It turns out that those exclusive State Department dinners for the rich, famous and influential that recently led to criticism of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have a history — at the Central Intelligence Agency.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, Pompeo hosted a number of taxpayer-funded dinners for powerful business leaders, conservative media figures, Republican lawmakers and a few foreign diplomats at the State Department headquarters.
But before that, when Pompeo was CIA director, he “put together an undisclosed board of outside advisers … that some at the agency viewed as inappropriately weighted toward wealthy individuals and well-connected political figures,” reports Politico, citing four unnamed “current and former officials.”
The outside advisers “were often treated to elaborate multi-day experiences that included ‘lavish’ dinners, classified briefings, and at least one trip to the CIA’s secret training facilities,” those sources told the political website.
There’s nothing illegal about this — previous CIA directors have had outside advisory boards.
“But several former senior CIA officials who were at the agency under Pompeo’s leadership, from January 2017 to April 2018, said they thought the then-director ‘crossed a line’ in his use of the external advisory board to charm business leaders and influential political figures,” Politico says.
That contrasts with the advisers assembled by other CIA directors, including Pompeo’s predecessor, John Brennan, whose advisers were described as “almost exclusively … national security veterans.” Pompeo fired them all, according to “another former CIA official” cited by Politico.
So who were Pompeo’s advisers?
“The CIA declined to divulge the list of names on Pompeo’s board,” Politico says.
But its sources named “billionaire entrepreneur Marc Andreessen; a top executive at global advertising agency McCann Worldgroup; former Republican House leader Eric Cantor … [current Attorney General] William Barr, who at the time served on the board of directors of Time Warner,” and others.
Critics say Pompeo, a former congressman from Kansas, used the dinners and other activities “to bolster his donor network and political base should he run for office again” — the same type of accusations aimed at Pompeo since he took over the State Department.
Former CIA officials agree. As one said:
“Absolutely, this is a pattern.”