Anderson Cooper, Secret Agent Man



(image via sfu.edu)

Had we been casting for the newest James Bond we might have went with the diminutive but substantial Anderson Cooper, clearly the most interesting man in any room. And that's before RadarOnline revealed he interned at the CIA's Langley headquarters:

"Anderson Cooper has long traded on his biography, carving a niche for himself as the most human of news anchors. But there's one aspect of his past that the silver-haired CNN star has never made public: the months he spent training for a career with the Central Intelligence Agency.




Following his sophomore and junior years at Yale�a well-known recruiting ground for the CIA�Cooper spent his summers interning at the agency's monolithic headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in a program for students interested in intelligence work. His involvement with the agency ended there, and he chose not to pursue a job with the agency after graduation, according to a CNN spokeswoman, who confirms details of Cooper's CIA involvement to Radar.

"'Whatever summer jobs or internships our anchors had in college couldn't be less consequential,' she adds. He has kept the experience a secret, sources say, out of concern that, if widely known, it might compromise his ability to travel in foreign countries and even possibly put him at greater risk from terrorists.

"'He doesn't want to be any more of a target than he already is,' says one Anderson confidante. On the other hand, as Bob Woodruff and others have learned, American journalists are already prime targets in the world's conflict zones, and are typically accused of having CIA ties even where none exist. And by not disclosing his training before now, Cooper has arguably made it into a potential issue. 'It creates the appearance of something smelly there,' says a former CNN official who knows Cooper."

"Cooper, Anderson ... Cooper." We guestimate that this choice nugget -- relayed at a cocktail party, in a dry raconteur manner -- should increase the amount of sweet ass Cooper is getting by factor of, oh, say: 8.