On this:
Corn is a far-left agitprop scum, while Isikoff pretends to be a more legitimate "investigative" reporter.
Isikoff probably does have a more mainstream reputation than Corn, but he has a habit of coauthoring with agitprop types which tends to undermine that rep. On the post linked, Q&A #22, I comment on his relationship with Mark Hosenball, a former codefendant of Philip Agee who does a regular column with Isikoff:
---
22. Did Michael Isikoff’s relationship with Philip Agee’s associate Mark Hosenball influence Newsweek’s coverage of the investigation?
Corn was aware of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act because he had previously written a biography of a CIA agent which touched on the act, passed in response to the disclosure of CIA agents’ identities by former CIA agent Philip Agee. After leaving the CIA, Agee had offered CIA secrets to the KGB before defecting to Cuban intelligence, Soviet archives reveal.
Corn’s coauthor Michael Isikoff had previously cowritten articles with Mark Hosenball, who happened to have a history with Agee. In 1976, while writing for the London Evening Standard in Britain, Hosenball and coauthor Duncan Campbell had written an article exposing the British equivalent of the National Security Agency. As a result of this article, British authorities began proceedings to deport Hosenball, who was the son of an American lawyer. At the same time, they began proceedings to deport fellow American Agee as one of Hosenball’s sources. Agee had fled from the US to Britain and had written a book on the CIA with help from KGB agent Edgar Anatolvevich Cheporov. He was now exposing CIA agents from the Agency’s London station, and MI6 blamed his work for the assassination of two MI6 agents in Poland. Agee and Hosenball were both linked to an antiwar group called Concerned Americans Abroad (CAA aka Group 68), and the British and American left rallied around them, with the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL aka Liberty, a sort of British version of the ACLU) hosting the Agee-Hosenball Defence Committee. Among those testifying on their behalf was American CIA critic Morton Halperin, who Agee says helped him obtain CIA correspondence between the US Embassy in Athens and CIA headquarters through Freedom of Information Act requests.
Agee and Hosenball were expelled by British authorities in 1977. Now with Newsweek, where he works with Isikoff, Hosenball is credited in the Acknowledgments of Isikoff and Corn’s book: “Michael Isikoff. . .has especially benefited from the insights of his longtime sidekick and ‘Terror Watch’ colleague Mark Hosenball, who knows more about the subject of this book--most notably the machinations of the Chalabites--than any other journalist in the Western world, as Meg Ryan can readily attest.”
Nice! Thanks!