After leaving The Washington Post in 1977, Carl Bernstein spent
six months looking at the relationship of the CIA and the press
during the Cold War years. His 25,000-word cover story, published in
Rolling Stone on October 20, 1977, is reprinted below.
THE CIA AND THE MEDIA
How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in
Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee
Covered It Up
BY CARL BERNSTEIN
In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated
columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go
because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because
he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He
went at the request of the CIA.
Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past
twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central
Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA
headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency
were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation
and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine
services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens
with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with
the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were
Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered
themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were
less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association
with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were
as interested in the derring‑do of the spy business as in filing
articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees
masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents
show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the
consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.
The history of the CIA’s involvement with the American press
continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and
deception for the following principal reasons:
■ The use of journalists has been among the most productive means of
intelligence‑gathering employed by the CIA. Although the Agency has
cut back sharply on the use of reporters since 1973 primarily as a
result of pressure from the media), some journalist‑operatives are
still posted abroad.
■ Further investigation into the matter, CIA officials say, would
inevitably reveal a series of embarrassing relationships in the 1950s
and 1960s with some of the most powerful organizations and individuals
in American journalism.
Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were
Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne
Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and
James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which
cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the
National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press
International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune.
By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.
The CIA’s use of the American news media has been much more
extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed
sessions with members of Congress. The general outlines of what
happened are indisputable; the specifics are harder to come by. CIA
sources hint that a particular journalist was trafficking all over
Eastern Europe for the Agency; the journalist says no, he just had
lunch with the station chief. CIA sources say flatly that a well‑known
ABC correspondent worked for the Agency through 1973; they refuse to
identify him. A high‑level CIA official with a prodigious memory says
that the New York Times provided cover for about ten CIA
operatives between 1950 and 1966; he does not know who they were, or
who in the newspaper’s management made the arrangements.
The Agency’s special relationships with the so‑called “majors” in
publishing and broadcasting enabled the CIA to post some of its most
valuable operatives abroad without exposure for more than two decades.
In most instances, Agency files show, officials at the highest levels
of the CIA usually director or deputy director) dealt personally with a
single designated individual in the top management of the cooperating
news organization. The aid furnished often took two forms: providing
jobs and credentials “journalistic cover” in Agency parlance) for CIA
operatives about to be posted in foreign capitals; and lending the
Agency the undercover services of reporters already on staff, including
some of the best‑known correspondents in the business.
In the field, journalists were used to help recruit and handle
foreigners as agents; to acquire and evaluate information, and to plant
false information with officials of foreign governments. Many signed
secrecy agreements, pledging never to divulge anything about their
dealings with the Agency; some signed employment contracts., some were
assigned case officers and treated with. unusual deference. Others had
less structured relationships with the Agency, even though they
performed similar tasks: they were briefed by CIA personnel before
trips abroad, debriefed afterward, and used as intermediaries with
foreign agents. Appropriately, the CIA uses the term “reporting” to
describe much of what cooperating journalists did for the Agency. “We
would ask them, ‘Will you do us a favor?’”.said a senior CIA official.
“‘We understand you’re going to be in Yugoslavia. Have they paved all
the streets? Where did you see planes? Were there any signs of military
presence? How many Soviets did you see? If you happen to meet a
Soviet, get his name and spell it right .... Can you set up a meeting
for is? Or relay a message?’” Many CIA officials regarded these helpful
journalists as operatives; the journalists tended to see themselves as
trusted friends of the Agency who performed occasional favors—usually
without pay—in the national interest.
“I’m proud they asked me and proud to have done it,” said Joseph
Alsop who, like his late brother, columnist Stewart Alsop, undertook
clandestine tasks for the Agency. “The notion that a newspaperman
doesn’t have a duty to his country is perfect balls.”
From the Agency’s perspective, there is nothing untoward in such
relationships, and any ethical questions are a matter for the
journalistic profession to resolve, not the intelligence community. As
Stuart Loory, former Los Angeles Times correspondent, has written in the Columbia Journalism Review: ‘If
even one American overseas carrying a press card is a paid informer
for the CIA, then all Americans with those credentials are suspect ....
If the crisis of confidence faced by the news business—along with the
government—is to be overcome, journalists must be willing to focus on
themselves the same spotlight they so relentlessly train on others!’
But as Loory also noted: “When it was reported... that newsmen
themselves were on the payroll of the CIA, the story caused a brief
stir, and then was dropped.”
During the 1976 investigation of the CIA by the Senate Intelligence
Committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church, the dimensions of the
Agency’s involvement with the press became apparent to several members
of the panel, as well as to two or three investigators on the staff.
But top officials of the CIA, including former directors William Colby
and George Bush, persuaded the committee to restrict its inquiry into
the matter and to deliberately misrepresent the actual scope of the
activities in its final report. The multivolurne report contains nine
pages in which the use of journalists is discussed in deliberately vague
and sometimes misleading terms. It makes no mention of the actual
number of journalists who undertook covert tasks for the CIA. Nor does
it adequately describe the role played by newspaper and broadcast
executives in cooperating with the Agency.
THE AGENCY’S DEALINGS WITH THE PRESS BEGAN during the earliest
stages of the Cold War. Allen Dulles, who became director of the CIA in
1953, sought to establish a recruiting‑and‑cover capability within
America’s most prestigious journalistic institutions. By operating
under the guise of accredited news correspondents, Dulles believed, CIA
operatives abroad would be accorded a degree of access and freedom of
movement unobtainable under almost any other type of cover.
American publishers, like so many other corporate and institutional
leaders at the time, were willing to commit the resources of their
companies to the struggle against “global Communism.” Accordingly, the
traditional line separating the American press corps and government was
often indistinguishable: rarely was a news agency used to provide
cover for CIA operatives abroad without the knowledge and consent of
either its principal owner, publisher or senior editor. Thus, contrary
to the notion that the CIA insidiously infiltrated the journalistic
community, there is ample evidence that America’s leading publishers
and news executives allowed themselves and their organizations to
become handmaidens to the intelligence services. “Let’s not pick on some
poor reporters, for God’s sake,” William Colby exclaimed at one point
to the Church committee’s investigators. “Let’s go to the managements.
They were witting.” In all, about twenty‑five news organizations
including those listed at the beginning of this article) provided cover
for the Agency.
In addition to cover capability, Dulles initiated a “debriefing”
procedure under which American correspondents returning from abroad
routinely emptied their notebooks and offered their impressions to
Agency personnel. Such arrangements, continued by Dulles’ successors,
to the present day, were made with literally dozens of news
organizations. In the 1950s, it was not uncommon for returning reporters
to be met at the ship by CIA officers. “There would be these guys from
the CIA flashing ID cards and looking like they belonged at the Yale
Club,” said Hugh Morrow, a former Saturday Evening Post
correspondent who is now press secretary to former vice‑president
Nelson Rockefeller. “It got to be so routine that you felt a little
miffed if you weren’t asked.”
CIA officials almost always refuse to divulge the names of
journalists who have cooperated with the Agency. They say it would be
unfair to judge these individuals in a context different from the one
that spawned the relationships in the first place. “There was a time
when it wasn’t considered a crime to serve your government,” said one
high‑level CIA official who makes no secret of his bitterness. “This
all has to be considered in the context of the morality of the times,
rather than against latter‑day standards—and hypocritical standards at
that.”
Many journalists who covered World War II were close to people in
the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime predecessor of the CIA;
more important, they were all on the same side. When the war ended and
many OSS officials went into the CIA, it was only natural that these
relationships would continue. Meanwhile, the first postwar generation of
journalists entered the profession; they shared the same political and
professional values as their mentors. “You had a gang of people who
worked together during World War II and never got over it,” said one
Agency official. “They were genuinely motivated and highly susceptible
to intrigue and being on the inside. Then in the Fifties and Sixties
there was a national consensus about a national threat. The Vietnam War
tore everything to pieces—shredded the consensus and threw it in the
air.” Another Agency official observed: “Many journalists didn’t give a
second thought to associating with the Agency. But there was a point
when the ethical issues which most people had submerged finally
surfaced. Today, a lot of these guys vehemently deny that they had any
relationship with the Agency.”
