YOUTUBE’S BONEHEADED MOVE: Faithful readers of The Dead Drop know how highly we regard the work of Julia Davis, who watches Russian TV and posts brief clips with translations that expose the lunacy and evil spouted by the Kremlin’s favorite talking heads. She is a columnist for The Daily Beast and her gems have been featured in The Dead Drop more than a dozen times. So, we were shocked to see her tweet this week that YouTube took down 60 of her videos for “violating community guidelines.” No explanation of what that means – but stopping a journalist from exposing Russian propaganda – and providing insight into what Putin’s publicists are promulgating makes no sense. YouTube’s actions are exactly the opposite of what it should be doing. Don’t just take that from us. Toomas Hendrik Ilves, former president of Estonia (and current TCB expert) reacted to the news by calling YouTube’s move in a tweet “utterly shameful.” Another TCB expert, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Admiral Jim Stavridis, expressed astonishment as well saying: “This is awful. Did Elon Musk buy YouTube too?” On Wednesday afternoon Davis tweeted her thanks for all who supported her and said she had recently heard back from YouTube and “things should be worked out soon.
VET YOUR CANDIDATE: Well, the uniformed services may be having trouble recruiting and retaining personnel, but you know where are lot of experienced servicemen and women are going? Into politics. Military Times reports that there are more veterans running for Congress this cycle than in any election since 2012. Considering how few members of Congress in recent years had military experience – this seems like a notable trend. There were only 91 members of Congress in January 2020 with military service. Almost 200 veterans won major party primaries and are contesting elections for Congress in the 2022 midterms, according to the report. Of course, competing and winning are two different things. Of the vets running this time around 126 are running as Republicans and 66 as Democrats. Among the Vets vying for office, 17 are women, 58 joined up after January 1, 2000, 90 were in the Army (the most of any service) and in 16 races two veterans are facing each other. We haven’t seen an accounting of the number of (non-military) intelligence community veterans running in 2022 but recent figures suggest that may be a growing cohort as well.
SPEAKING OF MILITARY MEMBERS AND CONGRESS: One Army reservist running for Congress has elected to employ a very unusual tactic to demonstrate his positions to voters. Mike Itkis is running a long-shot independent campaign for the 12th Congressional District seat in New York against long-time Congressman Rep. Jerry Nadler. So, how to attract attention to his platform? Itkis made and released a pornographic film showing him having sex with an adult film star named Nicole Sage. (Side question here: why are people in adult films always called “stars”?) In any case – Itkis is campaigning on (among other things) “decriminalizing sex work and ending adultery laws.” He described his own performance in the 13-minute film “a huge learning experience.” We bet it was. Turns out he is also an Army reserve major and currently assigned to the 335th Theater Signal Command at what used to be Fort Dix but is now one of those Joint Bases with an interminably long name. When asked about reservists making porn, an Army Reserve spokesperson said they are “aware of the allegations and (are) conducting an investigation.” Shouldn’t be too tough an investigation since the “alleged” act is all on tape. But the spokesperson said he cannot comment further due to the Privacy Act. It would seem “privacy” was not uppermost in Major Iklis’ mind.
THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE WIND: We can’t begin to understand a lengthy story in Rolling Stone this week, but we commend it to you. It is about an FBI raid of the home of ABC producer James Gordon Meek. The feds reportedly swooped in on Meek’s Arlington, VA apartment on April 27th because – well, we have no idea. But Meek was a long-time national security journalist and sometime staffer on the House Homeland Security Committee. He seems to have dropped out of sight after the raid. He quit his ABC job, got scrubbed from a book he was co-authoring Operation Pineapple Express: The Incredible Story of a Group of Americans Who Undertook One Last Mission and Honored a Promise in Afghanistan. There is some speculation that the FBI may have found classified information on a computer in Meek’s home – but if so, no word on what that might be. We’re betting it was not Kim Jong Un’s love letters to the former president. The most surprising part of this story may be that the FBI raided a journalist’s apartment in the DC suburbs in April and it didn’t leak until just now.
FULL MEDAL JACKETS: We learned from Military.com that a provision in the Senate’s version of the annual defense policy bill calls on the military services to complete a report on the “feasibility and cost of establishing a service ribbon to be awarded to any member of the Armed Forces who has competed as an Olympic or Paralympic athlete on Team USA." We don’t know if such a ribbon will be authorized – but if it is – it should be pretty easy to design – with Olympic rings and gold, silver and bronze attachments if the service person not only participated – but won.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
NOT “THE ONION”: If we ever had to re-name The Dead Drop we might go with “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up.” Today’s entry in that category comes via the BBC with news that some the families of Russian men who were drafted as cannon fodder in the Ukraine war are being consoled by being given a “one-off food package consisting of fresh vegetables.” In what some might dub a "we don’t" care package – families receive “cabbage, potato, carrot, beetroot and onion.” Not everyone gets this prize package, mind you. But residents of Yakutsk, in Russia’s Sakha Republic (also believed to be the coldest city in the world) are harvesting this reward. So, no complaints then. Shut up and eat your veggies. Russian citizens are left, once again, asking: where’s the beef?” By the way, the cabbage for your kids news was first reported by Francis Scarr who works for BBC Monitoring. We note that his Twitter bio appears to have mirrored (stolen?) Julia Davis’ line “watching Russian state TV so you don’t have to.”
SEND US A GREAT TIP AND WE MIGHT SEND YOU A BAG OF VEGETABLES: Beets paying for them, right? No matter how you slice it, when you carrot enough to send your very best – dispatch your most appealing tips to TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
Read more serious expert-driven national security news, analysis and perspective in The Cipher Brief
