Original editor's note: Carl Bernstein, a former reporter for The Washington Post, was the main investigator of the 1972 Watergate incident in the United States. After leaving The Washington Post in 1977, Carl Bernstein spent six months examining the relationship between the CIA and the media during the Cold War and wrote "The CIA and the Media."
This article uncovers the "secret intelligence deal" between the CIA and media outlets through detailed information: Hiring journalists has always been one of the most effective ways the CIA has gathered intelligence. In the 25 years since the beginning of the Cold War, 25 media outlets, including The New York Times, CBS, Time Corporation, NBC, The Associated Press, Newsweek, etc., have provided shelter, trained agents, and unearthed intelligence for the CIA; Media executives have extremely close personal relationships with the CIA; More than 400 journalists have intelligence links to the CIA.
With the first revelation of the CIA's hiring of journalists in 1973, the secrets between the C.I.A. and news organizations began to come under public pressure. However, the then CIA Zhang used various means to maintain the journalist intelligence network, which made intelligence transactions with news agencies more hidden. The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, which is in charge of the investigation, despite having a lot of evidence, chose the simplest approach: to cover up the truth.
The authors' investigation led to an important conclusion: Unlike the simple belief that the CIA manipulated and controlled the press, the American news organizations at the time willingly acted as CIA helpers in the struggle against "global communism." The C.I.A. uses the media to cover themselves, while foreign journalists see working for the C.I.A. as a way to serve the country and a way for them to get better news material and climb to the top of their careers.
The original article, published in Rolling Stone magazine on October 20, 1977, was a 25,000-word cover article. Due to the limitation of space, it is slightly reduced when compiling and publishing, and is divided into two issues.
First, the CIA's intimate relationship with the U.S. media that has been covered up
In 1953, Joseph Althorpe, the most important columnist in the United States at the time, the New York Times, traveled to the Philippines to cover the local elections. He went to the Philippines not by the syndicate or by the newspaper that printed his columns, but at the invitation of the CIA.
Joseph Althorpe
According to archival records at CIA headquarters, more than 400 U.S. journalists, including Elsep, have secretly carried out CIA missions over the past 25 years. The journalists secretly provided the CIA with a full range of services, from simple intelligence gathering to acting as intermediaries in contact with spies in communist countries. The CIA and media outlets share materials and employees. Some of them are pulitzer prize-winning journalists who call themselves ambassadors of the country at large (also known as touring ambassadors).
Most people aren't as lofty: foreign journalists find it beneficial for them to do their jobs; Special and freelance journalists are as interested in writing articles as they are in taking risks to contact spies; There are also a handful of CIA employees posing as journalists abroad. C.I.A. documents show that in most cases, journalists are given the consent of the management of major U.S. news organizations when carrying out CIA missions.
The history of the CIA's infiltration into the U.S. media continues to be obscured by vague and deceptive official policies for several major reasons:
1. Hiring journalists has always been one of the most effective ways the CIA has gathered intelligence. Although the CIA has drastically reduced the number of journalists it hires since 1973 (largely because of pressure from the media), some journalist agents have been sent abroad.
2. According to CIA officials, a further investigation into the matter would inevitably reveal a series of embarrassing relationships between the CIA and the most prominent News Organizations and practitioners in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. Among those managers who worked with intelligence agencies was CBS William Pelley; Henry Luce of Time Corporation; Arthur Hayes Suzberg of the New York Times; Barry Bingham of the Louisville Courier; James Copley of Copley News.
Other organizations working with the CIA include ABC, NBC, The Associated Press, United Press, Reuters, Hearst, Scripps Howard, Newsweek Magazine, Common Broadcasting System, Miami Herald, formerly Saturday Evening Post, and New York Herald Tribune. CIA officials revealed that by far the most valuable partnerships with The New York Times, CBS and Time.
The scope of the CIA's use of the U.S. news media is much broader than that CIA officials have publicly acknowledged or claimed in closed-door meetings with members of Congress. Their common practices are not controversial, but their exact operations are increasingly difficult to know. Whether it is the CIA or media agencies, the details of specific cooperation are either tight-lipped. A senior CIA official with an astonishing memory said the New York Times had sheltered ten C.I.A. agents between 1950 and 1966, but he did not know the exact list or which management of the newspaper had orchestrated it.
