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October 23

October 23

Digital Exam. Good thing the CIA just created a new Directorate for Digital Innovation.  First order of business is probably getting the Director a new personal email account.  Just sayin’.

Dunford Diverted.  Some media outlets picked up on an ‘up-in-the-air’ tidbit during General Joseph Dunford’s much-covered trip to Iraq this week.  It seems the Joint Chief’s Chairman’s plane was diverted for about 30 minutes after Iraqi ground controllers refused to allow him to land in Irbil.  At least one media outlet called it ‘another possible sign of growing friction between Washington and Baghdad’.  A Dead Drop source tells us that leap of logic was way overplayed.  It turns out there was an original flight plan filed with the U.S. Embassy that included a scheduled landing in Baghdad, but it seems that the General’s meeting times changed the same day, prompting a new flight plan to be filed re-routing the General’s plane to Irbil.  The source says the updated plan was filed with the State Department but the source is less clear on whether that new information was shared with the Iraqis.  It took about 30 minutes to sort out the confusion and the General’s plane was allowed to land.  It seems to us a more appropriate headline would have been ‘reporting over plane diversion is another possible sign of growing annoyance with reporters who jump to conclusions’.

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