WARNING: The Dead Drop contains humor and sometimes pronounced snarkiness that might not be suitable for people who are unable to occasionally laugh at themselves or their preferred political candidate or party. Proceed at your own risk of being offended.
NOTE THE DATE: It's Friday the 13th. But then again, its 2020, so who cares anymore?
SLOW NEWS WEEK: We almost decided not to do a Dead Drop this week because there is nothing important going on. Well, except for the presidential election, transition (or not,) high-level firings and the like. But seriously – this is the kind of week where, if you work in government and have some bad news to announce, get it out now – because there is a good chance people won’t notice.
STOLEN BALLOTS: As you may have heard, the presidential election is/was in some dispute. But thanks to someone who calls him (or her)self “Healthranger” – on a website called Distributed News, there was an explanation of why things were so close: it was the CIA’s fault. Healthranger alleges that CIA-developed software was used on voting machines in every swing state – and it injected “glitches” which shifted votes from “Trump” to “Biden.” The article includes a video on “Project Hammer: The Deep States Tool to Winning the 2020 Elections” which says the software ensured that Biden always had a roughly 3% margin of victory. YouTube reportedly banned the video, which features retired Lt Gen. Tom McInerney. Clearly, what we have here is a massive intelligence failure because the Deep State forgot to rig the software to help Democratic House and Senate candidates to win too. The factchecking website Snopes.com reached out to Christopher Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) who called the bogus software rumors: “nonsense.”
SLASH AND BURN: UPDATED (11/18) — Sources were mumbling last week that CISA Director Christopher Krebs believed the President was going to fire him and sure enough, that's what happened on Tuesday. From our position, this has to go down as one of the dumbest national security decisions we've seen from this administration at a time when cyber adversaries are aggressively targeting both government and private sector US companies. We need all the experienced help we can get and Krebs, literally the architect of CISA, has been an apolitical voice of reason in leading the organization. He created CISA from the ground up and spearheaded its ascent to Agency status within DHS, understanding the need for private sector businesses to have more resources to protect themselves. But Krebs crossed the loyalty line by saying that the presidential election was secure. Sounds a little bit like the tale of Mark Esper, who also stood up to the President on his desire to pull troops out of Afghanistan, against the advice of top generals. We're not really sure what Krebs is doing today, but since he has some time on his hands, why not make a trip up to Delaware? We hear someone up there is hiring.
MUSICAL CHAIRS – DOE EDITION: If you had the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration on your bingo card as the first senior official to be axed after the election – you are one lucky player. Word came out on November 6th that Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, leader of the outfit overseeing the safety of our nuclear weapons stockpile was shown the door by Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette who reportedly told her that she had lost the confidence of the President. Color us surprised that the president had even heard of the National Nuclear Security Administration and had developed opinions about the quality of the leadership there.
MUSICAL CHAIRS – PENTAGON EDITION PART ONE: In a move that everybody had on their bingo card – the president announced by tweet on November 9 that the man he once called “Yesper” – Mark Esper, had been “terminated” as Secretary of Defense and that the fifth person to serve as Defense Secretary (or acting) in the last days of his administration would be Christopher Miller. Miller is a retired Army colonel and held a series of mid-level jobs (a couple in the “acting” category) elsewhere in the Trump administration. Miller wasted no time making the short trip from his last job, as head of the National Counterterrorism Center to the Pentagon and was caught on camera tripping as he rushed up the steps whipping off his face mask. Let’s hope that wasn’t an omen. Miller seems like a good guy, a former Green Beret who has served his country, now the Acting Secretary of Defense. (No explanation was given as to why, with Esper fired, his Deputy, David Norquist, didn’t step into the boss’s shoes.) Oddly, the official bio of Acting SECDEF Miller, on the DOD website omits his role at NCTC, a position he held prior to taking on the ActingSECDEF. We pity the poor people tasked with maintaining the Defense.gov website – or the folks in charge of the photo board at the entrance of most military installations showing the chain of command. It must be tough to keep up.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE: Hot on the heels of Miller’s arrival, the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, retired Vice Admiral Joseph Kernan walked the plank and was replaced by Ezra Cohen-Watnick (who is in his early 30’s and made a number of appearances in The Dead Drop early in this administration.) Then the head of policy, James Anderson, by some reckonings the third most powerful person in the Pentagon, was out, replaced by retired Brigadier General Anthony Tata (who once called Barack Obama a “terrorist leader.” We could go on, but the roster would probably change by the time we finished typing this sentence……
OTHER SHOES: It was widely reported that the president’s firing of Esper was just a warmup and that he planned to fire FBI Director Christopher Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel, too. As of this writing – that has not happened but check back periodically. Cipher Brief sources inside CIA tell us they spent a lot of time early this week not working – but just watching the president’s twitter feed to see who their boss might be. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote that Haspel’s head might be on the chopping block because she resisted the president’s desire to release currently classified information that would seem to suggest that Vladimir Putin did not put Trump over the top in 2016. Haspel was said to resist the release in order to protect sensitive sources and methods. Ignatius says Attorney General Bill Barr and a bi-partisan group of Senators are trying to protect Haspel. National security expert Donald Trump Jr. was apparently irritated by reports that some Senators were defending Haspel, so he tweeted that Senators should talk to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows or National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien and not just take “a trained liar’s word for it on everything” (presumably referring to Haspel.) Meanwhile, back at the Fort, General Paul Nakasone, the head of Cyber Command and the NSA was told that Michael Ellis, a controversial figure and former chief counsel to Rep. Devin Nunes, would be installed as a career general counsel at his command. Nakasone is reportedly not pleased. We seem to be seeing political appointees – anticipating that the Trump administration may end sometime before 2024 – are “burrowing in” to take career civil servant positions. This is also known as ramspecking. The last time we heard that phrase was when it was used was by President Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, who was railing against members of the “deep state” burrowing in to undercut the Trump agenda at the start of this administration.
