DONG GONE? There was an interesting story floating around this week – about whether a senior Chinese counterintelligence official may have defected to the United States several months ago. The Daily Beast said there were rumors that Dong Jingwei, a vice minister of State Security (MSS) for China, seemed to have dropped out of sight. If he had indeed switched teams – he would have been the highest (known) ranking Chinese defector ever. The news excited some news organizations that speculated (apparently without evidence) that Dong might have brought with him proof that the COVID-19 virus escaped from a lab and was not born in a Wuhan wet market. The conservative news site The Blaze said there was speculation suggesting that Dong was the ultimate “walk in,” flying from Hong Kong to California on his own and then calling the Defense Intelligence Agency and offering his services. And there were some intriguing aspects to the story – such as the fact that, for a while, Dong’s images mysteriously disappeared from the Chinese search engine Baidu. And some observers thought that it would be a simple thing for Beijing to trot out Dong for a photo op if he were alive and well – and living in China. The U.S. intelligence community is not commenting on the record – which is understandable. But putting a ding in the Dong story, the authors of the original piece now say they received a call on Tuesday by a U.S. official who insisted on anonymity before saying that their original story was “not accurate.” When asked why they were reaching out to knock down the story – the anonymous officials referred the reporters to the White House – which (reportedly) did not respond. Then on Thursday, Dong apparently showed up at an event in Shanghai. There were pictures of him on stage — but no evidence that he spoke. Body double? Evil twin? Or just an initial (speculative) report Dong gone wrong? And they say good information is hard to come by…
(UPDATE: DING ON OUR DONG STORY: The above mentioned story swirling around about the possible defection of Dong Jingwei, the Chinese vice minister of State Security. As we mentioned in the piece – rumors of Dong’s defection turned out to be incorrect. But also incorrect was when we attributed the original story to The Daily Beast when it appeared first in a Spy Talk article by Matthew Brazil and Jeff Stein. A further defect in our defector story was the notion that U.S. officials called the authors to tell them that their story was incorrect – when in fact the original story made clear that some experts doubted it from the start. The U.S. official was simply advising the reporters that the rumors were wrong – not their story. We regret not getting all that right in the first place.)
SALTY SHOCK AND AWE: Usually, when you get a new piece of gear, you want to take it out and test it to make sure it’s up to snuff, right? That’s what the U.S. Navy did last week when it conducted a “Full Ship Shock Trial” (FSST) for the aircraft carrier USS GERALD R. FORD (CVN 78.) The test involved setting off an underwater 40,000-pound explosive near the ship to see if FORD would spring a leak or something. It turned out that the test made quite an impact with the explosion registering as a 3.9 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Florida. The video is notable. The good news is that FORD is still afloat – but we suspect car alarms went off all over the Sunshine State.
UNIDENTIFIED FLOATING OBJECTS: Keeping up with a nautical theme for the moment, there is this odd item. Last week, the Automated Identification System that tracks ships at sea, falsely showed two NATO warships menacingly close to a Russian-controlled naval base in the Black Sea. But in fact, both ships, one British (HMS Defender) and the other Dutch (HNLMS Evertsen), were moored in Odessa, Ukraine 180 miles away. Whether this was a weird electronic glitch or the Russians were manufacturing provocations – remains unknown. Then earlier this week, Russia said it fired warning shots and dropped bombs in the path of HMS Defender to chase it out of Russian claimed waters – and the Brits said: no they didn’t. A BBC reporter who was aboard Defender at the time says he heard shots in the distance – but thought they were not shooting at or near the ship.
