The CIA Goes On a War-Footing
02.22.2008 - 11:29 AM“Culinary Delights Soar to New Heights at CIA Thanks to Head Chef” – is the headline of a new CIA press release.
The head chef in question is Fred DeFilippo, a 1992 graduate of the other CIA, the Culinary Institute of America. At Langley, DeFillippo works with a special intelligence unit:
Four other chefs assist DeFilippo and spread out the work between the sauté, grill, and pantry stations. The sauté chef handles pasta and vegetable dishes, the grill chef prepares meat dishes, and the pantry chef crafts delicious salads and sandwiches.
This is all very interesting and important, but there is still a question about it: Why is the agency circulating old news? The same press release acknowledges that DeFilippo “has been making a splash with dishes like his Chocolate Tiramisu since he began cooking for the agency in 2004.”
The timing of this announcement is thus curious. DeFillippo was appointed in the George Tenet era. Tenet’s parents owned a Greek diner in Queens, New York. Is there some sort of one-upsmanship going on between the current CIA director, Michael Hayden, and his failure of a predecessor?
Whatever the answer, life in Langley sure beats searching for terrorists and/or a meal of curried goat in the backstreets of places like Peshawar.
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February 22nd, 2008 at 12:11 PM
Something tells me Mr. DeFilippo is a white male. I do have to wonder if his hiring was consonant with CIA’s affirmative action goals. It also remains to be investigated whether he is contributing to CIA’s laudable objective of reducing its carbon footprint. Much matter there. We may hope, with the gustatory welfare of CIA employees at stake, that there is also some art.
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:09 PM
I was watching television a few years back when I noticed an advertisement for a book entitled “Cooking Secrets of the CIA.” I had a vague image of an exploding souffle, the culinary counterpart to the Castro intended exploding cigars, when the ad let me in on the joke that it was referring to the Culinary Institute of America. Nice to see that these two formidable institutions have joined forces. At least now the CIA (the one concerned with intelligence) will not have any gastronomic excuses if something goes wrong.
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:49 PM
Trimming fat in government agencies ain’t what it used to be.
February 23rd, 2008 at 3:09 PM
Perhaps the two organizations could simply swap memberships. The quality of cuisine provided by the [new] Culinary Institute of America would presumably suffer a slight decline. But the quality of intelligence gathering provided by the [new] Central Intelligence Agency could hardly be worse than that provided by that organization with its current membership. It might actually show a bit of an improvement.