RISING LEAKS: The number of leaks of classified federal government information reported to law enforcement as possible crimes is on the rise. The Federation of American Scientists’ “Secrecy News” summarized data released by the Justice Department last week which said that agencies referred to DOJ, 120 leaks in 2017 and 88 in 2018. The average number of referrals during the Obama administration was 39 a year. It is unclear whether the volume of leaks is increasing – or the willingness of Agencies to ask for criminal investigations has gone up.
LOWERING AIM: In last week’s Dead Drop, we told you about a story in the Washington Examiner which said that former CIA officer Valerie Plame was considering running for the U.S. Senate in the state of New Mexico. Well, this week Politico reports that Plame is eying an open U.S. congressional seat – which is being vacated by Representative Ben Ray Lujan who is stepping down in order to run for the Senate slot that the Washington Examiner said Plame was looking at. Which is it? We dunno. What we do know is that Plame is one of the handful of Democrats who is NOT planning on running for president in 2020. So far.
LICENSE TO WILL: British intelligence services recently gave three weeks of on-the-job training to Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge. According to press accounts, the Duke embedded with MI6, GCHQ and the Security Service to observe – and take part a bit in the organization’s intelligence and counter-terrorism work. CNN reported that the Brits say the Prince “held his own” among high-skilled analysts and operators at GCHQ. BTW – we’d like to claim credit for the “Licensed to Will” title for this item – but we're sourcing it to The Times of London.
CONSPIRACY THEORY OF THE WEEK: This past week was the 25th anniversary of the death of grunge musician Kurt Cobain. Under the theory that no anniversary should go un-exploited, the UK news outlet – The Daily Star reported that according to “a researcher” Cobain didn’t really kill himself but instead was “psychologically profiled” by the CIA and provided with heroin from Afghanistan. Why? Not exactly clear. But author John Potash says that Cobain was among a group of musicians (including John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and Tupac) targeted by the CIA to prevent them from spreading leftist ideology in the U.S. Sometimes you wonder where folks get these crazy ideas.
OH, THAT’S WHERE THEY GET THE IDEAS: Amazon Prime has just started streaming an eight-episode series called “Hanna” about a 16-year-old girl who lives in an isolated cave in Poland with an ex-CIA operative who she thinks is her father. The pseudo-dad reportedly trained Hanna to be an assassin because the CIA is trying to kill her. She has no idea why – but in the first episode we see her 'father' break into a secret facility and steal baby Hanna, who we find out later, has modified DNA that makes her lethal.
ANOTHER DOWN-TO-EARTH PROJECT: The British news organization “The Sun” (even more unreliable than The Mirror in our opinion) says that a TV producer is suing a California-based “CIA scientist” in an effort to “end UFO secrecy within the U.S. government and expose a secret ‘anti-gravity’ project.” Naturally, the TV producer has launched a “GoFundMe” page – because the legal bills for bringing anti-gravity lawsuits are going up and up.
THE SECRETS OF GOOD WRITING: A website called Business2Community.com is touting the information in a 2008 publication from Mercyhurst College called “The Analysts’ Style Manual” which shares what are said to be the CIA’s rules for effective intelligence writing. They include: “put your main point up front,” ‘write short paragraphs,” “use active voice,” “use short, conventional words,” “write short sentences,” and “be correct, credible and complete,” No fair trying to add up how many of those rules we broke in this item.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
DISORIENTATION FLIGHT: A common practice of air forces around the world is to take journalists, prominent officials, and other influential folks on an orientation flight. Military Times reports of one such mission conducted by the French Air Force last month, did not go as expected. An unnamed 64-year-old individual went along for a ride on a Rafale B fighter jet and was ejected from the aircraft during takeoff. The unfortunate passenger survived the experience – albeit with some back injuries. It is unclear exactly what caused the premature ejection – and experts noted that before every such flight – passengers are given briefings including warnings to not touch things like ejection handles. The Rafale pilot managed to bring the aircraft in for a safe landing but we bet there was a lot of paperwork to fill out explaining how he took off with one more person onboard than he had in the plane when he landed.
FASTER THAN A SPEEDING BULLET: It has been a tough 2019 for NATO Air Forces. It was just revealed that back in January a Dutch F-16 sustained considerable gunfire damage — from itself. Fortunately, the pilot escaped injury and landed the aircraft safely, but investigations showed that while firing M61 Vulcan Gatling gun (which can shoot about 100 rounds a second) the aircraft somehow ran into at least one of its own rounds.
BOTTOMS UP: There is a new survey out showing how much people in various industries drink alcohol. And the winner is: the military. According to the study, members of the U.S. Armed Forces reported drinking on 130 days of the past year. This is an especially impressive total when you consider sailors on ships at sea – and service members in some combat zone are not allowed to drink. Disappointingly, not all industries are reported in the list. But for comparison the “Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation” industry reported drinking on only 87 days out of the previous year.
AGENTS OF (BAD) HISTORY: The “History News Network” is not the cable TV channel known as “History” – but instead is a website associated with The George Washington University. This week they ran an item on “a new biography” of former CIA counter-intelligence head James Jesus Angleton. We’ll set aside that the 'new' book they talk about, by Washington journalist Jefferson Morely, came out almost two years ago. And we’ll forgive the author for repeatedly referring to CIA officers as “agents” – since that is a common error…but what caught our eye was the opening paragraph which asserted that the average American if asked to name a “CIA Agent” could probably name only a few – such as “the current CIA Director, Dan Coats…” What are they teaching over there?
IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING: Got any tips for your friendly neighborhood Dead Drop? Shoot us a note at TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
