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Dead Drop: October 6

<p>dead drop</p>

REALLY FAKE NEWS: There was a remarkable story in The Weekly Standard late last week about a faux Congressional hearing recently held on Capitol Hill.  It seems former Senator Connie Mack is now a lobbyist (surprise!) and is working for some folks in Ukraine.    The Daily Beast reported that Mack got rookie member of Congress Ron Estes (R-KS) (who just won the seat vacated by CIA Director Mike Pompeo) to reserve a room for him in the Capitol basement. Mack then put on a mock hearing looking into banking irregularities at the National Bank of Ukraine. Wearing his old Member of Congress pin, Mack had two Ukrainian panelists talk about corruption at the NBU. The session was broadcast live to the Ukraine. Oddly, one other participant at the Mack event was former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, who reminisced about how nice the Russians were for a short while after the fall of the Berlin Wall.  The Weekly Standard says that Woolsey now suggests his remarks were off-the-record even though they were broadcast live on Ukraine’s NewsOne.  (And Rep. Estes’ office told the Daily Beast the room was reserved as a courtesy to Mack, but the room booking policy has been changed so it doesn’t happen again).

TROLLING THE SPOOKS: The CIA recently took to twitter to try to recruit Russian speakers posting the question (in Russian), “Do you know what you can do as a CIA linguist?” And answering, “unveil the truth.” The Russian Foreign Ministry responded (in both English and Russian) on Monday saying, “CIA thanks for support & promotion of Russian language. Why have U been hiding it? We are ready to assist with experts & recommendations.”

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