WILL THEY EVER FORGIVE US? Former UN inspector Scott Ritter admits his latest book: Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein is not a big seller. When last we checked, it was about 1,450,000th on the Amazon best-seller list. So, Ritter went to Russia to promote the book (which includes a foreward by Seymour Hersh.) Russia media watcher Julia Davis provided a video clip of Ritter appearing in St. Petersburg where he thanked Komsomolskya Pravda for publishing the book in Russian. While there, Ritter predicted that Russia would win their war in Ukraine this summer – and wondered whether Russia & China can ever forgive the US for all the terrible things it has done to them. Ritter is likely a believer in forgiveness, having been arrested a couple times and jailed for over two years for attempted sexual contact with minors. After getting out of the slammer he went to work for RT and Sputnik.
MORE UNTOLLED UNTOLD STORIES: The Cipher Brief’s Undercover book operatives are always looking for interesting forthcoming books to review – and we hear they recently stumbled across a book apparently coming out in June, titled The Slant: How the CIA Corrupted American Journalism by author Dan Luzadder. We say “apparently” because the book is not listed on Amazon or even on the website of the publisher supposedly putting it out called the “Radius Book Group.” But they DID find it listed on the Walmart website. The writeup there seems to target not so much the CIA as well-known author Lawrence Wright. Oddly, Wright wrote the book The Looming Tower, which was not very complimentary of the CIA. But he also wrote another book Going Clear, which was highly uncomplimentary of the Church of Scientology…and that may offer a clue about what to expect from The Slant. We found a 2021 tweet from Wright saying, “Friends, if Dan Luzadder contacts you claiming to be a reporter working on a story about me, be advised he’s actually a PI working for Scientology trying to dig up dirt.”
IT PROBABLY LOST SOMETHING IN TRANSLATION TO ENGLISH: Former CIA officer Robert Baer is no stranger to Dead Drop readers. This, however, has nothing to do with his highly questionable book – but rather a comment he was quoted as giving to the British tabloid, The Daily Express last week. This was in the aftermath of mysterious drone explosions over the Kremlin and Baer was quoted as saying that in his mind, the drone attacks were either conducted by Ukrainian or anti-Putin Russian partisans. He’s not buying that it was a genuine assassination attempt or some false flag excuse for Vlad to launch even more vicious air attacks on Ukraine. But here’s the part that caught our eye. Baer said he believes that if Putin is backed into a corner, he “will use tactical nukes, or flip over the table by, for instance, destabilizing the Baltics.” And here’s the money line, “If he remains rational, he’ll use tactical nukes against a Ukrainian military target.” If he remains rational, he will use nukes? Man, that’s just what Putin needs to hear. It made us wonder who is writing Baer’s stuff, Scott Ritter?
COACH TUBERVILLE’S PREVENT DEFENSE: Last week, seven former Secretaries of Defense got together to criticize Alabama Senator (and former coach) Tommy Tuberville for singlehandedly blocking a ton of military promotions. Tuberville is unhappy with DOD policy regarding providing leave and compensation for service members and their family members needing to travel across state lines to receive abortion services. So, Tuberville is blocking Senate confirmation for senior DoD promotions. At last count, about 200 nominees were in limbo as a result. As a result, the ex-SECDEFs, who served both political parties, tackled the issue and wrote a letter saying they “...believe placing a hold on all uniformed nominees risks turning military officers into political pawns, holding them responsible for a policy decision made by their civilian leaders.” Military Times reported that the letter was signed by every living former Secretary of Defense. Initially, the paper’s account said the letter was signed by every living SecDef since 1994 except Ash Carter who died in 2022 and Donald Rumsfeld. Someone probably pointed out that Rumsfeld passed away in 2021 and it was unreasonable to expect either Rummy or Carter to sign letters while dead. As troubling as holding up promotions for 200 senior officials is today – it could get worse with the nomination of a new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and several service chiefs on the horizon. The current living Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, subsequently weighed in saying in a letter in which he was responding to questions from Senator Elizabeth Warren, that Tuberville’s holding up the line of Defense nominees presents a “clear risk to U.S. military readiness.”
NO WONDER THE SERVICES ARE SHORT HANDED: Usually you hear stories about how paperwork screwups unfairly cost servicemembers earned benefits and such – but here’s an item about how the bureaucracy inadvertently gave at least 190 Army pilots an unexpected “get out of uniform early” card. It seems Army personnel officials have been routinely miscalculating how much service time active-duty pilots owe Uncle Sam. Normally, when a person receives their commission – they are obligated for a certain amount of time. And if they received pilot training, that extends their commitment for another stretch. But as we understand it – in some cases, the Army has been accidentally running those clocks concurrently and as a result, Army Times says, the service has lost hundreds of years of service that aviators owe them – but were mistakenly allowed to leave early. And now, some currently serving pilots are unhappy because they are told they are going to have to serve the full commitment, unlike some of their predecessors. As you might expect, some are considering suing. A group of 170 active-duty Army aviators sent an angry letter to the major general who leads the Army Human Resources Command. They signed it, “The Future of Army Aviation” but it appears many of them would like to be in “the past.” And just so you don’t think this paperwork snafu is unique to the Army, NBC News reported this week, that dozens of Navy dentists and physicians who thought they had enough time to retire were told “not so fast, Doc” after the service figured out personnel folks had screwed up calculations and the effected officers may owe three more years. Getting the services to admit their mistakes in cases like these is like pulling teeth.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
WE THOUGHT IT WAS A DELAYED APRIL FOOL’S STORY: But no, Military.com published a piece this week, re-visiting a story from nearly a decade ago, where a Marine Corps veteran, Brad Lee Davis, killed his 58-year-old stepfather by giving him an “atomic wedgie.” For those unfamiliar with the technique, it involves violently pulling up a victim’s underwear from behind and placing the waistband over their neck. In this case – Davis’ stepdad died of strangulation. The action was more than a prank – the two had been in a fight and exchanged blows before Davis gave the jockeys a jerk. At trial, Davis was sentenced to thirty years in prison. We can’t make this stuff up and neither can the medical community. The Baylor University Medical Center published a study three years after the event titled, “Wedgie-associated radiculitis in a quinquagenarian” which points out the dangers of the practice. Thanks for telling us. “Quinquagenarian” as we all know – means a person between 50 and 59 years of age. “Radiculitis” has nothing to do with ridiculousness – but has something to do with pinched nerves.
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