Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, a former Navy SEAL commander, has adopted a military tradition at his agency, raising a special flag any time he is at his headquarters.
When Zinke is at the Department of the Interior (DOI) in Washington, D.C., a security staffer makes a special trip up to the roof of the agency to replace the agency’s flag with a secretarial flag, the Washington Post reports.
No other agency secretary has a similar practice, though all have their own secretarial flags. Some sit in storage and rarely hang from a flagpole, while others fly from the agency regardless of whether the secretary is in or not.
“Ryan Zinke is proud and honored to lead the Department of the Interior, and is restoring honor and tradition to the department, whether it’s flying the flag when he is in garrison or restoring traditional access to public lands,” DOI spokeswoman Heather Swift told WaPo in an email.
Swift said the practice is “a major sign of transparency.”
Zinke is gaining a reputation for his unusual antics as a department secretary. His first day at the DOI, he rode to work on a horse, NBC news reports.
Trophy animals line the walls of his office, but it’s unknown whether he killed the animals himself. Zinke displayed a case of hunting knives as well, but was asked to remove them for security reasons.
He has ordered personalized, commemorative coins for DOI staff and visitors to the agency. Every other department has similar tokens, though none except for Zinke’s feature the name of the secretary. Any additional cost of Zinke’s personalized coins is not known, WaPo reports.
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