Reporters as arms of the spy state and other commentary

From the left: Reporters Now Arms of the Spy State

A decade after the huge WikiLeaks dump of Afghan War secrets launched “a historic stretch of true oppositional journalism” investigating massive national-security-agency abuse, Matt Taibbi seethes at his TK News site, suddenly “the FBI-CIA-media partnership” has become “cozier than a Swedish porn shoot.” And all it took “was a little partisan catnip” as “the intel agencies started feeding reporters sensational (and often bogus) stories about the Russian-Republican conspiracy.” Thus figures like ex-CIA chief John Brennan, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, “both of whom had been caught lying to Congress,” and other intel vets are now “rehabilitated and are all paid contributors to either MSNBC or CNN.” Liberals don’t even quail at news “that the government is considering using private citizens to help it conduct what amount to vigilante intelligence operations for the DHS, FBI, CIA, and NSA” as “a slew of War on Terror programs are being retooled for domestic use.” Foreign desk: Israel Hatred Takes an Ugly Turn