UMM…BECAUSE THEY DO BAD THINGS? Joe Weisberg, creator of the excellent TV series “The Americans” had a provocative opinion piece in The Washington Post recently titled: “The Cold War is over. Why do we still treat Russia like the Evil Empire?” The sound you may have heard thereafter was the heads of national security professionals exploding – or at least those people spitting out their holiday eggnog. Weisberg was very briefly a CIA officer decades ago, and if he learned one thing – it was that he was best suited for some other career. Among the gems in his piece - which argues that the U.S. should be nicer to Moscow - is the line: “We could extend an olive branch by releasing Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, traitors who were directly responsible for the deaths of numerous Soviets spying for the United States and who have each spent more than two decades in American prisons.” The central thought in the piece (if there is one) is that the United States should sit back if Russia does things like invade Ukraine and reflect on how the U.S. has been mean to Moscow – and caused them to behave in such a fashion. We could go on and on about how boneheaded Weisberg’s piece is – but we could not improve on the 20-plus tweets that Cipher Brief expert John Sipher devoted to the mission. Now this is a drama worth following.
CASE IN POINT: If you were looking for evidence that Russian officials are not all Mother Teresa’s – or evidence that the U.S. does not have the market cornered on legislators who say dumb things – we give you the example of Russian State Duma member Aleksei Zhuravlyov who recently advocated the abduction and imprisonment of U.S. Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) over comments Gallego made about Ukraine. During a trip to Ukraine, the congressman had urged the administration to provide lethal defensive arms to the country to help deter a Russian invasion. Zhuravlyov’s suggestion that Russia kidnap and imprison him did not go down well with Gallego who tweeted out in response: “F@@@ around and find out.” The phrase is a common meme. Being a former Marine, Gallego didn’t use the @@@ however. Zhuravlyov then returned to Russian TV to suggest that Russia could sentence the congressman to death and send someone to kill him, like Leon Trotsky who was murdered with an ice-axe in Mexico in 1940. Wonder what Weisberg would say about that.
NOW WE KNOW: Just before going to press last week, we learned that the administration released a new tranche of thousands of pages of previously classified documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Rather than writing about it then – we thought we would wait a few days to see what juicy bits the experts found in the documents. Apparently, there are none. Document divers are really annoyed that when the government released new versions of the documents that had been previously released in redacted form – they made it as hard as possible. Researchers had to go back and find earlier releases and manually compare them to the new releases to see what formerly blacked out words were now revealed. And in most cases – new words made folks wonder why they were blacked out in the first place.
PICTURE THIS: Yahoo News checked with a variety of national security experts recently to ask whether they were upset that a couple of years ago, then-President Donald Trump took a classified satellite photo of a missile mishap in Iran – and tweeted it out to the world. On August 30, 2019, during one of his ‘not-so-daily’ daily intelligence briefings, when Trump was shown a satellite image of a rocket exploding on the launch pad in Iran, briefers reportedly left behind a hard copy of the photo and unnamed officials say former CIA Director Gina Haspel and others cautioned the President to keep it to himself. But just an hour later, Trump tweeted out the picture along with a mocking caption saying the US “was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir SLV Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran. I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One.” Yahoo found some experts who said the photo release was quite unfortunate and could help America’s adversaries and others who were less upset saying that the image was only classified at the “secret” level and the U.S. overclassifies everything anyway. Yet another official said it was “top secret codeword” level imagery. We are not sure how damaging the release was – but we do recall the case of Samuel L. Morison, a Navy civilian who gave satellite imagery of a Soviet nuclear aircraft carrier under construction to Janes Defense Weekly magazine and was sentenced to two years in prison as a result. Of course, Morison made the mistake of not being president at the time he leaked the photo. Morison was pardoned by Bill Clinton on President Clinton’s last day in office.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
TIK TOK WANTS TO JOIN YOU: Two years ago, the U.S. Army banned the use of Tik Tok, saying the app posed a “cyber threat.” But there is always someone who doesn’t get the word. In this case – it is Army recruiting – which was called out by Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) recently for using the app to try to reach young people. In a letter to the Secretary of the Army, Rubio wrote: “Armed with biometric and other personal data, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is able to track, monitor, and collect information on Americans anywhere in the world.” He added, “From a military perspective, it can track troop movements, build source networks, or compile biographic profiles on military members for purposes of intelligence collection, exploitation, and manipulation.” Yes, but it can also teach the soldiers some new dance moves – so it has that going for it.
USAF BRD NEWS: In the things you didn’t know were a problem category comes news that US Air Force pilots are receiving “new and improved bladder-relieving devices” after it was learned that they had been intentionally dehydrating themselves rather than use the old in-flight urination devices. But fear not, coming online soon will be the “Omni Gen. 3 Skydrate” which is described as the “optimal in-flight bladder relief device.” The news came in the form of a press release – not a leak. “A suite of bladder relief devices will give Airmen the opportunity to choose the most comfortable human interface option while allowing them to focus on executing the mission,” the release read. We are not sure what “human interface option” means but it sounds icky.
WHAT DO YOU GET FOR A COLUMN THAT HAS EVERYTHING? Looking for a holiday present for The Dead Drop? Let us know of stuff you see in our wheelhouse that should be shared with your fellow Dead Drop readers. Send your tips to: TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
Happy Holidays from the Dead Drop!
