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Dead Drop: February 10

Dead Drop: February 10

FAKE VIEWS: You can’t make this stuff up.  Well, maybe you can.  Michael Isikoff had a story recently about a website calling itself the “Center for Global Strategic Monitoring,” which runs opinion pieces – often ostensibly from well-known former government officials.  The kicker is that the people whose names are attached to the articles – never wrote them.  According to Yahoo News, counterfeit Op-Eds have been published in the names of people like former CIA officials Bruce Riedel and Paul Pillar, and ex-FBI counterterrorism analyst Matthew Levitt.  We found a few other prominent names on the CGS website that strike us as unlikely contributors to the faux website – like former National Security Advisor Tom Donilon and former Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns.  So who is making up this stuff and why?  Isikoff says some of the legit articles on the site are lifted from Russian propaganda sites—RT and Sputnik News – and some folks note that the bogus pieces look like they might have been translated from Russian.

SAPP PROGRAM:  The Dead Drop hears that Betty Sapp, the Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, is the leading candidate to be Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence under DNI nominee Dan Coats. It is a big job – at least for the moment – although we hear the Trump administration continues to give serious consideration to restructuring the IC and slimming down the DNI shop.

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