Yesterday I was cc’d on an X thread about a list of 54 American journalists who appeared to have been paid by an organization called the Better Hong Kong Foundation to write nice things about Communist China. Guess who made the list? Rob Chaney! Good job, Rob!
The article suggests that the Better Hong Kong Foundation “deliberately sought senior journalists from influential American media organizations,” which begs the question, is the Missoulian really an influential American media organization?
Yes, I would say it is, because, when your town has a history of being targeted by the CIA to recruit smokejumpers to FIGHT those pesky Chinese Communists, which Rob Chaney wrote about a decade ago, then the town’s newspaper is going to be an important information-node to control.
This isn’t rocket science.
Rob Chaney wasn’t just a “staff writer” at the Missoulian who wrote about the CIA, no, he was a valued cultural voyeur who arrived as a “freelance” reporeter in 1987, and who recently recalled his time with retired CIA/newspaper man, John Talbot, in this article he wrote for The Pulp about a massive condo development (and covered by me in this post).
From the first link:
Full disclosure: I spent the bulk of my journalism lifetime at 500 South Higgins. For a few days, I had the second-best office in Missoula. The best was directly above, where the Missoulian publisher sat. It had a view of the river and an executive toilet.
The Missoulian managing editor’s desk was on the lower floor, looking out at a patio, bordered by an irrigation canal, leading to the little knobby park, and then the Clark Fork River. I never actually used it, as my promotion to newsroom leadership happened just as Lee Enterprises was completing the sale of the building to Bergquist for $8 million.
The hollowing-out of 500 South Higgins Avenue had been going on for years. I first came to work there in 1987 as a freelance reporter. One assignment was to help compile an annual Missoula business report, which noted that the Missoulian was one of the biggest employers in town. At its height, 160 full-time and 45 part-time workers rattled around there. When we moved to a new office on West Broadway in 2021, there were 75, including 21 in the newsroom.
1987 was a BIG year for both Missoula, John Talbot, and the Beastie Boys, who weirdly launched their first international headlining tour that year IN MISSOULA.
Huh?
For John Talbot and Missoula, 1987 was also the year that the first International Choral Festival was held here. This festival, co-directed by Talbot in ’87, is now a beloved local tradition that features children who know how to sing pretty coming from ALL AROUND THE WORLD to little old Missoula.
According to its official history, the seeds for this festival were first planted in France two year previous:
Back in 1985, the Missoula Mendelssohn Club was performing at a choral festival in France.
The event spurred choral conductor and music professor, the late Don Carey, to start an invitational festival in Missoula.
Over three decades before Don Carey traveled to France, John Talbot was in Paris, fighting the Cold War from the cafes while working for the CIA.
But don’t take my word for it, just read the man’s obituary (emphasis mine):
One of the great ironies of this Rob Chaney/CCP scandal that won’t be a scandal because Operation Mockingbird was successful and ALL MEDIA is captured terrain waging cognitive warfare on regular people, is the CUNY recognition this creeper with the peeper glasses (Rob, not John) just got for, get this, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM THAT FOLLOWS THE MONEY!
Isn’t that fucking hilarious?
Another recipient of this FOLLOW THE MONEY grant to investigate shit reports on immigration/diaspora issues related to…CHINESE PEOPLE! Isn’t that nice?
Would Rong feel at home in Missoula if he came to celebrate with his fellow investigative journalist, Rob Chaney? Yes, Missoula is very cosmopolitan for the discerning traveler who knows how to see the signs of exclusivity and prestige, like this sandwich board sign I took a pic of recently downtown, on Main Street:
If I could play Rob Chaney like a CCP video game, though, it would be the geographical opportunity provided by Chaney’s residence up Pattee Canyon I would operationalize, since I believe I’ve uncovered an enclave of Epstein-connected cosmopolitan beneficiaries who make Pattee Canyon look like Missoula’s version of Laurel Canyon.
If Rob Chaney doesn’t like how I use publicly available information to FOLLOW THE MONEY to what “journalism grants” and Better Hong Kong Foundation support produces for a “staff writer” of a local newspaper, I’m sure the fourth district court kangaroo will entertain whatever delusion he can cook up for a restraining order.
Until I’m disappeared again, though, I’ll keep connecting the kind of dots that inspired a local politician to decry my “Epstein conspiracies” before that very marsupial, and it only cost $355 dollars for me to get the proof that you can catch someone being so slippery with the truth, they can barely respond to certain questions on cross-examination, but that won’t stop a “non-partisan” marsupial from imposing a decade of unconstitutional restraint on one’s ability to convey what the fuck is ACTUALLY going on in the great People’s Republic of Missoula.
If you appreciate what I’ve gone through to be a troublesome dot-connector, please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. The recent $100 dollar donation (thank you, C!) helps offset the price I’ve personally paid to keep bringing this information to readers, free of charge, with ZERO dollars from grants or foreign adversaries.
The latter, I’m pretty sure, makes you a traitor to America, or something like that.
Stay tuned, more to come!
Skyline Dr. is on the east side of the Rattlesnake, Travis, not in Pattee Canyon.
Funny, I asked AI without double checking because I know humans like you read me closely. Thanks, Pete!
Oh, and if my father was a secret CIA operative spreading propaganda through the Missoulian, he probably wouldn’t include his work for the CIA while in Paris in the ’50s in his obit.
> Oh, and if my father was a secret CIA operative spreading propaganda through the Missoulian, he probably wouldn’t include his work for the CIA while in Paris in the ’50s in his obit.
Deathbed confession