[PEN-L:9464] CIA and News media (2/2)

[Michael Eisenscher <meisenscher@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Subject: CIA and News media (2/2)
>
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>>or subsidized more than fifty newspapers, news services, radio stations,
>>periodicals and other communications facilities, most of them overseas.
>>These were used for propaganda efforts, or even as cover for operations.
>>Another dozen foreign news organizations were infiltrated by paid CIA
>>agents. At least 22 American news organizations had employed American
>>journalists who were also working for the CIA, and nearly a dozen American
>>publishing houses printed some of the more than 1,000 books that had been
>>produced or subsidized by the CIA. When asked in a 1976 interview whether
>>the CIA had ever told its media agents what to write, William Colby
>>replied, "Oh, sure, all the time."
>>
>>     Since domestic propaganda was a violation of the their charter,
>>the CIA defined the predictable effects of their foreign publications as
>>"blowback" or "domestic fallout," which they considered to be "inevitable
>>and consequently permissible." But former CIA employees told the Times
>>that apart from this unintended blowback, "some CIA propaganda efforts,
>>especially during the Vietnam War, had been carried out with a view toward
>>their eventual impact in the United States." The Times series concluded
>>that at its peak, the CIA's network "embraced more than 800 news and
>>public information organizations and individuals."[15]
>>
>>
>>     By the time the Times series appeared, Congress was looking for a
>>way out of the issue. Obligingly, Stansfield Turner promised that the CIA
>>would avoid journalists "accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper,
>>periodical, radio or television network or station." There were at least
>>three problems with this that most press coverage overlooked: many
>>stringers and freelancers are not accredited; it didn't cover any
>>foreign-owned media; and as Gary Hart complained at the time, the new
>>policy included a provision that allowed the CIA to unilaterally make
>>exceptions whenever it wished.[16]
>>
>>     Within several years of this alleged policy, the new Reagan
>>administration ignored it in favor of a shooting war in Central America,
>>one component of which was an illegal CIA-administered propaganda war at
>>home. Edgar Chamorro, a contra sympathizer in Miami with a background in
>>public relations, was recruited by the CIA in late 1982. After two years
>>of following the CIA's instructions regarding the manipulation of U.S.
>>journalists and even members of Congress, Chamorro went public with his
>>story.[17] By now Congress was clearly out-maneuvered, even though it
>>alone held the purse strings that controlled funding for the war.
>>
>>     The inability of Congress to address the CIA-media problem in
>>the 1970s meant that more powerful forces were at work. In fact, while
>>Congress was wringing its left hand over illegal CIA activities, its right
>>hand was helping the CIA overhaul its Wurlitzer. Ever since 1967, when the
>>Katzenbach committee was tasked by Lyndon Johnson to study the problem of
>>the CIA's use of domestic organizations, the agenda at the highest levels
>>had been to remove such activities from the CIA's payroll and continue
>>them under a new umbrella. In the unclassified portion of their report,
>>this committee recommended giving money openly through a "public-private
>>mechanism." "The CIA's big mistake was not supplanting itself with private
>>funds fast enough," observed Gloria Steinem, who had been part of the
>>CIA's global network.[18]
>>
>>     The Asia Foundation was given a large "severance payment" so that
>>they could find private funding,[19] and the Congress for Cultural Freedom
>>got over $4 million from the Ford Foundation.[20] In 1971, Radio Liberty
>>and Radio Free Europe were spun off and funded separately by new
>>legislation. While this hardly diminished the CIA's control of these radio
>>stations, it did help public relations by facilitating "deniability."[21]
>>Then in 1983, Congress created the National Endowment for Democracy, with
>>funding to carry on many of the activities that the CIA once carried out
>>covertly within its own budget.