HIGH FIVE: With a few notable exceptions (such as Russia and North Korea) a large percentage of U.S. allies and foes have offered congratulations to Joe Biden for (seemingly) winning the presidential election. The folks at Diplopundit have been trying to keep track. The number of world leaders congratulating President-Elect Biden so far exceeds the count of Republican members of Congress offering similar wishes. Perhaps the American politicians (as opposed to foreign diplomats) were listening to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday when he promised “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” Pompeo MAY have been kidding – he had a smile on his face, and he promised to let us know if he was joking by January. Even if this IS the start of a second Trump administration – based on the items above – we would not call it a smooth transition.
LANDING TEAM KRIMLINOLOGY: Despite what Mike Pompeo thinks, the Biden campaign seems to think they will win any challenges to the vote count. They have begun to roll out lists of “review teams” – that include the names of individuals who will help advise the transition process. Insiders like to scrutinize the lists to see if they can deduce hints about who might gain political appointments in a new administration. The team for the Pentagon has 23 members – fifteen of whom are women. Almost all prognosticators suggest Michèle Flournoy is the likely SECDEF in a Biden administration. While Flournoy is not on the landing team (too high-powered most likely) another Michelle is. Michelle Howard, a retired four-star Navy admiral who was on-scene commander for the hostage rescue mission depicted in the movie “Captain Phillips” and might be a Navy Secretary candidate. The Intelligence Community landing team will be led by Stephanie O’Sullivan, former principal deputy DNI under Obama and retired 3-star Marine General Vince Stewart. Five of the 23 members of the IC team are Cipher Brief experts, BTW. (The Cipher Brief might be one of the few places left where politics take a back seat to pressing national security issues that impact ALL of us.) There are fewer bold-face names on the lists for State Department, USAID, U.S. Agency for Global Media, and the US Mission for the UN. You can find them all here.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
RED SPY GUY DIES: Russia has announced the passing of Yuri Shevchenko who died last week at the age of 82. While you may have never heard of him – the Kremlin says he was a deep-cover agent who stole highly classified material from the White House, FBI, CIA, and NATO during a 32-year career for which he was dubbed a “Hero of Russia.” It is not clear how he (allegedly) pulled this off – but his cover was that of an artist and architect. The SVR in announcing his death added this previous quote from him “Illegal intelligence is not a fight of a knight, a cloak and a dagger, there is never a James Bond. If shooting starts, reconnaissance ends. Intelligence is a war of the minds. And here you need to have such willpower to survive.”
THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN: According to UN Watch, (which we don’t THINK is a parody site) North Korea announced at the U.N. Human Rights Council that “(they) are concerned by the USA’s human rights violations at home and abroad.” We’re just gonna let that one sit there a minute.
HO, HO, OH, NO: Netflix has begun streaming a Christmas movie that is reportedly so bad that even the Hallmark Channel would blush. Military Times titled their scathing review of “Operation Christmas Drop” as “O run all ye faithful.” The romantic comedy is based on a real-world annual operation based in Guam when the USAF airdrops humanitarian supplies on remote Pacific islands. In the fictional version – a member of Congress wants to shutdown Andersen Air Force Base in Guam as part of the Base Realignment and Closure process – because she thinks delivering humanitarian supplies is wasteful. Humbug. You can see the trailer here which may be about all you can handle.
GOT ANY TIPS TO DROP ON US? Shoot us a note at TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com with any news you think we could use.
