Intrigue and Espionage: The Tense Relationship between Spy Agencies and Journalists

by Jonathan Broder

Back in 1978, I was sitting at the bar of the Commodore Hotel in Beirut, the storied safe haven for journalists and diplomats during the Lebanese civil war, when a low-level Palestinian official named Anis sidled up to me and asked if I was “from Israel.”

At the time, I was the Middle East correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, based …