YOU DON’T WRITE, YOU DON’T CALL… Last week, the Kremlin issued an oddly plaintive statement suggesting they kind of miss hearing from CIA Director Bill Burns. The TASS news agency quoted Sergei Naryshkin, head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), as saying that a meeting with Burns would be “useful” and “possible” but gave no indication that one was in the offing. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: "It can't be ruled out, and of course this kind of dialogue makes sense ... I don't know about exact dates." Normally you don’t see officials, especially Russian officials, sending out such “please call” messages especially to the CIA. The SVR RSVP was issued shortly before word leaked that Burns had secretly met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev not long ago.
ALL THE DCI’S MEN: Fox News host Tucker Carlson told viewers last week that the real reason Richard Nixon was ousted from the presidency was that (as recorded in Oval Office tapes) he told then-Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms that he (Nixon) knew “who shot John” (presumably meaning JFK.) This, according to Carlson, means that Kennedy was killed by the CIA and the Deep State and not-so-tricky Dick was letting Helms know he knew. According to the Fox commentator, this led to Nixon’s ouster by one of Helms’ operatives (wait for it) —- Bob Woodward. These allegations spark a lot of questions – principally: what has Tucker been smoking?
DON’T SHOOT ME, I’M THE PIANO PLAYER: Last weekend, Russia Media Monitor Julia Davis posted another clip from Russian state TV where talking heads discussed the best strategies to use against the United States including (according to one panelist) “liquidating” tens of thousands of American troops (See the 10:30 mark of the lengthy video). Another person injects that there is one American they would not want to kill: Tucker Carlson. (About the 12:00 mark.)
WE ADMIT IT, IT WAS US: There was a nugget in last week's Dead Drop about the State Department’s decision to change their official font from Times New Roman to Calibri. Several Dead Drop readers were kind enough to let us know that they enjoyed the title of that piece: “I Shot the Serif.” Later that evening, Politico’s “West Wing Playbook” newsletter had a lengthy story about the controversial Foggy Bottom font flap under the headline “Who shot the serif?” Clearly, they are not Subscriber+ members of The Cipher Brief, or they would have known.
IMITATION GAME: Remember the hit TV series “The Americans”? Anytime there is a successful show such as that, it's likely to inspire clones. But we didn’t see this one coming. Apparently, there is a Russian-made series now streaming on “Premier One” (whatever that is) called “The Russians.” (Clever, eh?) The plot is said to be “based on real events.” The storyline reportedly involves a Russian couple pretending to be Americans and living in the Washington D.C. suburbs with their two young sons. The hero is said to be an SVR illegal who is charged with discovering and thwarting a secret American plan to harm Russia. A twitter account called “Intel Takes” says the plot also involves a murder in Moscow and the eventual revelation that there is a mole in the SVR. Perhaps all those people falling out of windows were pushed by real Americans? We are not sure how it all comes out. You can see a trailer here – although sadly there don’t appear to be any closed captions in English.
A BEAR IN THE WOODS AND A WOLF AT THE DOOR: The SVR has been busy revisiting ancient history – almost as if they haven’t had any recent successes to talk about. On January 19, SVR Director Sergey Naryshkin sent a “congratulatory telegram” to the widow of former East German spymaster Markus Wolf marking the 100th anniversary of Wolf’s birth. According to a release on the SVR website, (which Google will translate for you if you ask them nicely) Naryshkin told Andrea Wolf (who was Markus’s third or fourth wife – we’re not sure) that her late husband, who died in 2006, was “a legend of the 20th century, a hereditary anti-fascist, a brilliant professional” and a true friend to Russia. Mrs. Wolf responded with a telegram of her own – and used it to plug books about him. She said her late hubby was a “German with a Russian soul.” Dubbed “the man without a face” because for years, western intelligence could not find a picture of Wolf, there is no doubt that the former Stasi leader was quite controversial. He was long rumored to have been the model for Karla, the spymaster in John le Carré’s novels – a claim that the famed writer went out of his way to deny.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
YEAH, THAT’LL FIX THINGS: General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the Russian General Staff, was recently dispatched to the Ukraine war (make that “special military operation”) zone by Russian President Vladimir Putin to take charge and fix whatever is standing in the way of victory. The U.K. Ministry of Defence reported this week, that Gerasimov’s razor sharp eye quickly figured out what the problem was with Russian troops performance. They say he has tried to “clamp down on non-regulation uniforms, travel in civilian vehicles, use of mobile phones, and non-standard haircuts.” Arriving on scene in the nick of time, the general also has issued orders “to improve the standard of troop’s shaving.”
OFF THE CHARTS: Russ Scholl, a retired Navy civilian and father of a current Marine, apparently had a lot of time on his hands during the pandemic and spent part of it creating what he calls the “Periodic Table of Military Slang.” According to Marine Corps Times, the resulting (suitable for framing) charts “lays out and defines 321 of the military’s most amusing and esoteric terms and phrases, arranging them neatly by service branch and historical era.” One sheet shows current terminology divided by service while others provide lingo from the past. We are not sure if a periodic table is the best device to help sort out what certain words mean to the different services but acknowledge that (like the US and UK) the services are often divided by a common language. There is an old observation (not on Scholl’s table as far as we know) that if you told the military branches to “secure the building” the Navy would turn out the lights and lock the doors, the Army would surround it with barbed wire, the Marines would attack it – and the Air Force would take out a three-year lease on it with an option to buy. We’re not sure what the military terms for “pricey” are – but Scholl is selling the table on his website “starting at $79.00.”
WHAT IS THE TERM FOR GRATEFUL? That is what we will be if you send us tips on items we can include in an upcoming edition of The Dead Drop. Send your tips to: TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com