From the outset, the use of journalists was among the CIA’s most
sensitive undertakings, with full knowledge restricted to the Director
of Central Intelligence and a few of his chosen deputies. Dulles and
his successors were fearful of what would happen if a
journalist‑operative’s cover was blown, or if details of the Agency’s
dealings with the press otherwise became public. As a result, contacts
with the heads of news organizations were normally initiated by Dulles
and succeeding Directors of Central Intelligence; by the deputy
directors and division chiefs in charge of covert operations—Frank
Wisner, Cord Meyer Jr., Richard Bissell, Desmond FitzGerald, Tracy
Barnes, Thomas Karamessines and Richard Helms himself a former UPI
correspondent); and, occasionally, by others in the CIA hierarchy known
to have an unusually close social relationship with a particular
publisher or broadcast executive.1
James Angleton, who was recently removed as the Agency’s head of
counterintelligence operations, ran a completely independent group of
journalist‑operatives who performed sensitive and frequently dangerous
assignments; little is known about this group for the simple reason that
Angleton deliberately kept only the vaguest of files.
The CIA even ran a formal training program in the 1950s to teach its
agents to be journalists. Intelligence officers were “taught to make
noises like reporters,” explained a high CIA official, and were then
placed in major news organizations with help from management. “These
were the guys who went through the ranks and were told ‘You’re going to
he a journalist,’” the CIA official said. Relatively few of the
400‑some relationships described in Agency files followed that pattern,
however; most involved persons who were already bona fide journalists
when they began undertaking tasks for the Agency.
The Agency’s relationships with journalists, as described in CIA files, include the following general categories:
■ Legitimate, accredited staff members of news organizations—usually
reporters. Some were paid; some worked for the Agency on a purely
voluntary basis. This group includes many of the best‑known journalists
who carried out tasks for the CIA. The files show that the salaries
paid to reporters by newspaper and broadcast networks were sometimes
supplemented by nominal payments from the CIA, either in the form of
retainers, travel expenses or outlays for specific services performed.
Almost all the payments were made in cash. The accredited category
also includes photographers, administrative personnel of foreign news
bureaus and members of broadcast technical crews.)
Two of the Agency’s most valuable personal relationships in the
1960s, according to CIA officials, were with reporters who covered
Latin America—Jerry O’Leary of the Washington Star and Hal Hendrix of the Miami News,
a Pulitzer Prize winner who became a high official of the
International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation. Hendrix was
extremely helpful to the Agency in providing information about
individuals in Miami’s Cuban exile community. O’Leary was considered a
valued asset in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Agency files contain
lengthy reports of both men’s activities on behalf of the CIA.
O’Leary maintains that his dealings were limited to the normal
give‑and‑take that goes on between reporters abroad and their sources.
CIA officials dispute the contention: “There’s no question Jerry
reported for us,” said one. “Jerry did assessing and spotting [of
prospective agents] but he was better as a reporter for us.” Referring
to O’Leary’s denials, the official added: “I don’t know what in the
world he’s worried about unless he’s wearing that mantle of integrity
the Senate put on you journalists.”
O’Leary attributes the difference of opinion to semantics. “I might
call them up and say something like, ‘Papa Doc has the clap, did you
know that?’ and they’d put it in the file. I don’t consider that
reporting for them.... it’s useful to be friendly to them and,
generally, I felt friendly to them. But I think they were more helpful
to me than I was to them.” O’Leary took particular exception to being
described in the same context as Hendrix. “Hal was really doing work
for them,” said O’Leary. “I’m still with the Star. He ended up
at ITT.” Hendrix could not be reached for comment. According to Agency
officials, neither Hendrix nor O’Leary was paid by the CIA.
■ Stringers2 and freelancers. Most were payrolled by the Agency
under standard contractual terms. Their journalistic credentials were
often supplied by cooperating news organizations. some filed news
stories; others reported only for the CIA. On some occasions, news
organizations were not informed by the CIA that their stringers were
also working for the Agency.
■ Employees of so‑called CIA “proprietaries.” During the past
twenty‑five years, the Agency has secretly bankrolled numerous foreign
press services, periodicals and newspapers—both English and foreign
language—which provided excellent cover for CIA operatives. One such
publication was the Rome Daily American, forty percent of which was owned by the CIA until the 1970s. The Daily American went out of business this year,
■ Editors, publishers and broadcast network executives. The CIAs
relationship with most news executives differed fundamentally from
those with working reporters and stringers, who were much more subject
to direction from the Agency. A few executives—Arthur Hays Sulzberger
of the New York Times among them—signed secrecy agreements.
But such formal understandings were rare: relationships between Agency
officials and media executives were usually social—”The P and Q Street
axis in Georgetown,” said one source. “You don’t tell Wilharn Paley to
sign a piece of paper saying he won’t fink.”
■ Columnists and commentators. There are perhaps a dozen well known
columnists and broadcast commentators whose relationships with the CIA
go far beyond those normally maintained between reporters and their
sources. They are referred to at the Agency as “known assets” and can
be counted on to perform a variety of undercover tasks; they are
considered receptive to the Agency’s point of view on various subjects.
Three of the most widely read columnists who maintained such ties with
the Agency are C.L. Sulzberger of the New York Times, Joseph Alsop, and the late Stewart Alsop, whose column appeared in the New York Herald‑Tribune, the Saturday Evening Post and Newsweek. CIA
files contain reports of specific tasks all three undertook.
Sulzberger is still regarded as an active asset by the Agency.
According to a senior CIA official, “Young Cy Sulzberger had some
uses.... He signed a secrecy agreement because we gave him classified
information.... There was sharing, give and take. We’d say, ‘Wed like
to know this; if we tell you this will it help you get access to
so‑and‑so?’ Because of his access in Europe he had an Open Sesame. We’d
ask him to just report: ‘What did so‑and‑so say, what did he look
like, is he healthy?’ He was very eager, he loved to cooperate.” On one
occasion, according to several CIA officials, Sulzberger was given a
briefing paper by the Agency which ran almost verbatim under the
columnist’s byline in the Times. “Cycame out and said, ‘I’m
thinking of doing a piece, can you give me some background?’” a CIA
officer said. “We gave it to Cy as a background piece and Cy gave it to
the printers and put his name on it.” Sulzberger denies that any
incident occurred. “A lot of baloney,” he said.
Sulzberger claims that he was never formally “tasked” by the Agency
and that he “would never get caught near the spook business. My
relations were totally informal—I had a goodmany friends,” he said.
“I’m sure they consider me an asset. They can ask me questions. They
find out you’re going to Slobovia and they say, ‘Can we talk to you
when you get back?’ ... Or they’ll want to know if the head of the
Ruritanian government is suffering from psoriasis. But I never took an
assignment from one of those guys.... I’ve known Wisner well, and Helms
and even McCone [former CIA director John McCone] I used to play golf
with. But they’d have had to he awfully subtle to have used me.
Sulzberger says he was asked to sign the secrecy agreement in the 1950s. “A
guy came around and said, ‘You are a responsible newsman and we need
you to sign this if we are going to show you anything classified.’ I
said I didn’t want to get entangled and told them, ‘Go to my uncle
[Arthur Hays Sulzberger, then publisher of the New York Times]
and if he says to sign it I will.’” His uncle subsequently signed such
an agreement, Sulzberger said, and he thinks he did too, though he is
unsure. “I don’t know, twenty‑some years is a long time.” He described
the whole question as “a bubble in a bathtub.”
Stewart Alsop’s relationship with the Agency was much more extensive
than Sulzberger’s. One official who served at the highest levels in
the CIA said flatly: “Stew Alsop was a CIA agent.” An equally senior
official refused to define Alsop’s relationship with the Agency except
to say it was a formal one. Other sources said that Alsop was
particularly helpful to the Agency in discussions with, officials of
foreign governments—asking questions to which the CIA was seeking
answers, planting misinformation advantageous to American policy,
assessing opportunities for CIA recruitment of well‑placed foreigners.
“Absolute nonsense,” said Joseph Alsop of the notion that his brother
was a CIA agent. “I was closer to the Agency than Stew was, though
Stew was very close. I dare say he did perform some tasks—he just did
the correct thing as an American.... The Founding Fathers [of the CIA]
were close personal friends of ours. Dick Bissell [former CIA deputy
director] was my oldest friend, from childhood. It was a social thing,
my dear fellow. I never received a dollar, I never signed a secrecy
agreement. I didn’t have to.... I’ve done things for them when I
thought they were the right thing to do. I call it doing my duty as a
citizen.
Alsop is willing to discuss on the record only two of the tasks he
undertook: a visit to Laos in 1952 at the behest of Frank Wisner, who
felt other American reporters were using anti‑American sources about
uprisings there; and a visit to the Phillipines in 1953 when the CIA
thought his presence there might affect the outcome of an election.
