[PEN-L:9465] CIA and News media (1/2)

[Michael Eisenscher <meisenscher@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Subject: CIA and News media (1/2)
>
>Folks--Now we all know we live in a democracy, and that news media is
>sancrosanct, but this long message really shares some important
>information--and names names.  Please feel free to distribute widely.  Kim
>>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 11:47:38 -0700 (PDT)
>>From: Daniel Brandt <dbrandt@xxxxxxx>
>>To: Lisa Pease <lpease@xxxxxxxxxx>
>>Subject: Distribute as you wish
>>
>>
>>
>> From NameBase NewsLine, No. 17, April-June 1997:
>>
>>
>>              Journalism and the CIA: The Mighty Wurlitzer
>>
>>                            by Daniel Brandt
>>
>>     Alongside those Greek morality plays and Biblical injunctions, we are
>>also reminded by history itself that the use of unethical means to achieve
>>a worthy end can be self-destructive. Power, by definition, is isolated
>>from the correcting signals of external criticism. Or perhaps the feeling
>>of fighting evil fits so comfortably, that it's difficult to shed even
>>after objective circumstances change.
>>
>>     The history of U.S. intelligence since World War II follows both
>>patterns. The Office of Strategic Services, the CIA's predecessor, had
>>jurisdiction over wartime covert operations and propaganda in the fight
>>against fascism. OSS chief William Donovan recruited heavily among social
>>and academic elites. When the CIA was launched in 1947 at the beginning
>>of the Cold War, these pioneers felt that they had both the right and the
>>duty to secretly manipulate the masses for the greater good.
>>
>>     OSS veteran Frank Wisner ran most of the early peacetime covert
>>operations as head of the Office of Policy Coordination. Although funded
>>by the CIA, OPC wasn't integrated into the CIA's Directorate of Plans
>>until 1952, under OSS veteran Allen Dulles. Both Wisner and Dulles were
>>enthusiastic about covert operations. By mid-1953 the department was
>>operating with 7,200 personnel and 74 percent of the CIA's total budget.
>>
>>     Wisner created the first "information superhighway." But this was
>>the age of vacuum tubes, not computers, so he called it his "Mighty
>>Wurlitzer." The CIA's global network funded the Italian elections in
>>1948, sent paramilitary teams into Albania, trained Nationalist Chinese
>>on Taiwan, and pumped money into the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the
>>National Student Association, and the Center for International Studies at
>>MIT. Key leaders and labor unions in western Europe received subsidies,
>>and Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were launched. The Wurlitzer, an
>>organ designed for film productions, could imitate sounds such as rain,
>>thunder, or an auto horn. Wisner and Dulles were at the keyboard,
>>directing history.
>>
>>     The ethos of the fight against fascism carried over into the fight
>>against godless communism; for these warriors, the Cold War was still a
>>war. OSS highbrows had already embraced psychological warfare as a new
>>social science: propaganda, for example, was divided into "black"
>>propaganda (stories that are unattributed, or attributed to nonexistent
>>sources, or false stories attributed to a real source), "gray" propaganda
>>(stories from the government where the source is attributed to others),
>>and "white" propaganda (stories from the government where the source is
>>acknowledged as such).[1]
>>
>>     After World War II, these psywar techniques continued. C.D. Jackson,
>>a major figure in U.S. psywar efforts before and after the war, was
>>simultaneously a top executive at Time-Life. Psywar was also used with
>>success during the 1950s by Edward Lansdale, first in the Philippines and
>>then in South Vietnam. In Guatemala, the Dulles brothers worked with their
>>friends at United Fruit, in particular the "father of public relations,"
>>Edward Bernays, who for years had been lobbying the press on behalf of
>>United. When CIA puppets finally took over in 1954, only applause was
>>heard from the media, commencing forty years of CIA-approved horrors in
>>that unlucky country.[2] Bernays' achievement apparently impressed Allen
>>Dulles, who immediately began using U.S. public relations experts and
>>front groups to promote the image of Ngo Dinh Diem as South Vietnam's
>>savior.[3]
>>
>>
>>     The combined forces of unaccountable covert operations and corporate
>>public relations, each able to tap massive resources, are sufficient to
>>make the concept of "democracy" obsolete. Fortunately for the rest of us,
>>unchallenged power can lose perspective. With research and analysis -- the
>>capacity to see and understand the world around them -- entrenched power
>>must constantly anticipate and contain potential threats. But even as
>>power seems more secure, this capacity can be blinded by hubris and
>>isolation.
