Those CIA types are strange. Check out this obituary:
Starting from the corn fields of Indiana, Samuel Smith set out on a mission around the world. His job with the CIA took him and his family to far-off destinations before Clermont became his retirement haven…
…”He was pretty high-ranking and involved in communications,” said son Craig Smith of Clermont. “There was not a lot he could tell us.”
…Craig Smith said the family followed Samuel Smith wherever he was stationed, including Germany, France, Thailand and Turkey.
When the family took vacations, they often went to exotic destinations in foreign countries, Craig Smith said.
Todd Smith said their father often worked nights, meaning he would sleep during the day, but the family always had evenings together and had time to go to ballgames.
“He said he worked for the government, and that seemed boring enough. We didn’t ask any questions,” Todd Smith said.
I’m glad I didn’t grow up in a family like that. In other CIA news: President George W. Bush did not include Libby on his list of pre-Christmas pardons, and the Justice Department said he does not have a pending pardon application on file. That’s a relief.
You can read an account of the now infamous Milan kidnapping of Abu Omar al Masri,
There is an interesting leaked report that shows that the CIA accurately predicted the breakup of Yugoslavia and even the rise of Albanian separatists in Kosovo. The State Department (Jim Baker) pretended not to notice.
There was a Walter Pincus piece last Thursday on how Michael Hayden is settling in at the Agency.
I saw The Good Shepherd a couple of days ago and it is pretty good. I didn’t find a whole lot to quibble with. I’ll probably have more to say about the movie in the future.
