WISE MOVE: As part of their Memorial Day weekend coverage, ABC News’ “This Week” featured a segment about the Wise family who lost two brothers in combat as recounted in the book Three Wise Men, (which was recently reviewed in The Cipher Brief.) Sole surviving brother Beau Wise was interviewed in front of the Memorial Wall at CIA headquarters where – for the first time - he was able to see the star engraved to honor his brother. Also interviewed for the segment was Bill Burns who made his first Sunday show appearance as CIA director and noted that the “… memorial wall is hallowed ground for CIA, it now holds 137 stars, each one marking a CIA officer who was killed in the line of duty." Burns added "Sadly, a few days ago, at our annual memorial ceremony, we added four new stars to this wall."
NEWS FLASH — BELLINGCAT RINGS AMERICAN BELL: We suspect U.S. officials (and others) have quite enjoyed the investigative journalism site Bellingcat because of the way it reveals Russian secrets. In recent years they’ve uncovered the details of the attempted assassinations of former Russian Officer Sergei Skripal and Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. But U.S. officials might not be quite as thrilled with a story the website published late last week, revealing that they believe they have been able to identify the exact locations where the U.S. stores nuclear weapons in Europe. Apparently, they figured this out by examining popular online education websites that help create flashcards. Bellingcat says the flashcards were used by U.S. troops looking to familiarize themselves with fun facts like which on base shelters were “hot vaults” with live nuclear weapons. "By simply searching online for terms publicly known to be associated with nuclear weapons, Bellingcat was able to discover cards used by military personnel serving at all six European military bases reported to store nuclear devices," according to Foeke Postma, the author of the Bellingcat article.
FORREST GAZUMP: British Parliamentarians were looking into their country’s less-than-stellar response to the COVID-19 crisis recently and Dominic Commings, a former aide to Prime Minister Boris Johnson testified that in the early days of the crisis “…we had Trump sending the CIA around trying to gazump everybody on PPE.” “Gazump” as it turns out – is a term used in the British real estate world meaning: “to outbid a potential buyer after the seller has already agreed to sell a property at a given price.” We didn’t know that PPE buying was part of the Agency’s portfolio but, like Forrest Gump, they seem to be everywhere (at least in some minds) and like a box of chocolate, you never know what you’re gonna get.
MAY BE CROOKED: The Daily Beast is reporting that May Salehi, a 65-year-old State Department employee, is under investigation for allegedly engaging in “corporate espionage.” When last we checked, she had not been formally charged but she was singled out in a federal search warrant looking into whether she helped steer State Department construction contracts to a Maryland firm called Mosaic, Inc. The founder of that firm, Sina Moayedi, was arrested on Friday on charges that he paid an unnamed “insider” in the State Department’s Overseas Building Operations (OBO) branch tens of thousands of dollars for information which enabled him to win more than $100 million in contracts. According to the search warrant, feds believe that Salahi, who works in OBO, had extensive dealings with Moayedi and say that in recent years, secured a $1.5 million mortgage on a house in Great Falls, VA and bought a Porsche Boxster convertible — all on a $9,333 a month salary.
WHY DIDN’T WE THINK OF THAT: Long-time George H.W. Bush staffer, Jean Becker, is out with a new book about her old boss titled, The Man I Knew. Early reviews include an anecdote about the former president – who was also a former CIA director - getting a call in 2012 relaying that there were rumors that his long-time friend, former Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Prince Bandar had been assassinated. Bush had Becker call the CIA to ask if the reports were true. CIA officials told her they had heard the same rumors and were trying to confirm or deny them. After days passed with no answer, Bush ordered Becker to simply call Bandar. It had not occurred to her (or apparently to the CIA) to place a call directly to the prince to ask him if he was alive or dead. Minutes later, Bandar was on the phone and he assured Bush that he was still alive – although the Syrians were apparently trying to change that, so he was in hiding – but his cell phone still worked. Sometimes the best way to collect intelligence is by just asking.
THEY PROBABLY TEACH “CALLING ON THE PHONE” NOW: A U.K.-based journalism podcast…cleverly called “The Journalism Podcast” recently featured Jacob Eastham and Nyssa Straatveit who are described as “creative thinking instructors” at the CIA. The site says the CIA has developed four techniques to help “agents” unlock their solution-generating power known as: the wombat, the wolf, the wood duck and the otter…which sounds like quite a menagerie. Eastham and Straatveit have been talking publicly about this zoological approach to analysis for some time. We found a summary of a similar pitch they gave at the 2019 SXSW conference.
UNUSUAL ADVANCE TEAM: A website called Explica.com says that CIA Deputy Director David Cohen was in Mexico last week to prepare for an upcoming visit by Vice President Kamala Harris. “Explica” explains that the Mexican Foreign Ministry announced that “coordination meetings were held between David Cohen, deputy director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and officials from the National Defense and Defense departments, Navy, as well as the National Intelligence Center of Mexico.” We don’t recall many examples in the past of foreign ministries announcing the travel of CIA Deputy Directors – and certainly not tying those visits to future travel of a U.S. vice president – but we live in unusual times.
UNUSUAL CONCERT: CBS News’ Catherine Herridge helped mark Memorial Day weekend this past week by filing a report on a “covert concert” held regularly to raise money to support the CIA, Special Operations and Defense Intelligence memorial foundations. Former CIA officer (and Cipher Brief expert) Mark Kelton was interviewed for the piece. Past concerts have featured performers like ZZ Top, The Steve Miller Band, and Peter Frampton and have raised over $3.5 million to support the educational needs of the children of the fallen. Kelton declined to even give the name of the concert series. Given that level of secrecy – perhaps they should book “The Who” next. Herridge also interviewed Alison Spann, whose father, CIA officer Mike Spann, was the first American to be killed in Afghanistan nearly twenty years ago after 9/11. Scholarships from the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation helped put her through college. She is now a television anchor/reporter in Biloxi, MS.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
ANOTHER CAPTAIN OBVIOUS SIGHTING: The White House released a letter this week from Anne Neuberger, Cybersecurity Advisor at the National Security Council, telling businesses that they need to do a better job of securing their systems against ransomware attacks, saying there has been a significant rise in the frequency and size of attacks. Forgive us for being a bit on the snarky side: The Cipher Brief held a briefing in the fall of 2020 with FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia, who called last year the year of ransomware. White House Spokesperson Jen Psaki also noted during a press briefing this week that President Biden has ordered a ‘rapid review’ of the threat from ransomware. Maybe they should include in their rapid review a measure to ensure their TCB subscription is up to date.
NEW NEWS ON OLD UFOS: UFOs or UAPs or whatever folks want to call them, are very much in the news these days. There seem to be new revelations daily. A website that calls itself unknownboundaries.com dug up an item from 1955 that adds to the mystery. According to a declassified CIA document, the site says then-Senator Richard Russell was traveling on a Soviet train on a fact-finding mission in Russia when he saw “UFOs being launched within eyesight of the railroad tracks.” But these weren’t flying saucers – they were flying triangles. Russell and staff rushed to the train’s windows to see what was up – but a Russian steward pulled down a shade to block the sight. We are not sure what to make of this 65+ year old revelation but we think Bellingcat should dig into the unexplained flying boomerangs.
CAN YOU EXPLAIN THE INEXPLICABLE? If you have any sightings of unusual news in our wheelhouse – why not launch them toward the Dead Drop? Shoot us a note at TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
