Dead Drop: March 8

“STOP WASTING TIME ON STUPID STUFF” – That is the brilliant order that Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson issued to her troops.  The Washington Examiner says that Wilson, speaking at an Air Warfare Symposium last week, explained that as a result of a paperwork reduction initiative, the USAF has shot down 302 service-wide instructions over the past 17 months.  Instead of flying their desks while filling out paperwork, airmen now may have time to fly actual airplanes. While avoiding make-work is a laudable goal in itself, Secretary Wilson gave an additional rationale for ripping up regs. “In a high-end conflict, you will not be able to rely upon exquisite command and control to be told what to do. You won’t be able to find out even sometimes where everybody else is on the battlefield. You’re going to have to act on mission orders and adapt and get the job done,” Wilson explained. “If we expect you to fight that way in wartime, we must treat you that way in peacetime.”

YOU THINK THE MOVIES ARE BAD: In last month’s Dead Drop we gave you what – in the view of some experts – is a list of some of the best and most accurate spy movies ever made – and some of the worst. We didn’t think to ask the question:  what about spy-related TV shows? We didn’t, that is, until we saw a couple new network shows which recently got their first airings – and then bad spy TV came into focus for us. After a little sleuthing, it seems that the frontrunner for most cringeworthy new series is ABC’s  “Whiskey Cavalier.” The concept is that a “super FBI agent” by the name of Will Chase (get it?) goes by the code name “Whiskey Cavalier.”  Will has had a bad breakup recently and has been paired to work with a hard-hearted CIA officer (although they call her an “agent”) named Frankie Trowbridge who has the code name “Fiery Tribune.”  ABC bills the show as an “action, adventure, comedy.”  But we found ourselves only laughing at the action and adventure parts. Also premiering in the last week – this time on NBC – is a new show called “The Enemy Within.”  In this one, a male FBI agent named “Will” Keaton teams up with a female ex-CIA operative (hmm, seems to be a trend here.)  Only in this one – the female CIA alum is no longer with the Agency because she is serving “15 consecutive life sentences” in a Supermax prison.  And she was no common case officer – no, she was the Deputy Director for Operations – until she gave up the names of four of her officers – who ended up getting killed (including the girlfriend of the FBI guy, Will Whatshisname.)  Against his better judgment, Will gets her sprung – because he needs her help in catching some particularly bad terrorists (probably people who would get even more than 15 consecutive life sentences if we could catch them.) There are a lot of car chases and bad-assery on the part of the sprung spy.  While not good or accurate in its depictions, it has the benefit of not being nearly as absurd as Whiskey Cavalier.  What is your nominee for the worst spy-related TV series of all time? Our pick is a show that, as far as we know, aired only once.  The CW network aired a pilot in hopes of the surefire idea it would take off.  It did not.  The show in question was called:  Cheerleader Death Squad an hour-long program about a former CIA “agent” who trains high school cheerleaders for covert missions. No, really.

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

Access all of The Cipher Brief’s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+ Member.

Subscriber+

Search

Close