Navy raised concerns, Pompeo living in U.S. Army housing at the Fort Myer base in Virginia

Pompeo’s housing request set off legal alarm bells, memo shows

A lawyer for the Navy raised concerns about the secretary of State's interest in military housing.

By NAHAL TOOSI

In his early months on the job, Mike Pompeo sought an unusual perk for a secretary of State: permission to rent a Washington, D.C.-area house that was controlled by the U.S. military.

Pompeo and his aides initially tried to arrange for the chief U.S. diplomat and his family to live close to the State Department in the Potomac Hill campus, where the Navy maintained some homes. But ultimately the Pompeos moved into U.S. Army housing at the Fort Myer base in Virginia, according to people familiar with the issue.

Along the way, the request set off legal and logistical alarms, raising questions about whether Pompeo is eligible for any sort of military housing.

According to a memo obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight and shared this week with POLITICO, a top Navy lawyer warned that the Pompeos’ initial request for housing was “problematic” and raised “factual, legal, fiscal and ethical” issues, not the least of which was whether he’d be displacing military officers already in line for the limited housing.

The attorney even questioned whether the State Department was violating the law by using official resources to help Pompeo track down a new home.

The memo comes to light as the State Department inspector general’s office pursues a probe of whether Pompeo and his wife, Susan, have improperly used taxpayer resources for personal reasons. Pompeo recently engineered the firing of inspector general Steve Linick, although the secretary insists the probe of himself and his wife had nothing to do with it.

It’s not clear whether investigators with the inspector general’s office are examining the question of the Pompeos’ housing as part of their probe — a spokesman for the unit declined comment. Regardless, the memo captures the challenge government officials faced in tackling such a sensitive request from a member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.

State Department spokespersons defended Pompeo’s current arrangement by saying it made sense security-wise as well as financially, and that the department’s lawyers had fully vetted the topic. The neighborhood has 24/7 controlled access, plus, the house is set back from public roads, making it harder for those seeking to surveil Pompeo, State officials said.

Pompeo personally pays “fair market value” for the residence, State officials said, without giving a dollar amount. At present, according to department officials, providing housing-related security for the Pompeos costs taxpayers $1.6 million a year, roughly $413,000 less than what it cost at his previous residence, the rental house in Virginia. Pompeo’s security costs also are around $1.5 million a year lower than the more than the $3 million it cost to secure the homes of former secretaries Rex Tillerson and John Kerry, officials said.

“An earlier assessment found that the secretary’s previous housing arrangement provided a more challenging location to secure for a Cabinet officer who is fourth in line to the presidency,” said Todd Brown, acting assistant secretary of State for diplomatic security, in a statement. “The State Department and Department of Defense reviewed the Diplomatic Security Service’s assessment of the residence and its location, noting the benefits derived, and that request was approved.”

The Defense Department referred questions to the State Department. Neither State nor Defense would say whether the Army had concerns similar to the Navy lawyer nor how the Pentagon determined that Pompeo legally qualified for a home on an Army base. A Navy spokesperson declined to say if the Navy had formally rejected Pompeo’s initial request.

Before shifting to his current perch at Foggy Bottom, Pompeo was serving as Trump’s first CIA director. He and his wife, who have one adult son, had been renting a modest home in Virginia, according to a 2018 New York Times story that explored Pompeo’s request for military housing.

Current and former CIA officials previously told POLITICO that the CIA looked into converting Scattergood — a spacious Georgian Revival house that serves as the spy agency’s liaison conference center — into a private residence for Pompeo during his tenure. A feasibility study was made at Congress’ request, one official said.

Prior to signing on with Trump, Pompeo was a Republican congressman from Kansas. The Pompeos owned a 5,500-square-foot home that sat on 2.3 acres next to a small lake in Wichita, Kansas; one news account described the “sprawling” property as having a tennis court and pool. The Pompeos turned to an auction house to sell it upon moving full time to the D.C. area in 2017.

