The Crenshaw text messages
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The name came up in passing in a viewer's comment about which politicians serve which interests. Ted Rall had barely finished the list when John Kiriakou stopped him.

The set-up

"Don't get me started on Crenshaw," Kiriakou said. "Oh my god." He then volunteered the reason: "Let me tell you about Crenshaw."

He described briefly dating a woman "who was considerably younger than I, very, very attractive, a leader in her field." They were at her flat one night watching a film, it was about midnight, and her phone was on the floor near him.

The message

The phone buzzed with a text. "It's from Dan Crenshaw," Kiriakou said, "and he says, 'What are you wearing?'"

He read it out to her. Her reaction, in his telling, was weary rather than surprised: "Oh, that guy won't leave me alone."

So Kiriakou answered it himself. "I took the phone and I wrote back. I said, 'Crenshaw, this is her boyfriend. Why don't you ask your wife what she's wearing?'"

The reply came back in two words: "Sorry, scumbag."

What made it worse

Kiriakou's objection was not only to the message but to its timing in the man's life. "His wife just had, they had a ten-month-old baby at the time," he said, "but he's asking my girlfriend what she's wearing at twelve o'clock at night."

He added that she then showed him other messages from the same sender. "They were filthy," he said, and, significantly, "she saved them just in case she needed to use them against him."

Rall's reaction was two words of disbelief; Kiriakou's verdict was one sentence: "Yeah, he's a scumbag."

Note

Kiriakou does not name the woman, give a date, or say whether she ever made use of the saved messages. He introduced the account unprompted, as an illustration of a judgement he had already delivered, that the subject "is in a league all of his own" among people he regards as contemptible.

See also

- Ted Rall
- John Kiriakou
