DON’T GO NEAR THE WATER: We have mentioned many times the proclivity of Russians who have gotten on the wrong side of Vladimir Putin, who then find themselves on the wrong side of open high-rise building windows. Well, it seems there is more than one way to knock off an oligarch. Business Insider says that Ivan Pechorin, a top Russian energy executive and long-time friend of Putin, died under mysterious circumstances after “falling overboard” from his boat on September 10. His body washed up two days later near Vladivostok. The hits just keep on coming.
DON’T DRINK THE WATER: If you have watched any cable TV in recent weeks, you have likely seen several of the advertisements from multiple law firms looking for people who lived or worked on Camp Lejeune between 1952 and 1987. Apparently, the water on base was toxic and might lead to serious health issues in later years. But the ads have been so ubiquitous – that it has us wondering if some of these outfits aren’t trying a bit too hard. There was one advertisement (that seems to have disappeared) featuring a gray-haired “former Marine captain” appearing in full uniform urging fellow formers to sign up with a particular ambulance chasing firm. Veteran activist, Paul Rieckhoff, also noted that he is seeing lots of “disingenuous, manipulative and exploitative ads” targeting him and other veterans online. Government officials around the country are also warning about misleading ads. “The TV ads are harmful to veterans and leading them down the path of misinformation,” Herm Breuer, the Trumbull County (Ohio) Veterans Service Commission’s executive director, told a local paper. “Some of the ads are deceiving. We’re seeing a broad brush with people on TV. Attorneys can be predatory on TV. They said, ‘If you were in Camp Lejeune, you’re eligible and you can get money now.’ We’ve received hundreds of calls since the commercials started.”
THEY DO CALL IT HELL WEEK: Last week’s Dead Drop reported on a troubling story in The New York Times about the death of a sailor in the Navy’s Basic Underwater Demolition/SEALs training (aka “BUD/S”.) The incident prompted charges of brutality, cheating, drug use and medical malpractice. As might be expected, the BUD/S buzz resulted in the service announcing a high-level “outside” investigation diving into the allegations. Well, not exactly outside – but the investigator is a non-SEAL admiral. Historically, only one in four sailors entering BUD/S makes it through the course but, The New York Times says that in recent months the success rate has plunged even further – and in some classes, only 7 percent of the sailors made it through the course. For the other 93%, this BUD/S not for you.
WAR GAMES: There seems to be an endless supply of “reality” TV shows these days. One new contribution on the horizon is a show that will air on FOX early next year called “Special Forces: The Ultimate Test” in which 16 “celebrities” undergo military instruction in the Jordanian desert while being trained/tormented by “an elite team of ex-special forces operatives.” The definition of “celebrity” seems a little expansive for the series. We have vaguely heard of several of them like “Mel B” who became known as “Scary Spice” of the Spice Girls two dozen years ago or so, and Anthony Scaramucci who spent about a dozen days in the Trump White House, and Kate Gosselin who had a previous reality show about having slightly less than a dozen kids. Some of the others are not so famous. The celebrity SF series is a knockoff of a British show called “Celebrity SAS” which is in its fourth season. Apparently, the Brits also have an endless supply of “celebrities.”
SIGHTED SUB, STOLE SAME: News has surfaced that Alexander Rose, who wrote a well-received book about George Washington’s spies quite a while back, has landed a deal with Little, Brown publishers to write “Hunter/Killer,” a WWII history book about an audacious U.S. Navy mission to capture a Nazi U-Boat. The mission to capture U-505 was led by then-Captain Dan Gallery and facilitated by intelligence officer Commander Kenneth Knowles. If this sounds familiar, it may because the captured submarine somehow ended up on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois. No word on publication date.
REMEDIAL CIVICS CLASS: Last week, eight former Secretaries of Defense and five former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs signed a letter that appeared in War on the Rockslaying out 16 principles intended to provide ground rules for civil-military relations. Without naming names, they stressed that military officers must ensure that “any order they receive from the president is legal.” The New York Timesdescribed the missive as reading, “like an American high school civics lesson.” Not everyone agreed. For example, Paul Yingling, a former high-school civics teacher and retired Army officer, took to Defense Oneto give the 13 former high-ranking officials some homework – asking ten questions about what he called the platitudes in the open letter. We had one additional question. Why did the signatories decide it was necessary to spell out their full middle names in the letter? Did we really need to know that William Cohen’s middle name is “Sebastian”? Or Gen. (ret.) Richard Myers’ middle moniker is “Bowman”?
HAPPY (ALMOST) 75TH: The official 75th anniversary of the Central Intelligence Agency is Sunday the 18th of September, but the CIA has been celebrating for a while. As part of the festivities, their social media team recently posted a list of “10 fascinating CIA missions” that have been declassified and asked if we had ever heard of them. Umm, you got Bin Ladin? Yeah, we heard that. We were hoping for some new nuggets but will have to be satisfied with some golden oldies like the Berlin tunnel, Glomar Explorer and that Abbottabad raid. Our spies tell us that on Saturday September 10, the Agency hosted a select group of alumni for a visit to CIA headquarters. Attendance was limited due to COVID, social distancing and such. As part of the 75th festivities, the Agency is unwrapping a renovated museum – known to a few as the finest museum you will (likely) never see. They have also dedicated a new statue of Harriet Tubman, whose Civil War missions with the Underground Railroad are sort of a precursor to the CIA exfiltrations of today.
ALSO CELEBRATING: The U.S. Air Force was established by the same act that created the CIA. Being a considerably more overt organization, they marked the event by conducting Thunderbirds and historic warbird flyovers above Washington, DC on September 15th. It is unclear why they didn’t schedule the event on the actual anniversary, the 18th – but since that is a Sunday, maybe it was deemed a day of rest. The National Security Council was similarly established on September 18th – 75 years ago. No word on what events they might have had planned. Perhaps precision briefing demonstrations.
POCKET LITTER: Dead Droplets and bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE – AND IT’S CLASSIFIED: The good news is that the U.S. Navy has more of those spooky UFO (or UAP) videos that are so fun to watch. The bad news is that they say letting us view them with would “harm national security.” An outfit called “The Black Vault” first filed FOIA requests for the videos about two years ago, when other videos leaked and eventually were confirmed to be authentic. Last week, the Navy got back to the Black Vault saying essentially: “We’ve got some stuff – but can’t share any of it.”
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