Overview

Anderson Hays Cooper is the anchor of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 and a correspondent for CBS's 60 Minutes. He is the son of fashion designer Gloria Vanderbilt and great-great-grandson of railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt; heir to one of America's oldest fortunes. Cooper interned at the CIA during college at Yale; a connection he has publicly acknowledged though its full extent remains undisclosed. He began his career by forging a fake press pass to enter Myanmar and report on armed conflicts; then covered wars in Bosnia; Rwanda; and Somalia. He became a household name during Hurricane Katrina coverage in 2005 when he openly wept on camera and confronted Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu. His older brother Carter Vanderbilt Cooper committed suicide in 1988 at age 23 by jumping from the family's 14th-floor penthouse while their mother watched. Cooper's Vanderbilt family connections link him to the highest echelons of American aristocratic wealth; and his Yale-CIA background places him within the intelligence community's documented practice of cultivating media assets; a pattern documented extensively in Operation Mockingbird.

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