In one of his most infamous comments, the former CIA director and secretary of state flouted the cadet honor code and mocked his alma mater, the U.S. Military Academy, writes Joe Lauria .
A view of the Hudson Valley from the West Point campus. (Joe Lauria)
by Joe Lauria
Consortium news feature
○On my way back to the Washington areaAfter giving an anti-war speech at a rally in Kingston, New York, on September 28, I decided to visit the other end of the political spectrum, the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.
Tour buses tour the expansive campus overlooking stunning views of the Hudson Valley.
We first passed through the athletic facilities (we learned that when General Douglas MacArthur ran the place, he required all cadets to be athletes), then through the various academic buildings, We passed dormitories, chapels, and the remains of the chains that General George Washington ordered laid down. They crossed the Hudson River to intercept British ships and then ended up near the library.
West Point Library is on the left. (Joe Lauria)
The tour guide said that General George Patton proudly said that when he was a student, he never went into a library. There, the guide explained that since the 19th century there has been a code of honor for cadets, and those who violate it are subject to punishment. “I won’t do it,” he told me.
(Public domain/Wikipedia)
Wow, that sounded very familiar. I thought. And I remembered two things: 1.) It was very similar to what Mike Pompeo once said, and 2). I seemed to remember that Mr. Pompeo graduated from West Point.
“Wait, didn’t Mike Pompeo go to West Point?” I said to my guide.
“I don’t know,” he answered, which seemed strange since he rattled off the minutest details of West Point’s history and mentioned the names of far-flung celebrities who had been there.
A real piece of Washington’s chain was lying across the river. (Joe Lauria)
A check of his cell phone revealed that Mr. Pompeo had indeed graduated at the top of his class from the academy in 1986 (though his reputation with the rest of his class was poor).
I’m sure the guide knew that too. Pompeo may also not have wanted to draw attention to comments that have brought disrepute to the academy by undermining what was once his own honor code for cadets.
At a conference at Texas A&M University in April 2019, Pompeo said:
“When I was a cadet, what was the cadet motto at West Point? We do not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate Who does? I was the director of the CIA, we I lied, cheated, and stole. the like we were The entire training course…”
He openly mentioned West Point and openly mocked it.
But the audience’s laughter and applause made the young man’s statement even more disturbing. It was as if he had finally found a place in life where he could escape the constraints of youth and do what he really wanted to do and be who he wanted to be: a cheater, a liar, a thief.
He was also Secretary of State at the time. Not surprisingly, the transcript of the remarks was removed from the State Department’s website.
This book speaks volumes about the hypocrisy of the ruling class, which demands that the American people thank the military for its “service” to the rulers rather than the people, not to protect the American people, but to expand their power in the world. There is. Pompeo’s comments exposed the CIA to the mainstream as a rogue organization that considers itself insulated and unaccountable to anyone in the United States.
Don’t tell that to your tour guide at West Point.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and former UN correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers including the Montreal Gazette, London Daily Mail, and Star of Johannesburg. is. He worked as an investigative reporter for London’s Sunday Times and an economics reporter for Bloomberg News before starting his professional career at the age of 19 as a stringer for the New York Times. He is the author of two books. A Political Odyssey (co-authored with Senator Mike Gravel), foreword by Daniel Ellsberg. and by Hillary Clinton, with a foreword by Julian Assange.
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