APPARENTLY, THEY WERE OUT OF TOAD VENOM: Vitaly Robertus, the vice president of the Russian oil company, Lukoil, was found hanged in his office last week. According to The Daily Mail, he was the fifth high-ranking Lukoil executive to die since the start of Vladimir Putin’s war with Ukraine in 2022. The 53-year-old Robertus reportedly told friends he was being set-up for criminal prosecution for some unspecified charge. Co-workers are said to have found him hanging in the Lukoil loo but instead of calling an ambulance they summoned in house medics who said he was dead. Early in the “special military operation” many Lukoil execs were said to be not supportive of Putin’s continuing war efforts – but now (perhaps operating under new management) they will alter their stance. Among the previous Lukoil execs who met unexpected ends, one reportedly “fell” from the window of his hospital room while another is believed to have been poisoned with toad venom.
THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING: Some people are coming to the conclusion that the Russian government is run by some troublesome folks – but others have missed the wake-up call. August Hanning, former head of the German foreign intelligence service, the BND, did an interview with the U.K.’s Telegraph newspaper and said that his own country is “naïve” and should wake up to the fact that they are already in the middle of a conflict with Russia. “People are shying away from the truth. Russia is in a conflict with NATO, and Germany is of course part of that conflict,” Hanning said. He added: “Russia’s attack dramatically changed Europe’s security. Society is starting to wake up, but there are many people who haven’t woken up yet.” Along the same lines, former chief of Britain’s MI-6, Sir Richard Dearlove, told Politico recently “…we are at war — we’re engaged in a gray war with Russia, and I am trying to remind people of that.”
GAME OF DRONES: Now that DOD has declared UFOs MIA – some of the slack of mysterious flying objects may be taken up by drones of unknown origin. The website “The War Zone” says waves of mystery drones buzzed around Langley Air Force Base in Virginia at the end of last year. The USAF says there were a lot of UASs (uncrewed aerial systems) loitering near Langley in December adding that "None of the incursions appeared to exhibit hostile intent but anything flying in our restricted airspace can pose a threat to flight safety. The FAA was made aware of the UAS incursions." Sounds like no one knows (or is saying) who owns the drones – or why they were hanging around where they were.
THE PRICE OF DEFECTION WENT UP: You will remember recent stories in The Dead Drop about Russian helicopter pilot Maxim Kuzimov, who last summer, defected to Ukraine and reportedly was awarded $500,000 for bringing his flying object with him. Unfortunately, Maxim didn’t get to spend all of his bounty since it appears Putin operatives tracked him down in Spain and rewarded him with bullets. Now, according to an article filed from Taipei, Taiwan in the French newspaper Le Monde sometime late last year, a Taiwanese lieutenant colonel helicopter pilot was offered the equivalent of $15 million to fly off in an American-made Chinook helicopter and land on a Chinese navy ship operating in the Taiwan Strait. Despite reportedly being offered thirty times the amount Kuzimov got, the Taiwanese officer is said to have turned down Beijing’s offer.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
ROYAL MESS: While most observers are completely gobsmacked at how badly Kensington Palace has handled concerns about Princess Kate Middleton’s health and whereabouts – we have come up with one group of folks who seem happy about it. The team around Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin can take comfort in the knowledge that they no longer own the record for the worst (self-inflicted) communications problem of the year.
DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT: According to The Intercept, the Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has a $40 million-plus classified program designed to “minimize cognitive burden” on soldiers. We are not entirely sure what that means. Equally mystifying is the code name for the program: “CARCOSA.” As it turns out – that is the same name of a temple in the HBO-TV series “True Detective” – and in the TV version, CARCOSA is the place where elite pedophiles abuse children. The Intercept says there is no evidence that the military’s version envisions anything like that (thanks for telling us,) but they wonder why DARPA set themselves up to provide fodder to conspiracy theorists by choosing the same name. We don’t know but we have a guess – DARPA’s CARCOSA is an acronym (Cyber-Augmented Reality and Cyber-Operations Suite for Augmented Intelligence.) Our hunch is that the folks at DARPA, like us, have never watched “True Detective.” Going forward, the Pentagon probably needs to check all proposed code names to make sure they don’t set off some conspiracy theory alarms. Checking might be burdensome and may increase DARPA’s cognitive load but perhaps those checks could be accomplished using AI.
WHEN CONSPIRACY THEORIES GET DANGEROUS: The Cipher Brief recently held a briefing for Subscriber+Members focused on conspiracy theories, why people like em so much and how they can actually become dangerous. It turns out that there is one phenomena that at least one of the briefers believes is 100% responsible for the spread of conspiracy theories and why some, like who was behind the assassination of former president John F. Kennedy, remain ‘sticky’ even decades later.
UNCLUTCH THOSE PEARLS! Judicial Watch is peddling some documents which purport to show for the first time that the CIA played “limited but key roles in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.” So it says in The Washington Examiner. A casual reader might think that means that the Agency helped instigate the insurrection but no – the documents simply show that the CIA sent “several” dog teams to the Capitol area after things got wild – and also lent some “bomb techs” to help out after explosive devices were found near the RNC and DNC headquarters on January 6th. Some text messages obtained by FOIA reveal stuff like – when shots were fired inside the Capitol and that when a demonstrator, Ashley Babbitt was killed – the CIA director was informed. Well, duh. “These striking records show that CIA resources were deployed in reaction to the Jan. 6 disturbance,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. We’re not really conspiracy theorists, but what would have been striking would have been if every federal agency in DC with capabilities didn’t lend a hand.
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