KILLING HIM SOFTLY? Tucker Carlson, seemingly the only former Fox News performer without an assignment in the new administration, made some news recently by saying on his podcast that “The Biden administration did, they tried to kill Putin. Carlson went on to say: “That’s demented, that you would even think of something like that. So why were they? Because chaos is a screen that protects them.” Who would believe such a claim? While we doubt they believed it, the Russian news agency TASS was happy to repeat it along with an additional claim that former Secretary of State Antony Blinken was “pushing so hard for a real war” between the U.S. and Russia during his last two months in office. Russian Media Monitor Julia Davis came through with a clip of state TV host Vladimir Solovyov insisting that Blinken be extradited to Russia for trial – based on Carlson’s claims. While Tucker may not have gotten an administration gig – we note that his son Buckley has been named deputy press secretary on Vice President Vance’s staff.
NO ROOM IN THE INN: Late last week, Defense Department leadership notified four news organizations that they were going to lose access to their coveted cubby holes in the Pentagon. Pentagon official Jonathan Ullyot said that NBC News, The New York Times, National Public Radio and Politico were being ousted as of February 14 to make room for One America News Network, The New York Post, Breitbart and The Huff Post. To be clear, the evicted news organizations will still be able to access the building and attend press conferences and the like – but particularly for the radio and TV types – it puts them at a disadvantage. When breaking news happens, network correspondents have been able to go to their booth, flip a switch on a robotic camera, and go live. Soon, team Peacock will have to hop in a car from the NBC bureau, summon a camera crew, cross the river and set up. Few observers missed the fact that the organizations getting access to the vacated space – like OANN and Breitbart – are much friendlier to the administration than the outfits being ousted. But here is something else that we haven’t seen much remarked on: Ullyot’s announcement said that this is part of a new “annual media rotation program.” That doesn’t mean that next year NBC gets back in…but more likely that CNN, CBS or ABC gets the heave ho. And here is the fiendishly clever part: for the next year, when correspondents from those networks are reporting on DOD – might they have in the back of their minds that if their reporting offends Team Hegseth too much – their network may be the next to follow NBC out the door? Are we suggesting that major news organizations might cave to subtle pressure? Recent evidence suggests: yes.
WORKAROUNDS: So, the Pentagon is saying that there is not enough room in the Correspondents Corridor for everyone who wants to be there, right? The five-sided puzzle palace is reportedly the second largest office building on the planet in terms of floor space. But officials couldn’t find a way to add a cubby hole booth for OANN without kicking out NBC? Here’s an idea – there is probably a lot of empty space in all those old DEI offices that have recently been dismantled. Just sayin’.
BET THEY WON’T HAVE ROOM FOR MANY REPORTERS THOUGH: Press accounts say that China is building a new military command center that will be ten times the size of the Pentagon. (Check out The Cipher Brief’s interview with one of our experts – RADM Mike Studeman on the subject.) U.S. intelligence assessments suggest that the site is designed to protect military leaders in the event of a nuclear war. We are not sure exactly how many military leaders they have in China – but at 10X the Pentagon – there should be room for a lot of followers too.
CHANGE IS HARD: There is a lot of confusion about what the new administration wants and expects – and many parts of the government seem to be taking wild guesses. For example, for a while recently, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s entire public-facing website went dark. An NGA spokesperson was quoted as saying “We’ve temporarily unpublished our public-facing presence while we work diligently to ensure that we are in compliance with the President’s EOs (Executive Orders).” When last we checked – the website seemed to be back up – but it is difficult to determine what was scrubbed. We put terms like “Black history” in the site’s search window and came up with no results. But a Google search using both the terms “National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency” and “Black History” turn up a couple hits like: “Recognizing Black American GEOINT Trailblazers” and “African American History Month: A time to reflect on lasting…” which previous existed but seem to remain “unpublished.” When you click on those links now you get an NGA “404” error message saying: “Sorry, we couldn't find the page you were looking for or it no longer exists. The site has changed and undergone major updates, please visit the new homepage to locate your content.”
BREAKING THE CODE ON WHAT IS PERMISSABLE: If you think scrubbing past press releases on GEOINT Trailblazers is odd – what till you hear this one. The NSA’s National Cryptologic Museum got itself in a heck of a mess over the weekend when someone used what appeared to be brown wrapping paper to cover over Hall of Honor displays of women and men of color who played important roles in the history of NSA. Photos of the cover-up rocketed around the internet and, following an outcry for former NSA officials like General Mike Hayden, and former NSA and CIA official Larry Pfeiffer, the museum announced that they had “corrected a mistake that covered an exhibit.”
