Dead Drop: January 6

WE HAVE FOUND THE ENEMY: The new Republican controlled House of Representatives is eager to get to work and fix some things they consider broken (or break some things their colleagues across the aisle thought they fixed.) Among the steps, is the creation of a new subcommittee under the House Judiciary Committee that has the working title of “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government” which we will dub the “SSWFG.” Neither the full title nor the acronym roll off your tongue.  Axios says the prime “targets” of the SSWFG will be the FBI, Justice Department and the intelligence community writ large.

GUESSING GAME:  Included among the transcripts recently released by the January 6th Committee was one containing the testimony of Chairman of the Joint Chief’s General Mark Milley. Among the interesting nuggets was the statement that former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn wanted Milley to recall to active duty retired military officers who had spoken or written negatively about President Trump so that they could be courts martialed. No names of those Flynn and others wanted to be forced to “walk the plank” were cited – but that didn’t stop speculation.  Salon mentioned retired Marine Corps General John Allen and Navy Admiral Mike Mullen as possible candidates. In the end, Milley apparently was able to convince the White House that freedom of speech extends to retired military officers too.

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

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