Newspaper Story Explains Mainstream Press Unwillingness to Tackle Moulitsas CIA Connections

Today, a story published at Yahoo News about a CIA agent whose activities where discovered and outed by a Great Britain newspaper confirms a suspicion that I have held for at least four years:  Just as the United States mainstream media does not report that a member of the US Congress is gay or cheating until the issue is forced into the open, likewise the US mainstream media simply does not report on its knowledge of who-- here and overseas-- is a CIA agent.

Likewise, identifying CIA-sponsored activities is also a verboten topic in the mainstream media, even when those topics receive a great deal of press.  The New York Times made an exception recently, reporting that President Obama had requested last September a list of countries that might be susceptible to uprisings.  The article reported CIA involvement in preparing the report. (I am looking for a link to that story.)  Yet, the Yahoo story of today proves that the US press doesn't identify or discuss CIA agents, except "on background" and without reporting their identities because doing so would disrupt CIA activities, and endanger agents and assets, within the United States.

And so it is in the case of Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas Zúniga (MAMZ). On June 2, 1996, MAMZ announced in a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco that, when MAMZ founded DailyKos in 2002, MAMZ had been in training with the CIA to be a Clandestine Services agent.

With 45,000 hits at Google for Moulitsas CIA speech Commonwealth, the apparent disinterest in this story by the mainstream press is a matter that has confounded me over the last four years.  In fact, the mainstream press, I have learned,  has simply written less biographical pieces on MAMZ rather than include his CIA involvement in stories about him.


Yahoo New reported today, based on a story first broken by the Guardian newspaper in London that a purported US Embassy staffer was actually working for the CIA when he was arrested in Pakistan:

The revelation that Davis was an employee of the CIA comes amid a tumultuous dispute over whether he is immune from criminal prosecution under international rules enacted to protect diplomats overseas. New protests in Pakistan erupted after The Guardian newspaper in London decided to publish details about Davis' relationship with the CIA.

The U.S. had repeatedly asserted that Davis had diplomatic immunity and should have been released immediately. The State Department claimed Davis was "entitled to full criminal immunity in accordance with the Vienna Convention" and was a member of the "technical and administrative staff" at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad.

The Associated Press learned about Davis working for the CIA last month, immediately after the shootings, but withheld publication of the information because it could endanger his life while he was jailed overseas, with at least some protesters there calling for his execution as a spy.

The AP had intended to report Davis' CIA employment after he was out of harm's way, but the story was broken Sunday by The Guardian. The CIA asked The AP and several other U.S. media outlets to hold their stories as the U.S. tried to improve Davis' security situation.

This case clearly shows that the mainstream newspapers and media in the United States withhold information about CIA activities if the CIA asks them to do so, and also because there is a tacit agreement that clandestine CIA activities are not to be reported in the news, because of "harm to the troops" and "risk to foreign sources" and a plethora of others excuses not to inform the public.

Obviously, it's impossible for the public to truly understand foreign news stories when the clandestine activities of the most powerful nation on earth are hidden and not revealed.

And so, MAMZ can cavort around media talk shows, insisting that he is a "liberal" "leftist", without ever being confronted with the proof that he is CIA-involved, which casts doubt on everything he does in the name of leftist activism.  By telling only the CIA-approved version of MAMZ's biography, the press actually helps the CIA to mislead the US public.

Still, the public can gather and publish MAMZ's CIA contacts at blogs such as this one, and any member of the public who really wants to understand MAMZ can just Google his name along with CIA.  The information is there.  It's explosive in the blogosphere, but still carefully ignored, at least since June 2, 2006, by the mainstream media.