EXQUISITE INTELLIGENCE: In defending the U.S. attack on Iranian General Qassem Soleimani over the past week or so, various administration officials have described “exquisite intelligence” which prompted the strike. This confused some talking heads, like CNN national security analyst Samantha Vinograd, who declared she was “befuddled” by the term. While there is no agreement on precisely what the phrase means – despite what some would suggest, the term is not an invention of the Trump administration. The phrase was deployed on many occasions in the past. For example, in 2001, then-SECDEF Donald Rumsfeld published a “Nuclear Posture Review” which said that a “new triad” would depend on command and control, intelligence, and adaptive planning and that “exquisite intelligence” on the intentions and capabilities of adversaries would permit timely adjustments to the force and permit improvement in precision of strikes. Then in 2009, Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter said that for the U.S. to strike pirates off the coast of Somalia it would require “exquisite intelligence.” And in 2016, former CIA/NSA Director General Michael Hayden describing the changes in warfare he had seen over time, said that we had seen not only a transformation from mass attacks to precision – and an increasing demand for “absolutely exquisite intelligence” to facilitate the targeting.
IN POSITIVE IRANIAN-AMERICAN NEWS: Major Jasmin “Jaws” Moghbeli, USMC, is the first Iranian-American selected to be an astronaut. The MIT-grad is a helicopter pilot. And speaking of over achievers – also in Major Moghbeli’s class of new astronauts is Jonny Kim. The naval reserve lieutenant is a former enlisted Navy SEAL who earned a Silver Star in Iraq and went on to get an MD from Harvard Medical School.
BOMBING BETTYS: Among the things we didn’t know – is that there is a quarterly team bomb building competition held at the U.S. airbase in Aviano, Italy. Actually, bomb building is only part of it – the full title of the competition is the “Rapid Aircraft Generation and Employment” competition – which has the really cool acronym “RAGE.” The first contest in 2020 was won by an all-female team who dubbed themselves the “Bouncing Bettys.” According to Stars and Stripes, the team all dressed as the World War II icon “Rosie the Riveter.” Sounds like they had a blast.
BUSTED BANQUET DATE: Then there is the story we found in TaskandPurpose.com about a West Point cadet who created a GoFundMe page to try to raise money so he could afford to bring his favorite porn star to the Military Academy. He said he needed a date for the school’s annual winter banquet. The GoFundMe page was titled: “Help Me Bring Diamond Foxxx to YWW.” “YWW” is short for “Yearling Winter Weekend.” We will let you Google Foxxx at your own (NSFW) risk. The lad said the actress had agreed to go to the event with him if he paid for her plane ticket and hotel room. He had collected promises of $370 (of his $1200 goal) when individuals of “much higher rank” convinced him that showing up with Ms. Foxxx on his arm at YWW might not be the image USMA was going for.
WHO’S FOR WHOM: Two weeks ago in The Dead Drop we mentioned a number of intelligence community alumni who have come out in support of Mayor Pete Buttigieg. This week we noticed the hash tag “#FP4Warren” for foreign policy professionals backing Senator Elizabeth Warren. When last we checked, the list included former Pentagon and CIA spokesman George Little, SiriusXM talk-show host and self-described “fmr Senior many things in gov’t” Nayyera Haq, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Michael Fuchs, and a few others.
FOLLOWING MOM AND DAD’S FOOTSTEPS: It turns out to no one’s surprise that serving in the military is something of a family business. The New York Times had a lengthy story recently which showed how common it is for young people to step into their relative’s boots. In 2019, the Army reported that 79% of their recruits had had a family member who served – often a parent. What’s more – there is a big gap in where recruits come from. Geographically, recruits tend to come disproportionately from the south – and from areas where there are a lot of military bases.
SPY MUSEUM IN THE CROSSHAIRS: You may have seen stories recently about three Democrat senators having written the International Spy Museum demanding changes be made to the museum’s exhibit on interrogation. Senators Dianne Feinstein, Martin Heinrich, and Ron Wyden think the display “sanitizes” what they call the CIA’s “torture program” and say they object to the notion that anything of value came from the enhanced interrogation program. The museum has said it will make some adjustments. But the Senators may not be thrilled if they take time to listen to a podcast released this week in which journalists Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman interviewed Museum Executive Director Chris Costa. Costa declined to agree that the CIA committed “torture” in the early 2000’s because he said the Agency’s actions were authorized by the Department of Justice at the time and noted that the law was subsequently changed. He acknowledged the concerns expressed in the Senate Intelligence Committee report in 2014 (the committee was led at the time by Senator Feinstein) but Costa pointed out that members of the then-minority of the Committee and the CIA’s own rebuttal took issue with some of their findings.
IMAGINE HOW BAD THE OTHER PLACES ARE: Apparently folks in the intelligence community are paying no attention when the president periodically calls them part of the deep state and tells them to “go back to school.” Last week the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reported that the IC has been named one of the “best places to work” for the 11th consecutive year. The intelligence community ranked third overall up from fifth last year. The rankings are derived from a job satisfaction survey run by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
IF EVERYONE IS WEARING SOMETHING DIFFERENT, HOW COME THEY CALL THEM “UNIFORMS”? The Dead Drop regularly brings you news about changes in military uniforms – because, well, because they seem to change their outfits on a weekly basis. This week’s sartorial report brings news that the Navy’s surface warfare officers are about to get their own leather jackets. Inspired by the iconic leather livery worn by guys like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, surface sailors will soon be able to wear similar jackets – but the ship driver’s versions will be black so that they are not mistaken for their high-flying brethren.
DO THEY ALWAYS GET THEIR MAN LIKE THE MOUNTIES? Hey, it is not just U.S. television networks making TV series about the CIA. The Canadian Broadcasting Company has launched a series called “Fortunate Son” about a ruthless CIA “agent” in 1968 whose mission is “taking down” war protestors. Actor Stephen Moyer, who starred in the vampire series “True Blood,” plays the anti-hero. While there were a lot of draft dodgers and deserters who went north of the border, we are unaware of the Agency chasing them around Canada.
ANOTHER UNLIKELY STORY: An Indiana woman went to a local gas station and asked the clerk to show her their surveillance video recordings. Sensing something wrong, the clerk called the cops. When questioned she said she worked for the CIA, but police were somewhat skeptical. One of the giveaways was that she was wearing a hat with “FBI” handwritten on it. The cops also discovered that the woman was driving a Dodge Charger that they say she had stolen from a local car dealership. No word on whether she was planning to drive the Dodge to Canada to look for draft dodgers.
FAKE NEWS – PERSIAN EDITION: The Mehr News Agency, an Iranian news outlet based in Tehran (owned by the Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organization) published an article this week by American Robert David Steele. Steele, who says he once worked for the CIA, says he believes the Ukrainian flight that was shot down last week was a false flag job designed by the U.S. “to discredit the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) while also seeking to drive a wedge between Iran and Ukraine.” His evidence? None really, but he has some interesting assertions. He says the Boeing aircraft is “designed to be hijacked by the U.S. or Israeli government at any time including via satellite…”
WHO'S THE TARGET: Hours before Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani was killed at Baghdad’s airport on Jan. 3, another Iranian military official was targeted in Yemen. Abdul Reza Shahlai was that figure. Here’s some insight into that story from JJ Green's Inside the SCIF newsletter.
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