MORE CRUMBS FROM THE PEANUT BUTTER SUB SANDWICH: This week, some additional delicious morsels emerged about allegations that civilian Navy nuclear engineer Jonathan Toebbe and his wife Diana’s attempted to serve up submarine secrets to some foreign nation. The couple pleaded not guilty on Wednesday and will be tried separately. Ms. Toebbe’s lawyers threw her husband under the bus, saying in court that Jonathan’s tradecraft was terrible. Crackerjack writer Fred Kaplan, in Slate, tried to ferret out what nation might have been on the receiving end of the reported tradecraft using a half peanut butter sandwich with a surprise inside (restricted data about U.S. nuclear powered subs.) Kaplan noted, as The Dead Drop did last week, that the intended receiving country appeared to have been cooperating with the FBI, since they flew some sort of signal from their “main building” in Washington as a sign they were hungry for what Toebbe is accused of selling. Kaplan relied on some thin evidence though to suggest that the country involved might have been France – since a note allegedly from Toebbe quoted in DOJ documents included the line: “One day, when it is safe, perhaps two old friends will have a chance to stumble into each other at a café, share a bottle of wine, and laugh over stories of their shared exploits.” Who else has cafés, wine and an interest in submarines, right? Kaplan did discover an amazing fact, however. He found that some of Toebbe’s notes cited in the DOJ filing “seem to lift entire quotes from The Courier,” a movie about the Oleg Penkovsky case. For example, at one point, Toebbe allegedly wrote: “Should that ever become necessary, I will be forever grateful for your help extracting me and my family.” This, Kaplan notes, “is a near-verbatim quote from The Courier.” Perhaps Toebbe did not follow that real life story to the end where the Soviets arrested Penkovsky for treason and executed him.
HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT: The military services have been doing a good job of getting their troops to line up for the COVID vaccine. Why are they doing better than many other organizations? In part – the armed forces are presenting arms simply because they tend to follow orders. But a recent Navy message to sailors worldwide gives another hint. At last report, 94% of active-duty Navy personnel were fully vaccinated and 99% had gotten at least the first dose. In their message to the fleet, the Navy said that for those who don’t go along – in addition to being tossed out of the service, the Navy, “…may seek recoupment of applicable bonuses, special and incentive pays, and the cost of training and education for service members refusing the vaccine.” That could be expensive. Reenlistment bonuses in some specialties can run from $30,000 to $40,000. And we’re not sure what it costs to train a naval aviator, for example, but numbers we saw from a few years ago, suggest that the price for training USAF pilots ran from $5 million to $10 million. It would take most of us a while to have to pay back that kind of coin.
“IN NO ONE WE TRUST” A recent Gallup Poll shows that American’s trust in the federal government’s ability to handle international problems has reached a record low. Only 39% of respondents say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust of the feds doing a good job in that arena – down from 48% in 2020, and an average of 59% in the four preceding years. The poll was conducted from September 1-17 – so the Kabul airport crisis was fresh in mind. Unsurprisingly – there is a partisan pessimism split. Just 15% of Republicans have confidence in the federal government’s ability to handle foreign affairs, while 75% of Democrats give that question a thumbs up. Drilling down, respondents were down on many federal agencies. Those thinking the FBI is doing an excellent or good job dropped 13 percentage points to 44%. The CIA fared worse, dropping 19 points to 41%. DoD was at 46%, DHS 42% and the State Department only got 32%. Republicans were harshest in their evaluations, giving FBI, CIA and DHS rankings in the mid-twenties. On the bright side – those agencies outshined the Centers for Disease Control which (in Republican eyes) dropped for 71% to 14% favorability in the past two years. FBI, CIA and DHS all went UP in the estimation of Democrat respondents.
SPACE: THE FINAL PREMIERE: In the May 21st Dead Drop, we mentioned that the Russians were rushing actress Yulia Preselid and filmmaker Klim Shipenko to the International Space Station to shoot scenes for a movie to be called, “Challenge.” In the U.S., their 12-day trip got far less coverage than the ten-minute space flight of William Shatner. But the Russians are back on earth after shooting on location in space. In the film, Preselid is playing the role of a surgeon who is sent to space to treat a critically ill cosmonaut. A real life cosmonaut played the patient. Tom Cruise has been planning his own trip to space to make a movie – but he has come in second in the cinematic space race. Working with NASA, Cruise says he is planning on visiting the International Space Station “sometime before the end of 2021.”
NO OFFENSE INTENDED: Back in May, The Dead Drop told you about a forthcoming four-part series on the Peacock streaming service hosted by singer Demi Lovato, which pledges to “uncover the truth about UFO phenomena.” Lovato, who prefers to be called “they” rather than “she” – now says we should not refer to extraterrestrials as “aliens” because the term is “derogatory” when applied to “anything.” Lovato’s practice is to call them “ETs.” We will try to do so going forward so as not to alienate “them” – by which we mean Lovato and the extraterrestrials. It will take some practice – since to us, “ETs” has generally meant “everything” bagels, or the lovable Steven Spielberg bike-riding alien – oops - “ET” of the 80s. Here is the trailer for Lovato’s series which is appropriately called “Unidentified with Demi Lovato.”
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO: A lot of people recently have been talking out loud about things that a short while ago, would have been unthinkable. For example, some folks are seriously talking about America’s red states and blue states heading for “divorce.” The last time this secession from the Union thing was tried, it didn’t work out so well. Newsmax TV had a guy named Daniel Miller on recently. He is the author of a 2019 book called “Texit: Why and How Texas Will Leave the Union.” (Texit is like Brexit, get it?) Miller told Newsmax that the red states should be thinking about setting up their own military alliances and trade policies. If you thought deciding who has custody of the kids could be a problem during a divorce – just imagine how dicey it would be to decide who controls the nukes. But being civil about a potential civil war was only the second dumbest thing we heard about this week….
A RISING TIDE CAN BE BLAMED ON ALL THE BOATS: Scott Pio, a candidate for the state legislature in Loudoun County, Virginia, has been giving some thought to solving the problem of the oceans engulfing low-lying communities. Pio posed a question on twitter (before subsequently taking it down) saying "I'm curious, Do you think the sea level would lower, if we just took all the boats out of the water? Just a thought, not a statement." If you think the supply-chain disruption issue is a challenge now – just wait until we get rid of all the boats. Pio subsequently defended himself against criticism by adding: "When you take things out of bath water, the bath water decreases, does it not? Got a lot of hate…for asking a question about taking things out of the water. Curious when you stopped believing in pure physics? I guess you don't believe in science experiments?" While Pio’s hypothesis might float in landlocked Loudoun County – he is fortunate not to be running for office in the Tidewater area of Virginia, where a lot of jobs depend on ships. The weird part is that some engineer has actually calculated the impact on the sea level if every ship were removed all at once from the Earth’s waters. His answer (which we have not confirmed with our own research) was “about six microns—slightly more than the diameter of a strand of spider silk.” OK, if removing all the boats would not solve the problem in the way removing rubber ducks from Pio’s bathtub might – perhaps we can send a submarine to the ocean floor to see if there is any hair caught in the drain.
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