>>
>>     Troublesome notes were heard from the Wurlitzer in the 1960s -- but
>>not from American journalism, which had already sold its soul to the
>>empire. Instead, the announcement that the emperor had no clothes was
>>made by a new generation. Much that was dear to this counterculture was
>>stylistic and superficial, and there were many within this culture itself,
>>and certainly within the straight media, who mistook this excess baggage
>>for its essence. Nevertheless, the youth culture's rumpled opposition was
>>sufficient to slow down the machine and let in some light.
>>
>>     The ruling class failed to see the naked contradiction that they had
>>created. They expected that the most-privileged, best-educated generation
>>in history could be forcibly drafted to fight a dirty war against popular
>>self-determination some 8,000 miles away -- a war that clearly had more to
>>do with anticommunist ideology and corporate greed than it did with the
>>defense of America. The elites didn't have a clue that this was even a
>>problem; President Johnson's knee-jerk response to the student antiwar
>>movement, for example, was to pressure the CIA into uncovering the
>>nefarious (and nonexistent) foreign influences behind it.
>>
>>     Thus the crack in the culture that eventually encouraged American
>>media to take a look at themselves. With rare exceptions,[4] it was the
>>alternative press that began to question racism, police brutality,
>>Vietnam, the defense establishment, and the JFK assassination. In 1967
>>Ramparts magazine exposed a portion of the CIA's covert funding network,
>>whereupon the New York Times and Washington Post began naming more names.
>>By then the Wurlitzer would never sound the same, particularly after the
>>1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy invited
>>further suspicions.
>>
>>     The counterculture burned out once the war wound down, but it had
>>already dented the lemming-like consensus that typified an earlier period.
>>For roughly ten years, between 1967 and 1977, Americans learned something
>>of their secret history. From the perspective of twenty additional years,
>>the results were mixed and much remains secret. But it's scary to think of
>>where we might be now if the counterculture had never happened.
>>
>>
>>     During the last half of those ten years, sandwiched between Watergate
>>coverage on one end, and Congressional investigations of the CIA on the
>>other, the media showed some interest in examining their own intelligence
>>connections. The first shoe was dropped by Jack Anderson in late August,
>>1973, when he revealed that Seymour Freidin, head of the Hearst bureau
>>in London, was a CIA agent. Freidin, already in the news because the
>>Republicans paid him $10,000 in 1972 to spy on the Democrats, confirmed
>>Anderson's story. At that point William Colby, the new CIA director, was
>>asked by the New York Times and the Washington Star-News if any of their
>>staff were on the CIA payroll.
>>
>>     James (Scotty) Reston of the NYT was satisfied with an evasive
>>answer, but when the Star-News editorial board met with Colby, they made
>>some progress. The other shoe dropped with an article by Oswald Johnston
>>on November 30: the Star-News learned from an "authoritative source"
>>(Colby) that the CIA had some three dozen American journalists on its
>>payroll. Johnston named only one -- Jeremiah O'Leary -- who was one of
>>their own diplomatic correspondents. (The Star-News stopped publishing
>>in 1981, at which point O'Leary joined Reagan's national security staff.
>>>From 1982 until his death in 1993, he was with the Washington Times.)
>>
>>     That was the first and last time that Colby was helpful on this
>>topic. Some believe that the new director was under pressure from the
>>"young Turks" (junior staffers) at the Agency, who were granted a mandate
>>by Colby's predecessor to cough up the "family jewels" -- a list of illegal
>>exploits that could be culled from the CIA's files. Already there were
>>rumors that the CIA was guilty of illegal spying on the antiwar movement
>>-- rumors that were confirmed a year later by Seymour Hersh, whose sources
>>were some of these same "young Turks."
>>
>>      Why was Colby initially forthcoming on the issue of the CIA and the
>>media, and why did he then start stonewalling? Some believe that he was
>>attempting a "limited hangout" as the best way out of a position that
>>made him nervous, while others feel that he was implicitly threatening to
>>provide additional names in order to scare off the media. Colby had reason
>>to be worried: by late 1973, investigative journalism was in the air
>>because of Watergate -- an issue that had more than the usual share of
>>CIA connections.
