“LUDICROUS”: CIA Director John Ratcliffe reportedly made a secret trip to Dubai this week to oversee the release of U.S. Russian dual national Ksenia Karelina, who had been sentenced to a penal colony in Russia where she was to serve a 12-year sentence for treason. Her crime? Allegedly donating the equivalent of about $50USD to benefit a charity that was reportedly aiding Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia’s war. In exchange for Karelina, the U.S. released German-Russian dual national Arthur Petrov, who had been arrested in Cyprus back in 2023 for allegedly exporting U.S.-made microelectronics to Russia. “They released the young ballerina and now she is out, and that was good, so we appreciate that,” President Donald Trump told reporters this week. For the bigger picture here, we just wanna note that arrests of U.S. or dual U.S. nationals (on trumped up charges usually) in Russia is nothing new, as authorities treat this like a game of “catch and release”. The head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, quoted in The Moscow Times, says authorities will pursue more such swaps. Duh. We couldn’t help but notice however, the irony that the rumored top candidate for CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations (DDO) position had been denied the position, allegedly after a White House naysayer didn’t like the candidate’s support for Ukraine made clear on social media. (Forget the fact that the guy had been a 6-time station chief was a deeply-loyal intelligence officer according to many who know him.) Thank goodness it was Ratcliffe – and not the White House naysayer – who had been leading negotiations for Karelina’s release. U.S. authorities called the case against Karelina “absolutely ludicrous”. It got us thinking that maybe the DDO candidate for the job might have had more support from the administration if he’d just donated to a Ukrainian charity in Russia and got caught. Just sayin.
ALSO “LUDICROUS” – Insiders tell The Dead Drop that morale inside the NSA is “pegging at zero” a week after the abrupt firing of NSA and Cyber Command leader General Timothy Haugh and NSA Deputy Director Wendy Noble, news first reported by The Cipher Brief. While rumors have been flying about why the firings happened, fingers have been pointing to the advice given to the president by a deeply unexperienced (in national security circles) political supporter, Laura Loomer who may have felt that Gen. Haugh and Noble weren’t loyal enough to the president. We were kinda waiting to see if the administration would provide any clarity around why it made the decision. We’re still waiting. And while we’re not experts in public relations even we know that anytime you have a void of information, people are gonna fill it, and that void so far, seems to have been filled by fear that this could happen literally to anyone. “It was just of the blue and if you believe what you read in the press it was because of the advice of some extremist influencer, Laura Looney – or something like that – who recommended to the president that he fired the two of them in addition to some National Security Council people…that’s just completely shocking and unprecedented,” former Deputy Director of the NSA told The Cipher Brief in an exclusive conversation. “I think it will knock both of them back because people get scared when the boss gets fired and the deputy of the boss gets fired, particularly when there is zero, no reason given,” was how retired Admiral Jim Stavridis described it. “There’s certainly been media reports about this right-wing conspiracy theorist named Laura Loomer, who is this person who has decided she will become kind of the Madame Lafarge, if you’ve read A Tale of Two Cities, who knitted at the foot of the guillotine and helped decide who the victims would be.” Now, while The Dead Drop totally gets that the president should be able to pick his own team, the issue here is who is really doing the picking. Former NSA Director and Commander of US Cyber Command General Paul Nakasone weighed in this week from the Vanderbilt University Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats (where he is now the new director) to say that he also understands the president’s right to pick his own team but reiterated the national security implications of the way this firing happened. “Does it cause disruption? Anytime you would take out a leader and the principal deputy, that’s got to cause disruption,” said Nakasone. Meanwhile, everyone seems pretty confident in the ability of the new acting director Army Lt. Gen. William Hartman. No word on whether he will be taking any meetings with Ms. Looney – er, Loomer.
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