Okay, so what about Anderson Cooper?

[gateley]

I've always liked him a lot, but since I haven't tuned in to CNN for a few years, I don't have a sense of where he's coming from.

Is he typical CNN? Does his reporting slant to the right? Is he one of us or one of them?

Just curious if you know, because as I said, I've always really liked him.

:hi:

[Drunken Irishman]

1. Hit & Miss.

I don't think he's intolerable, but yeah...

[OHdem10]

2. Tries to be fair, but often frames from the Rightie Perspective.

[gateley]

9. I kind of got that sense from the remarks I've seen here. Thanks! nt

[Ian David]

3. I think he's a great role-model for the albino children. n/t

[CrispyQ]

4. On occasion he hosts a round table discussion & I have found those to be really good.

Back before the election he had one with Zakaria & Gergen. It was a thoughtful, in depth discussion about the state of the union & the upcoming election, without the shouting & interrupting that you frequently get during the afternoon shows. A few weeks ago I saw another one on health care & again, I thought it was very good. As for his nightly show, I don't watch it much cuz I'm either online or watching something else.

[gateley]

12. He seems to be very intelligent, insightful and thoughtful. When

I did see him on CNN (or specials, don't really remember) to me he appeared pretty objective. I also liked it when, during the debates, Dennis said "I don't have anyone to the left of me" and Anderson said "I'm not sure that's possible, sir." :7 :hi:

[Sebastian Doyle]

5. He's a Vanderbildt

And thus, he'll always be about protecting the interests of the "top 1%"

[gateley]

10. Not necessarily. Look at the Kennedys and Jay Rockefeller. nt

[JackRiddler]

6. Q. Did he ever stop working for the CIA?

If so, why did he try to keep his internship there a secret?

Here's a story from Sep. 2006 (ignore the "posting" date, look at the URL).

-----------------------

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

Anderson Cooper's CIA Secret
Posted on Oct 27, 2008 @ 04:07PM


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.

----------------------

MOCKINGBIRD CALLING.

[Zen Democrat]

7. Ha! Is that how he got the job hosting "The Mole?" n/t

[JackRiddler]

8. More on Gloria Vanderbilt's son...

Commentary at:

http://rigint.blogspot.com/2006/09/license-to-spin.html

SNIP

Have you seen the "revelation" that Anderson Cooper interned for the CIA during his sophomore and junior summers away from Yale? "Soon after" his post-graduate time in Hanoi studying Vietnamese, says the Radar report, "Cooper apparently gave up his Bond fantasy to pursue a career in journalism." Bond fantasy. You hear that a lot from people who either don't know better or who know much worse. Sure, there are plenty of whoring dipsomaniacs on the company payroll, but I bet even James Angleton's car didn't have an ejector seat. Most so-called intelligence work - and especially that of media assets - is better suited to a cubicle than a jetpack.

The Bond conceit has been played by hooked-up lone-nutter Gus Russo, who says his initial skepticism of the Warren Report "was fueled by the naivete (perhaps it was the arrogance) of a seasoned teenager who had read all the James Bond novels. I knew about spies, and fake defectors, and sharpshooters, and patsies. The government couldn't fool me!" As soon as he'd finished consulting on Oliver Stone's JFK, Russo began speaking highly of an up-and-coming debunker named Gerald Posner, and in a 1993 symposium in Chicago he shocked fellow researchers by ridiculing the notion that Oswald was associated with US intelligence. "How many of you think Oswald was some kind of James Bond?" he asked. "I thought this was an oddly posed question," writes investigator Jim DiEugenio. "Nobody had ever reported Oswald owning an Aston-Martin, or leading an army of underwater scuba divers in a spear-gun fight, or employing all kinds of mechanical gadgetry to disarm his enemies. Far from it." Oswald was simply too marginal and unstable a character to be a player, claims Russo, ignoring the fact that it's on the margins that the unstable characters get played. (Though in recent years he's refined his position to allow that Oswald actually did figure in a conspiracy. A communist conspiracy.)

Cooper, of course, has more of the Bond, or Blofeld, about him than Oswald. Never has a patsy been both a Vanderbilt (and though most of the family squandered their inheritance, mother Gloria did alright for herself) and a Yalie. "Yale has influenced the Central Intelligence Agency more than any other university," says historian Gaddis Smith, "giving the CIA the atmosphere of a class reunion." The spy slang "spook" initially referred to a member of a Yale secret society. (See also "Spooks in Blue" and "For God, Country, Yale and the CIA" by the Yale Daily News.)

Cooper's internships nearly two decades ago don't imply that he's "on the payroll." But the payroll isn't very long. It's the assets, not the agents that predominate in the media, and his summer work is a strong indicator of affinity: something the Agency would not be inclined to forget as it follows the progress of his career, even as Cooper's viewers remain in the dark.

SNIP

[gateley]

11. That's interesting -- didn't know that. It really doesn't bother me,

though. I think that was at a time when we didn't know QUITE how smarmy the CIA was, and I imagine a life of 'intrigue' in the intelligence field would be appealing to many young college aged people.

He struck me as really caring about the Katrina debacle, appeared to have a good heart and sincere concern for the citizens of NO, and outrage at how the government had mishandled it. So, I ASSUMED he was more liberal -- that's really why I'm asking -- to find out if I read him right or not. Thanks!

[JackRiddler]

13. "a time when we didn't know QUITE how smarmy the CIA was"?

Smarmy? Really now.

Then and now, the CIA was well-known as a vast criminal organization, operating political rackets, terrorism and covert-war operations in many nations of the world: a tool of imperialism and fascism, an enemy of democracy.

This is not incompatible with liberal mindsets of individual members, a liberal atmosphere at the workplace compared to other government agencies, or even the promotion at times of liberal ideology (something the CIA has often done for tactical reasons, for example in the 1950s to win over the European left).

The question is not whether Cooper reacted righteously to the Katrina "debacle" (which was actually the deliberate abandonment of the poor and black by a federal government more intent on establishing the right of Blackwater to shoot "rioters" than on rescuing or feeding the refugees). He did! And it was about time, given how the corporate media had treated the Bush regime's incredible series of crimes until then - with celebrations and patriotic ballyhoo. Remember, just two years earlier, CNN was selling the WMD lie!

The interesting question is to what degree he and his network serve as a conduit for CIA or other mil/intel psyops and propaganda. Their history tells us they do, as when they accepted CIA "interns" to work as censors at CNN Atlanta headquarters during the 1999 NATO attack on Yugoslavia. Their conduct during the propaganda preparation for imperial wars has always been fully obedient to the needs and dictates of the US military/intel complex, right down to employing Pentagon generals as "reporters" and "analysts." Having a CIA asset as an anchor would be nothing new. Please look up Carl Bernstein's reports uncovering Operation Mockingbird, and the subsequent CIA admissions that they had highly-placed assets as editors and reporters all over the major media from the 1940s to the 1970s (at which point they claimed they stopped doing it).

Whether Cooper is still an asset is an academic question. He showed what he was about when he chose the CIA as a suitable employer, and later sought to hide this, which is the behavior of someone who feels implicated in the spook complex whether or not he still defines himself as a spook. For the rest, you need only look at his reports on anything touching on any given current mil/intel propaganda campaign. (Current examples: Afghanistan, Iran, Darfur.)

[JackRiddler]

14. kick

[JackRiddler]

15. & kick

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. Hmmm the CIA did have a program to penetrate US

news rooms...

It never stopped, so it seems

[VPStoltz]

16. I get a sense it depends on his daily constitution.

[emilyg]

18. I still miss Brown - don't watch

CNN anymore.