Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

cipherbrief

Welcome! Log in to stay connected and make the most of your experience.

Input clean

Dead Drop

The Dead Drop logo: red on white background.

NOUN

  1. A location to secretly pass information without a face-to-face meeting.

Each week we hope to give our readers tidbits of gossip from the world of national security and intelligence. The Dead Drop is a source of fun or intriguing news you can’t get anywhere else.

Got a tip for us? Email us at  thedeaddrop@thecipherbrief.com  and share the scoop. We promise to protect our sources and methods.

Below is our recent intelligence collection:

Dead Drop: October 4 - 10

STILL ON THE DISTRIBUTION LIST: August Hanning ran Germany's Federal Intelligence Service from 1998 to 2005 but there are some suspicions that he never really fell off the distribution list. (His former outfit is known as the BND - because the “Bundesnachrichtendienst” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.) According to the BBC, Hanning was arrested this week on suspicion of espionage, treason and obtaining classified information for a foreign power. Police also arrested Manfred D., his former chief of staff, who stayed at the BND until this year. Prosecutors allege that Manfred D. used that [...] Read More

Dead Drop: Sept 27 - October 3

CANOE SEE ME NOW? The Pentagon's newest border sentry is 11 feet long, weighs 340 pounds, runs on sunshine and has never once asked for overtime. [...] More

Dead Drop: September 20 - 26

WHO’S YOUR DADDY? According to the Justice Department, Lee Reiber, 55, CEO of Virginia-based Oxygen Forensics, was arrested in Idaho on a federal [...] More

Dead Drop Archive

Dead Drop: September 13 - 19

GOLDEN IWO JIMA: We’ve never heard anyone suggest that the Iwo Jima Memorial needs a little more bling. But that didn’t stop President Trump from [...] More

Dead Drop: September 6-12

RUSSIA PRACTICES CABLE-CUTTING, GETS CAUGHT MID-REHEARSAL: Russia's GUGI, a secretive Russian military unit whose entire job is apparently finding [...] More

Dead Drop: August 30 - September 5

AD-VERSARY DENIED: Per Reuters, the Air Force has disabled advertising identifiers on military computers and mobile phones, while U.S. Special [...] More

Dead Drop: August 23 - 29

A NOT-SO-SECRET REUNION -- The NSA is reportedly calling some of its former top hackers back to Fort Meade tomorrow — both a reunion and recruiting [...] More

Dead Drop: August 16 - 22

PRINCE OF THE AIR — Blackwater founder Erik Prince has reportedly launched an air defense company offering both hardware and operational management [...] More

Dead Drop: August 9 - 15

THIS DOESN'T REALLY WORK BOTH WAYS -- The Washington Post includes excerpts from reporter Joby Warrick’s new book about Carlos the Jackal, the [...] More

Dead Drop: August 2 - 8

UNCLE SAM'S EMPTY QUIVER, FULL PRISONS? According to the Washington Post, President Trump's patience "boiled over" at Camp David last Friday when he [...] More

Dead Drop: July 26 - August 1

DON’T YOU HATE WHEN THAT HAPPENS? It used to be that embarrassing mistakes that popped up during public presentations just kinda got forgotten about, [...] More

Dead Drop: July 19 - 25

DIRTY LAUNDRY BEAR: The Russians have apparently discovered a new way to air other people's dirty laundry. The NSA, FBI, CISA and a long roster of [...] More

Dead Drop: July 12 - 18

FOR BETTER OR WORSE – According to reporting from MS NOW, (not the president’s favorite network) two Atlanta-based FBI intelligence analysts were [...] More

Dead Drop: July 5 - 11

YOU WANT ME TO RIDE WHERE? General Tony Thomas (Ret.), former Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command doesn’t seem to have slowed down much in [...] More

Dead Drop: June 28 - July 4

PARDON ME? Word around Washington is that President Trump is thinking about whether he wants to issue 250 new presidential pardons to mark the [...] More