“Des FitzGerald urged me to go,” Alsop recalled. “It would be less
likely that the election could be stolen [by the opponents of Ramon
Magsaysay] if the eyes of the world were on them. I stayed with the
ambassador and wrote about what happened.”
Alsop maintains that he was never manipulated by the Agency. “You
can’t get entangled so they have leverage on you,” he said. “But what I
wrote was true. My view was to get the facts. If someone in the Agency
was wrong, I stopped talking to them—they’d given me phony goods.” On
one occasion, Alsop said, Richard Helms authorized the head of the
Agency’s analytical branch to provide Alsop with information on Soviet
military presence along the Chinese border. “The analytical side of the
Agency had been dead wrong about the war in Vietnam—they thought it
couldn’t be won,” said Alsop. “And they were wrong on the Soviet
buildup. I stopped talking to them.” Today, he says, “People in our
business would be outraged at the kinds of suggestions that were made
to me. They shouldn’t be. The CIA did not open itself at all to people
it did not trust. Stew and I were trusted, and I’m proud of it.”
MURKY DETAILS OF CIA RELATIONSHIPS WITH INDIVIDUALS and news
organizations began trickling out in 1973 when it was first disclosed
that the CIA had, on occasion, employed journalists. Those reports,
combined with new information, serve as casebook studies of the
Agency’s use of journalists for intelligence purposes. They include:
■ The New York Times. The Agency’s relationship with the Times
was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA
officials. From 1950 to 1966, about ten CIA employees were provided Times cover
under arrangements approved by the newspaper’s late publisher, Arthur
Hays Sulzberger. The cover arrangements were part of a general Times policy—set by Sulzberger—to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible.
Sulzberger was especially close to Allen Dulles. “At that level of
contact it was the mighty talking to the mighty,” said a high‑level CIA
official who was present at some of the discussions. “There was an
agreement in principle that, yes indeed, we would help each other. The
question of cover came up on several occasions. It was agreed that the
actual arrangements would be handled by subordinates.... The mighty
didn’t want to know the specifics; they wanted plausible deniability.
A senior CIA official who reviewed a portion of the Agency’s files
on journalists for two hours onSeptember 15th, 1977, said he found
documentation of five instances in which the Times had provided
cover for CIA employees between 1954 and 1962. In each instance he
said, the arrangements were handled by executives of the Times; the documents all contained standard Agency language “showing that this had been checked out at higher levels of the New York Times,”
said the official. The documents did not mention Sulzberger’s name,
however—only those of subordinates whom the official refused to
identify.
The CIA employees who received Times credentials posed as stringers for the paper abroad and worked as members of clerical staffs in the Times’ foreign bureaus. Most were American; two or three were foreigners.
CIA officials cite two reasons why the Agency’s working relationship with the Times was closer and more extensive than with any other paper: the fact that the Times maintained
the largest foreign news operation in American daily journalism; and
the close personal ties between the men who ran both institutions.
Sulzberger informed a number of reporters and editors of his general
policy of cooperation with the Agency. “We were in touch with
them—they’d talk to us and some cooperated,” said a CIA official. The
cooperation usually involved passing on information and “spotting”
prospective agents among foreigners.
Arthur Hays Sulzberger signed a secrecy agreement with the CIA in
the 1950s, according to CIA officials—a fact confirmed by his nephew,
C.L. Sulzberger. However, there are varying interpretations of the
purpose of the agreement: C.L. Sulzberger says it represented nothing
more than a pledge not to disclose classified information made
available to the publisher. That contention is supported by some Agency
officials. Others in the Agency maintain that the agreement represented
a pledge never to reveal any of the Times’ dealings with the
CIA, especially those involving cover. And there are those who note
that, because all cover arrangements are classified, a secrecy
agreement would automatically apply to them.
Attempts to find out which individuals in the Times organization
made the actual arrangements for providing credentials to CIA
personnel have been unsuccessful. In a letter to reporter Stuart Loory
in 1974, Turner Cadedge, managing editor of the Times from
1951 to 1964, wrote that approaches by the CIA had been rebuffed by the
newspaper. “I knew nothing about any involvement with the CIA... of
any of our foreign correspondents on the New York Times. I
heard many times of overtures to our men by the CIA, seeking to use
their privileges, contacts, immunities and, shall we say, superior
intelligence in the sordid business of spying and informing. If any one
of them succumbed to the blandishments or cash offers, I was not aware
of it. Repeatedly, the CIA and other hush‑hush agencies sought to make
arrangements for ‘cooperation’ even with Times management, especially during or soon after World War II, but we always resisted. Our motive was to protect our credibility.”
According to Wayne Phillips, a former Timesreporter, the CIA
invoked Arthur Hays Sulzberger’s name when it tried to recruit him as
an undercover operative in 1952 while he was studying at Columbia
University’s Russian Institute. Phillips said an Agency official told
him that the CIA had “a working arrangement” with the publisher in
which other reporters abroad had been placed on the Agency’s payroll.
Phillips, who remained at the Times until 1961, later obtained
CIA documents under the Freedom of Information Act which show that the
Agency intended to develop him as a clandestine “asset” for use
abroad.
On January 31st, 1976, the Times carried a brief story
describing the ClAs attempt to recruit Phillips. It quoted Arthur Ochs
Sulzberger, the present publisher, as follows: “I never heard of the Times being approached, either in my capacity as publisher or as the son of the late Mr. Sulzberger.” The Times story,
written by John M. Crewdson, also reported that Arthur Hays Sulzberger
told an unnamed former correspondent that he might he approached by
the CIA after arriving at a new post abroad. Sulzberger told him that
he was not “under any obligation to agree,” the story said and that the
publisher himself would be “happier” if he refused to cooperate. “But
he left it sort of up to me,” the Times quoted its former
reporter as saying. “The message was if I really wanted to do that,
okay, but he didn’t think it appropriate for a Times correspondent”
C.L. Sulzberger, in a telephone interview, said he had no knowledge of any CIA personnel using Times cover
or of reporters for the paper working actively for the Agency. He was
the paper’s chief of foreign service from 1944 to 1954 and expressed
doubt that his uncle would have approved such arrangements. More
typical of the late publisher, said Sulzberger, was a promise made to
Allen Dulles’ brother, John Foster, then secretary of state, that no Times staff
member would be permitted to accept an invitation to visit the
People’s Republic of China without John Foster Dulles’ consent. Such an
invitation was extended to the publisher’s nephew in the 1950s; Arthur
Sulzberger forbade him to accept it. “It was seventeen years before
another Times correspondent was invited,” C.L. Sulzberger recalled.
■ The Columbia Broadcasting System. CBS was unquestionably the CIAs
most valuable broadcasting asset. CBS President William Paley and
Allen Dulles enjoyed an easy working and social relationship. Over the
years, the network provided cover for CIA employees, including at least
one well‑known foreign correspondent and several stringers; it
supplied outtakes of newsfilm to the CIA3; established a formal channel
of communication between the Washington bureau chief and the Agency;
gave the Agency access to the CBS newsfilm library; and allowed reports
by CBS correspondents to the Washington and New York newsrooms to be
routinely monitored by the CIA. Once a year during the 1950s and early
1960s, CBS correspondents joined the CIA hierarchy for private dinners
and briefings.
The details of the CBS‑CIA arrangements were worked out by
subordinates of both Dulles and Paley. “The head of the company doesn’t
want to know the fine points, nor does the director,” said a CIA
official. “Both designate aides to work that out. It keeps them above
the battle.” Dr. Frank Stanton, for 25 years president of the network,
was aware of the general arrangements Paley made with Dulles—including
those for cover, according to CIA officials. Stanton, in an interview
last year, said he could not recall any cover arrangements.) But
Paley’s designated contact for the Agency was Sig Mickelson, president
of CBS News between 1954 and 1961. On one occasion, Mickelson has said,
he complained to Stanton about having to use a pay telephone to call
the CIA, and Stanton suggested he install a private line, bypassing the
CBS switchboard, for the purpose. According to Mickelson, he did so.
Mickelson is now president of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, both
of which were associated with the CIA for many years.
In 1976, CBS News president Richard Salant ordered an in‑house
investigation of the network's dealings with the CIA. Some of its
findings were first disclosed by Robert Scheer in the Los Angeles Times.) But Salant's report makes no mention of some of his own dealings with the Agency, which continued into the 1970s.
