Kings of Spy Prom
by digby
I wrote a fun piece for Salon earlier about the big expose by Ali Watkins and Ryan Grim about the “Spy Prom.” Talk about too weird to be believed:
We’ve all heard of the junior prom for high school students. Many of us went to one, although those left peering in the window from the outside undoubtedly still feel the sting of not being invited. And everyone knows about the “nerd prom,” the absurd celebration of D.C. insiderism otherwise known as the Washington Correspondents Dinner. But now we know about the most exclusive prom of all: “spy prom,” an annual gathering of the clandestine services where the spooks all gather to let the good times roll.
The big exposé comes from Ali Watkins and Ryan Grim at Huffington Post, who start off with this wry observation:
Relations between the intelligence community and the media are at such a low ebb it might be hard to believe that there’s a reporter who spies deeply admire.
That’s the one jarring note in the whole piece, actually. I can personally think of at least half a dozen reporters whom I’m sure the intelligence community are pleased as punch to call their friends and protectors. It’s not as if there weren’t many so-called journalists who reflexively defended the spying on Americans and ruthlessly criticized reporters who revealed it. From the pages of the New Yorker to the the gabfests on MSNBC, even many ostensibly liberal journalists were quick to condemn the Snowden leaks and demand that he come home immediately to face trial, warming the hearts of police agencies the world over. In fact, I’m fairly sure that the intelligence community sees most reporters who write about them as friends and the few who reveal what they’re actually doing are just bad apples in an otherwise excellent barrel.
Anyway, that’s just a quibble. The story is amazing.
It is. Read on. You cannot make this stuff up.