Investigative Issues: New York Times Spokesman Came Directly From National Security Agency

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The Intercept

CHARLIE STADTLANDER, DIRECTOR of external communications for the New York Times, joined the paper directly from the National Security Agency, where he served as head of public affairs.

According to Stadtlander’s LinkedIn page, he’s worked for the Times since January 2022. Before that, he held his position at the NSA starting in 2019. His only listed job in the media before the New York Times is as a journalism teacher for three months in 2010, when he served as an “instructor to gifted children, ages 8-13” at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

The Times corporate website publishes a constant stream of short posts about staffers joining the paper or changing positions, including in its external communications department. However, the news of Stadtlander’s hiring and his background does not appear on the webpage of press releases.

All of this raises obvious questions. Is being the spokesperson for the nation’s most prestigious newspaper a completely different job from being the spokesperson for the NSA? Or are they pretty much the same job? Most importantly, are the perspectives of the two institutions fundamentally different — or are they, in more ways than you might imagine, fundamentally the same?

 

The NSA serves as the hub of America’s cybersurveillance. One NSA director claimed that it had the largest budget and most personnel of any U.S. government intelligence organization.

It’s also been the most secretive. The NSA was founded in 1952, but the government did not acknowledge that it existed at all until a Senate investigation in 1975. Staffers there often joked that NSA stood for “No Such Agency” or “Never Say Anything.” The reporter Daniel Schorr once recalled that when he attempted to film an on-camera segment standing outside the NSA gates at its headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, a Marine threatened to shoot him.