Many details about the CBS‑CIA relationship were found in
Mickelson's files by two investigators for Salant. Among the documents
they found was a September 13th, 1957, memo to Mickelson fromTed Koop, CBS
News bureau chief in Washington from 1948 to 1961. It describes a
phone call to Koop from Colonel Stanley Grogan of the CIA: "Grogan
phoned to say that Reeves [J. B. Love Reeves, another CIA official] is
going to New York to be in charge of the CIA contact office there and
will call to see you and some of your confreres. Grogan says normal
activities will continue to channel through the Washington office of
CBS News." The report to Salant also states: "Further investigation of
Mickelson's files reveals some details of the relationship between the
CIA and CBS News.... Two key administrators of this relationship were
Mickelson and Koop.... The main activity appeared to be the delivery of
CBS newsfilm to the CIA.... In addition there is evidence that, during
1964 to 1971, film material, including some outtakes, were supplied by
the CBS Newsfilm Library to the CIA through and at the direction of
Mr. Koop4.... Notes in Mr. Mickelson's files indicate that the CIA used
CBS films for training... All of the above Mickelson activities were
handled on a confidential basis without mentioning the words Central
Intelligence Agency. The films were sent to individuals at post‑office
box numbers and were paid for by individual, nor government, checks.
..." Mickelson also regularly sent the CIA an internal CBS newsletter,
according to the report.
Salant's investigation led him to conclude that Frank Kearns, a
CBS‑TV reporter from 1958 to 1971, "was a CIA guy who got on the
payroll somehow through a CIA contact with somebody at CBS." Kearns and
Austin Goodrich, a CBS stringer, were undercover CIA employees, hired
under arrangements approved by Paley.
Last year a spokesman for Paley denied a report by former CBS
correspondent Daniel Schorr that Mickelson and he had discussed
Goodrich's CIA status during a meeting with two Agency representatives
in 1954. The spokesman claimed Paley had no knowledge that Goodrich had
worked for the CIA. "When I moved into the job I was told by Paley
that there was an ongoing relationship with the CIA," Mickelson said in
a recent interview. "He introduced me to two agents who he said would
keep in touch. We all discussed the Goodrich situation and film
arrangements. I assumed this was a normal relationship at the time.
This was at the height of the Cold War and I assumed the communications
media were cooperating—though the Goodrich matter was compromising.
At the headquarters of CBS News in New York, Paley's cooperation
with the CIA is taken for granted by many news executives and
reporters, despite tile denials. Paley, 76, was not interviewed by
Salant's investigators. "It wouldn't do any good," said one CBS
executive. "It is the single subject about which his memory has
failed."
Salant discussed his own contacts with the CIA, and the fact he
continued many of his predecessor's practices, in an interview with
this reporter last year. The contacts, he said, began in February 1961,
"when I got a phone call from a CIA man who said he had a working
relationship with Sig Mickelson. The man said, 'Your bosses know all
about it.'" According to Salant, the CIA representative asked that CBS
continue to supply the Agency with unedited newstapes and make its
correspondents available for debriefingby Agency officials. Said
Salant: "I said no on talking to the reporters, and let them see
broadcast tapes, but no outtakes. This went on for a number of
years—into the early Seventies."
In 1964 and 1965, Salant served on a super-secret CIA task force
which explored methods of beaming American propaganda broadcasts to the
People's Republic of China. The other members of the four‑man study
team were Zbigniew Brzezinski, then a professor at Columbia University;
William Griffith, then professor of political science at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology., and John Haves, then
vice‑president of the Washington Post Company for radio‑TV5. The
principal government officials associated with the project were Cord
Meyer of the CIA; McGeorge Bundy, then special assistant to the
president for national security; Leonard Marks, then director of the
USIA; and Bill Moyers, then special assistant to President Lyndon
Johnson and now a CBS correspondent.
Salant's involvement in the project began with a call from Leonard
Marks, "who told me the White House wanted to form a committee of four
people to make a study of U.S. overseas broadcasts behind the Iron
Curtain." When Salant arrived in Washington for the first meeting he was
told that the project was CIA sponsored. "Its purpose," he said, "was
to determine how best to set up shortwave broadcasts into Red China."
Accompanied by a CIA officer named Paul Henzie, the committee of four
subsequently traveled around the world inspecting facilities run by
Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty both CIA‑run operations at the
time), the Voice of America and Armed Forces Radio. After more than a
year of study, they submitted a report to Moyers recommending that the
government establish a broadcast service, run by the Voice of America,
to be beamed at the People's Republic of China. Salant has served two
tours as head of CBS News, from 1961‑64 and 1966‑present. At the time
of the China project he was a CBS corporate executive.)
■ Time and Newsweek magazines. According to CIA
and Senate sources, Agency files contain written agreements with former
foreign correspondents and stringers for both the weekly news
magazines. The same sources refused to say whether the CIA has ended
all its associations with individuals who work for the two
publications. Allen Dulles often interceded with his good friend, the
late Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life magazines,
who readily allowed certain members of his staff to work for the Agency
and agreed to provide jobs and credentials for other CIA operatives
who lacked journalistic experience.
For many years, Luce's personal emissary to the CIA was C.D. Jackson, a Time Inc., vice‑president who was publisher of Life magazine from 1960 until his death in 1964.While a Time executive,
Jackson coauthored a CIA‑sponsored study recommending the
reorganization of the American intelligence services in the early
1950s. Jackson, whose Time‑Life service was interrupted by a one‑year
White House tour as an assistant to President Dwight Eisenhower,
approved specific arrangements for providing CIA employees with
Time‑Life cover. Some of these arrangements were made with the
knowledge of Luce's wife, Clare Boothe. Other arrangements for Time cover,
according to CIA officials including those who dealt with Luce), were
made with the knowledge of Hedley Donovan, now editor‑in‑chief of Time
Inc. Donovan, who took over editorial direction of all Time Inc.
publications in 1959, denied in a telephone interview that he knew of
any such arrangements. "I was never approached and I'd be amazed if Luce
approved such arrangements," Donovan said. "Luce had a very
scrupulous regard for the difference between journalism and government."
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Time magazine's foreign
correspondents attended CIA "briefing" dinners similar to those the CIA
held for CBS. And Luce, according to CIA officials, made it a regular
practice to brief Dulles or other high Agency officials when he
returned from his frequent trips abroad. Luce and the men who ran his
magazines in the 1950s and 1960s encouraged their foreign
correspondents to provide help to the CIA, particularly information
that might be useful to the Agency for intelligence purposes or
recruiting foreigners.
At Newsweek, Agency sources reported, the CIA engaged the
services of' several foreign correspondents and stringers under
arrangements approved by senior editors at the magazine. Newsweek's stringer in Rome in the mid‑Fifties made little secret of the fact that he worked for the CIA. Malcolm Muir, Newsweek's editor
from its founding in 1937 until its sale to the Washington Post
Company in 1961, said in a recent interview that his dealings with the
CIA were limited to private briefings he gave Allen Dulles after trips
abroad and arrangements he approved for regular debriefing of Newsweek correspondents by the Agency. He said that he had never provided cover for CIA operatives, but that others high in the Newsweek organization might have done so without his knowledge.
"I would have thought there might have been stringers who were
agents, but I didn't know who they were," said Muir. "I do think in
those days the CIA kept pretty close touch with all responsible
reporters. Whenever I heard something that I thought might be of
interest to Allen Dulles, I'd call him up.... At one point he appointed
one of his CIA men to keep in regular contact with our reporters, a
chap that I knew but whose name I can't remember. I had a number of
friends in Alien Dulles' organization." Muir said that Harry Kern, Newsweek's foreign
editor from 1945 until 1956, and Ernest K. Lindley, the magazine's
Washington bureau chief during the same period "regularly checked in
with various fellows in the CIA."
"To the best of my knowledge." said Kern, "nobody at Newsweek worked
for the CIA... The informal relationship was there. Why have anybody
sign anything? What we knew we told them [the CIA] and the State
Department.... When I went to Washington, I would talk to Foster or
Allen Dulles about what was going on. ... We thought it was admirable
at the time. We were all on the same side." CIA officials say that
Kern's dealings with the Agency were extensive. In 1956, he left Newsweek to run Foreign Reports, a Washington‑based newsletter whose subscribers Kern refuses to identify.
Ernest Lindley, who remained at Newsweek until 1961, said in
a recent interview that he regularly consulted with Dulles and other
high CIA officials before going abroad and briefed them upon his
return. "Allen was very helpful to me and I tried to reciprocate when I
could," he said. "I'd give him my impressions of people I'd met
overseas. Once or twice he asked me to brief a large group of
intelligence people; when I came back from the Asian‑African conference
in 1955, for example; they mainly wanted to know about various
people."
