‘EXPERT’ COMMENTATOR: TV commentator and former CIA Officer Robert Baer recently appeared on CNN to talk about the strange circumstances surrounding the death of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. CNN’s anchor asked Baer “If it was a botched interrogation, how does something like this go so wrong, especially if it involves senior intelligence officers?” Baer answered, “Well, if it was a botched interrogation, a man of that age, if you hit him hard enough a couple of times, could die of a heart attack. I’ve seen that happen over and over again in the Middle East, where they’re over-aggressive and they die during the interrogation.” Wait a minute. Rewind. Did Baer say that as a CIA Officer, he has seen the death of detainees ‘over and over again’ because they were beaten too hard during interrogations? Did he report that at the time, or was he saving it for cable news? Sounds like there could be a special expert commentator chair for him up on Capitol Hill.
ODD MAN OUT: A recent New York Timesarticle headlined “Afghan Leader Blindsided by U.S. Meeting With Taliban” describes a messy diplomatic dust storm growing in Afghanistan. It seems that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who is months away from an election, was feeling uneasy about being cut out of Afghan peace talks with the Taliban. This, after the new American Special Envoy and veteran Afghan hand Zalmay Khalizad quietly met with the Taliban. The Times citing unnamed officials saying that President Ghani asked Khalizad about the talks, but the American envoy “changed the subject”. The Times reports that a furious Ghani reached out to other officials for assurance, including U.S. General Austin S. Miller, the ninth U.S. General to command U.S forces in Afghanistan, who reportedly assured Ghani that he was not being cut out of the talks. If all of this sounds like a story you’ve heard before, it is - if you’ve read ‘Directorate S’, by Steve Coll. The Dead Drop suggests President Ghani picks up a copy, before the next DOD or State Department meeting. We also suggest he keeps his jet fueled up…
OH, SO THAT’S WHO THEY ARE: In last week’s Dead Drop, we asked “who are these guys?” about the folks from “Bellingcat” who have done a bang-up job of exposing the true identities of the Russian GRU officers accused of trying to kill Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, UK. NPR’s All Things Considered had the same question – and answered it with a feature this week. Staffers at Bellingcat aren’t exactly sure how to describe themselves: "Digital researcher, digital investigator, digital something probably works," says 30-year-old Aric Toler one of the team members. NPR says that “Bellingcat was founded by Eliot Higgins, a British native whose previous jobs included helping the settlement of refugees in the U.K. and administrator in a women's lingerie factory.” Then “The Spectator” in the U.K. produced a story explaining in detail “How Bellingcat outfoxes the world’s spy agencies.” The story says they are either (a) an independent group of exceptionally gifted nerds – or (b) a sophisticated front used by western intelligence agencies to disseminate information which would be dismissed as tainted it is appeared to come from an official source. We’re going with (a.)
ARE MAD DOG’S DAYS NUMBERED? Probably not. But President Trump’s comments to Lesley Stahl during his CBS 60 Minutes interview last Sunday got folks talking. In case you missed it, Stahl asked the POTUS if Mattis is going to leave. The president said that he has a very good relationship with the SECDEF but “It could be that he is. I think he's sort of a Democrat, if you wanna know the truth. But General Mattis is a good guy. We get along very well. He may leave. I mean, at some point, everybody leaves.” This comment came shortly after Trump told CBS that he knows more about NATO than his defense secretary does. People who know Mattis say he wants to stay on, but what if Trump DOES send Mattis packing? Who might replace him? Churning in the rumor mill: Senator Tom Cotton (R, AK): a military veteran, ambitious, capable hard liner who is a friend of Secretary of State Pompeo. Or maybe: Senator Lindsay Graham (R, SC) – one of the President’s favorite Senators. Another suggestion we heard: White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. The rumors have it that the president has grown tired of having Kelly underfoot. Shipping him off to the Pentagon was described to us as “a clean kill.” It would certainly make shouting matches between him and John Bolton easier to referee… But given the recent presidential unpleasantness with representatives of the other gender – ranging from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford to Stormy Daniels – perhaps a female candidate would be wise? The names we heard were former Air Force A-10 pilot Martha McSally (if her Senate bid in Arizona should get shot down) or even Nikki Haley. General Mattis actually offered a deputy role to Michele Flournoy - the former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy – just after he became SECDEF. She turned that one down, but she had some pretty interesting thoughts about the administration that she shared with Cipher Brief CEO & Publisher Suzanne Kelly in a very telling podcast about 18 months ago…
TIME FLIES LIKE THE WIND, FRED FLEITZ LIKES THE PRIVATE SECTOR: Anybody know the real story behind why John Bolton’s chief of staff at the NSC, Fred Fleitz, is flying the coop after just a few months in the job? Fleitz is a former CIA analyst and long-time Bolton pal. It was announced this week that Fleitz is leaving the White House to take over as CEO and president of the Center for Security Policy, a DC-based think tank long helmed by Frank Gaffney. We’re sure the CSP thing is a sweet gig – but usually people who land high-powered slots at the White House hang on a bit longer before cashing in their chips.
