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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (9322)	11/22/1999 1:37:00 PM
From: E	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769670

Just a little anecdote that might be of interest: To become a mere clerk in an American Embassy overseas, you must have a security clearance. When I was in the Foreign Service, my own clearance was "Top Secret," a couple of grades from the top one. This meant that every place I had ever worked, and every school I had ever attended, back to first grade, was checked. My neighbors on the road where I live were visited questioned about me, asked if they knew of any secrets in my life that might be relevant to my suitability. Colleagues at places where I had worked even many, many years before were questioned. Personal friends were questioned. Every detail of my life and history was scrutinized. In fact, my parents had a couple of friends of theirs called. An Ambassador has an even closer background check, having to have the highest security clearance there is. (It's name escapes me, but it is a couple of grades higher than Top Secret.) This is generic information. I'm just mentioning it, fyi. So you can see that even if, unlike the ambassador whom we're discussing, you were not known by everybody to be gay, it would be unlikely not to emerge in such a microscopic personal investigation. The man was not "deeply closeted."-- Bush Senior knew he was gay, as did everyone who knew him, even without benefit of deep FBI investigation, and Bush knowingly made him ambassador, choosing him for his impressive qualifications. This is not surprising, really. Neocon, do you believe it was wrong to send a Black American as ambassador and other Black diplomats to the Republic of South Africa during the era of apartheid? You don't have to reply to that question, you can consider it rhetorical. I hope no one who posted to me today minds if they don't receive replies to their posts. There are so many of you and so few of me it's impossible to keep up and get any work done, too; and also I'm having a deja vu sort of experience now, and am sure everybody else is, too. Thanks for the conversation, all.