On Wednesday morning, Radar‘s newly revamped Web site broke an “exclusive” story revealing that CNN’s Anderson Cooper had briefly interned with the CIA during his summer vacations as an undergraduate at Yale. Shortly thereafter, Cooper responded by downplaying the story on his own blog. “I’ve told all my employers about it over the years, but have chosen not to talk about it publicly,” he wrote. “When I began to travel overseas to war zones as a reporter, I realized that some Jihadist might not understand that what people do for summer jobs in college doesn’t mean they make a career out of it.”
Despite Cooper’s assurances that there was really no story here, bloggers apparently weren’t quite ready to let it go.
“Now the CIA has done some disgusting things in terms of violating other countries’ sovereignty, killing people, spying on Americans, the list goes on — but there’s nothing wrong with Anderson for wanting to become a spy,” writes Le Monde en Vert. “There is a little thing however called full disclosure, and Mr. Cooper, being someone who reports on world affairs, American politics and the like, probably should’ve let people know he once worked for the CIA. (It was apparently only an internship, but that’s also subject to further revelations.)”
Afterwards, Jossip rushed to Cooper’s defense, noting the increasing risk this exposure might place on Cooper’s personal safety. “We had always figured Coopster for a stealthy bad ass, and the news that he once worked for the CIA? Not that surprising,” writes Jossip. “But what we didn’t realize is that Radar may be putting Anderson’s life in danger … Did you hear that Jeff Bercovici? If Anderson Cooper gets captured by a Jihadist Jill Carroll style, everyone will be lookin’ at you.”
Elsewhere, others bloggers mulled over the relevance of the news.
“Anderson Cooper Former CIA Spook?” writes John Linton Roberson. “That would explain why the lack of any discernable personality. Perhaps then he might have the expertise to report in-depth on the CIA gulags in Europe that Bush just admitted exist.”
“I knew that Anderson’s pre-maturely gray hair was a sham,” writes the Immoral Minority. “He is clearly still in deep undercover, working with the CIA to try and out moles within the CNN news desk who are helping to fabricate the news for the Bush administration. (The CIA hates the Bush administration!)”
Finally, mediabistro’s FishbowlNY suggests that perhaps Cooper should have stuck with the CIA because “he’d make a super agent.” The assertion is not unqualified. They offer eleven reasons why he would have been right for the job, including his “fortitude — the Philadelphia Inquirer once said it would take ‘a crowbar to pry’ him out of the Middle East,” the fact that he “can keep a big secret,” and his uncanny ability to “cry on cue.”
Mark Boyer was a CJR intern.