I believe that it was Tom Clancy who noted that (back in the Cold War era, at least) the CIA was always prepared to spend real money when purchasing treason. Apparently, would-be agents simply assumed that the decadent capitalist Western spy agency would offer money as a matter of course, and the CIA didn’t argue with them; it wasn’t as if Communist subjects ever had a really good idea of what the actual market value was for the intelligence that they were selling, and the American public at the time wasn’t really inclined to quibble. Or even care. And so we paid, if not top dollar, more than most for useful information.
I mention this because Andrew Breitbart decided to have him some fun:
I’ve had $100,000 burning in my pocket for the last three months and I’d really like to spend it on a worthy cause. So how about this: in the interests of journalistic transparency, and to offer the American public a unique insight in the workings of the Democrat-Media Complex, I’m offering $100,000 for the full “JournoList” archive, source fully protected. Now there’s an offer somebody can’t refuse.
That is, unquestionably, the most diabolically clever thing that I’ve seen all week. And I’m preemptively including the rest of this week, too: this will be hard to top.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.