Recently Michael Pompeo, the director of the CIA, sent a nice letter to his workforce. In it he had the temerity to mention Christmas several times, including shocking references to a Christmas kilt and a Christmas penguin suit.

Former CIA staffer Ned Price (who resigned in January to fight Trump) predictably tweeted out a hateful reference to the Family Research Council and called the director "non-inclusive" which is the harshest thing he could think of to say.

The workforce message of the CIA Director who brought the head of the Family Research Council to Langley was predictably non-inclusive. And the accompanying photos—nearly all featuring GOP Presidents from Trump to Nixon(!)—conveyed stark partisanship. Unsurprising. https://t.co/AeukcgtLP6 — Ned Price (@nedprice) December 22, 2017

Apparently word of this heinous and Hitler-esque letter spread rapidly through the Cult Marxosphere and Benjamin Wittes, august senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, filed a FOIA request in order to ferret out the audacious example of the love of the historic American nation.

But the director got wind of it and headed Mr. Wittes off at the pass, sending him the offensive letter directly.

I was surprised to find in my mailbox this morning a small package from the CIA. I was even more surprised to find within it a letter to me from CIA Director Michael Pompeo himself. The contents of Pompeo's letter, which the CIA posted on its website as well, further surprised me. A Letter from Michael Pompeo, By Benjamin Wittes Wednesday, January 3, 2018

For the record, I agree with Pompeo that there is nothing objectionable about this message and I'm surprised that it raised hackles within the agency. For her part, Susan Hennessey says that she does think it's a strange (though not necessarily offensive) message for an agency head to send out to the workforce, and that in her assessment, the fact that it contains an explicit Christmas message and prominently features Republican presidents might have caused a cautious NSA lawyer to at least flag the issues before it was sent. But to me it seems to me like a perfectly gracious expression of holiday good wishes. And I was frankly expecting it to be far worse.

It's amazing how sensitive people are—including lawyers. The card is, in fact, a holiday card, which ends with the words "Merry Christmas from the Pompeo Family." The Republican presidents—mostly Republican, Bill Clinton is in there too—are Presidents Pompeo has served under. (A political appointee, he wasn't on board during the Obama Administration.) Apparently any mention of Christmas is a red flag for lawyers—which just shows, once again, that there is a War On Christmas.

In it the director defended Jesus Christ and graciously offered Mr. Wittes his mother's recipe for fudge. You can read the letter here , but even Wittes admits that the complaint was bogus: