Does CNN's Anderson Cooper Sing Like a Mockingbird?

[JohnyCanuck]

Anderson Cooper's CIA Secret

Anderson Cooper has long traded on his biography, carving a niche for himself as the most human of news anchors. But there's one aspect of his past that the silver-haired CNN star has never made public: the months he spent training for a career with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Following his sophomore and junior years at Yale—a well-known recruiting ground for the CIA—Cooper spent his summers interning at the agency's monolithic headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in a program for students interested in intelligence work. His involvement with the agency ended there, and he chose not to pursue a job with the agency after graduation, according to a CNN spokeswoman, who confirmed details of Cooper's CIA involvement to Radar.

"Whatever summer jobs or internships our anchors had in college couldn't be less consequential," she added. He has kept the experience a secret, sources say, out of concern that, if widely known, it might compromise his ability to travel in foreign countries and even possibly put him at greater risk from terrorists.

"He doesn't want to be any more of a target than he already is," says one Anderson confidante. On the other hand, as Bob Woodruff and others have learned, American journalists are already prime targets in the world's conflict zones, and are typically accused of having CIA ties even where none exist. And by not disclosing his training before now, Cooper has arguably made it into a potential issue. "It creates the appearance of something smelly there," says a former CNN official who knows Cooper. (Particularly in light of the period Anderson spent studying Vietnamese at the University of Hanoi after college. Soon after, Cooper apparently gave up his Bond fantasy to pursue a career in journalism—except for a brief period when he starred as host of ABC's reality show, The Mole.)

http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2006/09/anderson-coopers-cia-secret.php

If you don't get the reference to "sing like a Mockingbird" in the subject line just google "operation mockingbird."

[MrModerate]

1. So he's the model for Joanie and Rick's son in Doonesbury? n/t

[SmokingJacket]

2. That's surprising.

There are others that strike me as much more obvious Mockingbirds... but who knows.

[KoKo]

3. but if they were "obvious" they wouldn't be good mockingbirds, though.

There are probably quite a few in each news organization. :-(

[SmokingJacket]

10. True, true! nt

[KoKo]

11. Kick for Anderson Cooper.... Mr. (possible) Mockingbird! Sent to NO's and

now with his OWN SHOW..FORUM for BUSH CIA! Amazing the timing that Anderson got his own show, isn't it? :shrug:

[Generic Other]

4. Well, you've certainly raised my suspicions

I guess old anderson just got a new nick.

[AX10]

5. I will now have to question him.

Remember "Operation Mockingbird"?

In fairness, he has not shown himself, at least overtly, to be a "mediawhore".

[TroglodyteScholar]

6. This is grasping at straws...

He isn't perfect, but he's far from the bogeyman you'd like him to be.

[JohnyCanuck]

9. Frankly the mainstream US media is as corrupt as the US government

so I don't trust any of the media personalities to play it straight with their audiences. I agree as mainstream media personalities go, Anderson Cooper seems to be among the least offensive of a whole sorry bunch of spin artist and establishment propaganda spewers, but who's to say that he doesn't get a late night phone call from his contact at Langley every once in a while along the lines of, "Gee Anderson, we'd rather you not cover this story, as it could really damage our foreign relations with country X and harm the war on terror if it came out their defense minister has been taking bribes from American defense contractors" or "Whistleblower Y has been creating some waves with her allegations about wrongdoing in such and such department. You had a chance to talk to her recently off the record. Did she tell you anything more than what she has stated publicly?"

Now maybe Cooper did really cut all ties to the CIA when he decided to become a reporter and maybe he is a 100% straight shooter calling the shots exactly as he sees them (within the limits imposed by his corporate bosses and issuers of his paycheck). The trouble is, after Mockingbird revealed just how extensively the media was infiltrated by CIA operatives, why trust any of them 100% to be offering up an un-compromised and straight forward view of the facts as he/she sees it. I sure don't (OK maybe Keith Olberman and Helen Thomas would be two exceptions to that rule).

In February, 1976, George Bush, the recently appointed Director of the CIA announced a new policy: “Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.” However, he added that the CIA would continue to “welcome” the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists.

Carl Bernstein, who had worked with Bob Woodward in the investigation of Watergate, provided further information about Operation Mockingbird in an article in Rolling Stone in October, 1977. Bernstein claimed that over a 25 year period over 400 American journalists secretly carried out assignments for the CIA: "Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested it the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles, and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmockingbird.htm

[Generic Other]

7. Remember how he orchestrated the smearing of Cindy in Crawford?

He brought the pro-war camp into the picture interviewing those nuts who organized the freeper base Camp Qualls.

[Sequoia]

8. Hitler Youth, Hitler Youth!

Heh, heh...never mind.