Former CBS News Reporter Sharyl Attkisson Claims Existence of Obama Enemies' List
11:00 PM PST 11/03/2014 by Paul Bond
Sharyl Attkisson
"I kind of assume I'm on a list. I don’t think I'm the only one"
Sharyl Attkisson is an investigative journalist who became the story when she quit CBS News after two decades amid allegations that the network refused to run some of her stories that were critical of President Barack Obama. Ahead of the Tuesday release of her book Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington, she spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about her struggles with CBS executives and her assertion that her computers were hacked, possibly by Obama operatives.
THR reached out for a response from CBS News, but the organization declined to comment.
Who did you tell at CBS that your computers were hacked?
The first person I spoke to was Washington bureau chief Chris Isham.
Did he believe you?
He appeared to.
Did CBS care? Did they do anything about it?
God, you know, there’s a lot of people there. He seemed to care. He hired a separate computer forensics firm to look at the computers. They, too, agreed that there had been highly sophisticated remote intrusion of my computers. They decided to dig deeper and embark upon a process that spanned a number of months, during which time the situation with the Associated Press and the government spying on Fox News reporter James Rosen was disclosed, as well as Edward Snowden’s NSA information.
Did they ever find out who hacked your computers and spied on you?
I don’t believe their computer forensics team concluded who spied on me.
Did they ask anybody in the Obama administration if they were the culprits?
Not to my knowledge. Executives discussed with me that they assumed that was the case. And we discussed how to proceed with that information and what we could do about it.
So what did you do about it?
It seemed to fall off the radar after the forensics report was delivered to CBS. And so I hired a — I have a legal and forensics team that began work.
Did they conclude anything yet?
Yes. Her work is still very much active, but they have told me they have evidence of highly sophisticated remote intrusions into my personal and work computers by someone using software proprietary to a government agency.
CBS executives suspect that the government hacked your computer, and CBS computers, but there’s been no accountability? CBS just dropped the matter?
As far as I know, although what they told me was they wanted to heavily pursue it and find out who was responsible. I discovered on my own they have a computer security specialist working for CBS. … But nobody ever questioned me, came to my house, checked the security of my system, asked me for more information, or followed up with me.
Do you believe that people working for the president of the United States hacked your computer and spied on you?
The way you phrase the question makes me want to couch it a little bit. I have been told by two computer forensics experts that a highly sophisticated entity using abilities outside non-government resources, using software proprietary either to the DIA, CIA, FBI or NSA made repeat remote intrusions into both my computers over a period of time. And we have evidence of a government computer connection into my computer system.
And why do you think they would target you as opposed to more partisan voices, like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck?
The question carries the assumption that they haven’t targeted others. I kind of assume I’m on a list. I don’t think I’m the only one, along with James Rosen and the Associated Press, that garnered special attention. There’s probably a list of people.
So an enemies list, like in the Nixon administration?
I’ve been told there is such a list, yes.
And who do you suspect is on that list?
Well, there’s an internal email that indicated reporters who were working with leakers in government agencies or perceived as enemies of the White House are being targeted. So I think that’s probably accurate — anybody that they perceive as harmful to their agenda or working with leakers and whistle-blowers, which I did a lot of.
Do you have sources who told you the names on that list? Is Rush Limbaugh on that list, for example?
Another reporter told me — I can’t remember who — that they thought he was on some sort of target list, but I don’t know that to be the case. I have someone who told me the existence of a list but not the names on it.
You’re being accused of being a partisan right-winger. Have you reported negative stories about conservatives?
Most of my reporting has not been political in nature. Some of the stories that were politicized, I don’t consider political stories, but they were made out to be by people who obviously didn’t want them reported, and I would put Fast and Furious and Benghazi in that category. But other stories include the one I won an investigative Emmy Award for last year, which was a series of stories from the time I went undercover to investigate freshmen Republican fundraising. I also did a story that MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow complimented in a seven-minute-long segment, exposing Congressman Steven Buyer, a Republican from Indiana, and his possible and allegedly fraudulent charity, which was followed shortly thereafter by his resignation from Congress.
Did your colleagues give you grief about your negative stories on Obama?
Not my reporter colleagues.
But you have said your bosses kind of shut down a lot of your reporting?
Some of them did. It was very complicated. All of them encouraged my reporting initially, and then as time went on some of them encouraged it and some of them discouraged it.
Who were the ones discouraging it?
Nobody ever discouraged it to my face, they just would not run the stories or would have other stories they wanted to put on every time the stories were offered. That was CBS News with Scott Pelley and his executive producer Pat Shevlin primarily, but there may have been others.
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