As Washington bureau chief, Lindley said he learned from Malcolm
Muir that the magazine's stringer in southeastern Europe was a CIA
contract employee—given credentials under arrangements worked out with
the management. "I remember it came up—whether it was a good idea to
keep this person from the Agency; eventually it was decided to
discontinue the association," Lindley said.
When Newsweek waspurchased by the
Washington Post Company, publisher Philip L. Graham was informed by
Agency officials that the CIA occasionally used the magazine for cover
purposes, according to CIA sources. "It was widely known that Phil
Graham was somebody you could get help from," said a former deputy
director of the Agency. "Frank Wisner dealt with him." Wisner, deputy
director of the CIA from 1950 until shortly before his suicide in 1965,
was the Agency's premier orchestrator of "black" operations,
including many in which journalists were involved. Wisner liked to boast
of his "mighty Wurlitzer," a wondrous propaganda instrument he built,
and played, with help from the press.) Phil Graham was probably
Wisner's closest friend. But Graharn, who committed suicide in 1963,
apparently knew little of the specifics of any cover arrangements with Newsweek, CIA sources said.
In 1965‑66, an accredited Newsweek stringer
in the Far East was in fact a CIA contract employee earning an annual
salary of $10,000 from the Agency, according to Robert T. Wood, then a
CIA officer in the Hong Kong station. Some, Newsweek correspondents and stringers continued to maintain covert ties with the Agency into the 1970s, CIA sources said.
Information about Agency dealings with the Washington Post newspaper is extremely sketchy. According to CIA officials, some Post stringers
have been CIA employees, but these officials say they do not know if
anyone in the Post management was aware of the arrangements.
All editors‑in‑chief and managing editors of the Post since 1950 say they knew of no formal Agency relationship with either stringers or members of the Post staff.
“If anything was done it was done by Phil without our knowledge,” said
one. Agency officials, meanwhile, make no claim that Post staff members have had covert affiliations with the Agency while working for the paper.6
Katharine Graham, Philip Graham’s widow and the current publisher of the Post, says she has never been informed of any CIA relationships with either Post or Newsweek personnel.
In November of 1973, Mrs. Graham called William Colby and asked if any
Post stringers or staff members were associated with the CIA. Colby
assured her that no staff members were employed by the Agency but
refused to discuss the question of stringers.
■ The Louisville Courier‑Journal. From December 1964 until March 1965, a CIA undercover operative named Robert H. Campbell worked on the Courier‑Journal. According
to high‑level CIA sources, Campbell was hired by the paper under
arrangements the Agency made with Norman E. Isaacs, then executive
editor of the Courier‑Journal. Barry Bingham Sr., then
publisher of the paper, also had knowledge of the arrangements, the
sources said. Both Isaacs and Bingham have denied knowing that Campbell
was an intelligence agent when he was hired.
The complex saga of Campbell’s hiring was first revealed in a Courier‑Journal story
written by James R Herzog on March 27th, 1976, during the Senate
committee’s investigation, Herzog’s account began: “When 28‑year‑old
Robert H. Campbell was hired as a Courier‑Journal reporter in
December 1964, he couldn’t type and knew little about news writing.”
The account then quoted the paper’s former managing editor as saying
that Isaacs told him that Campbell was hired as a result of a CIA
request: “Norman said, when he was in Washington [in 1964], he had been
called to lunch with some friend of his who was with the CIA [and
that] he wanted to send this young fellow down to get him a little
knowledge of newspapering.” All aspects of Campbell’s hiring were
highly unusual. No effort had been made to check his credentials, and
his employment records contained the following two notations: “Isaacs
has files of correspondence and investigation of this man”; and, “Hired
for temporary work—no reference checks completed or needed.”
The level of Campbell’s journalistic abilities apparently remained
consistent during his stint at the paper, “The stuff that Campbell
turned in was almost unreadable,” said a former assistant city editor.
One of Campbell’s major reportorial projects was a feature about wooden
Indians. It was never published. During his tenure at the paper,
Campbell frequented a bar a few steps from the office where, on
occasion, he reportedly confided to fellow drinkers that he was a CIA
employee.
According to CIA sources, Campbell’s tour at the Courier‑Journal was
arranged to provide him with a record of journalistic experience that
would enhance the plausibility of future reportorial cover and teach
him something about the newspaper business. The Courier‑Journal’s investigation also turned up the fact that before coming to Louisville he had worked briefly for the Hornell, New York, Evening Tribune, published
by Freedom News, Inc. CIA sources said the Agency had made
arrangements with that paper’s management to employ Campbell.7
At the Courier‑Journal, Campbell was hired under arrangements made with Isaacs and approved by Bingham, said CIA and Senate sources. “We paid the Courier‑Journal
so they could pay his salary,” said an Agency official who was
involved in the transaction. Responding by letter to these assertions,
Isaacs, who left Louisville to become president and publisher of the
Wilmington Delaware) News & Journal, said: “All I can do
is repeat the simple truth—that never, under any circumstances, or at
any time, have I ever knowingly hired a government agent. I’ve also
tried to dredge my memory, but Campbell’s hiring meant so little to me
that nothing emerges.... None of this is to say that I couldn’t have
been ‘had.’”.Barry Bingham Sr., said last year in a telephone interview
that he had no specific memory of Campbell’s hiring and denied that he
knew of any arrangements between the newspaper’s management and the
CIA. However, CIA officials said that the Courier‑Journal,
through contacts with Bingham, provided other unspecified assistance to
the Agency in the 1950s and 1960s. The Courier‑Journal’s detailed,
front‑page account of Campbell’s hiring was initiated by Barry Bingham
Jr., who succeeded his father as editor and publisher of the paper in
1971. The article is the only major piece of self‑investigation by a
newspaper that has appeared on this subject.8
■ The American Broadcasting Company and the National Broadcasting
Company. According to CIA officials, ABC continued to provide cover for
some CIA operatives through the 1960s. One was Sam Jaffe who CIA
officials said performed clandestine tasks for the Agency. Jaffe has
acknowledged only providing the CIA with information. In addition,
another well‑known network correspondent performed covert tasks for the
Agency, said CIA sources. At the time of the Senate bearings, Agency
officials serving at the highest levels refused to say whether the CIA
was still maintaining active relationships with members of the ABC‑News
organization. All cover arrangements were made with the knowledge off
ABC executives, the sources said.
These same sources professed to know few specifies about the
Agency’s relationships with NBC, except that several foreign
correspondents of the network undertook some assignments for the Agency
in the 1950s and 1960s. “It was a thing people did then,” said Richard
Wald, president of NBC News since 1973. “I wouldn’t be surprised if
people here—including some of the correspondents in those days—had
connections with the Agency.”
■ The Copley Press, and its subsidiary, the Copley News Service.
This relationship, first disclosed publicly by reporters Joe Trento and
Dave Roman in Penthouse magazine, is said by CIA officials to
have been among the Agency’s most productive in terms of getting
“outside” cover for its employees. Copley owns nine newspapers in
California and Illinois—among them the San Diego Union and Evening Tribune. The
Trento‑Roman account, which was financed by a grant from the Fund for
Investigative Journalism, asserted that at least twenty‑three Copley
News Service employees performed work for the CIA. “The Agency’s
involvement with the Copley organization is so extensive that it’s
almost impossible to sort out,” said a CIA official who was asked about
the relationship late in 1976. Other Agency officials said then that
James S. Copley, the chain’s owner until his death in 1973, personally
made most of the cover arrangements with the CIA.
According to Trento and Roman, Copley personally volunteered his
news service to then‑president Eisenhower to act as “the eyes and ears”
against “the Communist threat in Latin and Central America” for “our
intelligence services.” James Copley was also the guiding hand behind
the Inter‑American Press Association, a CIA‑funded organization with
heavy membership among right‑wing Latin American newspaper editors.
■ Other major news organizations. According to Agency officials, CIA
files document additional cover arrangements with the following
news‑gathering organizations, among others: the New York Herald‑Tribune, the Saturday‑Evening Post, Scripps‑Howard Newspapers, Hearst Newspapers Seymour K. Freidin, Hearst’s current London bureau chief and a former Herald‑Tribune editor
and correspondent, has been identified as a CIA operative by Agency
sources), Associated Press,9 United Press International, the Mutual
Broadcasting System, Reuters and the Miami Herald. Cover arrangements with the Herald,
according to CIA officials, were unusual in that they were made “on
the ground by the CIA station in Miami, not from CIA headquarters.
