HEAD GAMES ON THE USS FORD - Fresh from supporting U.S. operations off the coast of Venezuela, the USS Gerald R. Ford appears locked in a stubborn fight - not with an adversary, but with the head (Navy term for toilets.) According to Navy Times, the $13-billion supercarrier continues to rack up clogs in its vacuum waste system, occasionally requiring $400,000 acid flushes to blast the lines clear. More than 40 outside maintenance calls for help since 2023 suggest the fix is bigger than swabbie with a plunger. The size of the problem may be just one more argument for going with unmanned ships in the future. Loyal Dead Drop readers (are there any other kind?) may remember that we first mentioned the Ford’s head problem way back in July 2017 and again in 2020. (Don’t judge, sometimes it’s a slow news day.)
ESPIONAGE GIG ECONOMY – Britain has a spy problem, and many of the spies don't even know they're spies. Commander Dominic Murphy, head of London’s Metropolitan Police Department’s counter-terrorism squad, told The Times that officials are currently running over 160 investigations into state-sponsored threats, with roughly 100 of those focused on Britons who are suspected of working for Russia, Iran, and China. It seems that foreign intelligence services are recruiting; private detectives, asylum seekers, criminals, and teenagers through Telegram, offering to pay them for "due diligence" or "debt recovery" work that's actually espionage. One private eye thought he was chasing a bad business deal only to find out that he was instead feeding intelligence to a hostile regime. Since the 2018 Salisbury poisonings and mass expulsion of Russian officers, Moscow, Tehran, and Beijing have increasingly pivoted to proxy operations. Murphy says that disruptions now happen "almost every month," covering everything from cyberattacks to assassination plots. Among the cases: a 21-year-old, who prosecutors say was recruited by the Wagner Group to torch a Ukraine aid warehouse in London and a former British soldier, accused of spying for Iran. And a Home Office officer who was charged with assisting Hong Kong intelligence in 2024, was found dead shortly after allegations were made. Is this the new Murphy's law? "People do need to wake up to the way Russia particularly, but other countries too, are operating differently now and how vulnerable they could be to committing serious offenses without really realising."
‘MOSCOW, WE HAVE A CYPRUS PROBLEM’: The Guardian reports that Alexei Panov, 41, assigned to Moscow’s embassy in Cyprus - was “found dead after an apparent suicide” on January 8th and the paper is now reporting that Panov was a GRU intelligence officer, adding a whole new layer of intrigue with some sources speculating that Panov may have wanted to defect. Local authorities were denied access to the building where Panov allegedly hanged himself and were only allowed access to the body in an Embassy courtyard hours after the death was reported. No suicide note was shared with local officials but one was said to have been sent back to Moscow. We note from photos, that the Russian embassy in Nicosia does not seem to be a very tall building -- so the typical “troublesome people falling out of open windows” may not have been an option. At about the same time, a decomposed body that may have been that of missing Russian oligarch, Vladislav Baumgertner, turned up elsewhere in Cyprus. Positive ID is pending autopsy reports. Reports from Russia say the multimillionaire had gone missing while rock climbing. His family, however, said that Baumgertner had no interest in such activities. Naturally, amateur sleuths are trying to establish a connection between the deaths of both Russians in Cyprus.
POINTLESS PROSECUTION? Even for open and shut cases, we understand that juries often like to stretch out their deliberations long enough to get a free lunch. Not so in Washington, D.C. this past week when a U.S. District Court took just 35 minutes to decide that Jacob Winkler was not guilty of felony charges of aiming a laser at a Marine One helicopter carrying President Trump back in September. Pointing lasers at pilots can cause serious harm and, if convicted, Winkler would have faced up to five years in prison. The Secret Service thought he was wielding a potentially deadly device and U.S. Attorney Jenine Pirro pledged to prosecute him to “the fullest extent of the law.” But Winkler’s public defenders convinced the jury that the homeless man was brandishing a “key chain cat toy”… an offense nearly as serious as assault with a Subway sandwich (Yes, that’s also a real thing.)
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