Under Amazon’s CIA Cloud: The Washington Post

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/12/18-0


Jeff Bezos recently acquired the Washington Post, but the company that made him his real fortune, Amazon.com, is also under a multi-hundred million dollar contract with the CIA for computing services. (Credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)

News media should illuminate conflicts of interest, not embody them. But the owner of the Washington Post is now doing big business with the Central Intelligence Agency, while readers of the newspaper’s CIA coverage are left in the dark.

The Post’s new owner, Jeff Bezos, is the founder and CEO of Amazon -- which recently landed a $600 million contract with the CIA. But the Post’s articles about the CIA are not disclosing that the newspaper’s sole owner is the main owner of CIA business partner Amazon.

Even for a multi-billionaire like Bezos, a $600 million contract is a big deal. That’s more than twice as much as Bezos paid to buy the Post four months ago.

And there’s likely to be plenty more where that CIA largesse came from. Amazon’s offer wasn’t the low bid, but it won the CIA contract anyway by offering advanced high-tech “cloud” infrastructure.