“And that’s just a small part of the list,” in the words of one
official who served in the CIA hierarchy. Like many sources, this
official said that the only way to end the uncertainties about aid
furnished the Agency by journalists is to disclose the contents of the
CIA files—a course opposed by almost all of the thirty‑five present and
former CIA officials interviewed over the course of a year.
COLBY CUTS HIS LOSSES
THE CIA’S USE OF JOURNALISTS CONTINUED VIRTUALLY unabated until 1973
when, in response to public disclosure that the Agency had secretly
employed American reporters, William Colby began scaling down the
program. In his public statements, Colby conveyed the impression that
the use of journalists had been minimal and of limited importance to
the Agency.
He then initiated a series of moves intended to convince the press,
Congress and the public that the CIA had gotten out of the news
business. But according to Agency officials, Colby had in fact thrown a
protective net around his valuable intelligence in the journalistic
community. He ordered his deputies to maintain Agency ties with its best
journalist contacts while severing formal relationships with many
regarded as inactive, relatively unproductive or only marginally
important. In reviewing Agency files to comply with Colby’s directive,
officials found that many journalists had not performed useful
functions for the CIA in years. Such relationships, perhaps as many as a
hundred, were terminated between 1973 and 1976.
Meanwhile, important CIA operatives who had been placed on the
staffs of some major newspaper and broadcast outlets were told to
resign and become stringers or freelancers, thus enabling Colby to
assure concerned editors that members of their staffs were not CIA
employees. Colby also feared that some valuable stringer‑operatives
might find their covers blown if scrutiny of the Agency’s ties with
journalists continued. Some of these individuals were reassigned to
jobs on so‑called proprietary publications—foreign periodicals and
broadcast outlets secretly funded and staffed by the CIA. Other
journalists who had signed formal contracts with the CIA—making them
employees of the Agency—were released from their contracts, and asked
to continue working under less formal arrangements.
In November 1973, after many such shifts had been made, Colby told reporters and editors from the New York Times and the Washington Star
that the Agency had “some three dozen” American newsmen “on the CIA
payroll,” including five who worked for “general‑circulation news
organizations.” Yet even while the Senate Intelligence Committee was
holding its hearings in 1976, according to high‑level CIA sources, the
CIA continued to maintain ties with seventy‑five to ninety journalists
of every description—executives, reporters, stringers, photographers,
columnists, bureau clerks and members of broadcast technical crews.
More than half of these had been moved off CIA contracts and payrolls
but they were still bound by other secret agreements with the Agency.
According to an unpublished report by the House Select Committee on
Intelligence, chaired by Representative Otis Pike, at least fifteen
news organizations were still providing cover for CIA operatives as of
1976.
Colby, who built a reputation as one of the most skilled undercover
tacticians in the CIA’s history, had himself run journalists in
clandestine operations before becoming director in 1973. But even he
was said by his closest associates to have been disturbed at how
extensively and, in his view, indiscriminately, the Agency continued to
use journalists at the time he took over. “Too prominent,” the director
frequently said of some of the individuals and news organizations then
working with the CIA. Others in the Agency refer to their best‑known
journalistic assets as “brand names.”)
“Colby’s concern was that he might lose the resource altogether
unless we became a little more careful about who we used and how we got
them,” explained one of the former director’s deputies. The thrust of
Colby’s subsequent actions was to move the Agency’s affiliations away
from the so‑called “majors” and to concentrate them instead in smaller
newspaper chains, broadcasting groups and such specialized publications
as trade journals and newsletters.
After Colby left the Agency on January 28th, 1976, and was succeeded
by George Bush, the CIA announced a new policy: “Effective
immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contractual
relationship with any full‑time or part‑time news correspondent
accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or
television network or station” At the time of the announcement, the
Agency acknowledged that the policy would result in termination of less
than half of the relationships with the 50 U.S. journalists it said
were still affiliated with the Agency. The text of the announcement
noted that the CIA would continue to “welcome” the voluntary, unpaid
cooperation of journalists. Thus, many relationships were permitted to
remain intact.
The Agency’s unwillingness to end its use of journalists and its
continued relationships with some news executives is largely the
product of two basic facts of the intelligence game: journalistic cover
is ideal because of the inquisitive nature of a reporter’s job; and
many other sources of institutional cover have been denied the CIA in
recent years by businesses, foundations and educational institutions
that once cooperated with the Agency.
“It’s tough to run a secret agency in this country,” explained one
high‑level CIA official. “We have a curious ambivalence about
intelligence. In order to serve overseas we need cover. But we have been
fighting a rear‑guard action to try and provide cover. The Peace Corps
is off‑limits, so is USIA, the foundations and voluntary organizations
have been off‑limits since ‘67, and there is a self‑imposed
prohibition on Fulbrights [Fulbright Scholars]. If you take the
American community and line up who could work for the CIA and who
couldn’t there is a very narrow potential. Even the Foreign Service
doesn’t want us. So where the hell do you go? Business is nice, but the
press is a natural. One journalist is worth twenty agents. He has
access, the ability to ask questions without arousing suspicion.”
ROLE OF THE CHURCH COMMITTEE
DESPITE THE EVIDENCE OF WIDESPREAD CIA USE OF journalists, the
Senate Intelligence Committee and its staff decided against questioning
any of the reporters, editors, publishers or broadcast executives whose
relationships with the Agency are detailed in CIA files.
According to sources in the Senate and the Agency, the use of
journalists was one of two areas of inquiry which the CIA went to
extraordinary lengths to curtail. The other was the Agency’s continuing
and extensive use of academics for recruitment and information
gathering purposes.
In both instances, the sources said, former directors Colby and Bush
and CIA special counsel Mitchell Rogovin were able to convince key
members of the committee that full inquiry or even limited public
disclosure of the dimensions of the activities would do irreparable
damage to the nation’s intelligence‑gathering apparatus, as well as to
the reputations of hundreds of individuals. Colby was reported to have
been especially persuasive in arguing that disclosure would bring on a
latter‑day “witch hunt” in which the victims would be reporters,
publishers and editors.
Walter Elder, deputy to former CIA director McCone and the principal
Agency liaison to the Church committee, argued that the committee
lacked jurisdiction because there had been no misuse of journalists by
the CIA; the relationships had been voluntary. Elder cited as an
example the case of the Louisville Courier‑Journal. “Church and other people on the committee were on the chandelier about the Courier‑Journal,”
one Agency official said, “until we pointed out that we had gone to
the editor to arrange cover, and that the editor had said, ‘Fine.’”
Some members of the Church committee and staff feared that Agency
officials had gained control of the inquiry and that they were being
hoodwinked. “The Agency was extremely clever about it and the committee
played right into its hands,” said one congressional source familiar
with all aspects of the inquiry. “Church and some of the other members
were much more interested in making headlines than in doing serious,
tough investigating. The Agency pretended to be giving up a lot
whenever it was asked about the flashy stuff—assassinations and secret
weapons and James Bond operations. Then, when it came to things that
they didn’t want to give away, that were much more important to the
Agency, Colby in particular called in his chits. And the committee
bought it.”
The Senate committee’s investigation into the use of journalists was
supervised by William B. Bader, a former CIA intelligence officer who
returned briefly to the Agency this year as deputy to CIA director
Stansfield Turner and is now a high‑level intelligence official at the
Defense Department. Bader was assisted by David Aaron, who now serves
as the deputy to Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national
security adviser.
According to colleagues on the staff of the Senate inquiry, both
Bader and Aaron were disturbed by the information contained in CIA
files about journalists; they urged that further investigation he
undertaken by the Senate’s new permanent CIA oversight committee. That
committee, however, has spent its first year of existence writing a new
charter for the CIA, and members say there has been little interest in
delving further into the CIA’s use of the press.
Bader’s investigation was conducted under unusually difficult
conditions. His first request for specific information on the use of
journalists was turned down by the CIA on grounds that there had been no
abuse of authority and that current intelligence operations might he
compromised. Senators Walter Huddleston, Howard Baker, Gary Hart,
Walter Mondale and Charles Mathias—who had expressed interest in the
subject of the press and the CIA—shared Bader’s distress at the CIA’s
reaction. In a series of phone calls and meetings with CIA director
George Bush and other Agency officials, the senators insisted that the
committee staff be provided information about the scope of CIA‑press
activities. Finally, Bush agreed to order a search of the files and
have those records pulled which deals with operations where journalists
had been used. But the raw files could not he made available to Bader
or the committee, Bush insisted. Instead, the director decided, his
deputies would condense the material into one‑paragraph summaries
describing in the most general terms the activities of each individual
journalist. Most important, Bush decreed, the names of journalists and
of the news organizations with which they were affiliated would be
omitted from the summaries. However, there might be some indication of
the region where the journalist had served and a general description of
the type of news organization for which he worked.
