BACK STABBERS: Former Navy civilian intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard has spoken out for the first time since emigrating to Israel late last year after serving 30 years for selling U.S. secrets to that nation. He told an Israeli newspaper that he peddled American secrets because America had “stabbed Israel in the back” by not willingly sharing the information with them that Pollard eventually sold them.
OATH BREAKERS: We have been following with interest, reports on current and former members of the military, government, and law enforcement who have been swept up in the arrests connected with the January 6th insurrection. Some might argue it is unfair to single out people just because of their past line of work. But so far, statistics show that there is a greater percentage of people from some of those categories than occur in the general population. Latest example: Army Times reports that retired Green Beret, Sgt 1st Class Jeffrey McKellop, was denied bond by a judge this week after being charged with trying to spear a D.C. cop with a flagpole. In addition to being retired military, McKellop reportedly worked as a contractor for both the State Department and CIA. Of course, he - like the others charged - is innocent until proven guilty – but generally speaking, we had hoped for better from those who had pledged to support and defend the Constitution.
POLY CAUGHT A WHACKO: Some people question the value of polygraph examinations in screening applicants for sensitive federal jobs. The tests are often like the intelligence community itself – their failures are touted but their successes go unknown. But not always. The Daily Beast reports that in May 2020, a Colorado man, Ethan Collins, applied for a position in the federal government that required a background check and “poly.” Court records say Collins failed three of them – and eventually admitted that he hates the U.S. government, has a sweet spot in his heart for terrorism, and had been planning to “take down” several buildings, destroy the electrical power grid by throwing a wrench into a turbine, and blow up several police stations in Denver. The Daily Beast also reports that Collins expressed admiration for those who plotted to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer last year. Investigators searched his home outside of Denver and said they found three homemade black pipe-shaped silencers, seven firearms, ammunition, and ballistic gear. No word on whether any wrenches were found. The website said they reached out to Collins’ lawyer for comment, but didn’t get a response.
CRAZY STUPID: Then, there is Wisconsin native Ian Alan Olson, who reportedly drove 800 miles from his home to Washington, DC earlier this month. The Daily Beast says Olson told U.S. Capitol Police officers on March 3rd that he was “maybe going to do something crazy stupid tomorrow” (the day that he and fellow Q-Anon supporters thought that Donald Trump would return to take over the government.) His “thinking” according to court records, was that he would conduct some sort of attack and if the National Guard didn’t shoot him – he would know they were loyal to the “people” and if they did shoot him – well, he was willing to die to find out. Olson was reportedly locked up in a D.C. psychiatric hospital for a “brief psychotic disorder” but released on March 5th. According to a complaint filed in Federal Court, that’s when things started to get crazy. The complaint asserts that on March 15, he drove his Subaru onto an Army Reserve base in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. The car was festooned with QAnon sayings on the doors, hood, roof, rear window and bumpers. Olson reportedly got out of his vehicle and fired a couple rounds from an “AR-15 style paintball gun” in the direction of two uniformed reservists. Then the paintball gun jammed, and the reservists tackled him and held him for police. A search of his car produced a gas mask, throwing knives, police scanner, taser, military-style ballistic plates and a three-page hand-written manifesto. The next day – he was again released from custody. Olson’s wife reportedly consented to a search of their home which produced a real (not paint gun) AR-15 with a scope, suppressor, and seven magazines loaded with armor piercing ammunition. His family said there were several other handguns “still outstanding.” Apparently, they will turn them over when they find them.
PUTIN ON THE HITS: Vladimir Putin is, as one outfit puts it “a wolf in sheepskin clothing.” The Russian president was pictured recently wearing wooly clothes while dining outdoors in Siberia with his defense minister – perhaps to bolster his tough-guy image. The Daily Mail now reports that a mysterious, anonymous Russian intelligence officer has warned of a “kill list” that Putin has assembled of six critics of Russia, who are living in Britain. They include Christopher Steele the former British MI6 officer who assembled the famous (or infamous to some) “Steele dossier” which repeated alleged kompromat that the Russians had assembled on Donald Trump prior to the 2016 election. The wild and wooly story warned that “a Russian special ops team is getting ready to cross into Britain from Ireland” to start whittling down Vlad’s kill list. This would be hard to believe – if the Russians hadn’t already done similar things in the UK on several occasions.
