SLIM KIM, RIDING INTO THE SUNSET: Don’t read too much into that. Pyongyang leader Kim Jong Un has dropped a bunch of weight and is pictured in a new 110-minute North Korean documentary riding a white horse on a dimly-lit beach. But he doesn’t appear to be going anywhere fast. Reuters says the video lauds Kim for tackling his country’s, “worst-ever hardships,” and struggling “to walk down makeshift stairs during a visit to a rainy construction site.” The film’s narrator says: "This video showed his motherly side where he completely dedicated his own body to realize people's dreams." Motherly? It is unclear if the narrator is still with us.
YES, VIRGINIA, THERE IS A SPACE FORCE: There is always someone who doesn’t get the word. According to Military.com, among the uninformed was a Spirit Airlines ticket counter agent who was faced by a Space Force captain who wanted to score the discount the airline offers to those in uniform, allowing them to check bags for free. The agent refused to believe that there really was such a thing as a Space Force. Fortunately, a supervisor was called who either knew (or was willing to accept) that Space Force Guardians are a thing – and that their bags were declared ready for launch – free of charge.
CONSPIRACY THEORY THEORY: There is an oft-told tale that the Agency came up with the phrase “conspiracy theory” to mock anyone who thought the CIA was involved in JFK’s assassination (and perhaps to steer folks away from the truth.) The Dead Drop told you almost two years ago that the folks at SNOPES.COM had completed an investigation which concluded that the Central Intelligence Agency did NOT invent the term. Well, now you don’t just have to accept the SNOPES nope – the Australian Associated Press has done their own deep dive. Their down under factcheckers have also come up with no evidence that the term was created by the CIA. In fact – they say the phrase has been in use for at least 150 years. But what if the CIA has mastered time travel and went back and planted those old references just to throw us off the trail? Crikey!
STRING THEORY: A month ago, The Dead Drop mentioned that a lot of folks were mocking an FBI recruiting ad that featured a woman staring at a wall full of photos, news clippings etc. connected by string or yarn or something. Turns out, it was not a one-off thing. Former CIA analyst Aki Peritz has a piece in Slate which notes that there is a whole ad campaign of images with FBI employees looking for connections by gazing at crazy quilt corkboards. Peritz says that neither the FBI nor CIA, “has used pinboards to solve investigations in a generation or more.” Everyone can remember such scenes in movies and television shows – but Peritz polled quite a few intelligence community alumni and failed to find anyone who could remember yarn being used in their line of work. Sure, software would be harder to show in a recruiting advertisement – but if you are trying to knit together a tech-savvy crew, perhaps the ad agency could come up with a slightly more current trope.
OH, BROTHER: Wayne Brown, 64, is a Florida man (of course) who plead guilty of pretending to be Warren Brown, 64. It seems the two are twins. Warren served in the Army at one time. Wayne did not. The Military Times reports that Wayne decided it would be good to be Warren when receiving $64,000 worth of veteran medical, housing, and “nutritional” benefits. The VA IG finally figured out which Brown is which – and Warren confessed. At least – they think it was Warren.
DON’T LET THE PARADE PASS YOU BY: We were very surprised this week to see an online list of the “110 Best Thriller, Crime and Suspense Novels of All Time” from Parade Magazine. The biggest surprise was that we didn’t know Parade Magazine still existed. For our young readers – it used to be a very prominent colorful supplement to your Sunday newspaper. For our very young readers – newspapers were stories and pictures printed on paper that someone would throw on your lawn early each morning. In any case, Parade is still on the march and has taken it upon itself to declare the: “…110 of the best thriller, crime and suspense novels of all time. Gothic dramas, iconic secret agents, psychological thrillers that kept you guessing..” The second biggest surprise was that so many of the novels they picked were ones that we hadn’t heard of…and there were a lot we love – which did not make the cut. We won’t belabor the point – but check out the list and we suspect you will agree that periodically, Parade is out of step.
BULLDOG EDITION: In book biz news, terrorism expert Dr. Jeffrey Simon, reportedly has landed a deal to produce “The Bulldog Detective: William J. Flynn and America’s First War Against the Mafia, Spies, and Terrorists.” It is said to be about an early 20th century detective who not only went up against the Mafia but also took down a German spy ring in 1919. The book will be published at some undisclosed date by Prometheus Books.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
CAP’N CRUNCH: The Washington Football team finally came up with a new name: Commanders. The moniker search launched a thousand suggestions – many of them bad. But Commanders does offer up some branding possibilities and was “generally” well-received. (Some critics, however, worried that future headline writers might shorten the name to “Commies.”) Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander (and Cipher Brief expert) Admiral Jim Stavridis had been advocating the name “Fighting Admirals.” But he congratulated the team on Wednesday, saying while he would have preferred “Admirals” but “if the ‘Commanders’ and their Allies are Supreme... and win…perhaps they will get promoted someday.”
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