Intelligence ties to media.

This is the documented backdrop that makes the question legitimate rather than paranoid. The Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations (the Church Committee) found in 1976 that the CIA had maintained covert relationships with journalists and news organizations, using some as sources and others to place material — the practice widely referred to as Operation Mockingbird. Carl Bernstein's 1977 Rolling Stone investigation, 'The CIA and the Media,' put the number of cooperating American journalists in the hundreds. We cite this as established history, and as the reason the modern cases below are worth documenting — NOT as evidence about any modern individual.

• US Senate — Church Committee, Final Report (1976), Book I, on the CIA and the media
• Carl Bernstein, 'The CIA and the Media,' Rolling Stone (Oct 20, 1977)

In September 2014 The Intercept (Ken Silverstein) published emails — obtained via FOIA — showing that Ken Dilanian, then a national-security reporter at the Los Angeles Times, had a collaborative relationship with the CIA's press office: he sent drafts and story material to the Agency for review and feedback before publication. The Intercept titled the piece 'The CIA's Mop-Up Man.' Dilanian's career advanced afterward — the LA Times, then the Associated Press, and since 2014 NBC News, where he is a national-security reporter. We report the documented emails and the promotion; the 'mop-up man' label is The Intercept's characterization, which we attribute rather than adopt, and we do not allege his current reporting is agency-directed.

• The Intercept — Ken Silverstein, 'The CIA's Mop-Up Man: L.A. Times Reporter Cleared Stories With CIA Before Publication' (Sept 4, 2014)

Anderson Cooper, the CNN anchor, disclosed this himself: in a 2006 post on CNN's website he wrote that 'for a couple months over the course of two summers, I worked at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia' — an internship program for students interested in intelligence work, after his sophomore and junior years at Yale. He called the work 'pretty bureaucratic and mundane,' did not pursue a job with the Agency, and went into journalism. This is a self-disclosed fact, not a discovery. We include it for exactly what it is — a documented college internship at the Agency by a figure who became one of the most prominent anchors in American television — and for the revolving-door optics it illustrates. It is NOT evidence that Cooper is or was an intelligence operative, and we do not suggest that.

• Anderson Cooper's own 2006 CNN account ('For a couple months over the course of two summers, I worked at the CIA headquarters in Langley'), quoted by The Washington Post's Reliable Source (Oct 20, 2013)

Dawn Scalici joined Thomson Reuters in July 2015 as its first global government business director, 'after a three-decade career in the U.S. intelligence community that included roles at the CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Department of Homeland Security' (her published bio). In that role she oversees Thomson Reuters' relationships with government agencies and the sale of its data products to them. This is a documented revolving-door move from the top of the intelligence community into a senior business role at a global news-and-information company. We frame it precisely that way: a former senior intelligence official taking a corporate/government-business role at Reuters' parent — NOT a claim that Reuters' newsroom is run by the CIA.

• Dawn Scalici — 'joined Thomson Reuters in July 2015 as its first global government business director after a three-decade career in the U.S. intelligence community that included roles at the CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Department of Homeland Security' (ExecutiveBiz profile)