CNN has deep ties not only to the CIA, but also to the larger array of American intelligence agencies. That’s the word from Kent Heckenlively, co-author of a new book that delves into the multitude of ways in which CNN is engulfed within the American security framework.

“We’re being played,” he explains to the Next News Network. “There’s a remarkable pattern of employing guys at CNN who have worked for American intelligence agencies.”

Heckenlively titled his book This Was CNN: How Sex, Lies and Spies Undid The World’s Worst News Network. Published by Bombardier Books, it’s due to be released tomorrow on Feb. 7.

Reviewing the book, Facebook whistleblower Ryan Hartwig wrote, “This book may be about CNN, but its most shocking revelations have to do with the national security apparatus and its suffocating stranglehold on our government and our free press, through the use of social media companies and also through strategically embedded intelligence operatives.”

Heckenlively cowrote the book with Cary Poarch, an investigative journalist who works for Project Veritas. James O’Keefe, director of Project Veritas, penned the foreword. Here, Heckenlively cites examples of intelligence agents now holding key posts at CNN. This is hardly a new pattern. In the Project Mockingbird era, during the 1960s, as many as 400 journalists were discovered to have contributed to the FBI, sometimes as employees, other times as contract snitches.