CROSSING THE THIN GRAY LINE: The U.S. Military Academy, attempting to stay in tune with “Presidential Executive Orders, Department of Defense guidance, and Department of the Army guidance,” this week directed twelve West Point clubs to “permanently cease all activities” and “unpublish, deactivate, or otherwise remove all public facing content.” What were these subversive entities? Outfits like the Korean-American Relations Seminar, the National Society of Black Engineers Club, and the “Society of Women Engineers Club.” The work of those stomping out all this multi-culturalism is not done, however. Wait till they find out the USMA’s sports teams call themselves “the Black Knights.”
BEAM ME UP: You have heard all the stories about FBI special agents and supervisors who were involved in January 6th investigations and some other Trump-related investigations possibly facing being fired for displeasing the incoming crowd – but here is one we didn’t see coming. According to Politico, some FBI agents who investigated UFOs (AKA “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) sightings are also worried they might be canned too. Our Magic 8 ball is a little hazy on exactly why these agents have anything to be concerned about, but these days there is no such thing as being overly paranoid.
A COUNTERINTELLIGENCE PUZZLE: Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that, for some reason, someone at the CIA sent the White House an unclassified email which listed all the employees the Agency hired over the past two years. The list includes the first name and the first initial of the new hires’ last names. CIA vets we talked with were gobsmacked by the recklessness of the move. “We would kill – well, maybe not literally – but close – to have such a list of Russian or Chinese intelligence operatives,” one Agency alum told us. “It would be fun,” another told us, “to try to reverse engineer such a list to figure out the full identities.” And maybe, not that hard. Imagine if some of the names on the list are unusual. For example: “Elon, M.”
SHAKEN AND STIRRED: We were distressed to see a recent headline: “Who Killed James Bond?” The article appeared in something called Airmail News. The notion is that the last Bond movie, No Time to Die, was released more than three years ago and despite promises that 007 would double back there are no signs of the next edition on the horizon. Part of the problem is uncertainty as to who will take on the lead role — but another factor appears to be the blockbuster movies lately seem to be bombing – and not in a good way. Here’s hoping 007 figures it all out.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
WELL, THAT’S A STRETCH: Remember the item we had last week about President Trump and other administration officials saying (without apparent factual support) that USAID planned to send $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza (perhaps to be used in bomb making)? As far as we know, there remains no evidence to support those claims – but the President did address the issue early this week again – lauding Elon Musk’s work and telling reporters: “The numbers, some of the numbers are horrible, what he’s found,” the President said adding: “A hundred — think of it — $100 million on condoms to Hamas, condoms to Hamas, and many other things that are, frankly, even more ridiculous.” Now it has grown to $100m? Talk about inflation. Well, now that there is talk of taking an “ownership position” on Gaza – maybe we can get our condoms back.
CHEAP THRILLS DEPT., Cont’d. – Whenever we check in on Prince Andrew, we get a little frisson of “oh-no-he-didn’t.” The latest twist emerged last week from a long-running U.K. immigration case against Andrew associate, transnational businessman and alleged Chinese spy Yang Tenbo, barred from the U.K. in 2023 on national security grounds. A judgment in the case said that Yang “had been in a position to generate relationships between prominent UK figures and senior Chinese officials that could be leveraged for political interference purposes by the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]… or the Chinese State.” Their evidence: a fawning letter on Buckingham Palace stationery, dated March 30, 2020, that appears to be signed by Andrew’s business adviser Dominic Hampshire, and was reportedly found on Yang’s laptop and released in full last Friday. The letter thanked Yang for his friendship with Andrew, saying, "You sit at the very top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on.” The most intriguing line: “Under your guidance, we found a way to get the relevant people unnoticed in and out of the house of Windsor,” Hampshire wrote. “We orchestrated a very powerful verbal message of support to China at a Chinese New Year's dinner and between the three of us, we have written, amended and then always agreed a number of letters at the highest level possible.” What “relevant people” got snuck where? Into the royal family's Windsor Estate? What, if anything, did China get? That’s not clear, but we’ll stay tuned.
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