Earlier this year, I lamented that Barack Obama appeared to be the first U.S. elected official to confirm (seemingly inadvertently), on the record, that CIA “stations” and their chiefs brief visiting U.S. lawmakers when they’re traveling overseas, and where those briefings occur.

While one of these briefings have been described and depicted in the book and movie of Charlie Wilson’s War, and the Boris Badinovs of the world probably figured that out already, it seemed supremely unwise for an elected lawmaker to confirm that yes, the CIA does this sort of thing at this sort of place at these sorts of times.

Having said that, I have to grumble and shake my head at this recent comment by John McCain:

“A cadre of such undercover operatives would allow us to gain the intelligence on terrorist activities that we don’t get today from our high-tech surveillance systems and from a CIA clandestine service that works almost entirely out of our embassies abroad.”

Again, any badguy worth his salt could probably figure this out, but could we please get a moratorium on presidential candidates giving on-the-record quotes about where the clandestine service works? It tends to make them less, you know, clandestine.