Foreign spies could be manipulating Trump through Fox News

An ex-CIA analyst on the dangers of Trump’s Fox News obsession.

By Sean Illing@seanillingsean.illing@vox.com  Jan 17, 2018, 11:10am EST

Last month, AP reported that Russian intelligence agencies were pursuing journalists around the world in the same way they typically target politicians and government employees from hostile states.

Much of this activity, according to the report, was aimed at dissident journalists and bloggers who are perceived as threats to the Russian regime.

But Aki Peritz, a former CIA analyst and current adjunct professor at American University, believes that certain foreign spy agencies are very likely targeting one specific private institution: Fox News.

The reason is simple enough: The president of the United States watches Fox News — a lot — and therefore the channel has enormous influence on what he thinks, tweets, and does. As of last November, Trump had tweeted about the Fox News show Fox & Friends 88 times, according to the Washington Post’s Philip Bump.

I reached out to Peritz and asked him to lay out his case. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Sean Illing
If you were a Russian spy, why would you target Fox News?

Aki Peritz
I wouldn’t merely say a Russian spy, I’d say a spy from any hostile intelligence service. We all know that the Russians are a hostile intelligence service, but they’re not the only game in town. It’s not like the Chinese are not involved in targeting media personalities. It’s not like the Iranians or other countries aren’t also targeting journalists. It’s important that we don’t make this purely about Russia.

That said, if I were a hostile intelligence service, I would want to target the media source that the president, senior members of Congress and all their aides, many people in the Defense Department, people in the State Department, and the intelligence community watch. Fox, whatever you think of its content, has real power. They have all these networks into the government, but also into private industry and former government officials, who in turn influence the government.

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https://www.vox.com/world/2018/1/17/16878406/donald-trump-fox-news-russia-cia-foreign-spies