Dead Drop: December 1

SEMPER CRAZY: Hal Turner is a radio host who makes conspiracy peddler Alex Jones seem normal. Last week Turner posted on his website “reports” that a Marine Expeditionary Unit (which typically has about 2,200 troops) landed at CIA headquarters in tilt-rotor aircraft on Saturday, Nov. 18 to send a message to “rogue elements” within the intelligence community. Turner admits he didn’t witness this himself – but his sources (who he deems “conspiracy theorists”) told him that President Donald Trump aordered this alleged show of force  at the request of CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Our readers who live in Northern Virginia may be asking themselves: “How did I miss that?” In an update on his website, Turner said that’s because CIA HQ is “hidden behind man-made hills all around the perimeter of it to protect from sniper fire coming from nearby roads.” The fact-checking website Snopes fact checking website rated Turner’s tale “false”). Snopes reached out to the CIA and Marine Corps about the story. The Marines said the claim that a MEU had landed at Langley to send a message to the CIA was “ridiculous.” Amazingly enough, the CIA declined to comment to Snopes.

“NOT A D, NOT AN R, AN I”: Charles McCullough, former inspector general of the Intelligence Community, appeared on Fox News this week to say he was ignored, threatened and sabotaged when he complained about classified information found on Hillary Clinton’s private email server. McCullough said that people like Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., focused on whether the documents were marked classified – rather than whether the information in them should have been so designated. He said he was “chided” by a congressional staff director for “not considering the political consequences” of his work. McCullough told Fox’s Tucker Carlson: “As an IG, you’re not a D, you’re not an R, you’re an I- you’re an IG. Those are the letters that matter to you.”

SIXTEEN YEARS: Last Saturday, Nov. 25th, was the 16th anniversary of the death of CIA officer Johnny Micheal Spann, the first American killed in the war in Afghanistan. The online publication Legal Insurrection pointed out that John Walker Lindh, aka “the American Taliban” who Spann was questioning at Qali-Jangi prison shortly before he was killed, is set to be released from prison in less than two years.

POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:

• Jackie? OH!: The Daily Mail in the UK reported on Nov. 22 (the 54th anniversary of JFK’s assassination) the most asinine conspiracy theory we’ve heard on the late president’s death. The paper repeated speculation that perhaps First Lady Jackie Kennedy had been hired by the CIA to kill her husband and that slowed-down footage of the assassination seems to show something metallic in her hand.
• UBER LIFTED COMPETITORS SECRETS? The Associated Press reported this week that the feds are investigating whether ride sharing giant Uber used a group of “ex-CIA agents” to steal technology from self-driving car startup and Google spinoff Waymo.
• SPACE RACE: Muckrock.com’s exploration of the CIA’s CREST database has turned up a 31-year-old memo from then-CIA Deputy Director Bob Gates recounting a lunch conversation he had with then-NASA Administrator Jim Fletcher. According to the memo, Fletcher was concerned that the Soviets would shoot for a major space initiative in 1992 – the 75th anniversary of their revolution. Fletcher thought the Soviets might launch a manned mission to Mars. According to his memo, Gates suggested NASA think about establishing a permanent base on the moon to counter the PR value of the mission to Mars. As you may recall, the USSR didn’t quite make it to 1992…or Mars. On the other hand – that moon base hasn’t happened yet either.

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:

• Former Acting CIA Director John McLaughlin reacted strongly to Trump’s tweet attacking [non-Fox News] journalists saying: “If you favor CNN OR Fox and are not dismayed by this, you may now be numb and no longer capable of outrage. Scary if that’s our new normal.”
• And former CIA and NSA Director Mike Hayden replied: “If this is who we are or who we are becoming, I have wasted 40 years of my life.” Hayden elaborated on his views on CNN.
• Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral Jim Stavridis told NBC News that Trump tried to “score cheap political points” with his Thanksgiving speech to troops.
• Former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Sandy Winnefeld has a heart-wrenching article in The Atlantic about how no family is safe from the opioid epidemic. The admiral’s youngest son Jonathan died of an overdose shortly after starting at the University of Denver.

WHAT’S ON THEIR NIGHTSTAND?

“I’ve been reading Imbeciles by Adam Cohen. It is about the 1927 Supreme Court case Buck vs. Bell, and the right of the State to sterilize people it considered “feebleminded.”  The case is long forgotten but is perhaps one of the worst cases in U.S. history.  

Famous judges like Louis Brandeis, Oliver Wendell Holmes and William Taft subscribed to the American Eugenics movement that labeled people “idiots,” “imbeciles” and “morons,” and thought it okay to sterilize them so that they couldn’t reproduce. Many people were wrongly labeled as unfit, and there was a view that the State should be in the business of cleansing and improving the race. In fact, in many ways the Nazi views about the master race came from these “scientific” views that grew in the U.S.” — John Sipher, a member of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service, who served multiple overseas tours as Chief of Station and Deputy Chief of Station in Europe, Asia, Southeast Asia, the Balkans and South Asia.

SECURITY QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

“What’s striking to me, having worked this issue since 2003, is that we still haven’t resolved issues with North Korea, despite the 25 years of work. What’s even more striking is that North Korea now refuses to engage with the new administrations in the U.S. and South Korea – administrations that appear willing to enter into unconditional talks with North Korea….

“Convincing North Korea to halt its missile launches and nuclear tests and entering into official talks with the U.S., and possibly others, should be the responsibility of not just the U.S., but also China and Russia and all those countries that attended the 12th East Asia Summit.” — Ambassador Joseph DeTrani served over two decades with the Central Intelligence Agency. The author was the former Special Envoy for Negotiations with North Korea. The views are the author’s and not any government agency or department.

You can hear more of DeTrani’s thoughts on dealing with North Korea in this Intelligence Matters podcast.

IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING: Got any tips for your friendly neighborhood Dead Drop? Shoot us a note at [email protected] or [email protected].