Dead Drop: October 4

WHISTLEBLOWER/IMPEACHMENT FREE ZONE: Are you tired of constantly reading about whistleblowers, impeachment, the deep state and the like? Well, then you might want to get a job with the U.S. intelligence community.  CIA insiders tell us that the Agency puts out a daily media summary that is circulated around the IC with news items of interest to government officials.  But in the past week or so – when the Washington Post, New York Times, and other publications were chock full of stories about problematic Ukrainian phone calls, the resignation of State Department envoys, and urgent meetings with Inspectors General – the Agency’s “Media Highlights” carried very few such items.  A source familiar with the way that MH comes together told us that its only meant to 'highlight' the stories in the news, not include every story written by every organization on the same topic.  We kind of understand that, because if they did, it would have surely been 300 pages long over this past week.

TURNABOUT IS UNFAIR PLAY? Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, got famous by gathering secret information from the U.S. government and splashing it around the world.  Now we hear that he and his supporters are upset because a Spanish security firm reportedly gathered information on Assange when he was holed up in a diplomatic facility in London – and shared that information with the CIA. The newspaper El Pais reports that the Spanish company that was responsible for security at the Ecuadoran embassy, allegedly gave the CIA audio and video of meetings Assange held with his lawyers over the years. One account said that the company bugged fire extinguishers to keep an eye on the asylum seeking Wikileaks leader.  Assange is upset that his privacy was violated.  He probably doesn’t have much more privacy these days in a British jail – awaiting a February 2020 extradition hearing.