>>
>>     Colby's stonewalling continued for the remainder of his tenure, even
>>as a Senate committee led by Frank Church desperately tried to squeeze
>>more names out of him. George Bush replaced Colby in January, 1976,
>>and eventually agreed to a one-paragraph summary of each file of a CIA
>>journalist, with names deleted. When the CIA said it was finished, the
>>Church committee had over 400 summaries.
>>
>>     The committee staff was shocked at the extent of the CIA's activity
>>in this area, and felt that they still didn't have the story. But they
>>were running out of time, and expected that the Senate's new permanent
>>oversight committee would continue their work. The Church committee's
>>final report contained only a handful of vague and misleading pages on
>>the CIA and the media. "It hardly reflects what was found," stated Senator
>>Gary Hart. "There was a prolonged and elaborate negotiation [with the CIA]
>>over what would be said."[5]
>>
>>
>>     The House investigation of the CIA, under Otis Pike, had more
>>problems than the Senate investigation. The full House voted to suppress
>>its committee's final report under pressure from the executive branch, at
>>which point Daniel Schorr of CBS leaked a copy to the Village Voice. This
>>report contained just twelve paragraphs on the topic of the CIA and the
>>media, including the tidbit about the CIA's "frequent manipulation of
>>Reuters wire service dispatches."[6] Another paragraph gave some idea of
>>the scope of the CIA's efforts in this area:
>>
>>     Some 29 percent of Forty Committee-approved covert actions were
>>     for media and propaganda projects. This number is probably not
>>     representative. Staff has determined the existence of a large number
>>     of CIA internally-approved operations of this type, apparently
>>     deemed not politically sensitive. It is believed that if the correct
>>     number of all media and propaganda projects could be determined,
>>     it would exceed Election Support as the largest single category
>>     of covert action projects undertaken by the CIA.[7]
>>
>>     One enterprising researcher took this 29 percent figure, and
>>extrapolating from figures on CIA expenditures for covert operations,
>>found that the cost of propaganda in 1978 was around $265 million and
>>involved 2,000 personnel. Comparing this to figures for other news
>>agencies, he concluded that the CIA "uses far more resources in its
>>propaganda operations than any single news agency.... In fact, the CIA
>>propaganda budget is as large as the combined budgets of Reuters, United
>>Press International and the Associated Press."[8]
>>
>>     CBS took Daniel Schorr off the air after he leaked the Pike committee
>>report. This was most likely a convenient opportunity for William Paley,
>>chairman of CBS, who didn't approve of Schorr's interest in the network's
>>own CIA connection. Former CBS News president Sig Mickelson, who by 1976
>>was president of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, said that in October
>>1954, Paley called him into his office for a friendly discussion with two
>>CIA officials. Schorr mentioned this on Walter Cronkite's show, and in
>>an op-ed piece for the New York Times (Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the late
>>publisher of the Times, had been cozy with the CIA also). "There are
>>executives and retired executives," Schorr wrote, "who could help dispel
>>the cloud hanging over the press by coming forward to tell the arrangements
>>they made with the CIA."[9]
>>
>>     Little had changed since 1974, when Michael J. Harrington, a
>>Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, leaked Colby's closed-door
>>testimony about CIA involvement in the 1973 coup in Chile. Harrington
>>soon found himself the target of a formal Ethics Committee investigation;
>>now Schorr was also their target. Apparently Congress was fearful that
>>the executive branch might paint them as bungling and irresponsible when
>>it came to keeping secrets, and then use this as a club to deprive them
>>of access to information.
>>
>>     If Congress felt this way, it was more than simple paranoia. In 1976
>>the CIA began cranking up their Wurlitzer on the matter of Richard Welch,
>>a station chief in Athens who was assassinated by urban guerrillas at the
>>end of 1975. The CIA's exploitation of this timely tragedy had both an
>>immediate target and a general target. Ostensibly the CIA was complaining
>>about an obscure Washington magazine called CounterSpy, which had been
>>printing CIA names. In the same spirit, Philip Agee's just-published diary
>>of CIA tricks in Latin America was loaded with names, and was already an
>>international sensation. But the general target of this campaign was more
>>important -- the CIA managed to change the nature of the debate. Suddenly
>>it was no longer a question of what dirty work the CIA might be doing, but
>>rather a question of what happens when the press recklessly endangers the
>>lives of our brave boys overseas.
