Stephen Zunes posted the following comment:

With all the real conspiracies out there, it is a disservice to the anti-imperialist struggle to make things up like this.

I am one of a number of progressives who have worked with both Narco News and ICNC, and the idea that either are CIA or PNAC related are ridiculous. Of course, this author has been banned from a number of progressive web sites for similar outrageous paranoid fantasies and sectarian attacks about other individuals and organizations, so I suppose it's not surprising that he'd go after Narco News and ICNC as well.

I have worked for several years on ICNC's academic advisory committee with such prominent leftists as Stellan Vinthagen, Philippe Duhamel, Les Kurtz, Cynthia Boaz, Tom Hastings, Kevin Clements, and others. I know ICNC's work well, so I know that the factual errors in this diatribe are too numerous to respond all of them but here are a few:

Neither ICNC nor anybody on the staff or working in any other capacity with the organization has ever had anything to do with PNAC of the CIA. None of us would be on the academic advisory board if it did.

Neither Ackerman nor DuVall are "right-wingers." DuVall is a liberal Democrat and Ackerman is an independent libertarian.

DuVall overlapped for two meetings with James Woolsey on a politically-diverse board of a nonprofit organization and they never even spoke with each other. How that makes compromises him as some kind of CIA asset is a stretch to say the least.

ICNC has never "sought to overthrow the leadership of other nations." Again, none of the many progressives affiliated with ICNC would do so if they had. ICNC did not even exist at the time of the Milosevic overthrow in Yugoslavia, they have never had any contacts with anyone from Kyrgyzstan prior to the Tulip Revolution and other than some literature and books sent out to people from scores of different countries, no contact with Georgians or Ukrainians either.

ICNC has never deployed field advisers anywhere.

The only time anyone affiliated with ICNC has been to Venezuela was when ICNC sent me to the World Social Forum in 2006, where I worked with supporters of the Bolivarian Revolution on nonviolent means or RESISTING an attempted coup.

ICNC has worked with anti-war and immigrants rights activists in the United States, as well as Palestinians, Egyptians, Sahrawis, West Papuans, and others struggling against U.S. backed regimes, hardly the activities of a group tied to PNAC or the CIA.

I remember how in the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. government operatives would seek to divide and weaken the left by spreading false rumors among the Black Panthers and in anti-war and socialist organizations that certain dedicated activists were FBI informants, police agents, or CIA operatives. Some activists were naive enough to believe such lies and spread the rumors as well.

Narco News' School of Authentic Journalism is a threat to the some powerful interests and I wouldn't be surprised if, as a result, there are those who seek to undermine it.