“I didn’t want to fly under false colors. I’ve been an adviser and felt that I was making a contribution and I strongly support Mr. Trump for president, I did, since September and I wish him well, but I’m not really functioning as an adviser anymore,” Woolsey told CNN host Erin Burnett. “So when I’m on screen, everyone announces I’m a former CIA director and that I’m a Trump adviser, and I’m really not anymore, so I just thought I should strike that from the chyron or as it comes up on the screen so no one is under false impressions.”
“’I didn’t wanna fly under false colors’”
You can’t “fly under” false colors.
You can sail under false colors; you can fly false colors; but you can’t “fly under” false colors.
What is the matter with people? Are they actually stupid? Forrest Gump stupid? How did they get where they are when they can’t even use common idioms correctly?
Woolsey has served in the U.S. government as:
Advisor (during military service) on the U.S. Delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT 1), Helsinki and Vienna, 1969–1970
General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, 1970–73
Under Secretary of the Navy, 1977–1979
Delegate at Large to the U.S.-Soviet Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) and Nuclear and Space Arms Talks (NST), Geneva, 1983–1986
Ambassador to the Negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), Vienna, 1989–1991
Director of CIA, 1993–1995
IOW's this Yale / Yale law-school lawyer has spent most of his life in the boring dreary business of arms control negotiation, compared to which watching TV test patterns at 3AM is a white-knuckle thrill ride.
He is hardly a career intel expert.