The Goal Going Forward Is To Find And Expose More Conspiracy Theories, As The List Has Well Nigh Been Exhausted In This Century
Never forget the above advice! From almost any viewpoint imaginable it is hard to believe that AFNN is five years old: and going strong. It seems like yesterday the first article flew down range as the process took shape, the website stood up and deadlines, schedules and articles started to fly…
All tribute to the original team that came up with the vision-the idea-to provide a beacon of light and truth and a proverbial battering ram coming out of the dark days of censorship and lawfare that was most of 2020, to strike back at the system that was working to manipulate and monopolize “their truth,” often running roughshod over the actual facts.
The timing of the launch of AFNN could not have been better, just in time to witness and chronicle the beginning stages of what in hindsight would turn out to be some of the worst years in American history represented by the Joe Biden Presidency.
More tragic than the fact itself-a dreadful period in American history-are the people-friends, frenemies, colleagues, former colleagues who are now memories in the mist excommunicated from the contact list, and relatives-who profess and confess that they never saw it coming: the entire Biden disaster. Who still subscribe to the Obama scandal-free presidency bullspit, even after all we know.
All pretty much documented every tawdry step of the way into the crapper by little AFNN’s articles: a little website punching way above its weight!
My buddy and eventual AFNN contributor Stu Cvrk contacted me to do introductions with an Army Infantry guy-Mike Ford-who was standing up somewhat of a news source that was looking for contributing authors. Which somewhat intrigued me for several reasons. One being the idea of an Infantry guy putting together somewhat of a news site was at the very least-well-interesting: not that there is anything wrong with that, particularly since I read some of his well-written contributions on other sites in the years leading up to the discussion.
Just by chance, I had written somewhat of the third major rant in a series of emails to friends that castigated the intelligence community for the sorry judgement shown in recent selections that was elevating people with questionable morals, ethics and integrity, not to mention lack of experience, to senior positions in the government where I felt it signaled pending disaster in almost every instance.
I spoke with Mike-who had come across a few of my rants over time-and we discussed salary and deadlines and that kind of thing: and I’m kidding, of course. Mike knew I was an intel geek of the first order but understood that I often used a 12 gauge for my rants, many of which he had seen, with me wandering somewhat far afield from my core expertise to a fairly wide range of targets of opportunity: any topic that fostered a rant, which became somewhat of a criterion.
I recall it was early to mid-April 2021 when it seemed like things were getting serious. I had a decent rant in the hopper about the recent selection to be the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, who just happened to be my Deputy at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) about a year before I retired from government.
Which also brought up another issue, that being the little matter that a friend of mine had asked me to help a firm associated with MIT Lincoln Lab on a contract effort and-despite having no desire to do contract work, else Colorado would not have been the retirement destination of choice (although that decision was made to be near our kids and grandkids)-I agreed to the job which involved an effort to improve NGA analysis workflow: which was right up my alley.
The little matter being the issue of cancel culture and the fact that the articles I planned on writing would certainly put in jeopardy any contract that I might be associated with: and right out the gate hammering on the intel community pick for PDDNI where I would likely stand out like-my favorite saying-a ho in you know where.
So Max Dribbler-the main character in a second book I was writing-which is a play on words for somebody who has the drip lip, a person who is reminded of a story in otherwise innocuous conversations, which reminds me that I have yet to finish that book-but the pseudonym of Max Dribbler seemed prudent.
Which is kind of funny in hindsight, because about a month into the adventure I started receiving emails asking if I had worked with so and so or such and such, because I was kind of hiding in plain sight like my granddaughter playing peek-a-boo. The contract is long gone, as is any anonymity associated with Max-as any decent AI platform can crack that code in a skinny minute: which has long been the concern with AI for any in the IC truly in a cover position.
Regardless, I’m going to maintain the nom de guerre for the foreseeable future if for no other reason than sentimental value.
So, my first article downrange-which is no longer on the website because of a little-ahem-back-end database challenge, took issue with the newly nominated PDDNI. Nothing against Stacey Dixon-hell, she was my Deputy for a time and I worked with her on and off for some 11 years or so-but it somewhat frosted my toasties that she was being described as, “Dr. Dixon possesses a deep knowledge of the intelligence tradecraft and understands the critical work intelligence professionals perform every day. I cannot think of a more exceptional leader to join the ODNI team and help set the strategic direction for the Intelligence Community.”
Now she is a Stanford Grad, has a PhD from Georgia Tech in Robotics and is a smart cookie, but intelligence tradecraft? Just simply not on her resume nor in her CV. And she lacked about 12-15 years in experience in comparison with any senior IC leader imaginable, particularly at that level of responsibility.
