WHALE TALES: Loyal Dead Drop readers will remember that a little over four years ago, we told you about a Beluga whale that showed up off the coast of Norway wearing a harness that contained mounts for GoPro cameras and a piece of gear labeled “Equipment of St. Petersburg.” Speculation at the time, was that the Russians intended to use the whale for spying missions but that the plus-sized marine mammal had decided to defect. Well, the whale is back in the news – turning up off the coast of Sweden. Of course, lots of young Russian males have been leaving the country lately – so the whale, dubbed Hvaldimir by the Norwegians, may have just beaten the rush. There is also speculation that his recent reemergence just means he is searching for a mate. In any case – he seems quite friendly – unlike the orcas that have lived up to their name of “killer whales” by attacking and sinking boats recently, off the coast of Spain. Maybe they’re just mad they can’t find mates.
SPEAKING OF DEFECTIONS: Tara Reade, a former U.S. Senate aide who, during the 2020 presidential campaign, accused President Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her 30 years earlier – an allegation the President strongly denied - showed up in Moscow this week, and announced that she had made the “very difficult” decision to defect to Russia. Reade has requested Russian citizenship and says she now feels “very surrounded by protection and safety.” She made her comments sitting alongside Maria Butina, who was convicted and jailed in the U.S. for working for Russian intelligence. Reade apologized to her “Russian brothers and sisters” because of the aggressive stance that American elites are taking against Russia.
GLAD THEY DIDN’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY: Senator Lindsey Graham (R, SC) also visited Ukraine recently and met with President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Senator made some comments at the event to the effect that U.S. aid to Ukraine was “the best money we’ve ever spent” and he noted that Russians “are dying.” Some of the coverage of the visit edited the remarks making it sound as if Graham tied the two comments together. Russia Media Monitor Julia Davis in The Daily Beast noted that the remarks did not go down well in some circles. For example, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev talked darkly about how in America, “dirty money” is spent on killing senators – and named a variety of American politicians who have been murdered. As is her wont, head of RT, Margarita Simonyan, doubled down and said she hoped that the grandchildren of the guy who assassinated Leon Trotsky, take care of Graham noting, “It’s not even hard. We have his address.”” Doubling down on the doubling down, the Kremlin’s Interior Ministry issued an arrest warrant for Graham on Monday. Graham tweeted to his Russian “friends” that he would submit to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court if they did the same.
SPEAKING OF UKRAINE: The Cipher Brief hosted its first-ever Economic and Security Forum in Kyiv this week. That’s right. Kyiv. You didn’t hear about it? That’s probably because the entire forum was carried out in stealth mode because, well, there’s a war. But if you follow The Cipher Brief on Twitter and LinkedIn, we’re told some photographic evidence will be leaking out soon. Our own spies (literally) tell us that an address by the head of the presidential office of Ukraine, Andrii Yermak and conversations about the state of the war that were led by Cipher Brief Expert General David Petraeus (Ret.) were among the highlights of the two-day forum. We hear the event welcomed Ukrainian government ministers, deputy ministers, more than 80 Ukrainian professionals and the heads of some of Ukraine’s largest critical infrastructure providers as well as more than 50 business professionals from the U.S. who made the trip to engage in conversations about what is needed right now, on the cusp of a Ukrainian counteroffensive, and what solutions the private sector can bring to that mission.
THE DEVIL, YOU SAY: Sergei Naryshkin, chief of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service, made a speech at a very different security forum outside Moscow last week, and kvetched about the world not rolling over when Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine. "The Anglo-Saxons might be advised to attend to their own internal civil conflicts. Better still, to clear off to their acquaintance, the devil," Naryshkin said. Just to make sure you got the point, he added that the “spiritual dimension of existence” and traditions in the U.S. and Europe “long ago gave way to positivism, the cult of material success and outright Satanism.”
WE WEREN’T THE ONLY ONES UNSURE ABOUT 4THEPURE: Last week, we found ourselves wondering about news that former National Security Advisor and retired Lieutenant General Mike Flynn’s might be associated with a dating site for anti-vaxxers called “4thePURE.” Yes, it’s a dating site for anti-vaxxers. Initially, we were unsure if the ads promoting the site weren’t some kind of AI hoax…or a delayed April Fool’s joke. The folks at Salon.com had questions too. They reported this week, that a Twitter account associated with 4ThePURE had only 27 followers (but maybe their target audience is only on Truth Social). Also, the myth busting outfit Snopes looked into 4ThePURE as well and said “Though we have found no evidence to suggest that the ad and video are inauthentic, Snopes is still in the process of trying to confirm Flynn's direct participation in them. We have reached out to Flynn for comment and will update this fact check if and when we receive a response. For now, we rate the claim "Research in Progress."”
TUBERVILLE ADVISOR GOES DOWN THE TUBES: You know those stories we have been telling you about how Senator Tommy Tuberville (R, AL) has almost singlehandedly been standing between a couple hundred admirals and generals and their promotions? Well it turns out the Senator was not alone in the mission, According to a feature in The Washington Post, Morgan Murphy, the senator’s national security advisor, was key to the operation. The Post described Murphy as a “Navy captain who once sold his own line of bacon products.” Turns out, Murphy was a naval reservist who spent time writing for Vanity Fair and making appearances on the home shopping network QVC. Murphy may see himself as a fashion-plate and raconteur but he also may have dressed up his self-importance a bit too much, since Politico reports he resigned this week ,blaming the Post for overstating his role in the senator’s blockade. Subsequently, Murphy went out of his way to tell Politico that Tuberville was the guy in charge. Apparently, the Senator was unhappy with the implication that his staffer was the brains behind the operation – and now Murphy is no longer bringing home the bacon from the Tuberville staff.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
OK, WE LIED: We promised to quit posting stuff about Scott Ritter’s book tour of Russia – but the former UN weapons inspector and convicted felon keeps saying dumb stuff that is hard to ignore. This week, he took his book peddling to Crimea where he praised Vladimir Putin as “the greatest leader of all time” and reportedly said he wants to ask Putin if he could find it in his heart to forgive the USA for all it has done to try to destroy the “thriving” Russia. The website “Euronews” asks (but doesn’t really answer) the question: “Why do disgraced Americans like Scott Ritter spout pro-Putin propaganda in Russia?” They call people like Ritter, Oliver Stone, Steven Seagal, and others “tankies” – slang which first was applied to folks who downplayed the use of Kremlin tanks to suppress protests in Prague and Budapest. We wonder if they will add Tara Reade to that list now as well. And hey, pretty soon, they might have enough people to create their own dating site.
TANKS FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS: Send us news tips that will help us bedevil the forces of evil. Send them to us at: TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
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