Dead Drop: September 23

THE GANG THAT COULDN’T SHOOT STRAIGHT: There is speculation that the Russians may have struck one of their own cities with a stray hypersonic missile recently – causing damage and injuring six people about 220 miles from the Ukrainian border. Naturally, the Russians deny this, saying the explosion was caused by a Ukrainian TU-141 Strizh reconnaissance drone – but according to Newsweek, other sources say the evidence on the ground says otherwise.

THE GANG THAT WOULDN’T SPEAK STRAIGHT:   We hear Shaun Walker, a foreign correspondent for The Guardian has contracted with Knopf to write a book called “The Illegals” looking at the century-long history of Russia’s deep-cover spies from its roots in Lenin’s Bolshevik movement to Putin’s present-day sleeper agents. Walker tweets that it won’t be out until early 2024.

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

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