ONE IF BY LAND, TWO IF BY RIVER: Talk about seriously odd things happening around military housing, The Associated Press recently cited two senior U.S. intelligence officials (speaking anonymously) as saying there are concerns that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard may be planning an attack aimed at killing the Army’s vice chief of staff, Gen. Joseph Martin, at his home at Fort McNair in Washington. The attack, allegedly, would be in retaliation for the killing of Quds force leader, Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad by the U.S. in January 2020. The picturesque Fort McNair is situated along DC’s increasingly trendy waterfront district. The Army has pushed recently for permission to establish a security buffer zone along the Washington Channel – a request which has run into opposition from DC politicians. We remember the good old days when the most dangerous thing to come out of the water in the Potomac River – was the water from the Potomac River.
HOME SWEET HOME: Military members reportedly have taken to TikTok to show what their living conditions look like. According to Task & Purpose the short videos are like a mini version of the MTV series “Cribs.” Army folks show off their barracks. USAF airmen display what they call “dorms” – because the term “barracks” is too pedestrian for our high-flying servicemen and women. We haven’t seen any afloat berthing compartments from sailors and Marines – but maybe they are just better at complying with the military directives discouraging the use of TikTok for security reasons.
WATCH THIS SPACE: It has been a big week for other worldly news. Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told Fox News that a forthcoming government report on UFOs will reveal that there is lots of stuff we don’t understand. For example, mysterious flying objects that break the sound barrier – without creating a sonic boom. The Pentagon is expected to put out a report by June 1 which was mandated as part of the December 2020 COVID-19 relief bill. Senator Marco Rubio beamed into TMZ from Reagan National Airport to reveal that he is worried about UFOs flying near U.S. military bases. If they are aliens, he said, they must be smarter than we are because they “made it all the way here” while “we can’t get there.” Then The Sun newspaper reported that a British UFO expert says the CIA secretly probed “real” alien autopsy films from the late 1940s before someone created well-known fake alien autopsy videos. Exactly who was fooling who – is a bit mysterious.
WAS IT THE SECRET SAUCE? The Electronic Freedom Foundation has, tongue in cheek, presented an award to the State Department for one of the sillier FOIA redactions of the past year. Apparently, the folks at Foggy Bottom did not want to be transparent in when they released emails that as an NBC News correspondent noticed – cut out the types of pizza toppings that then-Secretary Mike Pompeo liked. Perhaps his preferred topping is pineapple – which, after all, is un-American.
GIVING UP THE GHOSTS: The Dead Drop has shared in the past stories about spooky events that have inspired the creation of the “Yokota Ghost Hunter Club” at the U.S. airbase in Japan. Now Stars and Stripes reports that an Air Force chaplain (Capt.) Lance Brown and his wife “have been performing home cleanses, or anointings, for the past eight years in homes where “odd things occur.” The actions to get the devil out of the housing is not an official USAF sanctioned effort. Chaplain Brown reportedly uses “a mixture of frankincense, myrrh, aloes, and herbs” – but doesn’t engage in activity as intense as you might see in the movie “The Exorcist.” In an endorsement that might need a little work, Brown’s wife says: “After we have left, the situation has never gotten worse, ever.”
COMBAT CONTROL: Actor Jake Gyllenhaal has signed on with MGM to portray Air Force Sgt. John Chapman who was killed in Afghanistan on March 4, 2002. Fifteen years after his death, enhanced drone video highlighted the true depth of Chapman’s heroism and the Air Force Cross he was first posthumously awarded was upgraded to a Medal of Honor, the first airman to receive that award since the Vietnam war. The film will be titled: “Combat Control.” No release date has been named.
GIVING MOVIE CHARACTERS A BAD NAME: Netflix is planning to make a big-budget movie called “The Gray Man” starring Ryan Gosling as a fictional CIA “agent” turned assassin. The lead character is called “Court Gentry” and is based on the hero of a series of books by Mark Greaney. We’ve lost count of how many movies feature rogue CIA “agents” turned assassins. But the next person who writes one should be taken to “Court.”
HAVE YOU HEARD ANY CRAZY STUPID THINGS WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT? Shoot us a note at TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
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