The Swamp Leading the Swamp
As an absolutist for free speech, in principle I begrudge no candidate of any party soliciting my support. Citizenship requires evaluation of such solicitations with an open mind. This is why I felt obliged to respond to one campaign solicitation which arrived in the name of a personage who represents the complete opposite of free speech.
A mailer recently arrived bearing the name of former Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo, soliciting support for a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Montana. Hoping the candidate to be unaware (feel free to burn my naïvité in the comments) of the record of the figure endorsing him, I will not here tag the candidate or otherwise call him out. It must be added that the mailer also included an endorsement from former president Donald Trump, which is discouraging for the reasons given below. The mailer was sent on behalf of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, so my reply requested my permanent removal from their lists, and in brief explained why.
In May 2017, Wikileaks published Vault Seven, a trove of 8761 documents detailing the Central Intelligence Agency's capabilities for warrantless espionage through everyday consumer electronics. Vault Seven revealed how the CIA exploits backdoors in operating systems to capture all keylogs, camera and voice data through potentially anyone's smartphone, even when using "encrypted" applications. CIA spooks can even track users' geolocation when smartphones are powered off and use web-connected televisions to monitor a room's audio like a bug microphone. In instigation of "international incidents," Vault Seven revealed how the CIA had been collecting programming code from foreign intelligence agencies, which the CIA could then plant on any device it would hack, so as to make it appear that the hack had come from a foreign power in a process called "bread-crumbing."
Wikileaks' revelations infuriated Mike Pompeo, such that the CIA hatched a plot to abduct and even assassinate Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange, then in refuge at Ecuador's embassy in London, UK. Pompeo officially designated Wikileaks a "hostile non-state intelligence agency," which meant that nothing was off the table for harming those associated with the organization. Visitors to the embassy were tailed, and nearly every person within a three-block radius of the embassy was on the payroll of some intelligence agency or another. The CIA's plan even proposed staging a shootout on London's streets as a distraction for Assange's black-bagging and rendition, but thankfully sanity prevailed on that count. Though Pompeo may have had no direct involvement in the plot, insiders reported the involvement of enough CIA assets that Pompeo's cognizance as director was assured, so his tacit approval is reasonably inferred.
In the end, it all comes down to values. On the one hand is Julian Assange, whose organization made the public aware of the CIA's functional and legal omnipotence to suppress free speech by surveilling nearly anyone anywhere anytime, unanswerable to any authority. On the other hand is Mike Pompeo, who seemingly disclaims government’s threat to free speech by saying that only those with something to hide object to unchecked scrutiny… whilst also suspiciously objecting to any semblance of the public’s scrutiny in kind.
No more neo-cons like Mike Pompeo are needed in the United States Senate or in any branch of government, so any candidate aligned with his interests is a candidate unworth supporting.