LYING TO THE FBI IS BAD: This week former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer James Wolfe pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contact with reporters. As part of the plea agreement, the Feds agreed to drop additional charges. Wolfe had previously denied all wrongdoing and stressed that he had not been charged with actually leaking classified information – simply lying about contacts with reporters –whose stories contained classified material. The Dead Drop noted in June that Wolfe and his supporters had launched a “Go Fund Me” page with the goal of raising $500,000 for his legal defense. At last check, four months later, he is only $491,712 short of his target. Wolfe is scheduled to be sentenced on December 20. Meanwhile, one of the reporters he was accused of hiding a personal relationship with, Ali Watkins, has been transferred out of the Washington Bureau of the New York Times and seems to be covering organized crime from New York.
LYING BY THE FBI – NOT SO MUCH: Reuters reported this week that, according to the Justice Department’s inspector general, a senior FBI official “improperly accepted tickets to professional sporting events from a reporter and later misled investigators when confronted about it.” Who was that official? We don’t know because DOJ and the FBI won’t say – other than the fact that the official resigned from the Bureau during the probe. According to Reuters, “the reporter who gave the tickets to the FBI official is a television news correspondent who covers the Justice Department and the FBI” but the IG report also did not name the correspondent. Why wasn’t this a bigger deal? Perhaps the unauthorized gifts were Washington Nationals tickets and, with the disappointing season they just had, it was determined they were of minimal value.
HUNTING FOR NEWS: One of the complaint’s The Dead Drop hears from reporters covering the Pentagon these days is that the past practice of having regular press briefings seems to have gone the way of the muzzle loading musket. Just like the long-gone daily White House press briefings, regularly scheduled Q&A’s from DOD spokesmen are things of the past. But the Pentagon is still getting some use out of the briefing room. Look no further than when actor Gerard Butler took to the lectern to brief the press on his new movie “Hunter Killer.” Butler reported on how he had spent three days about the submarine USS Houston preparing for his role. According to a Defense.gov article, officials stressed that support to “Hunter Killer” or any other movie is done at zero cost to the American taxpayer. On the other hand, access to submarines – and the Pentagon briefing room: priceless.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
- And you think YOU had a bad day at work: According to Avio News, a maintenance technician at Belgium’s Florennes Air Force Base was working on an F-16 recently when he accidentally triggered the aircraft’s weapons system. The 20mm Vulcan cannon shot up another nearby F-16 on the ground setting it on fire, destroying it and damaging yet another fighter. Fortunately, no one was killed – although two technicians reportedly suffered “hearing injuries” – perhaps as a result of being yelled at by their bosses.
- TA-TA RT? Russia media watcher Julia Davis reportsthat “Spectrum (formerly Time Warner Cable) and Comcast Chicago have ended their relationship with Russia’s government-sponsored channel RT, removing it from their networks.”
- No S#$% Sherlock: Among the secrets now being disclosed in the declassified CIA documents available online are instructions from the early 1960’s on the care and feeding of CIA U-2 pilots to help them avoid having to – umm – hit the head – during ten-hour-long surveillance flights. Muckrock.comhas uncovered an Agency U-2 pilot “physical maintenance control program” manual which calls for maintaining the proper diet thereby “obviating the need for frequent defecation.” In case you have been spending too much time in the loo yourself, the document lists the kinds of foods to seek out – and avoid. Stay away from milk, whole grains, popcorn, all cheeses (except cottage), fried food, rich deserts, spices, condiments and highly seasoned foods — or in other words – all the good stuff.
- CIA explored where the Ark was parked: The totally unreliable Daily Star newspaperin the UK reported a “Bible BOMBSHELL” this week revealing “exclusively” that CIA spooks used satellite imagery to probe the suspected location of Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat, Turkey. However, if you go to CIA’s FOIA archives, you’ll discover documents about such searches have been declassified and released for about two decades. The ark hunting is one of those fun facts that seems to get re-discovered every few years. The Agency’s website offers up, for example, this document, from 1994 (released in 1999) which reveals that in 1992 then-DCI Bob Gates asked imagery analysts to look around Mount Ararat – a search that found “nothing conclusive.”
IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING: Got any tips for your friendly neighborhood Dead Drop? Shoot us a note at TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
