BUT HIS EMAIL: After the brouhaha four years ago – you would think that government officials would have learned the lesson about not using personal email accounts for official business. Apparently not. Watchdog group American Oversight filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking emails sent to and from Mike Pompeo when he was CIA director. They recently received nearly 400 pages of (heavily redacted) emails. The same outfit has filed a request for similar Pompeo emails after he shifted to Foggy Bottom – but so far State has been stiffing them. Using personal email for official business can be troublesome for a couple of reasons. One is that they might not be captured for history’s sake, as required by federal record keeping requirements. A second problem is that the exchanges might be captured by foreign intelligence agencies who could milk them for information about upcoming travel or improprieties. By the way, American Oversight put out a press release about the issue – but we missed it. We first learned of the issue from a story in Sputnik News.
COURTNEY’S DAY IN COURT: The Dead Drop has reported a couple of times about the exploits of Garrison Courtney, a former DEA spokesman, who was busted for pretending to be a covert CIA operative – and bilking various private contractors out of more than $4.4 million. He even went so far as to give these companies fake “get out of jail free” cards – from the Justice Department promising they would not be prosecuted for working with him on his invented classified program. He should have saved one for himself. This week, Courtney was sentenced to seven years in federal prison.
WHO’LL SPILL THE BEANS ON BROOKE PINTO? Brooke Pinto is a 28-year-old lawyer who won a special election in June to fill a vacant Washington, D.C. city council seat. As the Democratic Party candidate in a heavily “D” city – she is likely to win reelection. The website Spy Talk says that some folks are raising questions, however, since Pinto is the daughter of businessman James Pinto who has long-time business dealings with the Moscow CableCom Corp. – which is a subsidiary of an outfit known as “Renova” which has been sanctioned by the Treasury Department for having played “a key role in advancing Russia’s malign activities.” Pinto is self-funding her political race (with the help of family members.) SpyTalk says mom and pop Pinto may be members of Mar-a-Lago as well. But would the Russians really care about a city council seat? Spy Talk asked former CIA officer (and Cipher Brief expert Steven Hall. “If [she] were a city council rep from, say, Billings, Montana, I'd say doubtful. But D.C. is a bit different,” Hall told us.
SOUNDS FAMILIAR: The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is offering a cash prize for people who can come up with new ways to identify where audio and video files were recorded. C4ISRNET says that NGA is looking for new methods of “…identifying a recording’s location based on ambient sound in the background.” NGA calls the contest “Soundscapes.” They’re offering up to 8 cash awards including a $27,000 top prize of “identifying, analyzing, and modelling these sound and acoustic scene indicators to uniquely classify audio recordings as originating in one of nine cities." Presumably, if this capability could be developed – when bad guys post hostage videos or the like – NGA could tune in and say – “that sounds like a piano bar in Pyongyang” or something.
FRIGHTFUL SIGHTS: You know who ought to enter the NGA contest? The folks at Bellingcat who continue to produce some remarkable private-sector intelligence analysis. For example, check out their recent piece on whether some video circulating of an alleged prisoner execution of two Armenians by Azerbaijani soldiers was real or staged. Evaluating the weapons seen in the video, geolocating the scenes shown, analyzing the time of day using shadows shown in overhead imagery and other elements allows them to conclude that despite denials by the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense – the executions are likely real.
FORTUNATELY, STATE DEPT DOESN’T NEED TO KNOW ABOUT OTHER CULTURES: The State Department informed all of its worldwide operations on October 23rd that they are “temporarily pausing all training programs related to diversity and inclusion.” This is in keeping with an Executive Order from September implying that such training “is rooted in the pernicious and false believe that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country…”
BOOK(S) REPORT: As always, books about intelligence and espionage continue to be hot. Among the things we learned this week were: former CIA officer Douglas London revealed that his book: The Recruiter: Spying in the Twilight of American Intelligence was picked up by Hachette books for publication about a year from now. London, now an adjunct professor at Georgetown, says in the book he relates the story of his “34 years working in the Clandestine Service, recruiting spies overseas, and dealing with a fraying American intelligence mission that lost its way after 9/11.” Then author Laura Kamoie has sold a novel titled Churchill’s Spymistress which is said to be about Vera Atkins, a real-life WWII British agent and two of her recruits who parachuted into Occupied France. That book will be published by Berkley. And in another deal, author Christine Wells, has sold a book called Her Secret War following the story of WWII British naval intelligence officer Victoria Ridsdale, who is said to be the real-life inspiration for the James Bond character Miss Moneypenny. That book will come from William Morrow.
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? Amazon Prime has been streaming Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest flick “Borat Subsequent MovieFilm.” Cohen has a remarkable ability of convincing (conning?) real people into saying and doing cringeworthy things. Much of the early coverage has focused on the actor playing Cohen’s young daughter literally catching Rudy Giuliani with his pants down. If that was it – it would not make the cut for the Dead Drop – but among the scenes was also one where Cohen/Borat takes his daughter to see a plastic surgeon about getting a nose job. In the mockumentary, the doctor reassures the girl that she doesn’t have a “Jew nose” but he can make her look better anyway and he responded to a question about whether he might want to have sex with her by responded if her father were not there. The real-world doctor – turns out to be a commander in the naval reserve. Task & Purpose says it reached out for comment, but the reservist in question didn’t immediately respond.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
TANKS FOR THE MEMORIES: We’ve relayed in the past fun stuff from the Task and Purpose website about U.S. Army soldiers coming up with cute names for their tank gun tubes. Names like “Diplomacy Faired,” “A Can of Whoopass” and “Bye Felicia.” Now, the same folks tell us that some soldiers in the 3rd Infantry Division have named their M1 Abrams main battle tank “Barbie’s Dreamhouse.” THAT should strike fear in the enemies hearts. Apparently, the moniker was applied by the tank’s former commander, Captain Jillian Collins who tweeted that “every little girl dreams of having a barbie dreamhouse,” and for her “it became my tank.”
SPANKS FOR TANKS: Speaking of tanks, The Moscow Times recently tweeted out some video of a “pair of reportedly drunk Russian soldiers” who drove a tank through an airport fence in Volgograd. If you have ever had trouble finding airport parking, you might enjoy the video.
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