THIS WEEK IN WACKY CONSPIRACY THEORIES: There have been a lot of wild conspiracy theories being bandied about concerning the 2020 election – and one we had not focused on very much until last weekend has been dubbed “Italy-gate.” In late December 2020, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reportedly asked the acting Attorney General to look into allegations that an Italian defense contractor had conspired with U.S. intelligence to rig the 2020 presidential election. Documents released by Congress last week, say that the allegation was that the Italian company, in coordination with CIA officials, used Italian military satellites to change votes from Trump to Biden. We did not know those Italian satellites were so capable. According to The Washington Post, the Italy-gate theory may trace back to Bradley Johnson, who says he is a retired CIA officer and who runs an obscure organization called “Americans for Intelligence Reform.”
HE SOUNDS NICE: We remember hearing about Johnson a couple years ago when he said in an interview that it would be a “very healthy thing for our country” if Obama administration officials were executed for treason. He listed former FBI director James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe and former CIA Director John Brennan as potential candidates for a noose. And we were reminded of that story this past week by another story in the International Business Times which reports that there is a viral claim circulating – that Brennan and Hillary Clinton had recently been tried by a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay and hanged. We are going to go out on a limb and guess that that viral story – as the unnamed official in our first item said is “not accurate.” And they say good information is hard to come by…
APPARENTLY THERE ARE NO RETIRED MARINES IN HIS DISTRICT: Congressman Madison Cawthorn (R, NC) was on Newsmax recently defending the Second Amendment saying that it exists so that “if a tyrannical government ever wants to rise up, we can stop them.” The congressman added that those who think small arms fire could not stop the federal government need to “Ask the Viet Cong how they handled the Marines and the Army in Vietnam.” Cawthorn, who is 25, was home-schooled in high school and is a veteran of one semester at Patrick Henry College, where he reportedly dropped out before earning a degree.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
BELATED FATHER’S DAY GIFT IDEA: Some outfit is selling patches, t-shirts, challenge coins and other gear with the inscriptions: “Secret Jewish Space Laser Corps: Mazel Tough!” The flip side says: “Death Star of David Division.” We don’t even know what to think of this one.
RUFF DAY AT CIA HQ: There were some tense moments near the main entrance of the Central Intelligence Agency on June 18th when a suspicious object was spotted outside. A bomb was feared – so roads were closed and a wheeled robot was deployed. A local TV news helicopter caught images of a bomb squad member in a moon suit gingerly placing the suspicious object on a sidewalk column so it could be examined. Turned out, it was a remote control device for a dog training collar. Given past deadly security incidents at the CIA’s front gate – extreme caution is entirely understandable.
STATE OF DISREPAIR: The Cipher Brief had a question for the State Department press office this week and we sent an email to the public affairs press duty officer. It bounced back with an “out of office” notice telling us to contact the PA Press Duty office. We checked the State Department website and it provided an email address for the PA Press Duty officer during normal working hours (which was when we emailed, of course) and it provided an email address for off duty hours – which is exactly the same. Not to worry – we also had a phone number. We called that and got an automated message saying they were helping “other callers” and suggested that we send an email to (you guessed it) the same address that says they are away until July 6. To be fair, someone did email us back after a few hours. We just couldn't resist wondering if their phone system was set up by the same people who run the customer call in lines for the cable companies.
INTERGALACTIC GAFFE: We missed this one from a couple weeks ago – but cannot let it go by unnoticed. Major General DeAnna Burt was sworn into the Space Force recently and the event included some folks dressed up as Imperial Stormtroopers and Darth Vader. As you may know (but General Burt apparently didn’t) Darth and the Stormtroopers are not generally viewed as “good guys.” Seizing on the incident, quirky defense reporter Jeff Schogol of Task and Purpose took the opportunity to toy with Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. At a press briefing, Schogol asked: “Does the Defense Department endorse the values of the Intergalactic Empire?” Entirely mixing movie metaphors, Kirby replied: “You’re killing me, Smalls.” Then after a pause, Kirby added: “We support and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” Fortunately, Kirby did not say that they TRY to support and defend the Constitution – or someone would have been forced to remind him “Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.”
THESE AREN’T THE DROIDS YOU ARE LOOKING FOR: No, but if you spot them – or any hot news we can use – please send them to us at TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
