CIA Archives » Lynda Waddington

30Nov 2014 by Lynda Waddington

Thankful for end of Benghazi conspiracies

Gazette Column

There has not been a single week I’ve failed to receive an email message from a reader questioning or demanding why I’ve not written about the so-called Benghazi scandal. Sometimes messages are long and linked to external content. I’ve also received messages with a single word in all capitals: “BENGHAZI” (correct spelling optional). My best guess is the number of exclamation points following the word is indicative of the writer’s current frustration level. One punctuation banger denotes reading of Facebook headlines. Two bangers indicates a recent twitter hashtag search mission. Three or more are evidence of recent consumption of Fox News, the national leader in Benghazi propaganda distribution. The last time I received an email referring to Benghazi was Thursday, about 24 hours before a Republican-led U.S. House report debunked every conspiracy…

16Nov 2014 by Lynda Waddington

FBI latest gov agency to use press

Gazette Column

When the videotape of journalist Daniel Pearl’s brutal murder was released in 2002, it was handed to an undercover FBI operative posing as a journalist. The move was ironic because Pearl’s captors originally said they believed the Wall Street Journal editor was actually a CIA agent. Weeks before Pearl became a hostage, Editor & Publisher speculated on the risky and widespread use of journalist “covers” overseas, after Taliban defectors said they were approached by intelligence officers in Afghanistan pretending to be journalists. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a total of 1,082 media members have been killed since 1992 (the first year statistics were kept). Of those killed, 715 were murdered, a quarter of them in the Middle East and mostly in Iraq since 2003. Long before these statistics, however, if we are to…