ERRANT MORAN: For Pentagon watchers, the 4th of July weekend ended with a bang. On Sunday night, news erupted that Admiral Bill Moran, the man who had recently been confirmed by the Senate to take the helm of the Navy in September as Chief of Naval Operations, would be retiring instead. Why? Well, it is still not entirely clear – but Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer reportedly lost confidence in Moran’s judgment when he learned that the admiral has been exchanging email and consulting with a former Navy public affairs officer who was fired a few years ago for inappropriate conduct at a Christmas party. Sources told Defense News that the problem was that Moran was taking free advice. If that is true – the brass better not visit any bars because there is always someone there willing to tell you how to do your job. Viewed from afar, several military experts we talked with had the same reaction to Moran being tossed overboard: Huh? Some naval gazers like the “CDR Salamander” blog were downright indignant. The consensus is – there must be more to it than that. We await a better explanation.
HOME ALONE: You would think that the Pentagon would be going out of its way to get people confirmed and into important positions. The website Task & Purpose recently added up and found that 20 of the Defense Department’s top positions are without fully confirmed leaders. They include the Defense Secretary, Air Force Secretary, Army Secretary, DOD IG, Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, at least six Assistant Secretaries of Defense. But wait – there’s more. More or less. The current acting SECDEF, Mark Esper, who took over when the previous acting Secretary Patrick Shanahan stepped down, will have to temporarily step down from his acting position – because of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 which says that people in Esper's position cannot serve as acting secretary while the Senate is considering their nomination to be the full time secretary. It was OK for Shanahan to do so – because he was already #2 in the department…but dipping down to Esper’s level is apparently a no-no. So, what to do? It appears that Navy Secretary Richard Spencer will be the Acting, Acting, Acting Secretary of Defense while Esper awaits confirmation. Actually, it is not as simple as we have suggested – but trust us you don’t want to know. Too bad for almost-CNO Admiral Moran. If SECNAV Spencer had been temporarily kicked upstairs a short while earlier – perhaps the Acting Secretary of the Navy would have gone easier on him. According to The Hill, the White House is putting pressure on the Senate to move heaven and earth to get a vote on Esper in record time.
WHO’S YOUR DADDY? When the current Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral John Richardson, is eventually allowed to retire – it is a pretty good bet where he won’t be getting a second-career job: Ancestry.com. Last week, Richardson was giving a speech in Washington and warned that popular home DNA test kits are making biological weapons more tailorable. Military.com found some DNA-testing experts who opined that we are a long way from enemies being able to create weapons that will be able to discriminate against (and target) specific groups of people but Richardson is warning folks to be careful about who you share your spit with.
FLEET WEAK: Meanwhile, the current Secretary of the Navy who might be the Acting Secretary of Defense by the time you read this – scrambled to find another candidate to take the conn of the Navy so that Richardson can go ashore. Making a pick wasn’t easy. The last two CNOs were submariners – and the thinking went that the next one needed to be a surface warfare officer or aviator – or it would sink morale among large parts of the naval aristocracy. There were only a few four-star officers to choose from with the right hardware on their chests. So, the administration dipped down and picked three-star admiral Mike Gilday for the post. We hear he is a fine fellow. Hopefully he hasn’t accepted free advice anywhere – or shared his DNA too widely.
WHO’S ASKING FOR WHAT? Last week’s edition of The Dead Drop was heavy on State Department items. This week, we are awash with Pentagon pieces. For example, the folks at Muckrock.com tell us that last year the Department of Defense received more than 57,000 FOIA requests. Federal agencies are required to publish logs of incoming requests and track how they are doing in responding. Sometime when you have absolutely nothing to do – like when you are waiting for DOD to fill all its open senior positions – you can log on to read Agencies FOIA logs…and see exactly what thousands of people are requesting – and generally not getting – through FOIA.
HUAWEI OR THE HIGHWAY: According to The Telegraph in the UK, a large trove of personnel files from Huawei leaked – and the files show that a very high percentage of the Chinese telecom giant’s employees came from military-backed cyber agencies. Huawei argues that you would find that same cross-pollination at western communications firms, but it seems China has gone out of its way to hide their connections. U.S. officials say this is just another reason its allies should run away from Huawei.
HISTORY WILL BE KIND TO US, FOR WE INTEND TO WRITE IT: The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), the Aussie equivalent of NSA, has long been pretty-tight lipped about what they do and how they do it. But now, according to the Australian ABC network, the outfit has commissioned a book about themselves. An outside historian has been hired to produce a “warts and all” history of ASD. The book is scheduled to be released in 2022 for the directorate’s 75th anniversary.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
REAL FAKES: The British tabloid Daily Star (which makes the National Enquirer look like the Christian Science Monitor) reported last week that mocked video of an alleged autopsy of a space alien (which first surfaced in 1995) is the real thing. In case you are unaware of the video – the story goes that it was discovered by a retired U.S. military photographer who was looking in the Pentagon archives for footage of Elvis Presley. Yeah, sure. Well now the Daily Star says a former CIA scientist named “Kit Green” claims he was “briefed three different times during and after his tenure at CIA on topics relevant to UFOs and the Roswell Incident Alien Autopsy.” No word on whether he received any briefings on Elvis sightings. We Googled Green and found this item about him which claims he was at CIA from 1969 to 1985 and says he was fondly known at the Agency as the “Keeper of the Weird.” We tried to validate that by searching for his name on the CIA’s public website – but their search function remains “temporarily unavailable” as it has been since April. Weird.
IT WAS A MAD WORLD: With the sad news that Mad Magazine is going to cease publishing new material after 70 years (admit it: you didn’t know they were still publishing) Muckrock.com has unearthed an appropriate item from the CIA archives relating to the publication. It seems in 1977 someone sent Agency spokesman Herb Hetu a clipping from Mad which pretended to reveal the messages on famous folks’ answering machines. One of them purportedly was from then-CIA Director Stansfield Turner. In part it said: “Hello! This is Stansfield Turner, the head of the C.I.A.! I can’t answer the phone right now because I am out! Which doesn’t make much difference anyway, because I wouldn’t answer my phone if I were in!” The faux message ended: “Don’t bother to leave your name and phone number! We know who you are already.” Not exactly comedy gold. But the funny part – is that the Agency kept the clipping in its classified files for about thirty years before releasing it.
MAKE SWITZERLAND GREAT AGAIN: Despite bad weather on Independence Day in Washington, the U.S. Navy Blue Angels performed a picture-perfect flyby over the Lincoln Memorial. Their Swiss counterparts were not so fortunate. The “Patrouille Suisse” the Swiss Air Force flight demonstration team was scheduled to perform on Saturday at an event in Langenbruck honoring a Swiss aviation pioneer. Unfortunately, the team’s F-5E Tiger II aircraft are not equipped with GPS technology and the pilots tend to fly by the seat of their lederhosen. Somehow, they got confused and missed the right spot and instead made four passes over a yodeling festival in nearby Mümliswil, four miles away from the intended location.
IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING: Got any tips for your friendly neighborhood Dead Drop? Shoot us a note at TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
