One of my tasks as an employee of Vanity Fair back in the mid-1990s was to compose weekly memos to my boss, Graydon Carter. These were supposed to be ‘intelligence briefings’ on the topics dominating the headlines, but I quickly discovered that he had no interest in news and current affairs. The only thing that interested him was gossip. I became the author of a weekly gossip column with a readership of one.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but I could easily have parlayed this skill into a career in the State Department. Judging from the latest batch of WikiLeaks, American diplomats spend most of their time gathering tittle-tattle that they can then pass on to their superiors back in Washington.
For instance, Tatiana Gfoeller, America’s ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, dispatched a secret cable in which she provided a detailed report of Prince Andrew’s remarks to a group of Canadian and British businessmen at a breakfast meeting in the capital. Incredibly — and this information would have remained ‘classified’ if it wasn’t for WikiLeaks — his comments ‘verged on the rude’. Thanks to the vigilance of Ms Gfoeller, we now know that the Duke of York has a low opinion of the French, thinks Americans have a poor grasp of geography and has absolutely no time for the Guardian. ‘His mother’s subjects seated around the table roared their approval,’ she reported.
It beggars belief that a senior career diplomat (Ms Gfoeller speaks six languages) would bother to relay such meaningless trivia. Is she under the impression that Britain is still run by its royal family? No, the poor woman has simply discovered that her political masters back in the State Department have an appetite for gossip.
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