Is the CEO of NPR an Intelligence Asset?
Is the CEO of NPR an Intelligence Asset?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Acknowledges the Possibility on X
Is Katherine Maher, the CEO of NPR, an intelligence asset?
In a recent X post, Josh Walkos analyzed Maher’s biography and dug up some provocative information about her past. She has a near-perfect resume for an intelligence operative and all the more stunning considering that she is only 41 years old.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to Walkos, stating that Operation Mockingbird is “alive and well,” before reminding us that outlets including Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, Salon, and Daily Kos have all come under the control of intelligence agencies.
Is it too hard to imagine that NPR has been brought into that stable?
Kennedy posted,
Despite the prohibitions in the CIA charter forbidding the agency from propagandizing Americans, Operation Mockingbird is alive and well. In his December 2021 article, “Belly of the Daily Beast,” CIA historian Dick Russell documents how liberal media outlets including Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, Salon, and Daily Kos have all come under the control of the intelligence agency’s operatives. As President, I will direct the US intelligence agencies to end these dangerous and unsavory relationships.
Using the information Walkos found, let’s review Maher’s resume:
She received her bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies in 2005 from New York University’s College of Arts and Science.
She studied at the Arabic Language Institute of the American University in Cairo, Egypt, and at the Institut français d’études arabes de Damas in Damascus, Syria.
She previously worked at Stanford University as a Lecturer, McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society.
She is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.
She was formerly chief executive officer (CEO) and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation.
She is an appointed member of the US Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board, where she advises the Secretary of State.
She served as advocacy, strategy, and communications director for the international digital-rights organization Access Now.
She was an information and communications technology (ICT) innovations specialist at the World Bank.
She was an ICT program officer at the National Democratic Institute.
She was the innovation and communication officer at UNICEF, where she was a founding member of the UNICEF Innovation team.
She is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
She was a World Economic Forum young global leader.
She has been a security fellow at the Truman National Security Project.
She is on the board of directors for the Center for Technology and Democracy, Consumer Reports, the Digital Public Library of America, and System.com.
She is also a trustee at the American University of Beirut.
As Walkos states, this career progression does seem like a curious path to end up leading Wikimedia and National Public Radio. Maher’s resume is obviously confusing for the CEO of a large non-profit media company. Her experience involves high-level international relations work, while NPR was chartered as a nationwide, grassroots radio outlet. Why would someone with Maher’s expertise, which does not include journalism of any stripe, be elevated to this particular position?
These revelations about Maher’s past are the latest headache for NPR at a time when its credibility is under fire.
Her profile suggests that the intelligence community considers public radio as a critical venue through which it can shape and control the information that a key American demographic receives multiple times a day.
Walkos is probably right that Maher’s ties to the U.S. intelligence community will never be disclosed. But given his unequivocal stand against intelligence and corporate capture of American institutions and regulatory agencies, the truth will come to light next year if Kennedy takes the White House.