MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE: Familiar TV talking-head Malcolm Nance made an unexpected appearance on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” show recently. He wasn’t in the studio with host Joy Reid. And he wasn’t Zooming in from his kitchen. Instead, Nance was dressed in combat gear, embracing an assault rifle and revealed that he was in Lviv, Ukraine. Nance said he had joined Ukraine’s foreign legion to help fight Russia. That seems like an unusual career move for the 61-year-old, retired Navy senior chief petty officer. But Nance told Reid that, “The more I saw the war going on, the more I thought, ‘I’m done talking’, adding that he joined the international legion about a month ago. We understand that to do so, he had to give up his MSNBC contributor gig where he has appeared for several years. Newsweek says the “International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine” was established on February 27th, right after Putin’s Army invaded Ukraine. Also on Tuesday, Nance posted a steely-eyed black and white photo of himself on Twitter with the caption, “I’m DONE talking.” Last we checked, the post had about 190K likes. This week, Nance’s twitter followers went up from (an already astounding) 1 million to 1.1 million. Unsurprisingly, Russian TV was not happy with Nance’s stance. Julia Davis noticed they aired a portion of Nance’s MSNBC appearance, calling him a mercenary. But they skipped the part where he talked about Russians murdering civilians in Ukraine. Nance has written several books since hanging up his uniform. While on active duty he was a “cryptologic technician interpretive” which the Navy says is, “more than a linguist” but someone who is a “cultural expert, able to translate and interpret foreign communications.”
TAKING AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH: Patrick Lancaster is also a Navy veteran. In his case, he only made it to petty officer third class. But now he says, he is, “an independent crowdfunded journalist” working in Ukraine. Task and Purpose reports that critics call Lancaster a part of Putin’s disinformation machine. This week, Lancaster posted a video from Mariupol placing the blame for the city’s devastation on the Ukrainians. Task and Purpose does not assert that any of the crowdfunding Lancaster’s reports is coming from the Kremlin – but Lancaster’s work regularly appears, and is praised, on Russian state-run media like RT and Zveda.
HANKERING FOR WWII: As much as the events in Ukraine make you want to divert your eyes – there are some (older) war stories also worth watching. We learned this week, that Tom Hanks, who has pretty much cornered the market on World War II stories, is in the middle of producing “Masters of the Air” – a limited streaming TV series about the 8th Air Force during their bombing missions over Germany. He’s also working on an unnamed sequel to his 2020 Navy movie, “Greyhound.” The new one is about a Navy ship on convoy duty at the start of (drum roll, please) …World War II.
BROKEN SEAL: Probably one of the most iconic images of the Central Intelligence Agency is the great seal embedded in the lobby floor of the original headquarters building. Watch any CIA movie and odds are you’ll see the film’s star walk across the seal once or twice. Look at any print story about the Agency and there is a good chance editors will include a stock image of a maintenance person pushing an enormous mop across the face of the logo. With all that action, it’s no surprise that the seal has endured some wear and tear in the original terrazzo floor. Recently, the Agency released a short video showing how the seal was renovated over five nights in March. The seal looks good as new – and is no longer what it had recently been cracked up to be.
LOOKING SHARP: A little known fact is that international photo satellite companies sometimes cooperate with various nations to hide or fuzz up sensitive national security facilities. A British outfit called “OSINT UK” claimed that Google Maps has stopped hiding Russia’s “secret military & strategic facilities.” Now Russian installations including ICBM sites and command posts can be viewed at 0.5m per pixel resolution, according to the company. Check out some examples here. It turns out, there may be less to this story than meets the eye. Google Maps, says they haven’t made any blurring changes to their satellite images in Russia and that the images come from third party vendors. Now that’s a mystery. Maybe people are just looking harder these days.
BOOK REPORT: That didn’t take long. Someone has landed a book deal about Ukraine. There will be many more, for sure. But the first one to hit our radar is by Atlantic Council senior fellow, Adrian Karatnycky. His book, “Battleground Ukraine: From Independence to The War With Russia”will cover the six presidents who have led Ukraine since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Yale University Press will publish it (at some date unknown.) The intent is to, “show that despite the influence of corrupt homegrown oligarchs, pressures from Russia, and the stresses of democratization, the disparate people of Ukraine have consolidated and rallied in a way that has inspired the world and forever changed the course of global relations.”
UNIFORMED ENDORSEMENT: Retired Navy 3-star admiral Mike Franken is running for the U.S. Senate in Iowa – trying to unseat long-time incumbent Senator Chuck Grassley. A couple weeks ago, Franken’s campaign proudly announced that they had landed the endorsement of retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman. What caught some people’s eye at the time, was that the campaign released a statement from Vindman accompanied by a photograph of him in full uniform. While former military personnel are free to endorse (or run) for office – protocol generally frowns on using one’s uniform to do so. Folks like retired General Barry McCaffrey reacted calling the move inappropriate. We figured the blunder was probably assembled by some junior staffer who was unaware of how it might be perceived (even though there was a disclaimer at the bottom of the advertisement saying, “Use of military rank, job titles, and photographs in unform do not imply endorsement by the Department of the Army or the Department of Defense.” But the same ad and picture are still up on Franken’s campaign Facebook page – so apparently they are OK with the message or can’t find a picture of Vindman in civilian clothes. While we’re at it – why does Franken’s Facebook page call him, “Admiral Franken” when he was a “Vice Admiral”? So many questions….so little time.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
WHAT A CROC: The Naval Air Station in Key West, Florida last month had to temporarily shift operations from one runway to another because of a seven foot long, 110-pound crocodile that decided to sun itself on a base landing strip and refused to move. The Miami Herald says Florida Fish and Wildlife officials were called and eventually relocated the beast to another portion of the base. Officials said the croc was a local. They know that because about four years ago, the same crocodile had been tagged with a yellow number 33 which is still in place. Good to know she’s a resident and not one of those pesky snowbirds.
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