Assembling the summaries was difficult, according to CIA officials
who supervised the job. There were no “journalist files” per se and
information had to be collected from divergent sources that reflect the
highly compartmentalized character of the CIA. Case officers who had
handled journalists supplied some names. Files were pulled on various
undercover operations in which it seemed logical that journalists had
been used. Significantly, all work by reporters for the Agency under
the category of covert operations, not foreign intelligence.) Old
station records were culled. “We really had to scramble,” said one
official.
After several weeks, Bader began receiving the summaries, which
numbered over 400 by the time the Agency said it had completed
searching its files.
The Agency played an intriguing numbers game with the committee.
Those who prepared the material say it was physically impossible to
produce all of the Agency’s files on the use of journalists. “We gave
them a broad, representative picture,” said one agency official. “We
never pretended it was a total description of the range of activities
over 25 years, or of the number of journalists who have done things for
us.” A relatively small number of the summaries described the
activities of foreign journalists—including those working as stringers
for American publications. Those officials most knowledgeable about the
subject say that a figure of 400 American journalists is on the low
side of the actual number who maintained covert relationships and
undertook clandestine tasks.
Bader and others to whom he described the contents of the summaries
immediately reached some general conclusions: the sheer number of
covert relationships with journalists was far greater than the CIA had
ever hinted; and the Agency’s use of reporters and news executives was
an intelligence asset of the first magnitude. Reporters had been
involved in almost every conceivable kind of operation. Of the 400‑plus
individuals whose activities were summarized, between 200 and 250 were
“working journalists” in the usual sense of the term—reporters,
editors, correspondents, photographers; the rest were employed at least
nominally) by book publishers, trade publications and newsletters.
Still, the summaries were just that: compressed, vague, sketchy,
incomplete. They could be subject to ambiguous interpretation. And they
contained no suggestion that the CIA had abused its authority by
manipulating the editorial content of American newspapers or broadcast
reports.
Bader’s unease with what he had found led him to seek advice from
several experienced hands in the fields of foreign relations and
intelligence. They suggested that he press for more information and give
those members of the committee in whom he had the most confidence a
general idea of what the summaries revealed. Bader again went to
Senators Huddleston, Baker, Hart, Mondale and Mathias. Meanwhile, he
told the CIA that he wanted to see more—the full files on perhaps a
hundred or so of the individuals whose activities had been summarized.
The request was turned down outright. The Agency would provide no more
information on the subject. Period.
The CIA’s intransigence led to an extraordinary dinner meeting at
Agency headquarters in late March 1976. Those present included Senators
Frank Church who had now been briefed by Bader), and John Tower, the
vice‑chairman of the committee; Bader; William Miller, director of the
committee staff; CIA director Bush; Agency counsel Rogovin; and Seymour
Bolten, a high‑level CIA operative who for years had been a station
chief in Germany and Willy Brandt’s case officer. Bolten had been
deputized by Bush to deal with the committee’s requests for information
on journalists and academics. At the dinner, the Agency held to its
refusal to provide any full files. Nor would it give the committee the
names of any individual journalists described in the 400 summaries or
of the news organizations with whom they were affiliated. The
discussion, according to participants, grew heated. The committee’s
representatives said they could not honor their mandate—to determine if
the CIA had abused its authority—without further information. The CIA
maintained it could not protect its legitimate intelligence operations
or its employees if further disclosures were made to the committee.
Many of the journalists were contract employees of the Agency, Bush
said at one point, and the CIA was no less obligated to them than to
any other agents.
Finally, a highly unusual agreement was hammered out: Bader and
Miller would be permitted to examine “sanitized” versions of the full
files of twenty‑five journalists selected from the summaries; but the
names of the journalists and the news organizations which employed them
would be blanked out, as would the identities of other CIA employees
mentioned in the files. Church and Tower would be permitted to examine
the unsanitizedversions of five of the twenty‑five files—to
attest that the CIA was not hiding anything except the names. The whole
deal was contingent on an agreement that neither Bader, Miner, Tower
nor Church would reveal the contents of the files to other members of
the committee or staff.
Bader began reviewing the 400‑some summaries again. His object was
to select twenty‑five that, on the basis of the sketchy information
they contained, seemed to represent a cross section. Dates of CIA
activity, general descriptions of news organizations, types of
journalists and undercover operations all figured in his calculations.
From the twenty‑five files he got back, according to Senate sources
and CIA officials, an unavoidable conclusion emerged: that to a degree
never widely suspected, the CIA in the 1950s, ‘60s and even early ‘70s
had concentrated its relationships with journalists in the most
prominent sectors of the American press corps, including four or five
of the largest newspapers in the country, the broadcast networks and
the two major newsweekly magazines. Despite the omission of names and
affiliations from the twenty‑five detailed files each was between three
and eleven inches thick), the information was usually sufficient to
tentatively identify either the newsman, his affiliation or
both—particularly because so many of them were prominent in the
profession.
“There is quite an incredible spread of relationships,” Bader reported to the senators. “You don’t need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are Agency people at the management level.”
Ironically, one major news organization that set limits on its
dealings with the CIA, according to Agency officials, was the one with
perhaps the greatest editorial affinity for the Agency’s long‑range
goals and policies: U.S. News and World Report. The late David Lawrence, the columnist and founding editor of U.S. News, was
a close friend of Allen Dulles. But he repeatedly refused requests by
the CIA director to use the magazine for cover purposes, the sources
said. At one point, according to a high CIA official, Lawrence issued
orders to his sub‑editors in which he threatened to fire any U.S. News employee
who was found to have entered into a formal relationship with the
Agency. Former editorial executives at the magazine confirmed that such
orders had been issued. CIA sources declined to say, however, if the
magazine remained off‑limits to the Agency after Lawrence’s death in
1973 or if Lawrence’s orders had been followed.)
Meanwhile, Bader attempted to get more information from the CIA,
particularly about the Agency’s current relationships with journalists.
He encountered a stone wall. “Bush has done nothing to date,” Bader
told associates. “None of the important operations are affected in even a
marginal way.” The CIA also refused the staffs requests for more
information on the use of academics. Bush began to urge members of the
committee to curtail its inquiries in both areas and conceal its
findings in the final report. “He kept saying, ‘Don’t fuck these guys
in the press and on the campuses,’ pleading that they were the only
areas of public life with any credibility left,” reported a Senate
source. Colby, Elder and Rogovin also implored individual members of
the committee to keep secret what the staff had found. “There were a
lot of representations that if this stuff got out some of the biggest
names in journalism would get smeared,” said another source. Exposure
of the CIA’s relationships with journalists and academics, the Agency
feared, would close down two of the few avenues of agent recruitment
still open. “The danger of exposure is not the other side,” explained
one CIA expert in covert operations. “This is not stuff the other side
doesn’t know about. The concern of the Agency is that another area of
cover will be denied.”
A senator who was the object of the Agency’s lobbying later said:
“From the CIA point of view this was the highest, most sensitive covert
program of all.... It was a much larger part of the operational system
than has been indicated.” He added, “I had a great compulsion to press
the point but it was late .... If we had demanded, they would have
gone the legal route to fight it.”
Indeed, time was running out for the committee. In the view of many
staff members, it had squandered its resources in the search for CIA
assassination plots and poison pen letters. It had undertaken the
inquiry into journalists almost as an afterthought. The dimensions of
the program and the CIA’s sensitivity to providing information on it
had caught the staff and the committee by surprise. The CIA oversight
committee that would succeed the Church panel would have the inclination
and the time to inquire into the subject methodically; if, as seemed
likely, the CIA refused to cooperate further, the mandate of the
successor committee would put it in a more advantageous position to
wage a protracted fight .... Or so the reasoning went as Church and the
few other senators even vaguely familiar with Bader’s findings reached
a decision not to pursue the matter further. No journalists would be
interviewed about their dealings with the Agency—either by the staff or
by the senators, in secret or in open session. The specter, first
raised by CIA officials, of a witch hunt in the press corps haunted
some members of the staff and the committee. “We weren’t about to bring
up guys to the committee and then have everybody say they’ve been
traitors to the ideals of their profession,” said a senator.
