DOC IN A BOX: Doctor Shakeel Afridi is the Pakistani MD who allegedly helped the CIA track down Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. He has been languishing behind bars in Pakistan since 2011 and now, according to AFP, has launched a hunger strike from his prison cell to protest his treatment. Afridi was sentenced to 33 years in prison in May 2012. His sentence was later reduced to ten years. The doctor has reportedly had no access to his lawyer for years. During the 2016 presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump said he would “order” Pakistan to free the doctor if he were elected. Since then, AFP says there has been no comment from the White House. The Cipher Brief covered the story last September 11, explaining how a valuable US asset became a liability.
PRESIDENTIAL CHEERING SECTION: Some military veterans we talked with were surprised to see an official DOD tweet the other day lauding the recently agreed to “Joint Declaration” aimed at ending a couple decades worth of hostilities in Afghanistan. Praising government negotiated deals (good and bad) is not unusual – but this tweet started with “Thanks to @POTUS Trump’s leadership, we are finally making substantial progress toward ending our nation’s longest war.” It is unusual to see the Pentagon single out Presidential leadership. “If some civilian ordered that tweet,” one military veteran told us, “it may be a Hatch Act violation.” Needless to say, with the deal already falling apart, from a pure marketing perspective, we’re not so sure this one is a winner. Just sayin’.
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: You wouldn’t ordinarily expect conservative news organizations like Breitbart to agree with folks like left-leaning journalist Glenn Greenwald but we don’t live in ordinary times. We noticed late last week that Breitbart was touting comments made by Greenwald on The Hill TV saying that the U.S. intelligence community’s “interference” in the 2020 presidential election is far worse that what he called the “mischief” the Russians have engaged in.
INTELLIGENCE HALL OF FAME: The Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) announced at an event at the National Press Club on February 25 the establishment of an “Intelligence Community Hall of Fame” at the Ridge College of Intelligence Studies and Applied Sciences at Mercyhurst University in Erie, PA. The HOF will honor recipients of the William Oliver Baker Award, presented annually by INSA to an individual for “sustained contributions to excellence in intelligence and national security affairs.” Among past Baker Award recipients are Cipher Brief experts General Mike Hayden, General Keith Alexander, John McLaughlin, James Clapper, and Charlie Allen. INSA has announced that the 2020 Baker Award will be presented to Sue Gordon. “It is entirely appropriate,” one observer told us, “that the spooks’ Hall of Fame will be at Mercyhurst. It is a place most people never heard of and is in a town pronounced ‘eerie.’”
SPEAKING OF AWARDS: We were delighted to see that the White House just announced that next week, the President will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to General Jack Keane. The general is a former Vice Chief of Staff of the Army and, we hasten to add, a Cipher Brief expert and just recently joined as a member of the board.
HIGH-FLYING SPY TOUR OF NYC: American Airlines’ inflight magazine American Way has a story this month in which historian and spy-gear collector Keith Melton takes a writer around New York City pointing out sites where various acts of espionage have taken place over the past 250 years or so. Melton was the perfect guy to lead the tour because, along with former CIA officer Robert Wallace, he authored a recent book called Spy Sites of New York City: A Guide to the Region’s Secret History. Want to know more about that book? Look for a review coming up in The Cipher Brief’sUndercover book review section in the next couple weeks.
SILVER FOX ATTACKED BY GRAYZONE: The Dead Drop has told you before about left-leaning, conspiracy-peddling website, The Grayzone. When last we heard from them, they were pushing the theory that Mayor Pete Buttigieg had mysterious ties to the CIA. Now they are dredging up the fact that in the 1980s CNN anchor Anderson Cooper was an intern at the Agency. It appears that Grayzone was unhappy that Cooper grilled candidate Bernie Sanders in a 60 Minutes interview that mentioned past praise the candidate had given to Fidel Castro’s literacy efforts. So Grayzone wants its readers to remember that Cooper once had ties to the CIA (and maybe he still does.) Cooper himself wrote about the experience saying (in 2006) that nearly twenty years before that – he had been an intern at Langley while a student at Yale. In 2013, Cooper told The Washington Post that his gig was “less James Bond” than he had hoped it would be. Anderson has said the job was “bureaucratic and mundane.” That doesn’t explain why he came back for a second summer. Couldn’t have been for the money, though. We’re guessing since Cooper is an heir to the Vanderbilt fortune, he was probably not hard up for cash.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
OFFSET ON THE SET: Team Dead Drop is not entirely conversant in the world of rap music, but we understand that there is a rapper well-known (to some) who goes by the single name of “Offset.” It seems Offset is branching out and has added acting to his portfolio and is set to appear in “NCIS Los Angeles” playing a “CIA agent.” Advance publicity for the episode says he will play a character who has been working for years in the Sinai Peninsula to embed himself with the local tribes by smuggling contraband so that he can monitor terrorist and weapons movements in that region. We’re adding it to our watchlist.
H-B- OH BOY: In 2019, a feature film called “Anna” was in the theaters. It’s a movie about a female KGB assassin who eventually agrees to be a double agent for the CIA. Movie critics were not impressed, however, awarding it a 36% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But rank and file audience members gave it an 81% — so Anna must have done something to please action movie fans. Decider says Russian fashion model Sasha Luss, who plays Anna, won folks over with a restaurant fight scene in which she engages in an “epic slaughter of countless bodyguards.” If you like Russian fashion models, or dislike bodyguards, you might want to tune in since the film is now streaming on HBO.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY INSIDE THE SCIF – JJ Green’s weekly newsletter turned one year old this week. Time flies when you have stuff to report. HBD.
TWEET-WORTHY – Looking for answers to tough questions on national security issues? Check out @natsecanswers, a social media national security answer desk.
MARINES: “WE HAVE THE MEATS” Sure, that’s Arby’s slogan – but the USMC might borrow it. According to the DailyMail.com, U.S. Marines training with their Thai counterparts at the annual (aptly named) Cobra Gold exercise have been dining out on some exotic stuff. The story comes complete with photos of Marines drinking the blood of decapitated cobras, chomping down on live geckos, and eating scorpions and tarantulas. Participants were reportedly trained on how to de-fang tarantulas before eating them. Whew. That sounds much yummier.
FANGS FOR THE MEMORIES: Got any tips we can sink our teeth into? Shoot us a note at TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com with your contribution to a forthcoming Dead Drop.
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