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The Washington Post faces lingering questions as liberal columnist Max Boot is caught up in a potential media scandal.
The Justice Department charged Boot’s wife, Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst and senior official at the National Security Council, last week with acting as a secret agent for South Korea’s intelligence service in exchange for luxury gifts. The indictment alleged that Terry accepted lavish gifts in exchange for pushing South Korean government positions during media appearances, sharing private information with intelligence officers and facilitating meetings to allow South Korean officials to be granted access to U.S. officials, without registering as a foreign agent. She has denied the charges.
Boot, an ex-Republican opinion columnist for the Post, has co-authored five pieces for the paper with his wife, all related to Korean issues. The Post responded by placing editor’s notes atop several opinion articles that were written or co-authored by the suspected foreign agent, but the paper has also used Terry as an expert in news articles, and failed to disclose her marriage to the liberal columnist.
Sue Mi Terry, who has been charged with acting as a secret agent for South Koreas intelligence service, is married to Washington Post columnist Max Boot. (Left:REUTERS/Lucas Jackson, Right: Anna Webber/Getty Images for The New Yorker)
“On July 16, a federal indictment was made public alleging that Sue Mi Terry had acted as an unregistered agent of the South Korean government beginning in 2013,” the note says atop pieces with Terry’s byline. “If true, this is information that would have been pertinent for The Post’s publication decision. Ms. Terry has denied these charges and has asserted through counsel that the allegations in the indictment are unfounded.”
Boot is known for being a fierce critic of former President Trump, and he was an enthusiastic proponent of Russiagate who claimed the former president could be a Russian agent. One of his most infamous pieces was a 2019 column he discussed on CNN titled, “Here are 18 reasons Trump could be a Russian asset.”
Boot’s latest column, “Netanyahu may be winning, but Israel isn’t,” was published on Tuesday.
“Max Boot is a longstanding contributor to Washington Post Opinion. He has not been accused of any wrongdoing and will continue to publish with The Washington Post on a regular basis,” a Post spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
The Washington Post did not immediately respond to a series of additional questions, including whether the paper will investigate Boot.
Fox News Digital counted nine opinion pieces Terry either wrote or co-authored that had editor’s notes placed on them Thursday, including one published May 27 headlined, “This nascent trilateral relationship is the best possible answer to China.”
FORMER CIA ANALYST CHARGED FOR ACTING AS SECRET AGENT FOR SOUTH KOREAN INTEL IN EXCHANGE FOR GIFTS
Boot also penned a 2018 piece, “Kim Jong Un has played Trump like a Stradivarius,” that cited Terry without informing readers of any personal relationship between them.
One of the columns Boot wrote alongside his wife, according to the 31-page indictment, was done at the specific behest of the South Korean government, headlined “South Korea takes a brave step toward reconciliation with Japan.” The Post editor’s note on that article used the same text as the others but added, “The indictment alleged that Terry co-authored this column at the request of a South Korean official.”
Published on March 7, 2023, the article contained talking points Terry received from a South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs official she texted with questions about relations between South Korea and Japan, according to the indictment.
Becket Adams, who is also program director of the National Journalism Center, penned a scathing piece for National Review noting that the Post’s “national-security columnist may have been compromised by a national-security risk.”
Adams wrote that Boot rose to prominence because of his “willingness to peddle conspiracies alleging a foreign takeover of the Trump-era GOP.”
“The question now for the Washington Post is whether it keeps Boot on staff. If it’s true Terry served for more than a decade as a covert intelligence asset of the Republic of Korea — and the indictment is rather damning — then Boot is left with no good defense,” Adams wrote.
“Either he knew of Terry’s side hustle, in which case he has no business writing a national-security column, or he didn’t know, in which case he has no business writing a national-security column,” he continued. “In other words, he’s either too corrupt or too dim to be taken seriously again as a supposed national-security and intelligence ‘analyst.’”
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The Washington Post added editors notes atop several opinion articles that were written or co-authored by suspected foreign agent Sue Mi Terry. (Getty Images)
The situation has also raised eyebrows on social media:
Terry’s indictment alleged that she admitted to FBI agents just over a year ago that she was a “source” for South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS). It also said she resigned from the CIA in 2008, in lieu of being fired, because the agency was concerned about her contacts with South Korean intelligence agents.
Terry, who was born in Seoul and is a naturalized U.S. citizen, has denied the charges. A statement from her lawyer said, “These allegations are unfounded and distort the work of a scholar and news analyst known for her independence and years of service to the United States.”
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Fox News Digital’s Landon Mion and Gabriel Hays contributed to this report.