North American Newspaper Alliance

The North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) was a U.S. news syndicate formed by 50 newspapers in 1922 and lasting until 1980.

In the 1950's, NANA was purchased by investors who had strong past ties to the British and American intelligence communities. There were rumors about some members of the organization fronting for espionage.

In the early 1960's, NANA came under Congressional scrutiny for publishing Chinese Nationalist propaganda, for which it had been paid large sums without registering as a foreign agent.

In 1972, a woman named Lucianne Goldberg claimed to be a NANA correspondent and gained access to Democratic candidate George McGovern's presidential campaign, while in reality she was on leave from NANA and she was being paid $1,000 a week by a Richard Nixon operative for regular reports about happenings on the campaign trail. She is the same person who forwarded Linda Tripp's tapes of Monica Lewinsky to the FBI during the 1990's Clinton administration, during which years she again posed as a pseudo-journalist.

Quite a few famous people worked at least briefly under the auspices of NANA, including Edna Ferber and Ernest Hemingway. See the Wikipedia article on North American Newspaper Alliance for more details.