LEAK WEEK: This has been quite the week for stories about leaks, leaks about stories, and people sticking the shiv in each other just for fun. On May 13th, Axios carried an article with the fun headline: “White House leakers leak about leaking.” Reporter Jonathan Swan asked folks why the ship of state was so leaky at the top. Answers: personal vendettas and making sure there is an accurate record of what is going on at the White House. One (anonymous) tipster said he (or maybe she?) studies “other staffers’ idioms” and uses that in their background quotes to throw the scent off them. (Pro-tip for White House leakers: at the end of every leak you give a reporter, include the word “Sad!”) The Daily Beast reported published a story claiming that Ezra Cohen-Watnick, when he was monitoring intelligence programs at the NSC, was trying to find ways to surreptitiously monitor the phone calls and emails of fellow White House officials to track down leakers. Cohen-Watnick, who we have written about before, was one of the original “Flynn-stones” a staffer loyal to National Security Advisor Mike Flynn. The Daily Beast story says it is unclear if Cohen-Watnick was ever able to deploy his own White House plumbers’ operation, but says that he was known for holding “loud secret meetings” in earshot of people passing by, about finding leakers. There are numerous legal and technical obstacles to mining government employees’ communications for leaks – and while Ezra may have found it too hard at his old gig – he is now an advisor to Attorney General Jeff Sessions with a whole new set of tools in his toolbox. Leak week was kicked off, of course, by White House staffers leaking that a fellow staffer made a stupid and insensitive joke about Senator John McCain. Offended that a White House official would make that kind of comment in front of a dozen other administration officials – the leaker(s) decided to share the words with the media – ensuring that millions of people (including the McCain family) could be similarly offended. Sarah Huckabee Sanders berated her colleagues about the leak –and accurately predicted that her tongue-lashing would, itself, leak. Naturally, the President wanted in on the action – and tweeted that “The so-called leaks coming out of the White House are a massive over exaggeration put out by the Fake News Media.” And then he undercut the message in the same tweet by saying “leakers are traitors and cowards and we will find out who they are!”
MORE BUCKS FOR THE BANG: The Washington Post reports that U.S. Air Force accidentally misplaced a box of explosive grenade rounds. Don’t you hate it when that happens? In this instance, airmen from the 91st Wing Security Forces were traveling between two ICBM sites in North Dakota when the explosives apparently fell off a truck. The Air Force ordered 100 airmen to walk the entire six-mile route between the facilities but came up empty. The red-faced guys in blue are now offering a $5,000 reward for leads about the missing munitions. The good news is that the ordnance is designed only to be launched from a certain type of automatic grenade launcher – so if someone finds the rounds – unless they find a launcher that falls off a truck as well, trying to use the grenades is, according to the Air Force, destined for “catastrophic failure.”
ERROR BNB: The government of Ecuador may be regretting having offered asylum to Julian Assange in their London embassy. The Guardian reports that the country has spent at least $5 million on a secret intelligence budget just to protect their guest. Some of the money is said to go toward spying on people who interact with Assange. Documents also showed that Ecuador may have spent a lot of money on trying to improve Assange’s image. One outfit requested $180,960 for a year’s worth of media consultancy in 2014.
MY WORK HERE IS DONE: Late last week, as momentum for Gina Haspel’s confirmation to become CIA Director was reaching a peak, long-time Agency spokesman Dean Boyd revealed to friends that he would be leaving his job to take a new position with the National Counterintelligence Security Center within the ODNI. Boyd said the transition had been months in the planning. His successor at Langley is Brittany Bramell, who joined the CIA last fall. She had previously worked for Uber and in a variety of positions on the Hill. The Dead Drop tried to pry a little more intel out of the Office of Public Affairs, but they were all busy celebrating news that Gina Haspel had been confirmed as CIA Director.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
NETWORK NEWS: Not a day goes by when members of The Cipher Brief Network aren’t making news. Here are just a few examples from this week:
IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING: Got any tips for your friendly neighborhood Dead Drop? Shoot us a note at [email protected]
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