Earlier today, the CIA celebrated its first anniversary on Twitter [6]. As part of its festivities it released five "reasons why you should follow the CIA" among which two stood out:
5: The comments. Some of our followers have the most entertaining conspiracy theories on the internet.
#aliensinthebasement [7]
#Twitterversary [8]
— CIA (@CIA) June 10, 2015 [9]
and:
4: In our second year we are going to ?????? #???
#Twitterversary [8]
— CIA (@CIA) June 10, 2015 [6]
And there you have it: in a nation in which a "conspiracy theory", namely that the NSA was secretly spying on every single US citizen, and where the entire spy apparatus is undergoing a massive overhaul as a result of the "theory" becoming "fact" due to the impenetrable secrecy surrounding every decision of an administration whose biggest accomplishment will be passing a law that nobody has seen, the very subject of public transparency is now being ridiculed by the government itself.
As expected, Edward Snowden's lesson was lost on, well, everyone.