Bader, according to associates, was satisfied with the decision and
believed that the successor committee would pick up the inquiry where
he had left it. He was opposed to making public the names of individual
journalists. He had been concerned all along that he had entered a
“gray area” in which there were no moral absolutes. Had the CIA
“manipulated” the press in the classic sense of the term? Probably not,
he concluded; the major news organizations and their executives had
willingly lent their resources to the Agency; foreign correspondents
had regarded work for the CIA as a national service and a way of
getting better stories and climbing to the top of their profession. Had
the CIA abused its authority? It had dealt with the press almost
exactly as it had dealt with other institutions from which it sought
cover — the diplomatic service, academia, corporations. There was
nothing in the CIA’s charter which declared any of these institutions
off‑limits to America’s intelligence service. And, in the case of the
press, the Agency had exercised more care in its dealings than with
many other institutions; it had gone to considerable lengths to
restrict its role to information‑gathering and cover.10
Bader was also said to be concerned that his knowledge was so
heavily based on information furnished by the CIA; he hadn’t gotten the
other side of the story from those journalists who had associated with
the Agency. He could be seeing only “the lantern show,” he told
associates. Still, Bader was reasonably sure that he had seen pretty
much the full panoply of what was in the files. If the CIA had wanted
to deceive him it would have never given away so much, he reasoned. “It
was smart of the Agency to cooperate to the extent of showing the
material to Bader,” observed a committee source. “That way, if one fine
day a file popped up, the Agency would be covered. They could say they
had already informed the Congress.”
The dependence on CIA files posed another problem. The CIA’s
perception of a relationship with a journalist might be quite different
than that of the journalist: a CIA official might think he had
exercised control over a journalist; the journalist might think he had
simply had a few drinks with a spook. It was possible that CIA case
officers had written self‑serving memos for the files about their
dealings with journalists, that the CIA was just as subject to common
bureaucratic “cover‑your‑ass” paperwork as any other agency of
government.
A CIA official who attempted to persuade members of the Senate
committee that the Agency’s use of journalists had been innocuous
maintained that the files were indeed filled with “puffing” by case
officers. “You can’t establish what is puff and what isn’t,” he
claimed. Many reporters, he added, “were recruited for finite
[specific] undertakings and would be appalled to find that they were
listed [in Agency files] as CIA operatives.” This same official
estimated that the files contained descriptions of about half a dozen
reporters and correspondents who would be considered “famous”—that is,
their names would be recognized by most Americans. “The files show that
the CIA goes to the press for and just as often that the press comes
to the CIA,” he observed. “...There is a tacit agreement in many of
these cases that there is going to be a quid pro quo”—i.e., that the
reporter is going to get good stories from the Agency and that the CIA
will pick up some valuable services from the reporter.
Whatever the interpretation, the findings of the Senate committees
inquiry into the use of journalists were deliberately buried—from the
full membership of the committee, from the Senate and from the public.
“There was a difference of opinion on how to treat the subject,”
explained one source. “Some [senators] thought these were abuses which
should be exorcized and there were those who said, ‘We don’t know if
this is bad or not.’”
Bader’s findings on the subject were never discussed with the full
committee, even in executive session. That might have led to
leaks—especially in view of the explosive nature of the facts. Since the
beginning of the Church committee’s investigation, leaks had been the
panel’s biggest collective fear, a real threat to its mission. At the
slightest sign of a leak the CIA might cut off the flow of sensitive
information as it did, several times in other areas), claiming that the
committee could not be trusted with secrets. “It was as if we were on
trial—not the CIA,” said a member of the committee staff. To describe
in the committee’s final report the true dimensions of the Agency’s use
of journalists would cause a furor in the press and on the Senate
floor. And it would result in heavy pressure on the CIA to end its use
of journalists altogether. “We just weren’t ready to take that step,”
said a senator. A similar decision was made to conceal the results of
the staff’s inquiry into the use of academics. Bader, who supervised
both areas of inquiry, concurred in the decisions and drafted those
sections of the committee’s final report. Pages 191 to 201 were entitled
“Covert Relationships with the United States Media.” “It hardly
reflects what we found,” stated Senator Gary Hart. “There was a
prolonged and elaborate negotiation [with the CIA] over what would be
said.”
Obscuring the facts was relatively simple. No mention was made of
the 400 summaries or what they showed. Instead the report noted blandly
that some fifty recent contacts with journalists had been studied by
the committee staff—thus conveying the impression that the Agency’s
dealings with the press had been limited to those instances. The Agency
files, the report noted, contained little evidence that the editorial
content of American news reports had been affected by the CIA’s dealings
with journalists. Colby’s misleading public statements about the use
of journalists were repeated without serious contradiction or
elaboration. The role of cooperating news executives was given short
shrift. The fact that the Agency had concentrated its relationships in
the most prominent sectors of the press went unmentioned. That the CIA
continued to regard the press as up for grabs was not even suggested.
Former ‘Washington Post’ reporter CARL BERNSTEIN is now working on a book about the witch hunts of the Cold War.
Footnotes:
1 John McCone, director of the Agency from 1961 to 1965, said in a
recent interview that he knew about "great deal of debriefing and
exchanging help" but nothing about any arrangements for cover the CIA
might have made with media organizations. "I wouldn't necessarily have
known about it," he said. "Helms would have handled anything like that.
It would be unusual for him to come to me and say, 'We're going to use
journalists for cover.' He had a job to do. There was no policy during
my period that would say, 'Don't go near that water,' nor was there one
saying, 'Go to it!'" During the Church committee bearings, McCone
testified that his subordinates failed to tell him about domestic
surveillance activities or that they were working on plans to
assassinate Fidel Castro. Richard Helms was deputy director of the
Agency at the time; he became director in 1966.
2 A stringer is a reporter who works for one or several news organizations on a retainer or on a piecework basis.
3 From the CIA point of view, access to newsfilm outtakes and photo
libraries is a matter of extreme importance. The Agency's photo
archive is probably the greatest on earth; its graphic sources include
satellites, photoreconnaissance, planes, miniature cameras ... and
the American press. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Agency obtained
carte‑blanche borrowing privileges in the photo libraries of literally
dozens of American newspapers, magazines and television, outlets. For
obvious reasons, the CIA also assigned high priority to the recruitment
of photojournalists, particularly foreign‑based members of network
camera crews.
4 On April 3rd, 1961, Koop left the Washington bureau to become
head of CBS, Inc.’s Government Relations Department — a position he
held until his retirement on March 31st, 1972. Koop, who worked as a
deputy in the Censorship Office in World War II, continued to deal with
the CIA in his new position, according to CBS sources.
5 Hayes, who left the Washington Post Company in 1965 to become U.S.
Ambassador to Switzerland, is now chairman of the board of Radio Free
Europe and Radio Liberty — both of which severed their ties with the
CIA in 1971. Hayes said he cleared his participation in the China
project with the late Frederick S. Beebe, then chairman of the board of
the Washington Post Company. Katharine Graham, the Post’s publisher,
was unaware of the nature of the assignment, he said. Participants in
the project signed secrecy agreements.
6 Philip Geyelin, editor of the Post editorial page, worked for the Agency before joining the Post.
7 Louis Buisch, presidentof the publishing company of the Hornell, New York, Evening Tribune, told the Courier‑Journal
in 1976 that he remembered little about the hiring of Robert Campbell.
"He wasn't there very long, and he didn't make much of an impression,"
said Buisch, who has since retired from active management of the
newspaper.
8 Probably the most thoughtful article on the subject of the press
and the CIA was written by Stuart H. Loory and appeared in the
September‑October 1974 issue of Columbia Journalism Review.
9 Wes Gallagher, general manager of the Associated Press from 1962
to 1976, takes vigorous exception to the notion that the Associated
Press might have aided the Agency. "We've always stayed clear on the
CIA; I would have fired anybody who worked for them. We don't even let
our people debrief." At the time of the first disclosures that
reporters had worked for the CIA, Gallagher went to Colby. "We tried to
find out names. All he would say was that no full‑time staff member of
the Associated Press was employed by the Agency. We talked to Bush. He
said the same thing." If any Agency personnel were placed in
Associated Press bureaus, said Gallagher, it was done without consulting
the management of the wire service. But Agency officials insist that
they were able to make cover arrangements through someone in the upper
management levelsof Associated Press, whom they refuse to identify.
10 Many journalists and some CIA officials dispute the Agency's
claim that it has been scrupulous in respecting the editorial integrity
of American publications and broadcast outlets.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment