TOO SOON? Last week, C-Span promoted a segment that was set to air on March 26th in which they covered Former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo making remarks at a breakfast held by the Westside Conservative Club in Urbandale, Iowa. The banner on their promotion was titled “The Road to 2024” – leaving no doubt that they saw the appearance as early steps by Pompeo down the road he hopes leads to the White House. We are not sure what kind of reception Pompeo got in Urbandale but most of the folks responding to a C-Span tweet about it were unimpressed and many said it is WAY too early to start another presidential campaign when the smoke (almost literally) hasn’t cleared from the last one. Comments on twitter ranged from “Why are you airing this?” “Must be a slow night,” and “Fortunately, I have to get a root canal that day.”
THE JOKE IS ON US: Two weeks ago, The Dead Drop carried an item about the lengthy National Guard deployment to defend Capitol Hill. We asked (tongue in cheek we thought) whether someone should be designing a special campaign ribbon for those who have undertaken that mission adding we were “thinking something with red, white and blue with a set of Shaman horns for extra color.” Turns out…a few days before our item, Stars and Stripes reported that those who answered the call on the Hill will receive one of two ribbons either the new “District of Columbia National Guard Presidential Inauguration Support Ribbon” or the “District of Columbia Emergency Service Ribbon.” The ribbons indeed have stripes of red, white, and blue, and the presidential inauguration ribbon includes the three red stars. Marine veteran and author Elliot Ackerman took to the pages of The New York Times to argue that for some, donning the new ribbons contribute to the politicization of the military. We are guessing he would have hated our suggestion to add Shaman horns.
THE JOKE IS ON HIM: Last week, Congressman Pat Fallon (R, TX) at a Congressional hearing about extremism in the military, demanded that one of the witnesses, Lecia Brooks, the chief of staff of the Southern Poverty Law Center, confirm that her organization had named the American Legion and the VFW as “hate groups.” What is this country coming too, amirite? Ms. Brooks was at a loss to explain it – until about a half hour later when someone let her know that the allegation appeared in the “Duffel Blog”, a satirical website.
NICE TRY: U.S. District Court Judge Paul Crotty turned down a request from former CIA officer Joshua Schulte to throw out an indictment that claimed he allegedly provided CIA hacking tools to Wikileaks. According to AP, Schulte’s lawyers’ argument was not that he didn’t do it (at least in this instance) but that there were not enough Black and Hispanic members of the Grand Jury that first indicted him. As far as we know, Schulte is neither Black nor Hispanic – but apparently his lawyers figured it was worth a shot.
THE PRICE OF TREACHERY: As you might imagine, the publication Business Insider focuses on business. So, they looked, based on press reports, at how much it costs to get someone to betray their country. Answer: not that much. For example, Business Insider reported that Estonian marine scientist Tarmo Kõuts, sold NATO secrets to the Chinese for two years and netted only about $20,000. And while spies like Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen raked in millions over decades of spying, their treason was a bargain for the Soviet Union on an annual basis. It was also reported this week that the captain of an Italian frigate was arrested while having a “clandestine meeting” with a Russian military officer in Rome. Press reports that the officer received € 5,000 (about $5,860) from his Russian contact.
JONATHAN’S NOT A MENSCH: Last week’s Dead Drop mentioned a just-released interview that ex-spy Jonathan Pollard gave to Israeli media. More details from that interview have emerged. The Jerusalem Post notes that Pollard told Israeli journalists that “The bottom line on this charge of dual loyalty is, I’m sorry, we’re Jews, and if we’re Jews, we will always have dual loyalty.” This is not a helpful message to other Americans who have struggled to get security clearances or gain acceptance within the national security community and have fought against whispers that they might not be totally loyal to their country. It is not just people from the Jewish faith who have faced that problem. Congressman Andy Kim (D, NJ) tweeted last week that when he worked at the State Department, he once received a letter banning him from working on Korean issues “just because of (his) last name.” While Pollard claimed his dual loyalty to Israel was the reason he sold them U.S. intelligence secrets, he did not appear to address the rationale why, before being caught, he (according to reports) also offered to sell secrets to Pakistan, South Africa and even Australia.
WHAT’S IN YOUR (INTELL OFFICE)? The Biden administration reached out to Capital One to find a nominee for the State Department’s Intelligence and Research branch (INR.) The White House announced that Brett Holmgren is their nominee for Assistant Secretary for INR. Holmgren had been VP for Technology Risk at Capital One Financial. But before that, he was Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council, where he also previously served as Senior Policy Advisor to the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. Earlier, Holmgren was Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Director for Counterterrorism at the NSC, and a political analyst at the CIA. Holmgren began his government service as a counterterrorism analyst at the DIA.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
CAN’T WE ALL GET ALONG? The U.S. Special Operations Command welcomed Ricard Torres-Estrada on March 25th as their new chief of diversity and inclusion. Four days later, he was “reassigned” pending an investigation of his social media posts which included (among other things) images comparing former President Trump with Adolph Hitler.
STRATCOM COMMUNICATIONS IS CHILD’S PLAY: A message from the official U.S. Strategic Command official Twitter account on Sunday scared the bejeebers out of some folks. It said simply: “;l;;gmlxzssaw.” This caused some observers to wonder if someone had accidently revealed the nuclear launch codes or, at a minimum, if you could trust the folks in charge of them to be launching gibberish. QAnon followers used up precious brain cells trying to decipher the message. Shortly after the military version of covfefe was released – another tweet came out asking folks to “disregard” it. The fact that the second post misspelled “apologies” did little to calm fears. Turns out the next day, STRATCOM fessed up that the person in charge of the feed was working from home and left their keyboard unattended for a few moments and their toddler launched the offending keystrokes.
GRAB YOUR KEYBOARD AWAY FROM YOUR KID: And send The Dead Drop tips on news we can use. Our not-to-secret email address is: TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
And read less tongue in cheek, expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief
