One symptom of this entire tragedy (or is it dark comedy now?) is the shocking degree of casual sorta/kinda rules and protocols — strange (or rather predictable) in this era of vast bureaucratic rules. How exactly did national-security and military affairs come to resemble Keeping Up with the Kardashians?
How can some individual just call up an FBI friend (?) and thereby instigate an FBI investigation? And how did that lead to an FBI agent photographing himself bare-chested and apparently infatuated with a married mother of three? How can a Ph.D. candidate, without any journalistic or historical credentials, become the public face of a four-star general and be privy to information to the point of hitting the lecture circuit to pontificate about a CIA annex in Benghazi? How did an early-middle-aged married mother of two suddenly morph into a court biographer who lectured on everything from military practice to leadership to national-security challenges? How can a Florida socialite by any stretch of the imagination merit a vast e-mail correspondence with the nation’s highest ranking warriors entrusted to conduct our most critical struggles? What in the world is an “honorary consul general” and who extends such Alice Through the Looking Glass titles? Why do generals seek to go back stage to meet a Denzel Washington or have Angelina Jolie pop up for a photo-op?
I think it is impossible that an attorney general who knew of the investigation and many of the details for months did not tell his president and close friend — but then on the other hand, given all of above, who knows?