Dead Drop: August 17

CIA DIRECTOR ANNOUNCES LEADERSHIP TEAM:   CIA Director Gina Haspel is naming 32-year career officer Andrew “Andy” Makridis as the Agency’s new COO, and 34-year career officer Sonya Holt as the new Diversity and Inclusion Officer.   It’s noteworthy that both are insiders, as is recently named DDCIA Vaughn Bishop.  A source familiar with the decision tells the Dead Drop that the Director’s background in operations has given her a keen understanding and appreciation for both experience within the Agency and more broadly, diverse life experiences and viewpoints, given that the intelligence mission spans the globe.  We’re told that senior leaders will begin a series of workforce engagements in the very near future.

CLEARANCE SALE: For former senior national security officials it appears that the price for keeping your security clearance is high.  Want to keep those “tickets”?  Just promise to say only nice things about the president (or at least nothing bad.) Most of the former officials we have talked with since Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced the President had yanked former CIA Director John Brennan’s clearances said they saw the move as a heavy-handed attempt to punish free speech. To be clear, not all of them are on board with the hot rhetoric Brennan has used since leaving office, to describe his disdain for the president. Some think former officials, like current ones, should not be so vocal in public, but most objected to using clearances to tighten lips.  One of the most interesting reactions to the news that Brennan’s clearance was being revoked came from former CIA officer David Priess who tweeted” “To honor free political speech – whether I agree with what’s said or not – I’m donating in the name of @JohnBrennan to the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation, supporting children/spouses of CIA officers who lost their lives in service.