>>
>>     Bits and pieces of the old Wurlitzer were still evident everywhere:
>>John Richardson, Jr., the new chairman of NED, had been president and CEO
>>of Radio Free Europe during the 1960s, and some of the NED's dozens of
>>grants were issued to groups that solicited aid for the contras.[22]
>>"It is not necessary to turn to the covert approach," commented Colby
>>in regard to the NED program. "Many of the programs which ... were
>>conducted as covert operations [can now be] conducted quite openly,
>>and consequentially, without controversy."[23] As if to prove his point,
>>Colby's wife was soon a member of NED's board of directors.
>>
>>
>>     Two major changes since the 1980s -- the collapse of socialism and
>>the centralization of domestic and transnational media, suggest that the
>>CIA now has everything well in hand. But it is far too early to tell.
>>The pressure to stay competitive in the global marketplace could provoke
>>economic nationalism in places where the CIA was once free to roam. France
>>and Germany, for example, have recently expelled CIA agents. At the same
>>time, the Soviet people are having second thoughts about all those benefits
>>of U.S.-imposed capitalism. China remains aggressive and uncompromising;
>>they may even tolerate less interference from us in their political
>>process than we do from them.
>>
>>     It's a different world, and it's unfamiliar. A blue-ribbon panel of
>>the Council on Foreign Relations suggested last year that the CIA be freed
>>from some policy constraints on covert operations, such as the use of
>>journalists and clergy as cover. This is alarming. Unlike the typical
>>corporate-funded think tank, filled with pro-Pentagon pundits, the folks
>>at CFR are either running the world or they know who does. For 70
>>years they've rarely recommended anything that has not become policy.
>>Furthermore, they've thoroughly co-opted the major media (see sidebar).
>>
>>     There have also been official announcements that the CIA is
>>mission-creeping into economic intelligence and computer-age information
>>warfare. This might reflect a bit of nostalgia for the job security and
>>moral clarity of the Cold War, or it could be a premonition that the
>>American Century is over and the masses are expected to get uppity.
>>Perhaps the First Amendment has always been something of a con -- a matter
>>of "freedom," but only for those who own the presses, or for those who
>>lived in an earlier century, before psywar and public relations experts.
>>
>>     Then again, stay tuned -- the credibility gap is back. A recent
>>poll shows that Americans are fed up with mainstream news media. "Very
>>favorable" ratings for television network news fell from 30 percent in
>>1985 to just 15 percent this year, and for large national newspapers it
>>dropped 12 percent. A majority now believe that news stories are often
>>inaccurate.[24]
>>
>>     After factoring in the new global economics and recalculating the
>>prospects for the middle class, all bets are off. The poor performance
>>of Congress and the press on the issue of journalists and the CIA may
>>mean that the next time around, the elites will lack even the credibility
>>to stage another co-opting charade of "oversight." That could prove
>>beneficial, particularly if next the time threatens to be as
>>inconsequential and diversionary as the last time.
>>
>> 1.  Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (Harmondsworth, Middlesex,
>>     England: Penguin Books, 1975), pp. 70-71.
>>
>> 2.  Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala (Austin: University of
>>     Texas Press, 1982), pp. 111-114; Thomas P. McCann, An American
>>     Company: The Tragedy of United Fruit (New York: Crown Publishers,
>>     1976), pp. 45-48.
>>
>> 3.  Eric Thomas Chester, Covert Network: Progressives, the International
>>     Rescue Committee, and the CIA (Armonk NY and London: M.E. Sharpe,
>>     1995), pp. 160-183.
>>
>> 4.  The first anti-CIA book appeared in 1964: David Wise and Thomas B.
>>     Ross, The Invisible Government (New York: Random House). CIA director
>>     John McCone, and other officials acting under his direction,
>>     contacted the publisher in an effort to stop it.
>>
>> 5.  Carl Bernstein, "The CIA and the Media," Rolling Stone, 20 October
>>     1977, pp. 65-67.
>>
>> 6.  "The CIA Report the President Doesn't Want You to Read," Village
>>     Voice, 20 February 1976, p. 40.