Compared to several other Trump Cabinet members as well as some past secretaries of State — some of whom have been millionaires — the Pompeos hail from relatively modest financial backgrounds. His federal financial disclosure form, which also covers his wife’s assets, suggests their wealth is in the hundreds of thousands. As secretary of State, Mike Pompeo is supposed to earn more than $200,000, according to a federal pay schedule.

Although he attended West Point and served as an Army officer in Europe, Pompeo left the military many years ago, switching to law school, the private sector and then politics.

The Navy memo was obtained by American Oversight through a Freedom of Information Act request. It is partly redacted — obscuring, for instance, the name of the senior associate counsel who wrote it — and is dated May 8, 2018, roughly two weeks after Pompeo was confirmed as secretary of State.

It appears to have been written as an internal document for attorneys working for Navy Installations Command. The subject line is: “Informal Request for GFOQ Housing, Secretary of State.” GFOQ stands for General and Flag Officer Quarters, according to the memo.

The lawyer writing raises several concerns about a query received from the Department of State as to whether Pompeo could be given Navy housing. For one thing, the memo makes clear that there’s basically no housing available unless Pompeo wanted to knock someone out of line.

The Navy’s inventory of possible residences “is barely adequate to provide shelter to the uniformed officers entitled by law to such housing,” the unnamed Navy attorney wrote. “In the National Capital Region, there is a waiting list of Navy Flag Officers who have yet to be assigned housing in a GFOQ.”

The memo also argues that while Congress allows the secretary of Defense, a civilian, the “privilege” to live in (and pay for) GFOQ housing otherwise reserved for military personnel, there’s no indication that the secretary of State has the same legal permission.

The memo even questioned whether State Department officials should be trying to secure housing for the secretary of State seeing as it’s arguably not their job. The department could be violating the “Antideficiency Act” by devoting time and resources to the issue, the memo warned.

“Given that obtaining and paying for housing is a personal responsibility of civilian employees of the Government, [Department of State] Office of Counsel may need to consider whether the agency has been authorized by law and provided appropriations by Congress to expend time and agency resources to locate and secure personal housing for the Secretary of State,” the Navy memo states.

The lawyer writing the memo further noted that because Pompeo didn’t work for or report to the military, trying to figure out how much to charge him for rent could be tricky. The memo also pointed out that it would take significant time and manpower to try to track and separate the costs of the residence’s upkeep and other expenses into what Pompeo would have to pay versus what the Defense Department would cover for such units in general.

Ultimately, the author of the memo urges the Department of State official who inquired about whether the Navy had housing available for Pompeo to talk to the department’s legal office to consider some of the issues raised.

Patrick Kennedy, a former undersecretary of State for management, wasn’t privy to the specific details of the Pompeos’ arrangement, but he said there is merit to the idea that the government — the military if necessary — should provide housing for a secretary of State.

The key reason? “It’s getting harder to protect the secretary of State,” he said, noting that in today’s politically charged atmosphere, even top U.S. health officials are receiving threats.

A military base not only offers more built-in security, but it’s probably easier to arrange for such needs as the construction of secure facilities where the secretary can read classified documents, Kennedy said.

As for what’s in the law, it could come down to interpretation and deciding whether to make allowances for something that isn’t necessarily outright forbidden, Kennedy said.

“You don’t always have to find something that says, ‘Yes, you can do this,’” he said. “In some cases, you just have to avoid situations that say, ‘No, you can’t.’”

Although the State Department is relatively tight-lipped about the Pompeos’ housing arrangements, the secretary himself has used his personal Twitter account to post some pictures from inside his home.

In a pair of tweets in March, as the coronavirus pandemic was starting to hit full force in the U.S., Pompeo posted photos of what appeared to be a den or a living room, where he, his wife and his son were piecing together a puzzle.

The movie “Top Gun” — about a roguish Navy pilot called “Maverick” who breaks military rules — was playing on the family’s flat-screen TV.