TALKING TURKI: CIA alumni, whom The Dead Drop talked with recently, were bemused by recent comments by a senior member of the Saudi royal family. Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former head of Saudi intelligence and former Saudi ambassador to the U.K. and U.S. was quoted attacking the agency for reportedly concluding with a 'high degree of confidence' that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman played a role in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. “The CIA is not necessarily the highest standard of veracity or accuracy in assessing situations. The examples of that are multitude,” Turki said to reporters in Abu Dhabi. Citing the Agency’s faulty analysis regarding Iraqi WMD in 2003, Turki said: “I don’t see why the CIA is not on trial in the United States. This is my answer to their assessment of who is guilty and who is not and who did what in the consulate in Istanbul.” The Saudi government did not publicly support the 2003 invasion, one Agency veteran told us, “because unlike the first Gulf war, they did not think they had a dog in the fight.” But the Saudis did not disagree with the assessment of U.S. intelligence (and most other intelligence agencies worldwide) that Saddam had WMD, we were told. But former U.S. associates are cutting Turki some slack. “When your Crown Prince deals with dissidents using bone saws, it is hard to expect people to stick their necks out,” we were told.
WILL SENATE NIX TRUMP INTEL PICKS? President Trump not only faces the prospect of a soon-to-be Democrat controlled House of Representatives, but he is also getting some unexpected push back from the Republican controlled Senate. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that two top Trump nominees for positions in the intelligence community are being help up by Republican Senators. The National Counterterrorism Center has been without a full-time leader for nearly a year. Joseph Maguire was nominated to lead NCTC this past June, but Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) has put a hold on the pick while he tries to pry information from the government about how the intelligence community uses metadata on U.S. citizens. Maguire is a retired Navy vice admiral. And then there is William Evanina, who was nominated in February to lead the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. (Evanina has been director of the NCSC since June 2014 but the position has been elevated so that it now requires Senate confirmation. Check out publisher Suzanne Kelly’s podcast with him here.) In Evanina’s case, Senator Chuck Grassley (R, IA) is the roadblock. Grassley has put a hold on the nomination trying to extract information from the administration about what Evanina might have told Vice President Pence about the Russia investigation early in the Trump administration. According to the WSJ, the delay has reached the point where Evanina is beginning to think about jobs outside government.
NOT THE JOURNALIST TYPE: Reporters and intelligence officers have a lot in common. They travel around, ask questions, write reports and move on. So, it is not surprising that for many years, secret organizations used journalism as a cover. In 1976, the U.S. intelligence community swore off the practice (for the most part) but that was not always the case. The Louisville Courier Journal recently wrote about a mystery solved. It seems back in 1964, the paper hired a 28-year-old man by the name of Robert Campbell to be a reporter. Trouble was, he couldn’t type, and didn’t seem to know much about putting together a story. Years later, colleagues figured out that Campbell was actually a CIA officer. Campbell had three stories published in the Courier Journal and one of them, about carved wooden Indians, was reportedly so bad, that it was posted in the paper’s newsroom as an object of ridicule. The young reporter left the paper allegedly to take a job working for Life magazine in Malaysia – but nothing with his byline ever appeared in that publication. The Courier Journal found Campbell, now 82, living in McLean, VA. He grudgingly confirmed that he was placed at the newspaper by CIA Director Richard Helms – who was a long-time friend of the paper’s executive editor. While he would not say much about his CIA career, Campbell strongly defended his wooden Indian story. “It was a wonderful article," he said. "It took me two weeks to write the damn thing."
MERLIN'S DEFENSE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS: We hear that former Acting CIA Director John McLaughlin, (who is fondly known as ‘Merlin’ because of his love for magic), has been pulling some impressive visitors out of his hat for his students at SAIS. The Dead Drop happened in on an interview this week with former Secretary of State Madeline Albright. While we were sworn to secrecy over what wisdom she shared, we were impressed by the way that she used her own magic powers while in office to convey secret messages to other heads of state. Apparently, her methods were so creative that many of her tools ended up in the Smithsonian.
CHEAP AT TWICE THE PRICE: There was an interesting nugget buried in a Washington Post story on November 25. In a story about Donald Trump’s push to reduce the deficit – journalists Josh Dawsey and Damian Paletta suggest that the president may not have a complete grasp of federal fiscal realities. They say White House chief of staff John Kelly once asked the president what he thought the chairman of the joint chiefs earns. According to the story, Trump guessed $5 million annually. “Kelly responded that he made less than $200,000. The president suggested he get a large raise and noted the number of stars on his uniform.”
REAL WORLD VS REEL WORLD: We recently stumbled across a motion picture blog called Slash Film. No, it is not about psycho killer flicks – just about movies apparently. A recent edition included a story where they visited the International Spy Museum in Washington and asked long-time CIA veterans Peter Earnest and Jonna Mendez about their favorite spy movie. Both said it was Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – a 2011 film that is short on “bang bang” and long on suspicious people trying to flush a mole out of British intelligence.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
- How kind: Our favorite Russian-TV-watcher Julia Davis points out that a Moscow TV host recently said on air that according to UK investigators, the amount of Novichok inside the bottle used to poison Sergei Skripal could have been used to kill thousands of people but wasn’t. A fellow host added that was because the “GRU is humane.” Or it could be more along the lines of what Cipher Brief expert and former Senior Member of the British Foreign Office, Nick Fishwick wrote in his OpEd, What the Skripal Attack Exposed About Russian Tradecraft.
- Who? Canoe? There is a Canadian website called Canoe.com that, at first blush, looks like the satirical website The Onion. But apparently Canoe is serious. This week, they ran a story about a book which contends that the CIA hired an “ex-Nazi commander to kill JFK to keep a lid on (the President’s) affairs with Soviet hookers. The book, called The Skorzeny Papers, alleges that a man (described as “Hitler’s favourite commando”) was brought in by the Agency and U.S. military to kill Kennedy before he could “bring shame on the U.S.”
- Chaplin Call: The folks at Muckrock.com dug up another gem. Through the Freedom of Information Act, more lovingly referred to as FOIA, they have uncovered FBI documents from 1978 which reveal that the Bureau’s Boston Field Office reported to headquarters that they had received a call from a businessman in Portland, Maine who was in contact with a local psychic with a tip about who was behind the recent theft of Charlie Chaplin’s corpse. Keeping up so far? Chaplin had died the previous December at his home in Switzerland and some folks had indeed made off with his casket. The “Little Tramp’s” remains were eventually recovered, and much of the information from the FBI’s tipster proved wrong. At the time, however, the Boston Field Office assured FBI Director William Webster that their source said the psychic was “one of the strongest in the area.”
- Army Recruiting Cover Up: Now where are they going to find young men? Army Times tells us that the Army Recruiting Command has recently issued an order declaring that all recruiting personnel are now “barred from frequenting Erotic Dance Establishments” (capitalization theirs). Not exactly clear what motivated the decision. The story does say that a 2015 Inspector General report discovered more than $1 million in charges at casinos and adult entertainment establishments had been racked up on government-issued credit cards over a one year period.
- Between a Rock and an Odd Place: The never reliable Daily Star has an article out claiming that a CIA document in the Agency’s FOIA Electronic Reading Room describes an incident where a UFO flew over Russian units in Siberia – and was shot down by surface to air missiles. “It fell to Earth not far away, and five short humanoids with ‘large heads and large black eyes’ emerged from it.” Apparently, the extra-terrestrials were pissed. The story says they used advance weapons and turned the 23 soldiers who watched the incident into “stone poles.”
IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING: Got any tips for your friendly neighborhood Dead Drop? Shoot us a note at TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