>>
>> 7.  Ibid, p. 36.
>>
>> 8.  Sean Gervasi, "CIA Covert Propaganda Capability," Covert Action
>>     Information Bulletin, No. 7, December 1979 - January 1980, pp. 18-20.
>>
>> 9.  Daniel Schorr, Clearing the Air (New York: Berkley Medallion Books,
>>     1978), pp. 204-206, 275-277.
>>
>>10.  Norman Kempster, "Identity of U.S. Spies Harder to Hide, Colby Says,"
>>     Los Angeles Times, 28 December 1977, pp. 1, 8.
>>
>>11.  Central Intelligence Agency, Memorandum for Director of Central
>>     Intelligence from the Task Force on Greater CIA Openness, 20 December
>>     1991, 15 pages.
>>
>>12.  Allan Nairn, "The Country Team," The Nation, 5 June 1995, p. 780.
>>
>>13.  Joe Trento and Dave Roman, "The Spies Who Came In From the Newsroom,"
>>     Penthouse, August 1977, pp. 44-46, 50.
>>
>>14.  Bernstein, p. 58.
>>
>>15.  John M. Crewdson and Joseph B. Treaster, "The CIA's 3-Decade Effort
>>     to Mold the World's Views," New York Times, 25 December 1977, pp. 1,
>>     12; Terrence Smith, "CIA Contacts With Reporters," New York Times,
>>     p. 13; Crewdson and Treaster, "Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by
>>     the CIA," New York Times, 26 December 1977, pp. 1, 37; Crewdson and
>>     Treaster, "CIA Established Many Links to Journalists in U.S. and
>>     Abroad," New York Times, 27 December 1977, pp. 1, 40-41.
>>
>>16.  While it's true that Gary Hart's complaint was not widely covered
>>     (there's one paragraph in the Los Angeles Times on 16 December 1977,
>>     p. 2), it is still amazing that when this clause was rediscovered in
>>     early 1996, indignant columnists pretended that it had been a secret
>>     all along. The truth is, journalists haven't been doing their
>>     homework for the last 18 years. This led the Society of Professional
>>     Journalists to earn a flunking grade for their 23 February 1996 press
>>     release: "An executive order during the Carter administration was
>>     thought to have banned the practice [of the recruitment of
>>     journalists by the CIA]. After a Council on Foreign Relations task
>>     force recommended that the ban be reconsidered, it was revealed that
>>     a 'loophole' existed allowing the CIA director or his deputy to grant
>>     a waiver. After protests, Deutch refused to rule out the practice,
>>     saying in some cases it might be necessary." To rephrase this
>>     politely, it took 18 years for the SPJ to become aware of the fine
>>     print in the CIA's policy. This is probably due to poor reporting
>>     from newspapers such as the Washington Post, which the innocents at
>>     SPJ must think of as not only "liberal," but also competent. So why,
>>     when the Post's intelligence reporter, Walter Pincus, was told about
>>     the waiver last year, did he write it up as a scoop in the 22 February
>>     1996 Washington Post??? Perhaps Pincus really didn't know. Or perhaps
>>     ever since Pincus took money from the CIA in the early 1960s, it has
>>     affected his reporting on this issue.
>>
>>17.  Edgar Chamorro, Packaging the Contras: A Case of CIA Disinformation
>>     (New York: Institute for Media Analysis, 1987), 78 pages; Jacqueline
>>     Sharkey, "Back in Control," Common Cause Magazine, September/October
>>     1986, pp. 28-40.
>>
>>18.  "CIA Subsidized Festival Trips: Hundreds of Students Were Sent to
>>     World Gatherings," New York Times, 21 February 1967.
>>
>>19.  Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of
>>     Intelligence (New York: Dell Publishing, 1975), p. 179.
>>
>>20.  Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural
>>     Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe (New York:
>>     The Free Press, 1989), pp. 224-225.
