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.  

FBI HQ Relocation: Maryland Edges Out Virginia to Play the Security Card

Well, that didn't take long. Barely two days after the GSA announced it had snatched the new FBI HQ prize away from Maryland, a gentleman from Maryland has pointed out a certain security vulnerability with the Reagan Building.

“I think there are enough Republicans who don’t want to put the safety of the men and women of the FBI at risk,” [Maryland Senator Chris] Van Hollen said. “The reason that the three prior sites were under consideration was because they all met the security and setback requirements to ensure the safety of the men and women at the FBI. It was determined years ago that in order to ensure their safety now into the future, you needed a campus like the CIA has at Langley, like the NSA has out at Fort Meade.”

See the WTOP news story here, Maryland delegation vows to fight FBI’s move to new DC location ‘with every tool we have’ 

So long as the physical security interests of the FBI align with the financial interests of Maryland political players, we can depend on having some elected officials taking up the security banner. So public spirited of them! 

Well played, Van Hollen. There is a whole lot of development money in this pot, and the security card might just be a winning hand. 

Virginia Senator Mark Warner, how are you going to come back from this?

The Soundtrack We Need in Our Border Control War

 

Amidst the current contention over immigration enforcement - and I fully agree that every order of removal should be enforced - we can lose empathy for the human factor that motivated most (but not all) of those who crossed our borderline. 

All the intending economic migrants who didn't follow our immigration law. The "persons not lawfully present" in the USA, to use the last administration's softer terminology for illegal aliens. 

Even my flinty heart is touched by the lyrics of the great song "Across the Borderline," and if I could I'd make it mandatory listening for our immigration enforcers.

It's been covered by everybody from Willy Nelson to Bob Dylan and in a lot of different styles, but only the Tejano style sounds exactly right. 

We can enforce the law and also appreciate that "hope remains when pride is gone, and it keeps you moving on, calling you across the borderline." 

The full lyrics are here.

New FBI HQ: Good Building, Bad Idea

That building cannot met some key security standards that apply to an FBI HQ. Either this idea is a nonstarter or someone will have to approve a waiver. https://t.co/xyS869sl6y

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) July 2, 2025

So the latest twist in the very long saga of how we'll replace the Hoover Building has come out of the blue: move the FBI into the very large and pretty modern Reagan Building in the Federal Triangle, formerly the HQ of the Agency for International Development. 

The Reagan Building was one of the late Senator Moynihan's pet projects, after he took a big interest in federal architecture. The less said about his taste for woo-woo design over physical security the better, I say, but that's a topic for another day. 

I think the selection of the Reagan Building for the FBI is very misguided because the building has a big security deficiency, and it is one that cannot be made better by any renovation or upgrade project. 

What critical feature is it that the building lacks? Hint: it rhymes with "get-back." 

For thirty years now the USG has had an Interagency Security Committee which creates and enforces security standards for domestic federal civilian office premises. Those standards are not dissimilar to the famously onerous ones that govern our imposing Fortress Embassies abroad, only they are toned down to what the ISC figures is pertinent to domestic threats. 

Moreover, those standards are linked to facility security levels which are derived from several criteria. A building such as the FBI headquarters checks all the boxes for a very high facility security level. 

If there is a shortfall between the level of security that the ISC requires of an FBI HQ and what the Reagan Building can deliver, well, then, it looks like some responsible official will have to stick his neck out by taking accountability for that shortfall.

I look forward to an epic display of buck-passing when that reality sinks in to the small circle of officials who are senior enough to sign on that dotted line. 

The Secretary Will Disavow Any Knowledge of Your RIF (Until Monday, Anyway)

New: Widespread RIFs/layoffs could come to the State Department as soon as Friday, though one source notes the department is expected to wait for a Supreme Court ruling on its reorganization plan (which is expected imminently) -https://t.co/Q4oDIFNvTQ

— Shelby Talcott (@ShelbyTalcott) June 25, 2025

As you've surely seen by now, today's Supreme Court decision in a pertinent case has paused, at least for a little while, the RIFs that were heavily rumored to take place today. Will they take place next week instead? Maybe.

The OPSEC fans among us, looking for observables and indicators, noticed that most of the large conference rooms at HST and Rosslyn annexes - where processing of RIF'ed employees would be likely to take place - were reserved today.  

I, personally, was headed to an early morning meeting today in a large conference room in SA-6 when I noticed that the meeting venue had been changed to another building at the last minute. It made me feel a chill as if the Angel of Death were circling over my good friends in OBO.

Don't give in to despair. Wait and see, and be assured that the worst is usually not as bad as you'd imagined it would be.

 

New OBO Director Comes From 'Bill Clinton, Inc.' What??

The new Director of Overseas Buildings Operations has been announced, and I freely admit that he leaves me perplexed. 

First, he's not a construction guy. No construction experience at all, but lots of bankruptcy and restructuring work. That's quite odd, especially given that a Trump Administration must be full of construction people, or so you’d think. 

But worse is that he comes from a senior position at Teneo, which is the money-grubbing arm of the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton’s personal financial benefactor. 

Teneo's website still identifies James Feltman this way:

James (Jim) has more than three decades of experience leading fiduciary and restructuring matters, as well as providing clients with key litigation support and expert witness testimony. As an advisor, Jim has worked primarily on debtor side assignments.

What's up with that? Is Trump putting OBO in receivership? My good friends in OBO didn't do anything to earn that. 

About Teneo, here's a typical news story about its cozy arrangement with the Clintons. Notice that the story comes from NPR and uses Wikileaks stolen email as its sourcing, so it has an impeccable left-side political pedigree despite the content. (So, that means if you dislike the info or the tone, I’ll assume you’re wearing a MAGA hat!)

A newly revealed memo from a former aide to Bill Clinton details substantial overlap between donors to the nonprofit Clinton Foundation and the former president's personal financial activities, a $30 million-plus enterprise described in the memo as "Bill Clinton, Inc."  

Money managers UBS and Barclays, mining giant BHP, and the for-profit educational company Laureate International Universities each made substantial payments to Bill Clinton for speeches or "advisory services," while also contributing to the Clinton Foundation. 

Most of these payments were brokered by Doug Band, who served as a personal aide to Bill Clinton during his White House years, and later as a chief fundraiser for the Clinton Foundation.  

- Snip - 

[Teneo founder] Band's memo also documents the interlocking relationship between the Clinton Foundation's corporate contributors, Teneo clients and Bill Clinton's personal wealth. 

- Snip - 

Band estimated that he'd helped to secure work for the former president that yielded more than $30 million in personal profit between when Clinton left office in 2001 and when the memo was drafted in 2011, with another $66 million in the pipeline at the time.

That is a very strange background for a Trump Admin official. We'll see more from him soon, so we can hope for the best, but prepare for the worse.