DOC IN THE BOX: We’ve told you in the past to brace yourself for a whole bunch of documentaries tied to the twentieth anniversary of 9/11. We heard of another one this week. MSNBC and their streaming partner Peacock plan to air “Memory Box: Echoes of 9/11” which will first run on September 8th. The idea behind this one is that shortly after 9/11, some filmmakers set up a plywood “video booth” in New York, Washington, DC and Shanksville, PA and let people come in and give their personal accounts of their experiences. Now, two decades later, the producers have found some of those same people and put them in the box again – asking them to reflect on their thoughts since that day.
PLUMBERS ASCENDENT: New data obtained by The Intercept shows that the number of media leak investigations during the Trump administration was considerably higher that during the 15 previous years. This revelation did not leak – but comes from documents obtained from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Project on Government Oversight. According to the account, more than 64 percent of the leak “crime reports” were sent to the Department of Justice by the CIA and there reportedly was a flood of leak referrals during the tenure of Mike Pompeo as CIA director. The Intercept speculates that the number of investigations may have spiked due to all the press accounts at the time about the Russia investigation. The story includes a link to a 187-page document cloud file summarizing crime reports from 2006 to 2019 but all the good stuff - like what the leak was about, where it appeared and the like - are redacted.
THE SWEEP OF HISTORY: Russian President Vladimir Putin knows how to hit U.S. diplomats where it hurts. Foreign Policy says that the U.S. Embassy and consulates in Russia are barely able to perform their most basic missions after the implementation of an April ruling by Putin that went into effect on August 1st prohibiting any locally-hired employees from working for the U.S. - except as security guards.. A decade ago, there were reportedly close to 350 U.S. diplomats in Russia who were supported by about 1,900 “foreign service nationals.” Many of the ‘local hires’ presumedly performed routine administrative, technical, cleaning, maintenance, and cooking chores. Now, apparently American foreign service officers will have to take time away from issuing visas and other diplomatic chores to wield a floor buffer and laundry cart. Putin’s move was a reaction to the U.S. kicking out some Russian diplomats this past spring. And this breaking news flash: On August 5th, The U.S. State Department issued a Russia Travel Advisory, warning Americans “not to travel to Russia due to terrorism, harassment by Russian government security officials, the embassy’s limited ability to assist U.S. citizens in Russia and the arbitrary enforcement of local law.’ Hmmm…the South of France is looking better every day.
RUSSIAN ARMS CONTROL SCANDAL: We thought people ducking the Fauci Ouchie in the U.S. were crazy but a Julia Davis story in The Daily Beast says that the Russians have the U.S. beaten, hands down. Allegedly, Kremlin-controlled anti-vax disinformation in Russia is so pervasive that locals are going to extraordinary lengths to avoid getting COVID jabs. Some are even trying to obtain prosthetic arms they could wear while receiving mandatory vaccinations. A TikTok influencer demonstrated in a short video how to fool the shot giver. We were going to go out on a limb and say that this sounds like disinformation to us – but Russian State TV hosts swear the story is true. (So, it must be, right?) That raises at least two questions in our minds. First, how bad are Russian innoculators if they can’t tell real arms from fakes, and second, how good are Russian prosthetics?
THE COMPETITION AIN’T BAD: In the sports world, conventional wisdom has it that you should not trash your competitors in the media – lest they use it for “bulletin board material” to post in their locker room to motivate them to compete against you. If you say anything, (like your mother used to say….) say something nice. That may be the thinking of Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, who is quoted in TASS this week opining that the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency is among the world’s top three “strongest and most authoritative intelligence services.” In an interview on Russian TV, Naryshkin said the CIA’s budget was ten times his but Russians “win with ability, not with numbers.”
THE COMPETITION AIN’T GOOD: Naryshkin is having a busy media week. We also saw him quoted in Sputnik News claiming that the independent investigative group “Bellingcat” is filled with ex-spooks designed to put pressure on “certain countries, entities and individuals.” Unlike the SVR apparently, Naryshkin says Bellingcat uses “dishonest methods” and that “the information used in such cases is false, unverified, and has its own purposes.”
SHOCKING NEWS FROM HOLLYWOOD: A website called Shadowproof is offering proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that filmmakers who want to shoot motion pictures at CIA headquarters are well advised to be nice to the CIA. Shocking, we know. This is one of those stories that shows up periodically – and some writer is amazed to find out that places like the CIA or the Pentagon are not keen on letting some film crews come into their headquarters if the intent is to make a flick that will make them look bad. The Shadowproof story is based on a stack of emails back and forth from people like Ben Affleck and (redacted) Agency officials saying nice stuff to each other when Affleck was preparing to make the movie “Argo.” This apparently troubles the author. Argo ended up winning the Oscar for Best Picture – so apparently all that nice-nice paid off.
TANKS FOR THE MEMORIES: A man from the German city of Kiel was hauled into court recently to explain why he had a storage facility full of what was described as a personal arsenal including a tank, flak cannon, and other weaponry. There was no explanation of why the 84-year-old owner kept the WWII-era stuff. Perhaps it was to remind him of his youth. German privacy laws require that the man’s name be withheld – but his punishment was said to include a suspended prison sentence of 14 months, a fine of 250,000 euros, and an order to donate his tank and anti-aircraft cannon to a museum within the next two years.
A FOOL FOR A CLIENT: Former CIA officer Joshua Schulte - who is awaiting a re-trial on charges of stealing “Vault 7” cyber security tools from the Central Intelligence Agency and passing the info to Wikileaks - has been granted permission to act as his own attorney. This week, he filed a motion in court in which he identified himself as “Slave #79471054” and asked for “24/7 access to a legal library that enables the user to search court documents, filings, motions, opinions, annotations and other essentials.” Hmmmm….
THAT’S THE SPIRITS! According to The New York Times the State Department is looking for a missing bottle of booze that the Japanese government gifted to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2019. This is no ordinary bottle of whiskey – but one valued at $5,800. Apparently, no one can remember what happened to the stuff (and to be clear, there is no indication that Pompeo ever got his hands on it.) U.S. officials are allowed to keep gifts valued $390 or less, so Pompeo would not legally have been able to take it home without paying for it. The story does not make clear how big the bottle was – but assuming it was a typical 750 ml bottle containing about 17 standard sized shots (don’t ask us how we know) – we figure Pompeo could have let 16 other staffers share a shot with him – and each shot would have been worth $341 and would have still been under the limit. We’re just sayin’ - that would have most definitely improved swagger around Foggy Bottom.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
LEFT TO THEIR OWN DEVICES: The reliably unreliable Daily Star publication in the UK says that a former CIA “agent” has “confessed” that he collected devices “found inside alien abduction victims.” Derrel Sims reportedly made this admission in a 2015 podcast but apparently the Daily Star just got around to listening to it. Sims, who is pictured in the story in a leather vest and cowboy hat (because Newsflash: that is how Brits view Americans,) says that we (the CIA presumably) have done surgery on 22 people who have had alien contact and “feel like they’ve been implanted with some type of device.” In a downer however, Sims says that the devices recovered during these operations seem to be of terrestrial origin. The Agency, being very accommodating, apparently allowed Sims to take all these devices home with him – some of which are shown in a 2016 video that accompanies the story.
IMPLANT SOME WISDOM AMONG YOUR FELLOW EARTHLINGS: Extract any news nuggets you have laying around and beam them up to: TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