>>
>>21.  Marchetti and Marks, pp. 174-178.
>>
>>22.  John Kelly, "National Endowment for Reagan's Democracies," The
>>     National Reporter, Summer 1986, pp. 22-26; Council on Hemispheric
>>     Affairs and Inter-Hemispheric Education Resource Center, National
>>     Endowment for Democracy (NED): A Foreign Policy Branch Gone Awry
>>     (Resource Center, Box 4506, Albuquerque NM 87196), 1990, 93 pages.
>>
>>23.  William Colby, "Political Action -- In the Open," Washington Post,
>>     14 March 1982, p. D8.
>>
>>24.  Jack Nelson, "Major News Media Trusted Less, Poll Says," Los Angeles
>>     Times, 21 March 1997.
>>
>>
>>Sidebar from NameBase NewsLine, No. 17, April-June 1997:
>>
>>            Journalists at Work: Who's Watching the Watchdogs?
>>
>>     In the handful of self-critical articles about the media that
>>appeared twenty years ago, the matter of CIA connections with executives,
>>editors, and reporters was emphasized. While this makes for good copy
>>and is certainly worth repeating, it also fails to challenge American
>>journalism at it weakest point: the corrupting influence of fame and
>>fortune. Someone who has looked at this issue recently is James Fallows,
>>formerly of Atlantic Monthly. Fallows argues in his recent book, Breaking
>>the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy, that his profession
>>is becoming seriously compromised.
>>
>>     The name recognition that comes from flaccid punditry can be lucrative
>>on the lecture circuit. Or if you have a name already, perhaps by doing
>>something useless or naughty at the White House, you can acquire pundit
>>status by writing a kiss-and-tell book. Big stars such as Cokie Roberts
>>can collect five figures simply by offering up flattering platitudes at a
>>corporate convention.
>>
>>     Another problem is the revolving door between the media and
>>government. It's considered a badge of honor for a journalist to have
>>spent time working for the White House, whereas it should be seen as a
>>conflict of interest. Some suggest that it's okay to make the switch once
>>-- Bill Moyers can call himself a journalist after working for Lyndon
>>Johnson, but David Gergen has been spinning through the door so often that
>>it makes the rest of us dizzy. Gergen flacked for Nixon, Ford, Reagan and
>>finally Clinton, and between administrations he was an editor at U.S.
>>News & World Report and a commentator for PBS. Come to think of it, James
>>Fallows himself, the new editor at U.S. News & World Report, was the chief
>>speech writer for Jimmy Carter.
>>
>>     Pundits and superstars aside, the larger problem is that the media
>>is owned by the ruling class. With the increased media centralization of
>>the last twenty years, their lock on the masses is now so complete that
>>when they maintain an appearance of objectivity, it's only out of habit.
>>(Sentences containing the words "ruling class" are scribbled self-
>>consciously these days -- a measure of how well they have cornered the
>>market on perception, and perverted what class consciousness we once
>>had into a mass-consumer consciousness.)
>>
>>     How can one distinguish between news and propaganda when the overlaps
>>and interlocks are so pervasive? John Chancellor was with NBC, then with
>>Voice of America, and then again with NBC. John Scali was with ABC, and
>>then with Nixon, and then again with ABC. Ben Bradlee, of Watergate and
>>Washington Post fame, was once a propagandist in Paris, taking orders from
>>the CIA station chief, and was friends with James Angleton. Bradley's
>>sister-in-law was Mary Meyer, divorced from Cord Meyer. She was JFK's
>>lover, and her 1964 murder was never solved. Robert John Myers was in the
>>CIA for twenty years, at one time as an assistant to William Colby, and
>>became publisher of the New Republic in 1968. Generoso Paul Pope, Jr.
>>was in the CIA the year before he bought the National Enquirer in 1952.
