(Former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson).

We have shared an interesting year, haven’t we? There is more to it than what we are told, of course, and there are several large moving components to the madness. One of the latest new wrinkles is an old one, and brings back memories. You might be interested in a Politico article adapted from Josh Rogin’s book CHAOS UNDER HEAVEN.

Up front, let’s locate ourselves. Politico is a left-leaning information stream. I am an independent, and take my inputs where they are relevant. I think most of what the strange new administration is doing- open borders, trillions in pork, and restructuring national voting laws- is wildly wrong. I generally want less government, not more. I confess, though, that I have to blush, since I am an accidental participant in part of it.

My minor involvement is derived from much older Government plans to survive the exchange of weapons of mass destruction between the U.S. and the USSR.

Let’s get the background stuff out of the way. I was entering the terminal phase of my military career. I had an opportunity to work for the legendary Joan Dempsey at the Community Management Staff at Langley. My ostensible job title was “Director of Information Operations Policy,” though of course it depended on what day of the week we were talking about. I was working there on 9/11 and it was an interesting day far beyond the horror of the attacks. Parts of the plan to ensure our government would continue to operate were taken down from the dusty shelf, and we discovered our staff was charged with providing intelligence support to the Cabinet member selected to be located outside the capital, just in case someone took out the line of succession of the Executive Branch in a mass attack.

As such, we comprised a group who did not want to be at one of the locations, which tended to be concrete and spare, baby-sitting a Cabinet member who only wanted to return to the Flagpole of their Department, and the much more pleasant home.

That was most of them, anyway. I recall Interior and Education Secretaries who were pleasant but a bit removed at the idea of the line of work they were in. And then there was Tommy Thompson, Secretary of Health and Human Services. He was something else. We were doing things by the book, but it was an old book. No one had gone into the depth of things, like how a handful of senior bureaucrats would support a handful of Cabinet Secretaries with meaningful information. And all of us were plucked from our normal realities and thrust into new ones in remarkable venues.
Secretary Thompson was fun. His day job involved managing the people and organizations involved in the remarkable public health bureaucracy. If you have not had a chance to explore, I recommend it. All sorts of people are involved. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention is the big one, but there are dozens more, including the Army, which has its own health bureaucracy built to manage millions in time of emergency or war. Among all the other things, Secretary Thompson printed those Medicare and Social Security checks many of us depend on. He used to be Governor of Wisconsin, and liked riding big American-built motorcycles.

My time with him, on one of those weeks we were deep underground, was to keep him engaged and current on matters of intelligence interest. He normally got a briefing from the CIA once a week, conducted by one of those smart people from Langley groomed or the assignment. After one of those sessions, and once again bereft of staff, we were sitting at the conference table in a small room under a lot of concrete and rock.

To keep him occupied, I mentioned the unusual one-acre plots some of Bin Laden’s group were using in Sudan. Tommy was interested, since it could have been production of something nasty. He got the idea perhaps his department could use intelligence to help manage the mission. I had already put in my letter for retirement, but offered to help. And that was almost my last government job, because something scary was just beginning that would make the whole issue most interesting.
It was called “SARS,” the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, and it was coming at us from China. I will have to get to that tomorrow, but it is how I found myself, accidentally, sitting with Dr. Anthony Fauci talking about things like “quarantine,” and the dramatic effect it could have on the nation. It was an interesting series of conversations, and it makes me wonder how he came to change his mind on public health emergencies. I can assure you he knows exactly what he is doing.

Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com