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Comment by aww_dang | Hacker News Reader

As an example, Anderson Cooper of CNN proudly admits that he worked as an intern at the CIA. Do with that what you will. There's a prejudice to pejoratively dismiss these things out of hand as conspiracy theory. One could easily push back asking about naivete, but it isn't worth it.

>"As a college student, I had a number of summer jobs and internships, including working at the CIA."

>"Oh, yeah, in case you're interested, after I graduated college, I briefly worked as a waiter, but I decided not to make a career out of that job either."

See also: "Operation Mockingbird"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

https://edition.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blo...

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Do you know what the hiring process is like for the CIA?

https://www.cia.gov/careers/how-we-hire/hiring-process/

The CIA works through a network of contractors and assets they cultivate over many years and through many layers of intermediaries. There are many levels of involvement beyond directly working for the agency.

You deserve a promotion if this referral converts.

And Princeton valedictorian and current professor of mathematics at Duke Lilian Pierce interned at the National Security Agency. Don't read too much into Cooper's very brief time at the CIA.

Don't know anything about the specific guy, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were 3-letter involvement in higher ed at some level.

But the broader answer to your point is to consider the stakes and possible outcomes of clandestine influence of US media and of the Duke math department. It would probably very often come in handy to get favorable coverage, spike stories, influence hiring, etc. at major outlets, and not so often to do the same in the Duke math department.

It's the difference between believing that the CIA is the one who knocked my mailbox over last night and believing that they were involved in the JFK assassination. Before considering evidence, we can provide many plausible reasons that the CIA may have wanted to assassinate JFK and few that they wanted to knock over my mailbox.

Slightly tongue in cheek, but that's probably what the CIA prefer you think.

What I will do with that is nothing because there is no way an intern did anything interesting enough to be worth mentioning in this thread.

I always thought Cooper looked like a spook. Like he was grown in a lab to run around in a suit with a badge doing "REDACTED" and "CLASSIFIED".

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