>>Laughlin Phillips, co-founder of the Washingtonian, was in the CIA for
>>fifteen years. Former top CIA officials Cord Meyer, Jr. and Tom Braden
>>became columnists (unlike Braden, Meyer rarely talks about his CIA
>>career). George R. Packard and L. Bruce van Voorst were with the CIA
>>before they joined Newsweek, and Philip Geyelin worked for the CIA while
>>on leave from the Wall Street Journal.
>>
>>     There's always Katharine Graham, one of the world's richest women,
>>who is now recognized as a victim of the male-dominated culture because
>>her new autobiography says it's so. In a 1988 speech at CIA headquarters,
>>Graham warmed to her audience: "We live in a dirty and dangerous world.
>>There are some things the general public does not need to know and
>>shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take
>>legitimate steps to keep its secrets, and when the press can decide
>>whether to print what it knows."
>>
>>     Here is a list of some pundits, news anchors, columnists,
>>commentators, reporters, editors, executives, owners, and publishers.
>>This list was compiled much too quickly, merely by scanning the 1995
>>membership roster of the Council on Foreign Relations -- the same CFR
>>that issued a report in early 1996 bemoaning the constraints on our poor,
>>beleaguered CIA. It's not a wallet-size card, but keep it handy somehow.
>>The next time someone denounces all conspiracy theories as wacky, check
>>out the name. You might not be surprised.
>>
>>     By the way, first William Bundy and then William G. Hyland edited
>>CFR's flagship journal Foreign Affairs between the years 1972-1992.
>>Bundy was with the CIA from 1951-1961, and Hyland from 1954-1969.
>>
>>Roone Arledge            Peter Grose              Walter H. Pincus
>>Sidney Blumenthal        Jim Hoagland             Norman Podhoretz
>>David Brinkley           Warren Hoge              Dan Rather
>>Tom Brokaw               David Ignatius           Stephen S. Rosenfeld
>>William F. Buckley, Jr.  Robert G. Kaiser         A. M. Rosenthal
>>James E. Burke           Marvin Kalb              Jack Rosenthal
>>Hodding Carter III       Peter R. Kann            Diane Sawyer
>>John Chancellor          Anne Karalekas           Daniel L. Schorr
>>George Crile III         Joe Klein                Robert B. Semple, Jr.
>>Arnaud de Borchgrave     Morton Kondracke         Hedrick L. Smith
>>Karen DeYoung            Charles Krauthammer      George Stephanopoulos
>>Christopher S. Dickey    Irving Kristol           Strobe Talbott
>>Joan Didion              Jim Lehrer               Laurence A. Tisch
>>Leonard Downie, Jr.      Joseph Lelyveld          Seymour Topping
>>Elizabeth Drew           Lee Lescaze              Robert C. Toth
>>Rowland Evans, Jr.       Anthony Lewis            Mark Uhlig
>>James Fallows            Flora Lewis              Garrick Utley
>>Thomas L. Friedman       Mitchel Levitas          Katrina vanden Heuvel
>>Suzanne Garment          Michael E. Lind          L. Bruce van Voorst
>>Leslie H. Gelb           Kati Marton              Milton Viorst
>>David R. Gergen          Jessica T. Mathews       Ben J. Wattenberg
>>Philip L. Geyelin        Karl E. Meyer            Craig R. Whitney
>>Georgie Anne Geyer       Sig Mickelson            Steven Weisman
>>Katharine Graham         Judith Miller            Lally G. Weymouth
>>James L. Greenfield      Jack Nelson              Roger W. Wilkins
>>Meg Greenfield           John B. Oakes            Mortimer B. Zuckerman
>>
>>...........................................................................
>>: For references to more information on this topic, search for the proper :
>>: names found in this essay by using NameBase Online, a cumulative name   :
>>: index of 500 investigative books, plus 20 years of assorted clippings.  :
>>:         http://www.pir.org/                     info@xxxxxxx            :
>>:.........................................................................:
>>
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