TO THE VICTOR, GO THE SPOILS: Every four years, we go through the drill where you start seeing the names of people likely to end up in cabinet positions if a certain candidate wins the presidency. The rumor mill seems to be a little late in starting in 2020 – but perhaps that is because the Biden camp has put out word discouraging folks from publicly lobbying for positions and because the Trump personnel lineup has been in a state of near-constant flux since 2016. But some of the “who’s up, who’s down” stories are starting to appear. This week Politico carried a report saying if Biden won, one of his priorities would be to “revamp (a) fraying intel community.” Campaign adviser Tony Blinken said that giving some TLC to the IC would be job one for Joe. That would start with appointing new people to lead it. According to Politico, “The Biden campaign has been considering a couple of veteran national security hands who could serve in senior intelligence roles…” Adding among the names floating around “is former CIA acting director Michael Morell, former Obama national security adviser and close Biden confidant, Tom Donilon, former Obama deputy national security adviser Avril Haines, former Deputy NSA Director Chris Inglis, and former deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Robert Cardillo.” Of course, it is not just IC slots that would need filling. Politico had another piece talking about top contenders for the State Department if Biden wins. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware seems to be in the running for the job. And Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut is also in the mix. Susan Rice, former Deputy Secretary Bill Burns, and Blinken’s name also come up as among those who might get the nod. Over at Defense, there seems to be something close to a consensus that Michèle Flournoy has the inside track to become the first female SECDEF.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE: Of course, a Biden win is far from a done deal. But expect a lot of turnover even if President Trump wins a second term. There is no indication that the senior official revolving door on steroids of the past four years would slow down in Trump II. The President has refused to give a vote of confidence to his (current) Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. And he has expressed concerns about Attorney General Bill Barr as well. Presidential number one son, Don Jr. recently mused about the need for breaking up the FBI, and Trump whisperers in the media have been taking shots at CIA Director Gina Haspel for not declassifying information they want to see fast enough and suggesting she is not a team player (at least not on their team.)
WHEN TO START PACKING: The Trump administration has done a bang-up job of filling vacant court seats but when it comes to putting warm bodies in empty ambassadorial posts – not so much. Two weeks before the presidential election, there are more than three dozen empty ambassador gigs. Thirteen, including some big jobs, have political nominees awaiting confirmation. These include Afghanistan, Canada, Germany, Japan, Singapore and Ukraine. By our count, there were 6 career nominees awaiting confirmation to posts where the previous ambassador has already departed. And there are an additional 18 posts that don’t even have anyone nominated (some of these are countries we are mad at – so we aren’t planning on sending an envoy – like Syria. Others are ambassadorial gigs at UN entities – and we may be mad at them, too.) The political nominees are likely in limbo for a while. Some, like Barbera Hale Thornhill, the nominee for Singapore, first had her name sent to the Senate over a year ago. She and 14 other nominees were cleared by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a month ago, but are awaiting a floor vote in the Senate. Since politically appointed ambassadors among the group are traditionally replaced when administrations change – the non-career nominees are likely not packing their bags until we learn the outcome of the November 3rd election.
CAN YOU SPOT THE DIFFERENCE? Supporters of jailed Wikileaks founder Julian Assange who are helping him fight extradition from the UK to the US, have come up with an interesting argument defending him for publishing tons of highly classified information. He was just doing what the CIA does, they say: stealing secrets. Left-leaning publication The Progressive quotes numerous former CIA officials as saying the Agency steals secrets, so it must be OK if Assange follows suit. Of course, the CIA is an arm of the U.S. government stealing foreign secrets to protect the USA. Assange’s goal was something else. But if the Assange defense theory works, Russian, Chinese and Iranian spies (to name a few) who are caught in the U.S. many want to try that defense themselves.
CAN YOU SPOT THE DIFFERENCE? (PART 2): The CIA recently posted on its social media accounts two nearly identical photos and asked the public if they could identify anomalies between the two images. The test was not unlike a regular feature in some Sunday newspaper supplements. The next day, the Agency posted the two photos again and marked with yellow boxes 11 places where the images differed. Getting a response they may not have anticipated, the CIA was bombarded by Twitter users who claimed to have found up to 16 differences. We are not exactly sure how “spot the photo error” became a useful test for intelligence wannabees, anyway. We would have thought that completing The New York Times crossword puzzle in Farsi might have been a more useful measure – but your mileage may vary.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
YOU SAY THAT LIKE IT IS A BAD THING: Faculty members at the University of California (Berkley) are coming to the defense of a fellow faculty member. Joseph Scalice, who lectures in the school’s South and Southeast Asian studies department, has recently been accused of being a “CIA agent” by the founder of the Communist Part of the Philippines, José Maria Sison. Fellow Berkley faculty members were annoyed and banded together to write in defense of Scalice saying that he is a “talented historian” (which to us sounds like a non-denial, denial.) But Scalice also came to his own defense saying he is not affiliated with the CIA in any way and is “fiercely opposed” to the agency’s actions abroad. We suspect the faculty at Berkley would not be nearly as upset if one of the members had been accused of being a member of the Communist Party of the Philippines. (Sorry, we couldn’t help ourselves…)
YOU COULD SPOT THE DIFFERENCE: If people like you sent news tips to the Dead Drop. Shoot us a note at TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
