ARMED CONFLICT: There’s a podcast on ClearanceJobs.com featuring Rick Diaz who, in 1995, just two weeks shy of getting out of the military and a scheduled start at the FBI academy, was the victim of a hit and run. As a result, Diaz lost use of his arm and was quickly uninvited to Quantico – apparently because the FBI figured their agents needed two working arms to fire weapons. Four years later though, Diaz joined the CIA, first working in the office of the Inspector General and then in 2001, just prior to 9/11, he joined the Directorate of Operations. He eventually deployed overseas and reportedly became the first CIA officer, with his type of disability to qualify with a weapon and deploy to a war zone and eventually qualifying as a case officer. In the podcast, he talks about how his time with the Agency was not without its challenges. Among the first, he says, came when he was trying to join the Agency and CIA polygraphers had to figure out where to attach the pressure cuff – since his arm was not an option. Fortunately – they worked it out.
ENIGMA’S ENEMIES: Kurt Cofano apparently has an odd set of enemies. The 34-year-old Pennsylvania man was recently sentenced to 64 months in prison for threatening to attack both CIA headquarters – and the Pennsylvania Treasury Department. The judge who sentenced him described Cofano as an “enigma” because he reportedly has high intelligence and once built an energy company with 70 employees. But that outfit went belly up and for some reason, Cofano blamed the CIA and the PTD and vowed to make them pay. Apparently, his threats were not idle since at his trial, witnesses said he had assembled an “arsenal of destruction” in his house. A county bomb squad leader said Cofano’s house contained the largest collection of bombs and grenades he had ever seen in 17 years on the job. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Cofano also had a flame-thrower, rocket launcher and enough hazardous material to endanger the entire neighborhood where he built the devices.
FOR THE 355TH TIME: We would like to recommend that Hollywood quit calling CIA officers “agents.” And yes, we recognize that this suggestion will go unheeded. The latest example of mislabeling is from a forthcoming movie called “The 355” which is set to be released on January 7, 2022. The premise of the movie is that “a wild card” CIA “agent” played by Jessica Chastain teams up with several other female intelligence operatives from the UK, Germany, and Colombia to retrieve a top-secret weapon which has fallen into mercenary hands. Their efforts are tracked by a mysterious Chinese woman who apparently works for the Chinese intelligence service. The spy sisterhood flick was shot in the summer of 2019 – but has been held back apparently waiting for movie theaters to emerge from their COVID cocoon. It is likely to be in theaters for about 45 days and then stream on Peacock. The title was derived from “Agent 355” the code name of a female spy for the United States during the American revolution. In that case – it was ok to call her an “agent.”
HIRE A VET: A married Texas automobile dealer reportedly had an affair with a woman in Nashville. His mistress had a boyfriend, however, who tried to blackmail the dealer and threatened to report the dalliance to the dealer’s wife unless he was paid. Instead – the roving car guy allegedly hired someone who said he was a former member of Israel’s Defense Force who allegedly brought in two more gents who allegedly agreed, for the low, low price of just $750,000 to kidnap and murder the mistress and her boyfriend. The headline of a DOJ press release on the matter identified the alleged hired hitmen as “Former U.S. Military Soldiers” (although the body of the release says they were former Marines). Media accounts, added that the Marines allegedly were former CIA contractors and former members of the CIA’s Global Response Staff. The tradecraft of whoever did this was pretty questionable – and apparently you don’t need to be a rocket scientist or a nice guy to run a successful car dealership.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
THAT’LL LEAVE A HALLMARK: It is well-known that the Hallmark Channel focuses (or perhaps obsesses) on hokey, schmaltzy, and otherwise awful Christmas movies. Well, naturally this year is no exception. Military Timesprovides way more than you will want to know about “A Royal Queens Christmas,”a movie about some guy who is a prince from a country called “Exeter” but who plays piano in a dive bar in Queens, NY. For some reason the piano-man prince also wears a USMC uniform – with lance corporal rank but an added gold sash, fuzzy epaulets, and has an equally fuzzy beard. Perhaps this is all explained in the movie –but we promise you we will not look into it. Apparently he meets a local girl with a heart of gold and eventually makes her his queen and…well, we don’t care.
CASH AND CARRY: The Department of Justice recently announced that Roudy Pierre-Louis, a Haitian former State Department employee was sentenced to a year in jail for embezzling more than $150,000 from the Department of Defense. These kinds of crimes and sentences are (unfortunately) pretty common, and Pierre-Louis would not normally make the cut for Dead Drop notice. But what put it over the edge was the defendant’s really cool former title at the U.S. Embassy in Haiti. He worked in the Security Coordination Office as its: “Occasional Money Holder.”
BUM SQUAD: Don’t you hate it when this happens to you? A British Army bomb squad rushed to a hospital in Gloucestershire when a man arrived in the emergency room with a 57mm World War II artillery shell lodged in his rectum. According to The Sun website from the UK, the poor chap told doctors that he “slipped and fell” and the shell ended up where the sun don’t shine. The device measured more than 6 inches long and two inches in circumference. Brave doctors successfully removed the round before the bomb squad lads rolled in. British defence officials explained the mis-placed projectile was a solid shot round and “It was basically an inert lump of metal, so there was no risk to life — at least not to anyone else’s.”
NO IFS ANDS OR BUTTS: We’d love to get your news tips. Send them to us at TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
