It would not be fair to blame the micro climate of Washington DC for the failure of the US Department of State to get things right, even occasionally. That is an institutional failure rather than a climatic one.

For the umpteenth time the State Department has got it wrong again. That is not the fault of the current Secretary. An oil expert made to become a diplomatic one, failure to get the message is understandable and excusable. What cannot be forgiven is the reasoning offered to justify the acceptance by the President of a contender for the title of the world’s major criminal not only on US soil but in the Oval Office.

Nevertheless that is what’s happened and the agreement by President Trump to receive officially the criminal Prime Minister of Malaysia must have been made on the advice of the State Department. The latter is notorious for its past support of criminal dictators. Pinochet, Noriega, Suharto, Marcos. The list is much longer and the only notable absentees are the Castro brothers, alive ad well and living in Havana.

So what is the excuse for ignoring mega crime this time? Beijing is trying to buy Najib? Wrong. They have already bought him largely because neglect of its international duty by the US has allowed him to remain in control in Malaysia and open his country to whatever offers may be made for it. So far a crooked deal for a loan to build a railway priced at twice its real cost so that Najib can pay off at least some of the debts of his 1 MDB, caused by his mega thefts from it.

All the details of that mega scandal are on the website of the United States Department of Justice and may be assumed to be known to Foggy Bottom. So it is not a case of ignorance but of complicity. Whether the US officially whitewashes Najib is less important than that he will be abe to claim domestically that it has done so. A strong element for the election campaign he is planning to hold this fall. He will be able to say that President Trump has “cfeared” him and that all the evidence of his mega criminality is what his bloggers like to describe as fake.

The main point is that the US will have ensured that a criminal will hang on to power and that Beijing, by funding him, will control Malaysia and,by extension, the vital Straits of Malacca. Do the State Department and the Department of Defence see eye to eye on that?