Ken Dilanian is the chief national-security correspondent at NBC News and its sister cable network MSNBC, having previously held a prominent front-page reporting role at the Los Angeles Times.[1] He is documented — through correspondence forced into the public record by a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Jason Leopold against the Central Intelligence Agency Office of Public Affairs — to have sent his own articles to the CIA for clearance before sending them to his own editor, with the agency then removing and adding information to the piece.[2][3]
John Kiriakou’s framing: “He was writing articles about the agency and then he was sending the articles to the agency for clearance before he sent them to his own editor. That is absolutely unacceptable. So they don’t need to recruit anybody in the media — they already own everybody in the media.”[2][4]
Clearing stories with the CIA
John Kiriakou says a Freedom of Information trove obtained by Jason Leopold showed Ken Dilanian, NBC’s chief national security correspondent, sending his articles to the CIA for clearance “before sending them to his own editor” — the agency editing lines and paragraphs. “That’s propaganda,” Kiriakou says.[5][6]