"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room."
It is a good bet that Washington Post reporters Carol Morello and Greg Miller probably had the movie Dr. Strangelove on their minds either conciously or unconciously when they wrote their May 10 story/fantasy about the possibility that a Russian photographer could have planted a surveillance device in the White House Oval Office during a meeting there between President Donald Trump and Russian diplomats. Before we get to the reporters summoning up their inner General Buck Turgidson, let us revisit the Dr. Strangelove War Room scene in which Russian ambassador Alexi de Sadesky attempts to secretly take photos with a hidden camera.
A photographer for a Russian state-owned news agency was allowed into the Oval Office on Wednesday during President Trump’s meeting with Russian diplomats, a level of access that was criticized by former U.S. intelligence officials as a potential security breach.
The officials cited the danger that a listening device or other surveillance equipment could have been brought into the Oval Office while hidden in cameras or other electronics. Former U.S. intelligence officials raised questions after photos of Trump’s meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were posted online by the Tass news agency.
...The White House played down the danger, saying that the photographer and his equipment were subjected to a security screening before he and it entered the White House grounds. The Russian “had to go through the same screening as a member of the U.S. press going through the main gate to the [White House] briefing room,” a senior administration official said.
Other former intelligence officials also described the access granted to the photographer as a potential security lapse, noting that standard screening for White House visitors would not necessarily detect a sophisticated espionage device.
"Sir, you can't let him in here. He'll see everything. He'll see the big board!"
Do the Washington Post reporters somehow not think that the Oval Office as well as the rest of the White House is regularly subject to electronic sweeping to detect surveillance devices?
Exit question: Who is more likely to plant a listening device in the Oval Office, a Russian photographer or a Washington Post reporter?
