NEXT YEAR HOLD IT AT CAPITAL ONE ARENA? A year ago, The Dead Drop reported that the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation had just held its annual Richard Helms dinner at an undisclosed location in northern Virginia. At the time, we joked that they might need to find a bigger ballroom after jamming in over 800 supporters to help fund scholarships and other support for the families of fallen CIA officers. Well, they must have listened because they DID find a bigger ballroom…and still packed it to the gills. Our spies tell us that retired Army four-star General Austin Scott Miller was the recipient of this year’s award. Miller worked closely with the Agency at several stages of his career, especially as head of NATO’s Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan from 2018 to 2021. Among the speakers at the event were former Central Command commander General Frank McKenzie, USMC (Ret.), current CIA director Bill Burns, and former CIA Director (and Memorial Foundation Chair) Gina Haspel. Most of the living former CIA directors (including 99-year-old Judge William Webster) were also on hand. The event was MC’d by Foundation president (and Cipher Brief expert) John Edwards and reportedly raised over $1.5 million for its worthy cause.
LIKE CLOCKWORK: Every time a U.S. military organization has a birthday, or there’s some holiday celebrating veterans or the armed forces, one or more politicians or well-meaning organizations post best wishes on social media and sometimes accidentally accompany those posts with images that don’t exactly align. The latest example – was picked up by eagled-eyed Politico defense editor Dave Brown – who noticed on October 13, that Congressman Cory Mills (R-FL) wished the U.S. Navy a happy 248th birthday – by posting a graphic showing a Russian ship. But Mills, an Army veteran, was not a lone ranger – Representative David Trone (D-MD), the Fox TV affiliate in Baltimore, and even an outfit calling itself “SEAL Legacy” made similar mistakes wishing the USN happy birthday while displaying images of Russian ships.
APPARENTLY, YOU CAN MAKE THIS STUFF UP: Loyal readers of The Dead Drop know that few names have appeared in this column more regularly than that of Amaryllis Fox. We first mentioned Fox back in 2016, when she was promoting a video in which she described herself as a writer, peace activist and former CIA clandestine service officer. The next year, we noted that she had married Robert F. Kennedy, III, and that she was making speeches and saying she was recruited out of graduate school at Georgetown where she had “developed an algorithm to predict terrorist activity.” In 2019, we had an item about Fox’s new book ‘Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA’ which early readers told us would have been a great novel – but was marketed as non-fiction. And we wrote that we heard that Fox apparently did not complete the process for the CIA clearing her manuscript. Subsequently, we noted that Apple TV was planning on making a TV series based on her book. In late 2019, our CEO & publisher Fox’s book in The Cipher Brief noted that many of the details in it “if true” would violate a real agency officer’s requirement to clear them with the CIA. Fox admitted to having “fictionalized” some of the details in the book to “protect sources and methods.” Now we see in “SpyTalk,” a piece by journalist Seth Hettena, commenting on the fact that Fox is now running the presidential campaign of her father-in-law, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.. Hettena notes that RFK JR thinks Fox’s old outfit, the CIA, had a hand in the murder of JFK. Hettena rounded up several former CIA officers, including (Cipher Brief expert) John Sipher who said he read Fox’s book and “It’s BS.” Several other veteran Agency officers were similarly skeptical.
A MOVIE WORTH MISSING: The same Seth Hettena who wrote about Amaryllis Fox also posted an interesting piece on Substack this week. He’s been mining declassified documents in CIA’s FOIA reading room and came up with some gems about how and why the Agency cooperated with a 1973 motion picture called: Scorpio. If, like us, you have never heard of it – there may be a reason. The flick, starring Burt Lancaster, is said to be monumentally bad. “Scorpio is two hours of your life you will never get back,” Hettena writes. But what makes it noteworthy is that the filmmakers somehow snared permission to film a bit of it on CIA grounds. Hettena found documents showing that CIA Director Richard Helms approved the filming in part because the chairman of United Artists, the studio that made it, was a personal friend. Senator John V. Tunney also weighed in supporting granting access. Helms likely rued his decision because the movie that hit the silver screen depicted Agency officers as immoral assassins who conducted hits within the United States. According to Hettena, the intelligence failure of allowing some filming at Langley was the likely result of the Agency neglecting to ask to see the script before green lighting the shoot.
“TOP GUN: SURVIVOR”: Well, that is not exactly what the National Geographic channel is going to call their new reality series – but pretty close. The real working title is “Top Gun: The Next Generation.” In this case, there is no script to see in advance, but Nat Geo has convinced the Navy to allow them access to follow “a diverse range of Navy student pilots” as they fight it out with each other to see who is good enough to be chosen to fly the F-35C Lightning II strike fighter. According to The Hollywood Reporter, film crews will be able to follow naval aviators in the air, in the classroom, off base and at home. Following them in the air sounds kinda cool – but following them at home sounds really dangerous. No word on when the program or the pilots will air -but given the mammoth success of 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick” and its last generation predecessor, Nat Geo is betting the high-flying reality show will land a lot of viewers and the Navy is betting it will land a lot of recruits.
COOKING THE BOOKS: We’ve just seen a report that says author Diana R. Chambers has landed a deal to publish a book called “The Secret Life of Julia Child,” about Child’s service with the OSS during World War II. It won’t be out until late 2024, however. It is set to be published by Sourcebooks Landmark.
MORE BUCK FOR YOUR BANG: The military services have had a rough time recruiting and retaining qualified personnel. And they have been aggressively trying to address any shortfalls. Navy Times, for example, reports that if you are a lieutenant commander explosive ordnance disposal officer and agree to re-up for four more years, you could score a retention bonus of up to $100,000. With that kind of money on the table, we expect a boom in EOD officers sticking around.
SHAMELESS CIPHER BRIEF SELF-PROMOTION: What’s going on behind the scenes at The Cipher Brief:
‘CONFLICT’ IN MANHATTAN: We hear thatCipher Brief CEO & Publisher Suzanne Kelly and COO Brad Christian attended a book talk in Manhattan this week with Cipher Brief Expert and author General David Petraeus (Ret.) and co-author Lord Andrew Roberts, who have been on a multi-country book tour promoting, Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine. It’s fitting then, that another former senior CIA Officer who recently traveled to Ukraine with The Cipher Brief was there as well. The headline on this bit of gossip was location, location, location, as guests mingled on the 80th floor of the KKR building after the talk. No actual ‘conflict’ was reported, but we hear the wine was pretty good.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
SWISS MISS: If we lived in Russia – we’d want to move to Switzerland too. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, a well-regarded German-language newspaper in Switzerland, says that according to the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service, there are about 80 Russian spies in their country. Exactly how they came up with that number and why they are publicizing it is unclear. But the very orderly Swiss apparently are totaling up spies like clockwork and claim that their 80 Ruskie spooks represent about one fifth of the total number of Russian agents in Europe. It is nice that the Swiss are keeping track of the number of Russian spies, but we’d appreciate it if the next time they would also provide a list of names.
NEWS TIPS ARE LIKE A BOX OF (SWISS) CHOCOLATES. YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO GET. SURPRISE US BY SENDING YOUR NEWS TIPS TO: TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
