TWO OUT OF THREE: (Recently) Acting SECDEF Chris Miller told a reporter that when he took his job, he had three goals: “No military coup, no major war, and no troops in the street.” Well, two out of three is good in most sports. Who would have guessed that under a press-unfriendly Trump administration, that the Pentagon leadership would allow a journalist to embed with them to chronicle their last days in power? It turns out the Acting SECDEF along with his chief of staff, Kash Patel, and acting intel guy Ezra Cohen-Watnick (who sometimes goes by “Cohen”) did just that. The resulting story in Vanity Fair has accurately been described as “bonkers.” Among the killer quotes: Cohen-Watnik said, “The president threw us under the bus. And when I say ‘us,’ I don’t mean only us political appointees or only us Republicans. He threw America under the bus. He caused a lot of damage to the fabric of this country,” His angst had to do with the events of January 6th. “Did he go and storm the Capitol himself? No. But he, I believe, had an opportunity to tamp things down and he chose not to.” Some of what was included in the story may be fodder for the upcoming Senate impeachment trial. Ciralsky reports that President Trump told Miller prior to January 6th that DoD would need 10,000 troops to control the enormous crowd he was expecting. Miller blew that off as presidential hyperbole. But when the rioting broke out, the Pentagon could not get through to the President. While he wasn’t happy with the White House – Miller was also not high on the Pentagon. “This f—-ing place is rotten. It’s rotten….When the system is weighted toward the Joint Staff and the geographic combatant commanders against civilian control, you know we’ve got to rethink this.” The article also confirms earlier reports of an aborted administration plan to oust CIA director Gina Haspel and replace her with Patel. Cohen-Watnick is quoted as saying: “The idea was to put Kash in as the deputy, which doesn’t require Senate approval, and then to fire Gina the next day, leaving Kash in charge…. Robert O’Brien, [Trump’s national security adviser], is the one who deep-sixed it.” There is a ton of wacky stuff in the article – which probably would have gotten more attention, had it not been quickly followed by a New York Times story concerning White House discussions earlier this month to oust the Acting Attorney General and replace him with a loyalist who would be willing to twist the arms of the states to try to overturn the election.
CIRALSKY SOUND FAMILIAR? You may remember that Ciralsky was once a CIA lawyer – who sued the Agency over an unsuccessful polygraph test. As far as we know, he lost his suit, but he was still featured on CBS News’ 60 Minutes. The network liked him so much, they hired him and turned him into a journalist. In any case, Ciralsky is not the kind of guy you would think the Pentagon leadership would pick to memorialize the end of their time in power.
A FEW ROTTEN APPLES: Here is some discouraging news about a very small slice of the veteran population. An investigation by NPR found that nearly 1 in 5 of the people charged in the attack on the U.S. Capitol were military veterans or contractors. One retired military officer told us that for most of his adult life, it has been common to receive visits from security officials doing background checks on acquaintances who are under review for security clearance updates. “I used to laugh when they would ask the obligatory questions about whether the person in question had ever been part of a group that supported the violent overthrow of the U.S. government…” because of course, that's not the mindset of most veterans, adding “I guess I won’t laugh anymore.”
SLEEPER SELLOUT: On at least three occasions in the past several years, The Dead Drop has taken note of a guy by the name of Jason Hanson who apparently served in some capacity at the CIA for seven years and has been cranking out books since then, teaching people how to escape from the trunk of a car with your hands bound together – or how to sell anyone anything like a spy. Now it seems he is flogging a new book titled, Sleeper Cell Secrets by Spies and Our Founding Fathers. The concept, it appears, is to teach “like-minded patriots” to set up sleeper cells to keep America from turning socialist.
LANGLEY LAMENTS LOOSE LIPS: According to The New York Times, the CIA sent a note to retired officers recently telling them to quit blabbing sensitive stuff on television, podcasts, panels and social media. And Sheetal T. Patel, the Agency’s assistant director for counterintelligence also warned about Agency alums seeking employment with foreign governments. A CIA spokesperson, Nicole de Haay, told the Times there was nothing unusual with the content of the email. Former CIA Director General Michael Hayden, at a Hayden Center Event at George Mason University, spoke out in favor of careful engagement with the media. “The people want to know. I was able to do that…. It’s good for America,” he said. Former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell agreed saying that the intelligence community is a “set of institutions that are secret organizations operating in a democracy” and you would want former officials to talk about what their agencies do and put it in context – without revealing classified information. Morell said that if he were saying stuff in the media that was classified, he would want the Agency to tell him, as opposed to sending some broad note.
