GET THE POPCORN OUT: JCS Chairman General Mark Milley is scheduled to testify in public before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, September 28th. The subject matter is supposed to be about the committee’s investigation on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. That would be colorful enough – but the session is also the first public appearance by Milley following the publication of Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s book Peril, and the disclosure that Milley chatted up his Chinese counterpart, General Li Zuocheng, a couple times, allegedly warning him to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Most of the informed speculation after that bit of the book leaked suggests that Milley was just doing his job trying to prevent miscalculation on the part of the Chinese. We look forward to hearing, however, whether the General really did tell the Chinese that if the U.S. were planning on attacking them – he would be a gentleman about it and give them advance notice. That seems likely to have lost some context in the translation (to Woodward and Costa.) The hearing is set to start at 9:30 AM and could make for some colorful viewing. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and CENTCOM Commander General Kenneth McKenzie are also slated to testify – but they will get the easy stuff – just explaining how and why the Afghan pullout was so messy.
THE LIFE OF LAVROV: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov seems to be living large. The Daily Beast says that according to Russian opposition media (tied to Alexei Navalny) the 71-year-old diplomat often travels the world with a much younger mistress, who is also an actress and restauranteur. His travel companion is also reportedly is quite rich – but still saves money by using the foreign minister’s official plane on at least 60 occasions for travel around the world. During a press briefing, Maria Zahharova, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, issued a non-denial denial attacking the folks who reported the allegations as “feeding on foreign grants” and stating “…even the most malicious opponents don’t doubt Lavrov’s professionalism. His authority is unshakable. His authority is simply undisputable.” Then Zakharova gathered her papers and promptly stalked off the podium, a move patented by former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
WOMAN OF THE HOUSE: Speaking of things the Russians learned from the U.S., we see that Maria Butina, who was once convicted as an un-registered foreign agent in the U.S., has been elected to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament in Russia. She was elected to represent the rural region of Kirov Oblast which is about 2700 miles from her hometown. (And we thought the Gerrymandering and carpet bagging here was bad.) Business Insider says her campaign was allegedly partially bankrolled by the ex-CEO of Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne.
QUITE AN ACCOMPLISHMENT: These days, it is all you can do to get a majority of people to agree on who won the last election or whether or not taking horse de-wormer is the best way to avoid COVID-19, so we were struck by the achievement of Brigadier General Amy Johnston who was chief of the Army’s office of public affairs until recently. According to Army Times, Johnston was suspended from her duties after 97% of the respondents to an official survey of her command reported “workplace hostility.” Army Times got an Army spokesperson to confirm that Johnston is not currently the chief Army spokesperson – but that person was mum on why pending an investigation. Two thirds of the soldiers and civilians surveyed in Army public affairs reported low morale which, if our math is right, means that almost a third experienced workplace hostility. But hey, everyone knows journalists can’t do math.
MAY DAY IN COURT: In June, we shared an item about May Salehi, a long-time State Department employee who was under investigation for “corporate espionage” for allegedly giving insider information to a contractor bidding on State Department construction contracts. This week, the Department of Justice announced that Salehi has pled guilty to a “honest services fraud scheme.” According to court documents, Salehi told one of six bidders on a project in Bermuda that he had initially underbid the others – so he subsequently submitted a new bid raising his price by $917,820 and blaming the earlier number on “an arithmetic error.” He won the contract and subsequently gave Salehi a $60,000 tip for the tip. Charges against the contractor are reportedly pending.
SPACE FORCE LAUNCHES (LEAD) TRIAL BALLOON: This week, the Space Force showed off some prototypes of uniforms for the fledgling service. The dark blue outfits oddly have buttons that start on the wearer’s right shoulder and then plunge diagonally toward their left hip. Many social media users immediately likened the space suits to costumes used on Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek – and Iron Chef. We’re not sure if the USSF should be Guardians of fashion sense (see what we did there?) but we hope this design is not their final frontier.
AND FINALLY…. In what may be the last documentary (for a while) on the end of the “forever war” in Afghanistan, MSNBC aired a documentary by veteran war correspondent Richard Engel on Sunday September 19th called, “Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires.” The program featured interviews with legendary CIA operatives Gary Schroen (who led the first team into Afghanistan after 9/11 as told in his book: First In) and Ambassador Hank Crumpton who led the CIA’s overall Afghan mission as recounted in The Art of Intelligence. Also interviewed, was former NATO Supreme Allied Commander (and Cipher Brief expert) Admiral James Stavridis. As far as we can tell, MSNBC didn’t promote this documentary much – as can be seen in the TV ratings from Sunday night which listed Engel’s show as coming in 38th out of 39 listed shows.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
TIME FLIES, BUT TIK TOK DOESN’T: We mentioned in the September 10 Dead Drop that Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) was ticked off when he saw an item in Politico which seemed to suggest that the CIA’s social media team was considering establishing a Tik Tok account to augment their Twitter, Instagram and other social media presence. CIA Director William Burns wrote to Rubio on September 16th telling him to rest easy saying, “The CIA has never had a presence on TikTok and has no plans to join the platform.”
WE GOT A BANG OUT OF THIS: An Army unit proudly announced last week that the service had officially christened their new next-generation artillery system, the XM1299 Extended Range Cannon Artillery (aka ERCA) for nomenclature geeks, – the “Iron Thunder.” Only problem was – that was a misfire. Task & Purpose says that apparently the release was a little quick on the trigger. “The Army has not officially named the ERCA system,” Army Futures Command spokesman Col. Cobb Laslie told Task & Purpose in a statement. “The Facebook post by 4-27FA inaccurately implied the ERCA was named ‘Iron Thunder.'” Oops.
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