Dead Drop: July 20

HEAD SCRATCHER: A lot of current and former intelligence officials we know are trying to decipher an @realDonaldTrump tweet from last Wednesday which asserted: “So many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved my press conference performance in Helsinki.” The two best explanations we have heard were either that “higher ends” means those on drugs, or that the people in intelligence he was referring to are in Russian intelligence.

COATS KEPT IN THE DARK:  Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was in Aspen this week, addressing questions at a security conference about what he knows and doesn’t know about the private meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday.  Coats appeared to be almost as much in the dark as the rest of us, confirming to NBC’s Andrea Mitchell that he still doesn’t know what happened in that meeting.  Toward the end of the interview, Mitchell shared news based on a tweet out of the White House, that President Trump had asked National Security Advisor John Bolton to invite Putin to the White House this fall.  “Say that again”, Coats asked Mitchell, taking a moment before adding, “Okaaayyyy.  That’s gonna be special.”