THE REAL PRICE OF LOOSE LIPS: Somehow, we don’t think the biggest threat to secrecy is folks appearing on TV, in podcasts, or selling “How-to” books on sleeper cells. Case in point, former CIA software engineer Joshua Schulte, who is a long-term resident of the New York Metropolitan Correction Center. Schulte was charged with giving the Agency’s so-called “Vault 7” secrets to Wikileaks. His first trial ended in a hung jury and he is awaiting re-trial. Schulte recently went to court to complain about being held in solitary confinement in a vermin-infested cell and being treated like “caged animals.” We can understand being upset about the vermin – but being “caged” is sort of the whole idea of incarceration, no?
NSC INTEL WATCHER: The Biden administration has appointed Maher Bitar to be the National Security Council’s senior director for intelligence programs. Bitar had served as the general counsel for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under Representative Adam Schiff since 2017. He is taking the job (briefly) held by Ezra Cohen-Watnick (mentioned above) and several others who followed. The last person in the NSC job was reportedly Michael Ellis – who the Trump administration shoe-horned into a job at the National Security Agency just before the inauguration. Bitar receives good marks from folks who know him on the Hill – although some observers we talked with thought that it would have been better for IC/White House relations to put a long-term intelligence professional in the gig.
THAT’S WHAT WE WERE THINKING: Recently declassified CIA documents show that in the early 1990s, the Agency believed that Soviet scientists had conducted “several successful Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP) experiments” in the previous decade. We suspect the Soviets weren’t entirely successful – since they didn’t foresee the Berlin Wall coming down.
HEROS-R-US: In one of the final acts of the Trump Administration, the White House released an Executive Order establishing a “National Garden of American Heroes.” The idea was sparked in response to demonstrators vandalizing statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and others during last summer’s riots. So, the Trump administration said: Oh yeah? Vandalize this. The EO listed the names of 244 people to be immortalized in statue form – if the Garden was ever built. It’s kind of an eclectic group ranging from Sitting Bull, to Kobe Bryant, to Dr. Seuss. Since The Cipher Brief’s interest is national security – we want to point out some names in our wheelhouse – such as: Admiral Bull Halsey, Ira Hayes, Grace Hopper, Jeane Kirkpatrick, George Marshall, Billy Mitchell, Audie Murphy, George Patton, Oliver Hazard Perry, Walter Reed, Norman Schwarzkopf, Alan Shepard, and Orville and Wilbur Wright. Even though the list contains 244 names – if you read it, you will almost certainly think of people who you can’t believe were left out. And probably a couple you can’t believe made it. Is Christopher Columbus an American? If it is any consolation – it is very unlikely that the Garden will ever be built.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
EZRA COHEN NOT-Q: Remember Ezra Cohen Watnick, mentioned in the Vanity Fair story we opened with (and in multiple Dead Drop items over the past four years)? Politico reports that he has been busy denying that he has lived a double life. Apparently, a lot of Q-Anon conspiracy theorists – think HE is their messiah – “Q.” He had to go so far as to hire a Washington lawyer to try to get social media sites to quit accusing him being THE guy. At the outset of the administration, Cohen-Watnick, then about 30 years old, was hired by the first Trump national security advisor, Michael Flynn. While Flynn only lasted 25 days in his job (about two “Scaramucci’s”) his apparent flirtation with QAnon added to suspicion that Ezra had some special sauce.
MODERN ROMANCE: Newsweek says Lori Anne Holton, 56, has been “charged with kidnapping and beating a man she allegedly held captive for more than two months while claiming she was a CIA operative working on behalf of the government and would one day be president.” We don’t know the name of the victim, but we are guessing he was an accountant because he apparently kept very good records saying he had been hit by the Wisconsin woman: “97 times, kicked 10 times, elbowed four times, tased 15 times, choked three times, had (a) knife held to his throat, hot coffee thrown on him and spat on.” There is no evidence Holton ever worked for the CIA, but she does have some tradecraft chops. She managed to hide from law enforcement for three and a half months before being captured ten days ago. She is due for her first day in court next week.
YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP: Well, maybe you can. Normally, Joe Gould, a reporter for Defense News, would like it when a story with his byline goes viral. But this week, someone faked a story saying that newly confirmed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was planning on “defunding and dismantling” the U.S. Army and contracting out American defense to China. And they attached Gould’s name to it. The piece was widely shared on social media, message board, and conspiracy sites. Gould may have attracted more eyeballs with the story he didn’t write – than the ones he does. Fortunately, he says the U.S. Army is not going out of business.
DEFUND AND GAMES: Hearing any interesting developments in the new administration? Don’t keep them to yourself. Send us your news at: TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
Read more expert-driven national security perspectives in The Cipher Brief
