Dead Drop: July 3

BOUNTY-GATE: Last week, The Cipher Brief reached out to the CIA asking why the Agency had not published a single news release in 2020.  That very day, the Agency put out a press release about their new recruiting video (that we discussed in our last edition.)  Now, for the second week in a row, the Agency has issued another press release.  (Man, The Cipher Brief must have some serious power.) This one, posted late Monday evening, carried a two paragraph statement from CIA Director Gina Haspel decrying leaks which “compromise and disrupt the critical interagency work to collect, assess, and ascribe culpability” to threats against coalition forces overseas.” Haspel’s statement followed one put out earlier in the evening by DNI John Ratcliffe who was a bit more explicit about what he was talking about saying: “We are still investigating the alleged intelligence referenced in recent media reporting” about “U.S. and coalition force protection.” We won’t go through all the allegations and counterclaims here – but the short version is that The New York Times, Washington Post, and dozens of other news organizations say intelligence (perhaps going back to 2019) suggested that the Russians may be paying bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The president says the stories are  “fake news.” And the White House press secretary says the president wasn’t “personally briefed” on it because there was no consensus within the IC on the details. The Wall Street Journal reports that the NSA differed from the CIA and other agencies on the reliability of the intelligence. Our sources tell us that if there had to be unanimity on intelligence reports before sharing them with the president – the PDB would be awfully thin.  Hmm.  Maybe that was the plan.

THE FRIDAY NEWS DUMP LIVES: Some “communications experts” have declared dead the time-(dis) honored Washington practice of dumping out bad news late on a Friday to minimize coverage.  They say that the 24-hour-news-cycle now means that you can’t hide the dirty laundry the way you once could.  One bit of evidence that the practice is still viable is the news you might have barely noticed a couple Fridays ago.  Remember Captain Brett Crozier formerly of the USS Theodore Roosevelt? He was fired after the leak of a letter he wrote to most of his chain of command expressing concern for the health of his crew amid the coronavirus crisis. Then, the Acting Secretary Navy flew halfway around the world to visit the TR and say dumb stuff – and was subsequently forced to walk the plank himself. Word then came out that following a brief investigation the Chief of Naval Operations favored restoring Crozier to his command. But more senior officials called for a more in depth investigation.  Which brings us to the afternoon of  Friday June 19 when new Secretary of the Navy Kenneth Braithwaite and CNO Mike Gilday came into the socially distanced Pentagon briefing room, released  two TLDNR (Too Long, Did Not Read) reports and announced that Crozier would NOT be getting his command back and in fact would never command anything in the Navy again.  Apparently, they were referring to stuff unrelated to his letter,  administrative missteps that would never have come to light had he not written his shipboard SOS. News of the whole matter sank like a rock. So, bottom line:  the Friday news dump is still alive – and Captain Crozier’s career is not.