Dead Drop: July 26

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE PRESIDENTIAL ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT?  No, not that one. We missed this with all of the focus around events in Butler, PA, but various media reports say Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said there have been several attempts to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin. Demonstrating a clear grasp of the obvious, Budanov was quoted as saying, “But as you can see, they were unsuccessful.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was unimpressed saying, “The threat from the Kiev regime is obvious.” In a bit of macabre commentary, Peskov said that one day – when Putin does die, Russian will act like they did when Stalin passed in 1953.  For people in the USSR at the time he said, “their whole world collapsed, they didn’t know how to go on living.” Another Russian spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, blamed the U.S. for funding Ukrainian assassination attempts and suggested that the U.S. should use its money to invest in domestic security instead – citing the recent attempt on Donald Trump’s life. There is no evidence that Putin has suffered any similar close calls.

TARGET RICH OPPORTUNITY:  Just over a week ago, back when the presidential campaign was believed to be Biden vs. Trump, the Washington Examiner published a column that said spies from all over the world are closely following the U.S. election. John Schindler, who served at the NSA as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer, wrote that foreign spies in DC will be “working the diplomatic-media-political cocktail circuit, schmoozing Congressional staffers, journalists, and other diplomats.” And they’ll be using technology to collect intelligence too. Schindler listed phone calls, text, emails and such as likely targets. He speculated about whether Biden would stay in the race or not saying “foreign spies from numerous countries will likely know Biden’s fate before America does.” We wonder how that worked out for them.