Dead Drop: February 17

MILLER TIME: If you have 37 minutes to spare – and a strong stomach, you might want to watch the full interview of former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller on MSNBC’s Morning Joe last week.  As we mentioned in the last Dead Drop, Miller has a new book out, Soldier Secretary: Warnings from the Battlefield & the Pentagon about America’s Most Dangerous Enemies.  We’re just gonna say it’s unusual for an author to get 37 minutes of airtime to flog a book – and you might assume that getting such exposure would be good for the writer – but we suggest not so, in this case. During the cringe-worthy session, Miller alternated from sucking up to the hosts (saying how much he and his wife love the show), to passing out what he called “presentation coins” (challenge coins left over from his 71 days as acting SECDEF in the last administration,) and ducking questions from Boston-native Mike Barnicle (by reminiscing about how Miller’s wife once had a kid in Massachusetts.) The questions Barnicle asked were about Miller writing in the book that CJCS General Mark Milley and General Frank McKenzie, USMC, were either “lying or possibly incompetent” based on things they said at a meeting and that they had been involved “in a petty turf war, the only kind of war they were actually good at winning.”  Miller got a friendlier audience when he appeared on Steve Bannon’s podcast. During that interview, Miller said that on January 6^th some person with the DC police department called and told him they would not need the military’s help in stemming the violence. But Miller said regrettably, he didn’t catch the person’s name. Unless we are mistaken, staff members for the (acting) Secretary of Defense always log the names of incoming and outgoing calls – but perhaps they were “possibly incompetent.”

OH SY:  Our younger readers (by which we mean those under 60) may not know who reporter Seymour (Sy) Hersh is though the 85-year-old journalist first gained fame in 1969, by exposing the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. He has done a lot of investigative reporting in the ensuing half century and was in the news recently with a lengthy story published on Substack that alleges the United States was responsible for sabotaging the Nord Stream gas pipeline last year. Substack, in case you are not aware, is a self-publishing platform. We’re just gonna say we’re not surprised that Hersh couldn’t find a more traditional outlet that would take his story, since it appears to be based largely (if not entirely) on a single unnamed source who he says had “direct knowledge of the operational planning.”  He claims that the mission was planned by the CIA and carried out by the U.S. Navy. A White House spokesperson is quoted on the record in the story as saying Hersh’s take is “false and complete fiction.” And a CIA spokesperson (also on-the-record) chimes in saying “This claim is completely and utterly false.” To be clear, not everyone has dismissed Hersh’s conspiracy theory. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova called for NATO to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the allegations. If there is precedent for Russia calling for emergency NATO meetings – we are unaware of it. Sweden and Denmark (in whose exclusive economic zones the undersea blasts occurred) have both said they think it was a deliberate act by some entity but have not said who yet. The U.S. and NATO have previously called the explosions “an act of sabotage.”