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A tongue-in-cheek promotional cover of Mother JonesMay/June 1994 issue predicted that the New York Times would pick up our expose of the CIA’s economic espionage sometime in January 1995. It seems we overestimated the Gray Lady–the New York Times waited until October 1995 to run its own article.

David E. Sanger and Tim Weiner’s story for the Times, “Emerging Role for the CIA: Economic Spy,” explained the CIA’s new role in gathering foreign trade secrets for federal employees, especially for U.S. trade representative to Japan, Mickey Kantor. But the Times missed the crux of reporter Robert Dreyfuss’ ongoing investigative stories for Mother Jones into the role CIA espionage plays in the private sector.

In “Company Spies” (May/June 1994), Dreyfuss reported how the CIA targets foreign companies, then shares proprietary trade secrets and technology with private U.S. companies. Not only is the CIA spying for U.S. agencies, as the Times reported, but for RJR Nabisco, Ford, Procter & Gamble, and IBM.

The Times portrayed Kantor as the chief beneficiary of the agency’s economic spying, though he recently admitted privately that the CIA’s information provides little more than a rehash of conventional economic analysis. Once again, Mother Jones‘ readers were a step ahead. Dreyfuss had detailed the CIA’s shabby research in a story on “nonofficial cover” operatives in “The CIA Crosses Over” (Jan./Feb. 1995).

The Times, it appears, is afraid of being too hard on our intelligence agencies. That includes the FBI. Mother Jones‘ antennae tuned into the FBI’s increased reliance on wiretapping in our July/August 1995 story, “FBI’s New Party Line.” About three months later, on Nov. 2, 1995, the New York Times again produced page-one copy on the same issue. Times reporter John Markoff explained how a dramatic increase in the FBI’s wiretapping capacities could threaten civil liberties.

But Mother Jones reporter Mark Barroso had also shown how wiretaps can be extremely inefficient. Case in point: The 1992 Fat Cats BBQ case in Tampa, Fla., where G-men squandered $106,000 and one month’s time gathering information on a small-time marijuana ring. Ultimately, the evidence was inadmissible in court.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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