Dead Drop: March 24

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.

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

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