MOVING ON: NGA Director Robert Cardillo is retiring and handing over controls of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to Navy Vice Adm. Robert Sharp. We're told that the 6th NGA Director is not giving up his GEOINT Intelligence Officer badge of honor, however, telling those at his retirement ceremony that he "will always be a GEOINT Intelligence Officer. So, while I depart a position - and turnover a title - I will never leave this profession - or this Agency. And this profession and this Agency will never leave me - both will flow through my veins, as long as I live." Now that's dedication.
AND THE NOMINEES FOR THE WORST SPY MOVIES ARE…. In last week’s episode of The Dead Drop, we reported that a writer named Sophie Matthews had published a piece on Women.com listing “8 of the Best and Most Accurate Spy Movies Ever Made.” Sophie’s choices were inspired by her Mom & Dad, both former members of the CIA’s clandestine service. While Sophie did not blow their cover in her piece, our sources told us her parents might be Jason and Suzanne Matthews. (Jason being the author of the“Red Sparrow” trilogy of highly successful novels.) We were right. We know that now because Jason and Suzanne saw the item in The Dead Drop and reached out to us confirming that Sophie is indeed their youngest daughter. What’s more, they took us up on our challenge to readers: “Give us your list of ten worst and most inaccurate spy films.” (Actually, we were wondering why she picked 8 instead of 10, so we asked and low and behold, we got 10). Here are the Matthews’ picks: 1. Salt, 2. All of The Bourne series, 3. Mr. and Mrs. Smith, 4. All of the Mission Impossible series, 5. Casino Royale (1967), 6. The Recruit, 7. The November Man and 8. Three Days of the Condor 9. Body of Lies 10. The Defector (1968).
Agree? Disagree? Know if flicks that are even more inaccurate and awful? Send your list to us at: TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com
SOME NERVE: Apparently some folks in Russia think their country’s botched attempt to kill Sergei Skripal with a nerve agent in the U.K. was a laugh riot. The Guardian says that the ham-handed Novichok assassination attempt by two GRU officers who were pretending to be tourists has now been turned into a “humorous” board game called “Our Guys in Salisbury.” A Russian toymaker released the game which features a finish line that looks like the Salisbury cathedral. Along the way are two figures wearing hazmat suits and spray bottles sporting skull and crossbones (evoking the perfume bottle that British officials say the Russians used to transport the nerve agent.) The Guardian notes that the western outrage over the Salisbury attack has been treated as something of a joke in Russia and that the RT network even sent out “chocolate Salisbury Cathedrals as end-of-year gifts to other news agencies this year.” RT is reportedly also selling black t-shirts with the inscription “Do you work for the GRU?” The Cipher Brief posted a piece back in September from Cipher Brief Expert Nick Fishwick, who is also a former Senior Member of the British Foreign Office, about what the attack exposed about , and well, let's just say it's laughable.
ELSEWHERE, IN QUESTIONABLE TASTE NEWS: Stars and Stripes tells us that there is a website that mocks the boom in non-profits providing services to service members. Everythingforwarriors.org randomly generates the names of oddball charities that might make you question the kindness of Americans who want to be supportive of veterans. The Stripes story lists some of the goofy titles obtained with a push of a button on the website. They ranged from “Pancakes for Redheaded Veterans,” to “Speed Walking for American Sailors.” Brian Wilson, the website’s founder, says his personal favorite is: “Cuddles for Airmen.” Now, remember, these are mock accounts, so keep your checkbook in your pocket.
RAPTUOUS REPORT: In the December 7 edition of The Dead Drop we noted that among the films premiering at the Sundance Film Festival would be one called “The Report” glamorizing the role of former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer Daniel Jones. Jones oversaw putting together the SSCI’s controversial 2014 report on the CIA’s post 9/11 program on rendition, detention and interrogation. Former CIA Director, General Michael Hayden wrote that the report “may be the most flawed analytical document I have seen in forty years of government service.” Former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell called Jones’s report “one of the worst pieces of analysis” he had ever seen. In December, The Dead Drop wondered how the flick would explain Jones & company’s failure to interview a single person involved in the program during their five-year, $40 million investigation Well, we still don’t know how (or if) all that is explained in the film because we haven’t seen it…but initial reports from credulous critics at Sundance is that the audience loved the flick. Press accounts make clear that the film repeats the errors in the report such as the assertion that nothing of value came from the interrogation program ( Former CIA Director Leon Panetta has said: “At bottom, we know we got important, even critical information” from individuals in the program." The film, like the report, implies that those implementing the program were doing so out of some perverse sense of retribution rather than desperately trying to stop another 9/11. Variety says Amazon bought distribution rights to the film for $14 million. Agency alumni we talked with got a big laugh out of a quote in The Atlantic from “The Report” director Scott Z. Burns. The director, who was doing a post-screening media blitz was asked about negative references in his film about the 2012 motion picture "Zero Dark Thirty.” “Hollywood people don’t always fact-check stories,” Burns revealed. No kidding.
NO DISREPECT, BUT…. Troubled by “fake news”? Here is a fix: outlaw it. According to Slate, Russia’s State Duma, the lower house of their parliament, tentatively approved a bill last week which, if it was enacted in its current form, “would prohibit Russian citizens and news outlets from publishing unreliable news and from expressing disrespect toward the government.” Nearly 90% of the Duma members voted for the bill. Sergei Ivanov, one of te few Russian politicians to speak out about the governmental disrespect portion of the proposed law, said: “If we stop calling a fool a fool, he won’t stop being a fool as a result.” Hopefully the notion of outlawing disrespecting the government won’t spread to the United States. If it did – the country might go broke building more jails.
NUNES AIDE BOLTS FOR THE NSC STAFF: Remember about a year ago when the then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman issued a controversial memo claiming that the FBI and Justice Department had abused their authority by issuing FISA warrants on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page? We don’t blame you for not remembering. That was eons ago. Now, CNN reports that the staffer who drafted the memo, Kashyap Patel, has joined the NSC staff. Patel was also reportedly one of two House aides dispatched to the UK to try to dig up dirt on dossier author Christopher Steele.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
POETIC INJUSTICE: The folks at Muckrock.com continue to dig through the CIA’s declassified archives and have uncovered a poetic parody printed in the Agency’s Studies in Intelligence in 1986. The verse was a knock-off of Edgar Allen Poe’s classic “The Raven.” The document seemed to be inspired by concerns over using a computer-based anonymous chat box. The poem was declassified and approved for release in 2014, but as Muckrock notes, the rhyme scheme was messed up by one of those pesky redactions. The piece ends with “And my soul from out that shadow floats in (b) (3) (c) To return home – nevermore!” Apparently, the missing bit is info represented by “(b) (3) (c)” - material specifically exempt from disclosure as a result of some other statute.
ASSAULT WITH A FRIENDLY WEAPON: Military Times recently reported about some unusual evidence of physical abuse in the Russian military. How unusual? A book called “Russian Military Reform, 1992-2002” says “physical abuse is such an accepted part of Russian military life that many officers routinely use force themselves to discipline their soldiers; only the exceptional cases come to public notice." One exceptional case cited is that of a Russian Army captain by the name of Ilyasov, who was court-martialed in 2002 for regularly waking his soldiers up during the night for snap inspections and if he found anything amiss, he “would beat the culprits with a rubber dildo.”
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