Leaked Gaza Cable. US military in 74 countries. Election Hysteria.

Your weekly roundup

U.S. Air Force firefighters deployed to what the Pentagon calls an “undisclosed location” (actually deployed to Prince Sultan Airbase in Saudi Arabia) participate in an accident exercise

Don’t believe the hype about election interference. Don’t take our word for it. Here’s what former NSA Director Paul Nakasone said on Thursday: “[In] 2018, 2020 [and] 2022 we’ve had safe and secure elections … [in] 2024, we will have another safe and secure election.” The retired four-star general would know, having served as director of the NSA and commander  of U.S. Cyber Command. CYBERCOM’s mission set includes defending U.S. elections from foreign cyber threats. 

Nakasone is an unusually sober voice in the national security space, and level-headed comments like his don’t often generate headlines. Compare what he said with the hyperventilating in the news media as well as Congress about Iran’s frankly laughable attempts to hack the Trump campaign. On Tuesday, Rep. Mike Turner, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, wrote a letter to President Biden. “I am writing to convey my grave concern over the alarming reports that Iran is actively attempting to influence upcoming U.S. elections,” the letter begins, written as though Turner was holding a flashlight up to his chin during a campfire scary story. Donald Trump, ironically, has been another voice of moderation on this issue, saying of the Iran-backed hack of his campaign: “They were only able to get publicly available information…” 

U.S. deploys troops in 74 different countries, this week alone. Our military deployments to countries like Germany, Qatar or Japan are most familiar to people, but they’re far from the only ones. As we reported on our new KlipNews Twitter account (follow us here), the U.S. military deployed troops to the following countries this week alone: 

• Angola

• Antigua and Barbuda

• Australia

• Bahamas

• Bahrain

• Belgium

• Botswana

• Bulgaria

• Cameroon

• Canada

• Chile

• Columbia

• Cuba (Guantanamo Bay)

• Cyprus

• Denmark (Greenland)

• Diego Garcia

• Djibouti

• Ecuador

• Egypt

• El Salvador

• Estonia

• Federated States of Micronesia

• Finland

• Germany

• Greece

• Haiti

• Honduras

• Hungary

• Iceland

• Indonesia

• Iraq

• Israel

• Italy

• Jamaica

• Japan

• Jordan

• Kenya

• Kosovo

• Kuwait

• Latvia

• Lebanon

• Lithuania

• Libya

• Marshall Islands

• Moldova

• Morocco

• Netherlands

• Niger

• Northern Marianas

• Norway

• Oman

• Panama

• Papua New Guinea

• Philippines

• Peru

• Poland

• Portugal

• Romania

• Qatar

• Saudi Arabia

• Singapore

• Slovakia

• Somalia

• South Korea

• Spain

• Sweden

• Syria

• Thailand

• Turkey

• Ukraine

• UAE

• UK

• Uzbekistan

• Vietnam

Some are countries that host permanent U.S. bases, some are countries with minor facilities, some with clandestine operations, and some are where U.S. military forces are conducting combat exercises. Some of these countries – Jordan, Saudi Arabia – insist on obscuring the American military presence. You’ll occasionally see critiques of our world-bestriding military but only in reference to countries like Iraq or Syria. In actuality it might be easier to talk about the countries we aren’t deployed to. 

Leaked U.S. diplomatic cable reveals tensions between USAID and Israel.

The cable we obtained shows USAID warning the Biden administration that the Israeli military has "drastically increased the pace of evacuation orders in Gaza," worsening the humanitarian crisis. “IDF evacuation orders hindered both humanitarian access to populations in need and access to aid by civilians, increasing food, health, protection, shelter and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) needs among an increasingly vulnerable population following more than ten months of conflict.” The IDF’s evacuation orders have resulted in an 80 percent reduction in water production in one part of Gaza(!), the cable reveals. You can read the entire cable in a Twitter thread posted on KlipNews. 

U.S. military to assist the Secret Service through Inauguration day. The Defense Department announced on Thursday that it would “provide assistance to the Secret Service for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates during the 2024 campaigns through Inauguration Day 2025.” The support follows a request for assistance from the Department of Homeland Security, Secret Service’s parent agency. The Secret Service’s sprawling mission entails all kinds of work unrelated to protecting current or former presidents, as we’ve previously reported. The fact that they need outside help to carry out what Secret Service itself describes as a “no-fail” mission should raise a lot of questions about whether the agency needs to be involved in, say, counterfeiting investigations (which should be the function of either the FBI or the Treasury).

And as for the military “assisting” homeland security through the elections, the transition, and the inauguration, this speaks to the unstated concerns about violence and the military’s quiet preparations to avoid another repeat of January 6. We’ll have more about this later. 

Codename of the week: KaChing. While codenames are supposed to obscure the nature of the secret programs they designate, that often isn’t the case in practice. KaChing is a highly classified CIA  intelligence database of currency transaction reports used to find and track terrorists, drug dealers, money launderers, transnational organized crime syndicates, sanctions candidates and busters, and foreign intelligence services. Once again, the intelligence world is a lot less Jason Bourne and a lot more Burn After Reading.

We’re hearing that KaChing is being supplemented or replaced by a new database called Fireship.

Hypeland Security, I mean Homeland Security, warns of “Attack on Energy Facility in anti-Israel Action.” That quote is from the title of a restricted intelligence report the Department of Homeland Security circulated to local police across the country that we obtained this week. Sounds pretty ominous, right? An attack on an energy facility, that must be an oil facility, imagine if it blew up! But what the title doesn't make clear is that the "energy facility" was a single solar panel array and the "attack" produced minor damage. Consequences of the attack shown in photo of the solar panel array below: