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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks to reporters after a Security Council meeting on non-proliferation at the United Nations headquarters in New York, December 12, 2018. /Xinhua
**Editor's note: **Mark Pinkstone is former chief information officer of the Hong Kong government before 1997 for 20 years. He is also a veteran journalist with 50 years of experience in Hong Kong. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is undoubtedly the world's most undiplomatic diplomat. His entire "diplomatic" career has been based on smear campaigns, lies, deceit, cover-ups and conspiracy theories.
His latest lie, of course, is that the Chinese mainland is trying to kill Hong Kong's economic and financial base. Why would it want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg? Only Pompeo knows.
Pompeo and his boss, U.S. President Donald Trump, make good bedfellows. Both hate China to the core. They are afraid that China's successes on the world stage will eventually make China the world's No.1 superpower – something they could not allow.
Politics is a power game that both use to the fullest extent. Trump makes the most outlandish statements, such as using disinfectant to cure the coronavirus. He is a joke. Yet he is still well supported by the Republicans who voted him into power.
Pompeo, on the other hand, is evil. He spits out his hatred of China with menace. His rise to power was assisted by his friend Donald Trump who promoted him to CIA director in November 2016 and secretary of state in March 2018.
Pompeo, a life member of the National Rifle Association, drew the attention of Trump when he served in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Kansas Republican from 2011 to 2017.
There he made a name for himself as a leading purveyor of hard-line conservative ideology and conspiracy theories.
He has called for Edward Snowden's execution, defended interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding and rectal feeding, co-sponsored legislation to prevent transferring detainees from the infamous Guantanamo detention center, opposed same-sex marriage, and co-sponsored another bill to defund Planned Parenthood. Pompeo lives in a world of negativity and self-denial.
Four patrons of the Chicago Transit Authority Orange Line Kedzie Station space themselves as they wait for an inbound train to Chicago's famed Loop from Midway International Airport, April 10, 2020. /AP
As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across the U.S., killing more than 70,000 people and infecting more than a million, both Trump and Pompeo remain in denial, with Trump trumpeting "we are doing a brilliant job."
The team needed to direct global attention away from their mishandling of the pandemic. Pompeo also joined Trump in actively spreading propaganda, blaming China for the spread of the virus and claiming that the country allowed the virus to escape from testing laboratories in Wuhan and should be punished.
The idea spread to state governors and the rest of the world, and soon it appeared that everyone wanted to sue China to cover the costs involved with cleaning up the virus.
Pompeo had convinced his counterparts in the UK and Australia that he was right, even though he had no evidence to back up his claims.
However, scientists in the UK and elsewhere soon rubbished their claims by linking the coronavirus to wild animals, as was first asserted by the Chinese authorities.
Laboratory researchers have established solid genetic links between the new coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2, and one found in a horseshoe bat in southeastern China, adding that the bat virus would have had to circulate and evolve for several years before mutating enough to be able to infect people.
It was also noted that early infections did not come from people near a wet market, meaning it might have come from elsewhere.
But the Americans persist with their conspiracy theory that China was involved in a cover-up by not releasing details earlier, which Trump and Pompeo claim could have saved thousands of American lives.
It doesn't matter when the details were released, as the U.S. was ill-prepared for an epidemic, even if got plenty of notice.
The Times of Israel, quoting local TV, reported on April 16 that U.S. intelligence agencies alerted Israel and NATO to the coronavirus outbreak in China in the second week of November. Meanwhile, the American Broadcasting Company said U.S. intelligence officials were warning about the coronavirus in a December report prepared by the U.S. military's National Center for Medical Intelligence.
Even the World Health Organization (WHO) stood by China, saying it notified the organization in a timely manner.
Trump responded by withholding funds to the WHO, while Pompeo warned that the U.S. would never restore funds and would set up its own alternative to the WHO.
All fingers are pointing to the U.S. for a cover-up, an art Pompeo mastered in his CIA days. Trump, at the time, was too preoccupied with his impeachment hearings that he cared little about a flu-like outbreak.
At Texas AM University on April 15, 2019, Pompeo summed up his modus operandi perfectly, "I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, and we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment."
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