FSO Confesses to Being a Romantic Fool

 

\Well, well, well. What he did for love? Where have we heard those lyrics before? 

Kiss your job goodbye 

Your last day is tomorrow

Wish her luck, but none to you 

Now you've got the shove

So we're rid of, what you did for love 

Oh, dammit, now I've got that song stuck in my head. 

As is more than obvious from the video above, yet another male FSO has shown extremely poor judgement in the serious matter of his obligation to report continuing contacts with persons from criteria countries. 

Not like that's never happened before, but this one keeps talking about it to women he's just met who are wearing wires. That's a double whammmy. First he compromises himself via-a-vis the Chi-Coms, and then he falls right into a trap set by one of the sillier anti-government activist groups. 

This sad news makes me wonder yet again whether the State Department wouldn't be better served if it went to exclusively female embassy staffing in those hostile countries where the local intelligence services like to run sexual entrapment games on western diplomats. 

Women FSOs have not been 100 percent immune to that approach, it must be admitted, but they nevertheless seem nowhere near as foolish as their male counterparts. 

Until the day comes that we raise an order of celibate monks to do diplomatic work in places like China, female FSOs might be our safest bet.

China Plans to Build a Fortress Embassy in London, To Which Security-Based Objections Are Raised

Allowing the Chinese to build this in the heart of London is complete and utter madness https://t.co/EaG4S3uTh2

— Camilla Tominey (@CamillaTominey) August 7, 2025

BBC has more on this, including a regular Chinese laundry list of security concerns:

The plan itself involves a cultural centre and housing for 200 staff, but in the basement, behind security doors, there are also rooms with no identified use on the plans. 

There is another fear, held by some opponents, that the Royal Mint Court site could allow China to infiltrate the UK's financial system by tapping into fibre optic cables carrying sensitive data for firms in the City of London. 

The site once housed Barclays Bank's trading floor, so it was wired directly into the UK's financial infrastructure. Nearby, a tunnel has, since 1985, carried fibre optic cables under the Thames serving hundreds of City firms. 

And in the grounds of the Court, is a five-storey brick building - the Wapping Telephone Exchange that serves the City of London. 

According to Prof Periklis Petropoulos, an optoelectronics researcher at Southampton University, direct access to a working telephone exchange could allow people to glean information.

Against all that, if there are any good arguments in favor of this Great Diplomatic Wall of China, I didn't catch them.

DSS Doing Immigration Enforcement, Not a Big Stretch From Visa/Passport Fraud

“Similarly, the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) has assigned approximately 600 special agents, or about 24% of its workforce, to assist in these operations, despite their usual focus on passport fraud and the protection of diplomats.” https://t.co/Hx0ccCEp2g

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) August 8, 2025

 

Vice Consul Monterrey Fatal Vehicle Crash: According to Local News a Tire May Have Been Damaged

I fully assume we'll learn more about the possible cause of that fatal accident when - if? - an internal investigation is completed, but for now it seems the host government suspects the cause may have been a damaged tire. 

Here's a local news story that mentions an initial Mexican police report:

Although initial reports suggest that one of the vehicle's tires may have been damaged, the investigation is ongoing to determine the cause of the accident. 

As previously reported, the incident that killed Brian Matthew Faughnan, Vice Consul of the United States in Monterrey, Nuevo León, occurred around 5:31 p.m. on Wednesday, July 9, on the stretch known as La Cuchilla - Matamoros, at kilometer 36+000, near the Matamoros municipal landfill. 

Faughnan was driving a white, armored 2018 Toyota pickup truck [camioneta] when he lost control of the vehicle, rolling over onto the side of the road and sustaining serious injuries. The truck was completely destroyed. 

The key sentence in the original Spanish is: "Aunque los primeros informes sugieren que pudo haberse dañado una de las llantas del vehículo."

Vice Consul Monterrey Killed in Car Accident, Cause Unknown For the Present

Muere Brian Matthew Faughan, alto funcionario de la embajada de Estados Unidos en carretera a Torreón - this local report describes his car as an armored vehicle, but I’d wait for USG confirmation on that. https://t.co/eGtQzTbitU

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) July 10, 2025

The fatal accident happened two weeks ago, but the first photos I'd seen are in a Daily Mail report here.  