My last draft on the article was shortly after 21 April 2021 when the above was announced. May the 4th (be with you) was likely the publish date, or whenever the first official page went live.
Mike and I discussed a handful of topics or subjects I would focus on, such as intel topics, LQBTQMOUSE issues, with one in particular of great interest to both of us. That being the idea of what a festering pustule disaster the Biden Presidency was going to be in consideration of all the Obama sycophants who would be revived like Freddy Krueger or Jason and be placed in charge-on the varsity team.
We discussed telling the story by focusing on the disasters of the Obama administration to set the story up, envisioning a series that might go for 7-8 or so articles. When last I checked the dreadful, dreary, and malfeasance laden Biden series called “Globalist Folly as Fashion Back In Style In The Swamp” and-actually-this one-number 18-was one of my favorite articles that includes somewhat of a parody along the lines of the famous comedy from Vietnam of “What the Captain meant to say,” but the series was up to article number 32 when I stopped.
About the first 17 articles were victims of the database problem and timed off the site, and in truth I could have written 100 articles to present, but it became too depressing to write about-and also-like picking on the handicapped…At some point I will resurrect the first 17 to stroll down memory lane as a reminder: you were warned….
The first article was not tied to the series-which was later named the above as I leaned into the series-but my records show that my 11 May 2021 article was entitled “The Hardest Job in the US: The Biden-Harris Foreign Policy Team EOD Guy,” which was somewhat of a recap of the lowlights of the first four months of the presidency in somewhat of an irreverent style. It is still a good read given how the administration stumbled right out of the gate: will publish this one at a future date for pure entertainment, historical value.
On the 20th anniversary of an IC community study effort I led (the analysis group,) I wrote just a classic email rant that was-even for me-of great length (and even more impressive girth.) Infantry Mike-ever the article hound looking to turn useful rants into published articles-asked me to look into making the rant into an article series. I did give somewhat of a weak argument that the problem with trying to cover the story in a series was-in actuality-it would be a book by the time I went through the outline of what I envisioned as the key elements of the story.
His classic answer: So what? My response, what, me worry?: Let’s go…
That series-“National Intelligence Folly: How an Unsolved Murder Led to Billions of Dollars of Program Fraud, Waste and Abuse–” started 7 November 2022 and went on for 31 articles through March of 2023. It is at the very least interesting from the standpoint of how the secretive National Reconnaissance Office ran afoul of congress “bigly” and was spanked “bigly.”
Along the way there were nearly 300 articles published. It has been a great experience and opportunity having an outlet to opine, complain, whine, pontificate, and observe life as it unfolds in America in the 21st century.
The trends that have unfolded in this century-but particularly in the decade of Trump-bode badly for our country, even to this optimistic pessimist. Particularly in recent years where the democrat party completely eliminated any and all remnants of the left center of the political spectrum, starting with the agent orange-like elimination of any who fail to kiss the ring of the abortion culture that began with the elimination of the term “rare” from the 2008 Obama Democrat Platform. As well as the watering down-and later elimination through failure to defend in court-the up to that point position of the US Government that marriage was between a man and a woman.
Fast forward to the lawfare against Trump and his movement, the censorship against the American people, the COVID dogma and stupid policy that ran roughshod over citizens’ rights while picking winners and losers concerning business policy, economic policies that added trillions to the deficit for spurious reasons and drove inflation rates up to all-time highs while our government throughout described it as “transitory,” there was the disaster of Afghanistan-while Ukraine was dragging on, followed by 7 October 2023 and one of the biggest intelligence failures in history where Hamas committed an atrocity that makes all such efforts in history seem minor in comparison-even the Munich Olympic terrorism committed by the Palestinians in 1972 that seems all but forgotten, right up to present with a feckless congress that continues to fail to do job 1-produce a budget by October 1-not to mention the ongoing strife with Iran-which is frankly long overdue.
All to say that we are in for more sportiness in the next 5 years: and I’m there for it!
Congratulations to the entire AFNN Team, the writers/authors and particularly the editors and the folks who make things work behind the scenes.
An endeavor like this can’t happen without a lot of people behind the scenes who work with little to no fanfare: but are greatly appreciated!
Now-about that salary…
Max Dribbler
7 May 2026
May the 4th be with you: RIP Big Ed, you are missed more than you can imagine.
LSMBTGAN: Lamestream media echo chamber (LMEC-L) social media (SM) big tech tyrants (BT,) government (G,) academia (A,) and non-government officials (N)
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