NOT SO ‘SPOOKY’ NEIGHBORS: The CBS Saturday Morning show recently featured video of a home in northern Virginia that was purchased by Margaret Scattergood and Florence Thomas in 1933. A couple decades later, the U.S. government wanted to acquire the house along with the adjacent grounds to build a new headquarters for the Central Intelligence Agency. The two women struck a savvy deal. They sold their home and grounds to the government for $55,000 with the understanding that they would be allowed to live in the home for the rest of their lives. The CIA headquarters opened in 1961, and the women became part of the family. Thorne passed away in 1973 at the age of 95 and Scattergood remained there until she passed away in 1986 at the age of 92. For a while after that, the CIA used the home to house their K-9 unit but in recent years the place has been beautifully restored and was reopened in 2004 as “The Scattergood-Thorne Conferencing Center.”
THE SCHOOL OF VICE: Chances are, you have never heard of the Defense Information School (DINFOS) that trains military journalists, broadcasters, and public affairs officers. Currently, the school is located at Fort Meade, MD (though the outfit has had several other homes in its nearly 60-year lifetime.) Among the school’s alumni – Senator J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for Vice President. What’s the story, you ask? Vance enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps after high school and after attending DINFOS, served in the Iraq War as a combat correspondent with the 2nd Marine Air Wing. But here’s the odd thing. You know who else is a graduate of DINFOS? Former Vice Presidents Walter Mondale, Dan Quayle and Al Gore. Why one DOD training activity has turned out so many vice presidents (and aspiring Veeps) is anyone’s guess. The Cipher Brief’s Senior Cyber & Tech Analyst Ken Hughes, and Senior Book Editor and Cover Stories Co-host Bill Harlow are also DINFOS grads. Both assure us, however, that they have no plans to run for vice president.
IS IT THE SEASON FOR RUSSIAN TREASON? According to the Associated Press, the number of reported cases of treason and espionage has skyrocketed since the start of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. An outfit that tracks espionage cases, known as the ‘First Department’, says there were over 100 known treason cases in Russia in 2023 alone and likely an equal number that have not been publicized. The definition of treason seems quite flexible – for example Ksenia Khavana, a 33-year-old dual U.S-Russian citizen, was charged with treason for donating $51 to a charity in the U.S. that helps Ukraine. An increasing number of foreigners are being charged with espionage in Russia as well – often on what appear to be trumped up charges. Go figure.
BELOW PAR PERFORMANCE: We’ve told you before that Russian armed forces are using what are essentially modified golf carts to move their troops around the battlefield. That’s because so many traditional armored vehicles have been lost, that it is no longer an uncommon sight to see golf carts putting around the rough battlefields of Ukraine. Forbes reported that at least five cart-like all-terrain vehicles hauling Russian infantry were recently destroyed. The article carried a photo of a Russian cart with what looks like an enormous chain link “anti-drone cage” built around it.
LOST AND FOUND (AND KINDA LOST): Rear Admiral Grace Hopper was a trailblazing computer pioneer. Legend has it that she was the first person to coin the term “bug” – referring to software problems – stemming from a time in 1947, when an actual moth got inside the Harvard Mark I computer she was working on. Hopper successfully “debugged” it. She also had a long and productive career, helping create COBOL and dragging the military kicking and screaming into the computer age. Well, it turns out that Hopper delivered a landmark lecture to the folks at the National Security Agency in 1982, and a lot of people would like to know what she said. With so much time having passed – it couldn’t possibly still be classified, right? Well, Muckrock News, FOIA’d (a request for access under the Freedom of Information Act for the uninitiated) it in 2021, and two and half years later, they were told that there were “no responsive documents.” But other records show that there were recordings of Hopper’s August 19, 1982 lecture within the archives of the National Cryptographic School. The problem was that the lecture was recorded on AMPEX 1-inch Video Tape Recorders and NSA no longer had access to machines that could play or copy them. Somehow – with all the technical wizardry that NSA can amass – we suspect they could find a way to convert the ancient tapes to some format accessible today. No doubt Muckrock and others will be bugging them to do so.
ALL ROADS LEAD TO MY SPY: Opening in theaters right now, is the sequel to the 2020 movie “My Spy.” This one is called “My Spy The Eternal City.” The concept, according to the producers, is that JJ, a veteran CIA agent (sic), reunites with “his protégé Sophie, in order to prevent a catastrophic nuclear scheme aimed at the Vatican, which disrupts a high school choir trip to Italy.” As you might imagine from that plot – it is described as an action comedy. It stars Dave Bautista, Choloe Coleman, Kristen Schall, and Ken Jeong – all of whom were in the earlier version (which we told you about at the time.)
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
SLIMMING DOWN THE FAT HEN: “Bundesnachrichtendienst. James Bundesnachrichtendienst.” The German intelligence agency that everyone calls the “BND” because the official name of “Bundesnachrichtendienst” is too much of a mouthful, has launched a new campaign to recruit employees. Like other intelligence services around the world, the BND has found that it needs to modernize the techniques it uses to fill its ranks. According to the German news agency DPA, the drive reportedly includes a new logo, semi-mysterious catchphrases and advertising videos with a driving bass beat – intended to evoke James Bond movies. The bird in the BND’s former logo was described as looking like a “fat hen” but has been slimmed down and looks part eagle, part fingerprint, and part target (at least to us.) One new poster that is part of the campaign alludes to Bond. The text reads: “No shaking, no stirring. Just apply.”
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