CIA Openly Recruits Journalists at Journos of Color Conference

These people have no shame! The Central Intelligence Agency actually had a table on the exhibition floor of Unity ’08, the conference for journalists of color organized jointly by (in alphabetical order) the Asian-American Journalists Association, the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Native-American Journalists Association!

As the article points out, this is not an appropriate place for journalists to work. Here are two of the people interviewed on the segment:

JOE DAVIDSON: I don’t think that the CIA should recruit at conventions for journalists. I think that CIA members have pretended to be journalists in years past. They might still be doing it, I don’t know, but they certainly have done it previously. And I think that the knowledge that CIA agents have used journalism as a cover puts legitimate journalists in danger.

It’s certainly known that in other countries, journalists will report to their governments. That certainly is not the case, or certainly generally has not been the case, for American journalists. But we don’t want that perception. I think there really has to be a long distance between the role of a spy, even someone who does research in Langley, Virginia, and a journalist.

and

DENNIS MOYNIHAN: You know, in a climate where journalists are being laid of en masse by the media corporations, I think it’s unfortunate that an agency like the CIA can prey upon people. I mean, what are they going to be doing? Of course, they’re talking about open source intelligence gathering.

Well, that’s exactly how they gather names of alleged socialists or labor sympathizers in Indonesia, by forming lists. They’re going to be reading other reporters’ work and identifying subjects of interest to the U.S. security apparatus. I don’t think it’s good work for a journalist. There’s just a massive abuse of data collection that’s happening by the United States, principally.

The ACLU released a press report, a press release about waterboarding and CIA’s involvement in authorizing and coaching waterboarding. You know, why isn’t this guy being asked about it? I think some journalists here actually have confronted this recruiter, but this is one of the most controversial agencies functioning on the planet today, and it’s shocking that here, with between five and ten thousand journalists, and the guy isn’t getting grilled continually.

Several other attenders also comment. Go read or listen to the whole segment.