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Washington Monthly, April, 2001 by Susan Threadgill

An on-the-record confirmation of a scandal reported years ago in these pages is available in a new book, The Great Phelsuma Caper, by former ambassador Robert Keeley, who says that the mass-murderer Idi Amin had been a CIA "asset" before he ruled Uganda. This means that Idi Amin was a paid spy in the employ of the CIA. The confirmation by Keeley is of an item that had earlier been given us on a not-for-attribution basis by another foreign service officer who, like Keeley, had served in Uganda. It's amazing we won the Cold War. Our agents (remember that Guatemalan colonel?) specialized in killing innocent people while the Russian spies were majoring in stealing our secrets.

The Brookings Institution is fast becoming the Clinton Administration in exile, offering temporary shelter to former White House staffers Gene Sperling, Andrea Kane, Lael Brainard, as well as former Treasury officials Lawrence Summers and Michael Barr, and former HHS Secretary Donna Shalala.

The Senate has passed a resolution authorizing the Peace Corps headquarters building in Washington to be named for former Sen. Paul Coverdell. This has not set well with former Peace Corps volunteers and staff members. Many of them think the Peace Corps' founding director, Sargent Shriver, is more deserving of the honor. If a Republican has to be considered, they feel that the late Loret Ruppe, who ran the agency for eight years compared to Coverdell's two and who is generally considered to have been one of the best of all the directors, should be recognized. Shriver and Ruppe loyalists are working in the House to derail the Senate proposal.

As we now know, there was no truth to the story Bill Clinton's guests on his last trip on Air Force One had vandalized the plane. An example of the many false reports that had appeared was a newspaper column by Fox commentator Tony Snow who said the aircraft "looked as if it had been stripped by a skilled band of thieves--or perhaps wrecked by a trailer-park twister" We have been unable to find a subsequent retraction by Snow, who had not displayed excessive restraint with his allegations: "Gone were the porcelain dishes, the blankets, candies--even toothpaste. It makes one feel grateful that the seats and carpets are bolted down" You would think he would have felt at least a twinge of embarrassment at his own flight of fancy--and perhaps at presidential grammar--when George W. Bush said, "all the allegations that they took stuff off of Air Force One ... is simply not true." Bush himself took several weeks to set the record straight. During that time, his spokesperson, Ari Fleischer gave the impression that the President was keeping quiet, not because the story wasn't true, but because he thought not commenting was a dignified way to handle the situation.

It turns out that we were handed a piece of apocrypha with last month's item about Norman Mineta's being left off an invitation to a Carter White House honoring the Japanese Prime Minister because Carterites thought he was Italian. Les Francis, a former Mineta aide who worked in the Carter White House congressional relations office, tells The Washington Post's Al Kamen that the story originated as his joking explanation of why Mineta had been inadvertently left off the White House invitation list until the last minute.

Speaking of the Clinton Administration, Washingtonian magazine's Kim Eisler recently graded the Clinton cabinet. The only `A' went to Education Secretary Richard Riley, and the only `F' went to Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson, who was cited for "cavorting around the country laying groundwork for his vice-presidential hopes," while he "mishandled a crisis at Los Alamos laboratories and failed to foresee either sudden gas-price increases or the power crisis in California." As for Riley, "Even critics realized they were working with a true, honest, and devoted public servant."

You wouldn't think that Bill Clinton and Karl Rove, George W. Bush's chief political strategist, would have much in common, but it turns out they have the same view of why Al Gore lost the electoral vote Here's how Rove put it: "We should have gotten our brains beat," and would have had Gore focused on "the extraordinary peace and prosperity."

Even though Colin Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when we attacked Iraqi forces in Kuwait, he did not take part in planning the attack, according to Newsweek's John Barry and Evan Thomas. Instead, then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, frustrated by Powell's foot-dragging, had gone around him to set up a secret group that came up with the "left-hook" plan that worked to expel the Iraqis. This may help explain the rivalry between Cheney and Powell reported in this space last month.

Paul O'Neill's decision to keep his $100 million in Alcoa stock and options has raised some eyebrows among ethics watchdogs. "Everyone in the administration will know that doing something nice for Alcoa is going to please the secretary of the treasury, one of the three or four most powerful figures in government," points out our staff ethicist, "and what's good for Alcoa is not necessarily good for the USA."