Pompeo in his US military quarters

There's nothing like a good old story of bureaucracy gone mad. A memo has emerged which reveals that a US Navy lawyer got all concerned and precious about the fact that Mike Pompeo in his early days as Secretary of State applied for and received a house to rent on a military base. I can imagine it's quite tricky to find the secretary of state a safe place to live in or near Washington while he serves his country in one of the top cabinet jobs. The threat assessment for a Donald Trump secretary of state must be quite an interesting read. So someone, whether Pompeo or one of his flunkies, thought up the idea of him and his family renting a military house. A lot cheaper, instant top security living behind the wire and the sort of place where Pompeo could read his classified documents without having to worry about prying eyes. He initially plumped for a US Navy house not far from the State Department but in the end rented a house on the huge US Army base at Fort Myer in Virginia which incidentally also houses the National Security Agency headquarters which looks like a giant container ship with a massive car park to match. So, nice and secure for Pompeo and cheapish for the taxpayers. But oh my goodness this US Navy lawyer chap has come up with all kinds of legal and moral and constitutional reasons why it could be wrong for the secretary of state to be housed in military quarters, especially since every house on every base was normally supposed to be accounted for for much-needed officer types. He implied in the memo which has now emerged under Freedom of Information that some poor officer might have been ousted to make way for Pompeo. According to the memo unearthed by a watchdog group called American Oversight, the picky lawyer said the whole matter raised "factual, legal, fiscal and ethical" issues. As far as I know Pompeo is still living at Fort Myer which is a 40-minute ride into Washington on a good day. Pompeo recently showed him and his family playing a board game inside the house to prove he was still alive and well in lockdown. Pompeo was top of his class when he attended West Point military academy way back but under normal regulations that wouldn't allow him to rent a military house. But it seems to me that it sounds quite sensible for the secretary of state to have a house in a secure area like a military base which is close to Washington. Unless of course he really did have to kick out some poor colonel or general from his quarters! There's a quote in Politico on this story from Patrick Kennedy, a former undersecretary of state for management who says: "You don't always have to find something that says, 'yes you can do this'. In some cases you have to avoid situations that say, 'no you can't'. " I love that.