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Wednesday, April 6, 2011

CBS News Bureau Chief Denies Being FBI Informant

The Washington bureau chief for CBS News denied on Tuesday that he served as an FBI informant during the agency's investigation into the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

According to The Hollywood Reporter and a story by Kimberly Nordyke at Reuters, Chris Isham, who previously worked at ABC News, was said to be the anonymous journalist cited in a once-classified FBI memo.

According to a report Tuesday by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), the ABC News reporter cooperated with the FBI and even revealed the identity of a confidential source, which would have been a possible violation of professional ethics if the source had not agreed to be named.

The memo -- which was recently discovered by Utah lawyer Jesse Trentadue, who has spent years researching the Oklahoma City case -- claims the journalist contacted the FBI hours after Timothy McVeigh's terrorist attack. The reporter passed on information -- which ultimately proved untrue -- "that a source within the Saudi Arabian Intelligence Service advised that the Oklahoma City bombing was sponsored by the Iraqi Special Services."

According to CPI, that source was Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA officer working as a consultant for ABC News.

On Tuesday, an ABC News spokesperson told CPI that the network is not certain about the identity of the journalist, but does not believe he or she still works there.

However, Gawker later claimed that Isham was the unnamed journalist.

In a statement, Isham called the "suggestion" that he was an FBI informant "outrageous and untrue."

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