BAER FACTS: The last time former CIA officer Robert Baer was mentioned in The Cipher Brief was when three former counterintelligence chiefs dismantled arguments he made in his recent book, The Fourth Man. Now, we hear he has decided to become an unpaid agent/lobbyist of the Ukrainian government. According to a filing made with the Department of Justice earlier this month, Baer plans to “Help Ukraine navigate through arm purchases, including political lobbying in the House and Senate, make public realtime geolocation of Russian intelligence operative (sic) as part of a psyop no fees, no expenses.” He also said he would consult with members of Congress and the intelligence community. Baer has been a paid consultant for CNN for years, though spies tell us that arrangement has now come to an end. It would seem a bit odd to have a CNN contributor also conducting psyops for a foreign government. Now that would be a headline.
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE: You might want to read this one with your eyes covered due to graphic content. But maybe not the kind of graphic content you normally think about when you’re talking about the Wagner Group. We’ve got to hand it to their recruiting team. Tasked with the unenviable job of getting volunteers to join the Russian mercenary group that is being thrown into the meat grinder in Ukraine – they must have asked themselves – where can we advertise to best reach our target audience? The answer? Pornhub. According to the New York Post, the site recently aired a Wagner Group commercial (which you can see here) showing a blonde woman wearing red lipstick, twirling a large lollipop in her mouth while a “husky female voice purrs in the background: we are the f-king coolest private army in the world.” But wait, there’s more. The narrator goes on to say: “We are recruiting fighters from all regions of Russia. Don’t whack off, go to work for PMC Wagner.” Vice News later reported that the advertisement has been removed by Pornhub – because, after all, Pornhub DOES have some standards. No way of knowing how many Russian young men succumbed to the allure of the advertisement – and will soon be on their way to Ukraine to get whacked.
IF PORNHUB IS NOT YOUR THING: Russia Media Watcher Julia Davis recently posted a “motivational” video showing images of Putin, Lenin, Stalin and Peter the Great – along with lots of pictures of military activity and religious icons. The music is an odd mix of Prokofiev put to a rock beat – with someone appearing to say (in English) at the start – “Oh yeah!” The lyrics (kindly translated by Ms. Davis) includes lines like: “Arise Russian people, into a glorious battle, into a battle to the death!” Which is repeated many times in the video and “Arise, free people! For our honest land!” Honestly.
GIVE PERPS A CHANCE: Here is another gem (and by “gem” we mean cringeworthy) clip provided by Julia Davis. Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter appeared in a lengthy interview on Russian TV denying that he is an agent of the Kremlin and saying that his country, the US, is on the wrong side of history vis-a-vis Ukraine. He laments that after the dissolution of the USSR, Americans quit respecting Russia. Now, he says U.S. intelligence is supporting “Nazi Banderites” in Ukraine. Ritter then went on with some story about how CIA helped foment a coup in Ukraine that would somehow help bring down the Russian government. Frankly, we lost track of the argument there. As far as we can tell, the Russian interviewer failed to mention Ritter’s conviction for an online sex offense involving a minor.
JUST SPITBALLING HERE: Recently, a media site we had never heard of (Mintpress News) attacked two organizations we have heard of – Georgetown University and the Central Intelligence Agency. An article by a chap named Alan Macleod asks: “where do America’s spies come from?” According to Macleod, the answer is the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. His evidence is that there are more than two dozen ex-CIA officials on the staff and he said: “the school tailors its courses towards producing the next generation of analysts, assassins, coup-plotters and economic hitmen, fast-tracking graduates into the upper echelons of the national security state.” Backing up his theory, Macleod darkly notes that current CIA Director Bill Burns gave a speech at Georgetown last month and included a line that he hoped the students present would explore the promise of government service. How dare he? The article mentions a number of adjunct professors and others with CIA experience which he describes as their “dark pasts.” It describes the faculty members as “former” CIA agents – with quotation marks around the word former. There are factual errors in the piece (such as blaming Abu Ghraib on the CIA when the mistreatment of prisoners there was done by U.S. Army reservists.) MacLeod says he got his PhD in 2017 (we’re guessing in Scotland somewhere) but he doesn’t give the school. But it got us thinking, why would there be so many former CIA officers at Georgetown – and so many Georgetown grads at CIA? The fact that their campuses are less than seven miles apart might have something to do with it, and it is a foreign service school for crying out loud. In doing a little research of our own on Mintpress, we found a story from another media outlet we’ve never heard of, claiming some pretty dark things about Mintpress and questioning who’s funding it. Guess you can just never be too careful about where you get your news these days.
BECAUSE THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH SHOWS ON TV ABOUT THE FBI: Netflix is streaming another one called: “The Night Agent.” It stars Gabriel Basso. According to IMDB, the show’s premise is that “low-level FBI Agent Peter Sutherland works in the basement of the White House - manning a phone that never rings – until the night it does – propelling him into a conspiracy that leads all the way to the Oval Office.” The 10-part series began streaming on March 23rd. A trailer can be seen here. The series is based on a novel by Matthew Quirk who once wrote a piece in the Washington Post saying that the research he did for thrillers has shown him how vulnerable the US is to terrorists. If the showrunners run out of Quirky plotlines – they might look to a piece in Politico this week titled “Fear, burnout and insubordination: Insiders spill details about life at the highest levels of FBI.” Now that could prompt some thriller ideas.
NEED TO KNOW: On a more serious note, Nick Reynolds’ resume is one for the history books: a PhD from Oxford, followed by active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps, and then service with the CIA – both overseas and running the CIA Museum. Last year, he published Need to Know: World War II and the Rise of American Intelligence, a well-received book that explores the origins, successes and failures of the whole range of U.S. intelligence agencies during the war. Cover Stories Podcast co-host host Bill Harlow digs into some of the colorful cast of characters with author Reynolds in this week's Cover Stories Podcast.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
THINGS ARE NOT LOOKING UP IN NORTH KOREA: The Indian website FirstPost recently reported that according to a South Korean publication, a North Korean security official was executed for the crime of Googling his boss, Kim Jong Un. The unnamed official allegedly worked for the Ministry of State Security in a division charged with managing the country’s information barrier – to prevent citizens from learning about their nation. Apparently, this gent let his curiosity get the better of him and used his uncommon access to the internet to find out what the rest of the world was reading on the Dear Leader (AKA the “Little Rocket Man.”) It is believed that one of the official’s co-workers ratted on him and the penalty for Googling the boss was to face a firing squad. Good thing he didn’t look up Pornhub.
BEAM ME UP! Fox News personality Tucker Carlson was on some podcast recently and revealed that he had a discussion with a Stanford professor who says that 11 years ago, he was asked by DOD to investigate more than 100 cases of troops dying due to UFO-inflicted brain injuries. Wait till all the law firms that have been chasing toxic water cases at Camp Lejeune hear about this one.
DON’T MAKE US WAIT FOR TUCKER CARLSON TO REVEAL THE NEWS ON SOME PODCAST: Send us news we can use for upcoming Dead Drops. You can send nuggets to: TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
updated 3/24 to reflect that Bob Baer is no longer a consultant for CNN
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