As NewsBusters reported, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was hassling Navy veteran Zachary Young as he tried to get a book published about his successful defamation trial against CNN, even demanding he delete everything to do with his manuscript. While the CIA never cited what exactly it objected to, it seems as though the Agency was more interested in protecting themselves from embarrassment. A NewsBusters investigation has uncovered that the CIA public affairs director who improperly burned him to CNN had actually worked for the network.
In his letter to the CIA’s Publications Review Board, Young noted how then-Public Affairs Director Tammy Kupperman Thorp improperly outed his affiliation with the agency to then-CNN correspondent Alex Marquardt as he was working on the defamatory report on Young (bold added to highlight):
The trial record also establishes that my prior CIA affiliation was not merely incidentally mentioned by a private individual or inadvertently disclosed by an unauthorized outsider. It was confirmed through the Agency’s official press function. The documentary record, admitted as a trial exhibit and broadcast nationally, shows CNN correspondent Alex Marquardt formally tasking the Agency’s Office of Public Affairs on October 29, 2021, stating: “FYI I asked Tammy if they can look into the other guy’s claim that he’s CIA.” This was not a casual conversation. It was a directed request to the Agency’s official press office to look into whether a named individual was connected to the CIA. Marquardt testified under oath at trial that Tammy Kupperman Thorp, who served as the CIA’s Director of Public Affairs from 2021 to 2025, confirmed my Agency background and described the practice as a “steer,” which he defined on the record as the Agency’s established method of informally confirming information to credentialed journalists. This testimony is further corroborated by Marquardt’s contemporaneous written communications stating that the Director of Public Affairs “just basically told me that dude was former CIA.” These communications were entered as exhibits and displayed during the televised proceedings. The disclosure of my identity was accordingly the result of an official Public Affairs response to a media inquiry, provided by the Agency official responsible for press relations, and later confirmed through sworn testimony and contemporaneous communications in open court.
A NewsBusters investigation into Thorp examined her public (as of publication) LinkedIn profile and found that she had worked for CNN as a “supervising producer” on matters of “justice, transportation, [and] regulation.” She was at CNN from January 2017 to January 2020.
According to her, her duties entailed: “Led CNN’s coverage of the US Justice Department, FBI, Homeland Security, Supreme Court, and immigration policy. Edited television scripts and digital stories, authored digital content.”
In a little over a year, Thorp bounced from CNN to a PR firm to director of media relations at military contractor BAE Systems before landing in the CIA as their director of public affairs.
Interestingly, she started at the Agency in May 2021, just months before the fall of Afghanistan, Young’s efforts to help rescue nearly two dozen women and baby, and CNN’s maliciously defamatory report about him. She was only on the job a few months before burning Young to her former employer, who she worked for just a year prior.
Even more interestingly, Thorp’s time at the Agency ended in February 2025. Young won his trial against CNN in January 2025.
Thorp’s page for the Intelligence and National Security Alliance boasts of her use of the revolving door to shift between the media and governmental positions:
Tammy Kupperman Thorp is an award-winning journalist and public affairs practitioner with more than 30 years of experience in public affairs, media, and national security, most recently serving as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Office of Public Affairs. Just before joining CIA, Tammy directed media relations for BAE Systems, Inc. From 2017 to 2020, she led CNN’s coverage of the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, focusing on issues including the Mueller investigation, immigration, and the confirmations of two Supreme Court justices.
On June 17, 2026, Thorp appeared on The Readiness Edge with Dr. Jennifer Posa, one of her friends and colleagues from her time at the Agency. As she ironically described the appearance on her LinkedIn activities page, she was there “to talk about the importance of teamwork.” She also beamed about working at CNN in the interview.
In a statement to NewsBusters, Young expressed suspicion of the CIA’s relationship with CNN given Thorp’s close ties:
I've wondered about the relationship between CNN and the CIA for a while now. I can't tell you what to make of it, only what I've seen with my own eyes. Tammy Thorp spent years at CNN before becoming the CIA's official spokesperson, the person who speaks for the Agency to the media. In that official capacity, she's the one who confirmed my background to a CNN reporter. I'm not going to pretend I have the full picture. But having lived through this, it's hard not to wonder.
Politically, Thorp is a liberal. According to OpenSecrets, her only personal political donation was to President Obama’s reelection in 2012 to the tune of $750. She was working for the National Counterterrorism Center as a managing editor at the time. Her husband Frank Thorp is the Democratic alderman of Ward 8 of the Annapolis City Council in Maryland.
She also started her media career at NBC News.
