Dead Drop: July 30

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US:  This week marks the sixth anniversary of The Dead Drop. We are going to keep doing it until we get it right.  In that first edition on July 31, 2016 we talked about senior officials throwing out first pitches at baseball games. Man, have times changed.

GAME OF THROWS:  We want to be David Cohen when we grow up. He seems to have a lot of fun. A couple years ago he had a walk-on part in The Game of Thrones (he explained to us in 2019 how that came about) and now we hear the CIA Deputy Director got to throw out the first pitch at Fenway Park where his hometown Boston Red Sox were playing their arch enemies, the New York Yankees. “Our cousin from Boston” tells us the pitch was a strike and was praised by the Red Sox TV analysts who said Cohen would be “hard on right-handed batters and bad guys.” In addition to being interviewed on TV, Cohen (a former Cipher Brief expert) was also on the Red Sox radio network. The Yankees were at bat at the time and after the umps called a close pitch a ball, Cohen told play-by-play announcer Joe Castiglione: “the CIA does intelligence assessments, and I would assess that was a strike.”  Making the most of the occasion, Cohen also delivered strong pitches for the CIA Officer’s Memorial Foundation and the Third Option Foundation.