>>
>>     The fact that Welch's name had been published by the East Germans
>>five years earlier, and that he could be identified as a CIA officer from
>>his listing in the unclassified 1973 State Department Biographic Register,
>>were both ignored. In any case, it was hardly a secret in Athens -- the
>>group that killed Welch had been stalking his predecessor, Stacy Hulse,
>>until Welch moved into the Hulse residence five months earlier. Colby
>>eventually admitted to a House subcommittee that Welch's cover was
>>inexcusably weak, and that the publication of his name in an Athens
>>newspaper had only an indirect effect on his assassination.[10]
>>
>>     Colby could say this two years later because by then his comments
>>were destined for a back page. The battle to rein in the CIA was already
>>lost. In 1982 Congress passed a controversial new law that made publication
>>of CIA names a felony under certain conditions. Although these conditions
>>rarely applied to journalists, the wide coverage on this issue served to
>>intimidate most publishers and editors.
>>
>>     Today the CIA, which once issued an automatic "no comment" when
>>asked anything by reporters, is playing an adept game of "soft cop,
>>hard cop" public relations. In 1991 an internal CIA task force recommended
>>a more active posture by the public affairs office when responding to
>>requests for assistance (that year they handled 3,369 telephone inquires
>>from reporters, provided 174 unclassified background briefings for
>>them at Headquarters, and arranged 164 interviews with senior Agency
>>officials).[11] The "hard cop" was discovered by Katrina vanden Heuvel,
>>editor of The Nation. In 1995 she was telephoned by Vin Swasey, CIA deputy
>>director of public affairs, who strongly objected to an editorial because
>>it included the names of nine former station chiefs in Guatemala.[12]
>>Reuters was persuaded by Swasey's colleagues to run the story without
>>the names.
>>
>>
>>     The final months of 1977 produced three significant pieces of
>>journalism on the CIA and the media, just before the issue was abandoned
>>altogether. The first, by Joe Trento and Dave Roman, reported the
>>connections between Copley Press and the CIA. Owner James S. Copley
>>cooperated with the CIA for three decades. A subsidiary, Copley News
>>Service, was used as a CIA front in Latin America, while reporters at the
>>Copley-owned San Diego Union and Evening News were instructed to spy on
>>antiwar protesters for the FBI. No less than 23 news service employees
>>were simultaneously working for the CIA. James Copley, who died in 1973,
>>was also a leading figure behind the CIA-funded Inter-American Press
>>Association.[13]
>>
>>     The next article was by Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame. In a
>>long piece in Rolling Stone, he came up with the figure of 400 American
>>journalists over the past 25 years, based primarily on interviews with
>>Church committee staffers. This figure included stringers and freelancers
>>who had an understanding that they were expected to help the CIA, as well
>>as a small number of full-time CIA employees using journalism as a cover.
>>It did not include foreigners, nor did it include numerous Americans who
>>traded favors with the CIA in the normal give-and-take between a journalist
>>and his sources. In addition to some of the names already mentioned above,
>>Bernstein supplied details on Stewart and Joseph Alsop, Henry Luce, Barry
>>Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal, Hal Hendrix of the Miami
>>News, columnist C.L. Sulzberger, Richard Salant of CBS, and Philip Graham
>>and John Hayes of the Washington Post.
>>
>>     Bernstein concentrated more on the owners, executives, and editors of
>>news organizations than on individual reporters. "Lets's not pick on some
>>poor reporters, for God's sake," William Colby said at one point to the
>>Church committee's investigators. "Let's go to the management. They were
>>witting." Bernstein noted that Colby had specific definitions for words
>>such as "contract employee," "agent," "asset," "accredited correspondent,"
>>"editorial employee," "freelance," "stringer," and even "reporter," and
>>through careful use of these words, the CIA "managed to obscure the most
>>elemental fact about the relationships detailed in its files: i.e.,
>>that there was recognition by all parties involved that the cooperating
>>journalists were working for the CIA -- whether or not they were paid
>>or had signed employment contracts."[14]
>>
>>     The reaction to Bernstein's piece among mainstream media was to
>>ignore it, or to suggest that it was sloppy and exaggerated. Then two
>>months later, the New York Times published the results of their "three-
>>month inquiry by a team of Times reporters and researchers." This
>>three-part series not only confirmed Bernstein, but added a wealth
>>of far-ranging details and contained twice as many names. Now almost
>>everyone pretended not to notice.
>>
>>     The Times reported that over the last twenty years, the CIA owned
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