nytimes: "The Plot to Take Down a Fox News Analyst"

[MinM]

In the fall of 2010, Clizbe was summoned from his Northern Virginia home to a restaurant at Baltimore-Washington International Airport for lunch with a Department of Defense contractor named Kerry Patton. The two had grown friendly on an email list affiliated with the International Association for Intelligence Education. The lunch was Patton’s idea; he wanted Clizbe to meet a mentor of his, Wayne Simmons. Simmons had served in the C.I.A. for 27 years and appeared regularly as an analyst on Fox News. He was ‘‘all Kerry could talk about,’’ Clizbe recalls.

Though Simmons had become well known to people in that right-wing media circle, Clizbe didn’t know his name. He never encountered Simmons during his days with the C.I.A. — it’s a massive, compartmentalized organization, after all — and he didn’t have cable TV. Still, Simmons and Clizbe should have had plenty to discuss. Their political leanings were similar enough. Simmons claimed to be ‘‘far right of Attila the Hun.’’ But something about Simmons didn’t sit right with Clizbe.

Over lunch, it seemed to Clizbe that Simmons was oblivious to the routine ‘‘butt-sniffing’’ that C.I.A. veterans routinely engage in: questions about time spent at the ‘‘Farm’’ and about stints in war zones. Simmons said he had operated separately from Langley; he hinted at brazen operations against drug cartels, opining on the painful isolation of an operative’s existence. ‘‘ ‘You and me, we know what it’s like,’ ’’ Clizbe recalls him saying. ‘‘ ‘It’s how we have to live our lives.’ ’’

Clizbe added: ‘‘He was so full of bluster that anybody who hadn’t been in the C.I.A. would have had their socks knocked off. But the things he said were so not C.I.A.’’ ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/magazine/the-plot-to-take-down-a-fox-news-analyst.html

[Xipe Totec]

1. Dense reading but I'm slogging through it. Worth it. Thanks! nt

[underpants]

2. Marking for later read