Journalists Engage in Acts of Espionage

The CIA has a long track record of using journalists to spy on its foes

Journalists Engage in Acts of Espionage 

By Bruh Tesfa


As I was driving home from shopping one afternoon I decided to turn the radio on to keep abreast on the latest news. It was one of those radio talk shows that broadcast news hourly and present sociopolitical commentaries in between 7/24/365. The topic of the discussion was....you guessed it, Sony's controversial movie "The Interview" and North Korea. The content of the movie, which had to be cancelled in many theaters across the US due to imminent threat of retaliation, was supposedly about assassination plot against North Korea's leader who was portrayed in demeaning ways. The Host of the show, Monica Perez, a self-confessed libertarian, had this to say about the whole drama before opening the phone line for discussion. After briefly describing the movie in which I will loosely quote " the movie is about how the CIA trains this journalist to assassinate North Korean leader", she shared the sentiment the North Korean had felt at the mere thought of assassinating their country's leader, which was the highlight of the movie. After expressing disgust at the people who actually produced/directed the movie, the Host went on to add, again loosely quoted " this is not the first time CIA had used Journalists in an attempt to assassinate leaders of other countries".  Then, she cited two countries- Iran and Chile- whose leaders were the target for assassination in the past through similar fashion.

Some readers may be wondering why I'm bringing up this subject that "has nothing to do with Eritrea". Well, the reality on the ground is that one of the causes of the so called "Reporters without Boarders"  and Amnesty International for attacking Eritrea viciously for over a decade had to do with "Journalists". In every western media you turn to, Eritrea is described in a demeaning manner, often equated to North Korea with respect to number of jailed "journalists". The gross exaggeration and the intention of such defamatory reports is not lost to this writer.

Looking at all the challenges Eritrea has gone through since the unprovoked war of aggression in 1998 retrospectively and the decisive actions the government took against certain foreign reporters, like that Martin Plaut of BBC and others and in light of what is now being revealed regarding CIA's relationship with "Journalists" and certain NGO's it reinforces the need to fully support the idea of restricting and or closely monitoring the works of organizations with propensity to engage in activities outside their mandate.

While it'd be inappropriate to label every journalist that you come across as a spy, it would be nonetheless important that  the governments of the host country know the background of those who seek an entrance permit to write a report and , upon admission, continue to monitor his/her activities. In a nutshell one just has to accustom himself to sleep with one eye open when he's around them.

One may dismiss this as a case of paranoia. Well, let's cite another concrete example in which a faceless member of SEMG (Somalia Eritrea Monitoring Group) was caught red handed coordinating a plot for regime change. One has to be naive to think that this man was acting alone.

Lastly, for those who still think that western government's persistent demand for "free press" and "democracy" is born out of genuine concern for the people, here's another revelation: According to a well known historian whose name I can not recall, a country with open society (i.e free press) and multiparty system is more preferable for agents like CIA because in the event a need arises for regime change or a coup, it's easily manageable.

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