s weasel worded email assigning his boss the responsibility to tell other WH staff and creates a passive expectation that everyone thought that everyone else was handling public notification, with the attached For Official Use only (FOU) boilerplate mysteriously attached to excuse the failure to notify. In fact the report does not offer any evidence that would disprove the rumors about the flight being a junket or political favor initiated from the WH. All we have here is a description of a hapless low level functionary shuffling papers and complaining about his bad back. A scene from Yes Minister ensued. It is entirely possible that the flight was stuffed with Hollywood A, B and C listers, we just don’t know.

In government the difference between a good idea and a great idea is:
1) You steal a good idea
2) You steal a great idea and backdate a memo for the record to show you
      thought it up first.