The Central Intelligence Agency has always made much of its overseas mission, with its charter explicitly excluding domestic intelligence operations.

So it was strange stuff to read that some guy named Moby, who apparently is a popular dee jay and entertainer, was out canoodling with the CIA one day, and according to his own account of the mattr, was propositioned by the spy agency to spread it around about President Trump being a Russian agent. According to Pitchfork:

Talking with WFPK's Kyle Meredith, Moby cited “active and former CIA agents” who were “truly concerned” about Trump’s collusion with Russia. “They were like, ‘This is the Manchurian Candidate, like [Putin] has a Russian agent as the President of the United States,’” he said. “So they passed on some information to me and they said, like, ‘Look, you have more of a social media following than any of us do, can you please post some of these things just in a way that … sort of put it out there.’”

If the story is true, it's a stunning revelation that falls right into line with all the other Deep State efforts to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump before he even got to office. Moby also said he heard from the agents that every word of the Steele Dossier, which has the agency in such hot water right now, was true, which probably was their position at the time. Yet the remarks stand in stark contrast to longtstanding practice, because the CIA is explicitly forbidden by its charter from domestic meddling. It took a great deal of heat for its efforts to do that in hearings commenced by Frank Church and his committee in the early 1970s. The hammer came down so hard on the CIA as its "family jewels" were exposed, that the agency was effectively crippled in its aftermath, during the Carter years. But the agency had supposedly learned its lesson and from then on, confined its spy activities to the overseas arena.

Which is what makes Moby's claims so startling.

Would the CIA really be caught dead in a room with a guy like this? Moby is a vocal supporter of Chelsea Manning and according to his Wikipedia bio, apparently not the kind of guy who might be granted a security clearance, given his dissolute pattern of life. Not that this is utterly necessary in the case of an agent - the CIA deals with dodgy characters all the time, but in such instances, the important question is if he could he keep a secret.

Well, he didn't.

All the same, his charges bear looking at. First, let's look at motive. Did Moby have anything to gain by spilling the beans? Not really - it seems the guy wanted to hurt Trump by saying 'hey even the CIA thinks this.' It's unlikely he knew the officials could be fired for domestic activity.

Second, the CIA yes indeed is very sensitive to propaganda and with it, pop culture. They are also very social media-savvy. We have seen this with its Hollywood collaborations to boost its image and we know they know the value of entertainers such as Moby from their overseas exploits. The fact that Moby is a show business boob wouldn't deter them from being in a room with him if he could be of some use to them.

But it's just as possible, as writers Scott Johnson and John Hinderaker of Powerline note, that Moby was duped, and the people he was speaking to weren't CIA officers at all. It could have easily been someone just saying he was from CIA, given that the CIA would be unlikely to identify itself as such to someone like him. How would Moby know the difference?

And yet, and yet, to use a U.S. entertainer to 'put it out there' that Trump was a Russian agent is just so illegal, and just fits so perfectly into the emerging story of an agency out of control.

Hinderaker, citing thoughts from Johnson, writes:

Until recently, I never would have imagined that a top FBI investigator would send his lover easily discoverable texts about how they can stop the Republican nominee from winning the presidency. Would present or former CIA agents identify themselves as such to entertainers in order to convince them to assist in the campaign to destroy the Trump presidency? I don’t know. But CIA agents and officials have done things in recent years that I never would have imagined, like leaking to reporters to try to destroy the Trump presidency.

There's one way to get to the bottom of this: Someone, perhaps in Congress or through a new special prosecutor, needs to get Moby to identify who exactly his sources were. He's spilled too much and the public has a right to know.