Something I haven't seen so far is an official State Department account of the accident. There is no reason to believe it was due to an attack, or was anything other than a motor vehicle accident. 

The use of an armored vehicle may, possibly, suggest that the unusual driving dynamics of armored vehicles played a part. 

There is surely an official investigation going on into this accident, so I assume we'll eventually learn more.  

Even Dimly Recalled Memories Can Be Worth Ten Million

President Joe Biden has sold the rights to his memoirs to the Hachette Book Group. The deal amounted to ten million dollars, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.https://t.co/edzOwyfj6M

— Biden Activities Tracker (@BidenActivities) July 24, 2025

This news produced the biggest swarm of unwanted title recommendations from the general public since Hillary announced she was starting a podcast. 

My runner-up suggestion: Am I Still President? 

But the best I've seen so far is: Biden My Time. 

That one works in two different ways, since you can add a colon to make it Biden: My Time, which is perfect for a memoir. So perfect that it transcends internet hectoring to become, in fact, an excellent title for any publisher with an ounce of humor. 

Personally I'll skip the book unless Joe narrates it himself.

We the Living

Like most of you who work for the foreign affairs department of the Washingtion DC area's largest employer, I lost a few collegues in the RIF. Unlike some of you, I didn't get a chance to say goodbye before COB Friday came and we were scattered. 

That was a rough way to end an association that, in most cases, went back a decade or longer. Best wishes to them all, and I hope I can at least provide them with job contacts, recommendations, and be a reference for clearance interviews. 

My good friends in Overseas Buildings Operations had it much worse, losing half the Area Management Officers, a large part of Real Estate, and some senior key leaders. That will hurt. 

Of the many news stories I saw about the RIF, this one stood out as being more reflective than most and also addressing the procedure by which the staff cuts were planned: Veteran U.S. diplomats baffled after mass layoffs at State Department.

More than 1,300 employees were forced out of the State Department on Friday, leaving their offices with small boxes of plants and old coffee mugs and taking with them decades of specialized skills and on-the-job training as part of the United States diplomatic corps 

The massive overhaul of the federal agency has been in the works for months, with the Trump administration informing Congress in late May that thousands of State Department employees would lose their jobs as part of the largest reorganization of the department in decades.

Still, the details of whose jobs would be cut remained closely held, and many were shocked to find they were a part of the 15% cut to domestic agency staff. Several career employees who unexpectedly found themselves with pink slips told NBC News they were asked to write speeches and prepare talking points for political appointees on critical issues just days before. 

“It’s so hard to work somewhere your entire life and then get treated this way,” one veteran civil servant with more than 30 years working at the department told NBC News. “I don’t know how you treat people this way. I really don’t.” 

As the termination notices hit inboxes throughout the day, employees could be seen crying in the courtyard and huddling in corners in the hallways, as those who had been laid off lined up to hand in their laptops, phones and diplomatic passports. 

“The manner in which things were done … they were not done with dignity. They were not done respectfully. They were not done transparently,” Olga Bashbush, a laid-off foreign service officer with more than 20 years of experience, told NBC News. 

A senior State Department official briefing reporters on behalf of the agency ahead of the cuts told reporters Thursday that the restructuring was intended to be “individual agnostic.” 

“This is the most complicated personnel reorganization that the federal government has ever undertaken,” the official said. “And it was done so in order to be very focused on looking at the functions that we want to eliminate or consolidate, rather than looking at individuals.”

All true! The planning was certaintly not done transparently. In fact, it was closely held for several months, which says something about the insularity and group loyalty of those at the top. After all, this is the second time around the Department for the Trump administration, and apparently they learned some lessons from the first time. 

Also true that the layoffs were targeted at offices and functions that conflicted with Trump administration policies. On the day of the RIF nobody was in the mood to take a disinterested view of the matter, however, it is important to avoid delusion, especially self-delusion. 

The Trumpening was never going to fight its own government apparatus on issues such as immigration and refugees. There was a fundamentally political disagreement between the White House and some of the functions that were eliminated, and that can only end one way. 

Vox populi, after all. The pendulum keeps swinging. Every four years comes a new election. Sometimes the stars align. 

Meanwhile, we can try to show some human sympathy for the victims this time, and remember that it can just as easily be you and your friends next time.