LOSING CONFIDENCE: On Sunday, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer that he had lost confidence in him and would like him to shove off. Spencer did so, but not before firing a broadside at the Commander in Chief in a “I hereby acknowledge my termination” letter. In the document, Spencer said he could no longer serve since he is on a different page than the POTUS when it comes to good order and discipline. Interestingly, the axing came about four months after Spencer threw the nominee for Chief of Naval Operations overboard because he “lost confidence in his judgment.” In explaining his move against Spencer, Esper told reporters it was NOT because of Spencer’s stance about the wisdom of a group of SEALs considering yanking convicted Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher’s SEAL trident pin. No, Esper says it was because he was stunned to discover on Friday that Spencer was having back channel discussions with the White House about doing precisely what the White House wanted. Unhappy with this – on Sunday Esper asked for (and got) Spencer’s resignation and then he immediately gave the White House what they wanted – no action on Gallagher’s SEAL status. Later on Sunday, Esper recommended that the current Ambassador to Norway, Ken Braithwaite (a retired reserve Navy rear admiral) to be the next Secretary of the Navy. The President immediately tweeted his support. But our sources tell us that Braithwaite was already in the neighborhood – and was at the U.S. Naval Academy’s football game on Saturday against SMU and may have been aware that he would be Spencer’s successor before Spencer knew he was departing.
TRUMP AND FRIENDS: The Daily Beast, citing sources, says that President Trump is considering going on the campaign trail with some of the servicemen he recently pardoned for alleged war crimes. “Two people tell The Daily Beast they’ve heard Trump talk about how he’d like to have the now-cleared Clint Lorance, Matthew Golsteyn, or Edward Gallagher show up at his 2020 rallies, or even have a moment on stage at his renomination convention in Charlotte next year.”
ARE WE TURNING INTO A BANANA REPUBLIC? It is bad news when small countries start to pity the big ones. We learned from the Miami Herald that a Colombian newspaper released a 24-minute-long audio recording of Colombia’s Ambassador to the U.S., Francisco Santos, talking with Claudia Blum, who is the Colombian Foreign Minister-designate. The recording was reportedly surreptitiously made by an unnamed third party at a Washington, DC coffee shop. Santos can be heard to say: “The U.S. State Department, which used to be important, is destroyed, it doesn’t exist.” If you speak Spanish, you can listen to the clandestine coffee klatch here. No word on whether they ordered Colombian coffee.
DON’T BELIEVE CIA TRADECRAFT AS SEEN ON TV: Don’t buy into the stuff you see on TV shows like Jack Ryan as an accurate reflection of the way CIA officers function. So says Dr. Vince Houghton, curator of the International Spy Museum in an article on ClearanceJobs.com. Shows like that “are really laughable” according to Houghton who says Agency analysts (like Ryan) are highly unlikely to get into “gunfights and other mayhem.” He trashes the tradecraft and accuracy displayed in some other television shows as well – such as sloppy handling of classified information and discussing sensitive information in offices with big windows bordering on hostile streets. We’d resonate more with ClearanceJobs criticism of accuracy if they hadn’t subtitled once section of their piece “CIA Agents in the Field.” Please. They are “officers.”
DON’T BELIEVE POSITIVE DEPICTION OF CIA SEEN ON TV: So says Vladimir Putin’s propagandists at RT. In a recent article, they jumped on the “trash Jack Ryan” bandwagon in a piece titled: “‘We should thank & cherish CIA,’ says star of ‘Jack Ryan’ – just maybe not for torture, coups & mind control.”
DON’T CARE WHETHER TV GETS IT RIGHT OR NOT? Then we may have the show for you. HBO Max is reportedly working on a possible comedy series called “Classified” about the life of interns at the CIA. Paramount TV is developing the series with David Sidrov who once wrote for The Onion, so we’re betting dead accuracy is not what he will be going for in the new series.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
POMPE-O, I WANNA GO HOME: In last week’s Dead Drop we talked about what a no good, really bad week Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was having. His week of woe was later eclipsed by that of Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer, but Pompeo’s rounded out the week with a video on CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that is well worth watching. Check it out here.
USS HOAX: You’ve got to hand it to some West Point alums for being nimble. They were about to put out a bogus press release announcing that Navy Secretary Richard Spencer had named a new guided missile destroyer “USS Jeff Monken” after Army’s football coach. But then Spencer got fired, so they deftly changed the name in the fake release to that of Acting Secretary of the Navy, Thomas Modly. The missive claimed that the ship is being built at the non-existent “South Hudson Shipyards” in Highland Falls, New York. The fake release which reportedly went out on Associated Press and was picked up by some gullible media was a small win for the Black Knights. They have a bigger test coming up on December 14th against the Naval Academy.
UP SCHLITT’S CREEK: Conventional wisdom has it that German engineering is the gold standard for innovation and efficiency. But a story in Military Times reminds us that that is not always the case. Take the saga of the high-tech Nazi submarine U-1206. Just eight days into the boat’s first patrol and her skipper was using the head and had difficulty with the innovative flushing mechanism. Soon his number 1 problem was number 2 mixing with seawater and leaking into the vessel’s battery compartment. A deadly chlorine gas was created and, unable to open a window, the sub had to surface where it was spotted by Allied aircraft. Schlitt and most of his crew escaped to lifeboats before pulling the plug and plunging U-1206 down the drain.
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