Dead Drop: August 6

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 8^th.  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.