Dead Drop: June 7 - 13

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS: Do friends spy on friends? Depends on who you ask, apparently. NBC News broke (and the New York Times the next day confirmed) that the Defense Intelligence Agency quietly raised Israel's counterintelligence threat level to the U.S. from "high" to "critical," the top of the scale and, per the Times, higher than that of any other U.S. ally and even some adversarial states. The worry, sources say, is that Israel has taken an unusually keen interest in what the Trump administration is saying behind closed doors about Iran. The Times named Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby among those of particular interest to the Israelis, and one senior official called the collection effort against U.S. officials "unhinged." Both Israel and the White House say it's nonsense. A White House official, quoted in the Times of Israel, dismissed the story as "false and sourced to someone who doesn't have any knowledge of what's going on." Israel's embassy in Washington called the reports "completely false," insisting Israel does not gather intelligence on American entities or government officials…which will be news to Jonathan Pollard, the Navy analyst who did 30 years for handing Israel suitcases of classified U.S documents.

GOLD STANDARD OF MANIPULATION OR JUST A MISUNDERSTANDING? A little more is leaking out about David Rush, the former senior CIA officer found in May with 303 gold bars, $2 million in cash, and a Rolex collection stashed in his house. The Washington Post reports that Rush allegedly built a fake "special access program" ( SAP), the blackest of the government's secret programs - sealed off from oversight even by most personnel with the highest clearances. Prosecutors believe that Rush dressed up the program as a continuity-of-government operation for keeping Washington running through a nuclear attack. He then "read in" two colleagues, allegedly persuading one to route millions to the program through a fraudulent contract and to buy the gold. The Justice Department calls Rush a "master manipulator" who "cannot be trusted," and a judge ordered that he remain in custody as a flight risk. Rush has not yet entered a plea of guilty or not guilty.