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Dead Drop: April 21

Dead Drop: April 21

PARK SPOT VACANT: We hear Meroe Park, the long-serving Executive Director of the CIA, told Agency staff last week that she plans to retire.  Park has held the #3 position at CIA since mid-2013.  No word on what she will do next.  She stepped out of the shadows (briefly) on January 21st when she was Acting Director – and was tasked with welcoming President Trump for what turned out to be a controversial post-inauguration visit to CIA HQ.   There is no indication yet on who will succeed Park, but we have heard that the new Deputy Executive Director (DEXDIR in Agency parlance) will be Cynthia “Didi” Rapp.  Rapp is a long-time Agency analyst who served as top Agency spokesperson when David Petraeus was Director. The Deputy Executive Director job is admittedly an obscure one – but it was once held by John Brennan, who, as you may recall, went on to bigger and better things.

WIKILEAKS REVENGE: Last week, in his first major public remarks as CIA Director, Mike Pompeo went out of his way to dump on WikiLeaks, saying the outfit “walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service.”  The allegation generated some – well, hostility – from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who said the CIA was trying to “subvert” his First Amendment rights. We were unaware that the First Amendment applied to Australian fugitives holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London – but perhaps it does. Assange had a somewhat more effective pushback by noting that last July, during the presidential election, then-Congressman Pompeo was touting WikiLeaks’ release of pilfered DNC emails.  And WikiLeaks was not without some other odd defenders, including Roger Stone – a colorful Trump supporter accused of being too cozy with the Russians – who accurately predicted that it would soon be John Podesta’s time in the barrel just before his emails were released on WikiLeaks. Stone told Newsmax TV that Pompeo should resign for saying such rude things about Assange and company.  RT, Mike Flynn’s favorite Russian propaganda outlet, also attacked Pompeo.

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