The C.I.A.'s special relationship with so-called "professionals" in the publishing and broadcasting industries allowed the C.I.A. to send its most valuable agents overseas without being discovered for more than two decades. According to the CIA, in most cases, the highest-ranking CIA official (usually the director or deputy director) personally contacts the designated top management of the partner news organization. There are usually two ways for the news media to provide assistance: one is to provide job offers and certificates ("press cards" according to the CIA) to C.I.A. agents who will be stationed in foreign capitals; The second is to "borrow" secret services from the CIA for in-service journalists, including some of the most well-known journalists who are familiar with the business.
The CIA used the appropriate word "reporting" to describe much of the work that the co-journalists do for the CIA. A senior C.I.A. official said, "We'd ask them, 'Can you do us a favor?'" We know you're going to Yugoslavia. Are their streets paved? Where have you seen airplanes? Are there any signs of a military presence? How many Soviets have you met? If you meet a Soviet, know his name and spell it correctly... Can you arrange a meeting or get a message across?" Many CIA officials treat these useful journalists as agents; Journalists also tend to see themselves as trusted friends of the CIA, who occasionally help for the good of the country, often without pay.
"I'm honored that they invited me to do it, and I did it," says Joseph Elsep. He had performed secret missions for the CIA, and "the notion that journalists are not responsible to the state is completely wrong." ”
From the C.I.A.'s point of view, there is nothing wrong with this relationship with journalists, and any ethical problems that arise are solved by the journalist industry itself, regardless of the intelligence agencies.
Second, the secret transaction that began in the Cold War
The CIA's "deal" with the news media began in the early days of the Cold War. After Alan Dulles became CIA director in 1953, he sought to build the ability to recruit reporters within america's most prestigious news organizations. Dulles argues that CIA agents overseas will enjoy a degree of freedom of access and movement that no other cover job can enjoy.
Alan Dulles
In the context of the Cold War, American publishers at the time were more than willing to devote their company's resources to the struggle against "global communism." As a result, the traditional line between American journalists and the government has disappeared: News organizations that provide cover abroad for CIA agents often do so with the informed consent of their bosses, publishers, and senior editors.
In other words, contrary to the CIA's deliberate infiltration into the news media, there is ample evidence that major U.S. publishers and news executives have volunteered to be the CIA's helpers. In addition, Dulles pioneered the mission reporting program, in which all American journalists returning from abroad were required to empty their laptops and report what they saw and felt to the CIA. This practice was inherited by Dulles's successor and continues to this day.
In the 1950s, it was very common for American journalists to see C.I.A. officials on their way back home. "There will be these people with shiny identification documents that look like they belong to the Yale Club," said Hugh Morrow, a former Post correspondent who is now the press secretary of former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, "because it's routine, and it's a little irritating if you don't get questioned [by CIA]." ”
CIA officials almost never declined to name the journalists they worked with. One CIA official, who made no secret of his pain, said, "There was a time when serving the government wasn't considered a crime. "All this must be considered in the context of the morality of the times, not against it or hypocritical criteria." Many of the journalists who covered World War II had close contact with the staff of the Strategic Intelligence Agency, the predecessor of the CIA. More importantly, they are united in their positions. After the war, many former Strategic Intelligence Agency officials went to work for the CIA, and it was natural that they would continue to develop this relationship.
Because the use of journalists is one of the CIA's most sensitive tasks, it is highly confidential and only the director and his hand-picked deputies are familiar with the situation. Fearing that the identity of a journalist's agent would be exposed, or that the CIA's dealings with the news media would be made public, contact with the heads of news organizations was usually done by Dulles and his successors themselves; Or by the Deputy Director and the Chief of The Secret Operations Division, or occasionally by executives in the media industry.
James Angleton was responsible for running a completely independent CIA organization of journalistic operatives, specializing in sensitive and often dangerous missions; This organization is little known for the simple reason that Angleton deliberately kept only the most obscure documents.
The CIA even launched a formal training program in the 1950s to train agents of their choice to become journalists. A senior CIA official explained, "Intelligence officers are 'trained' to be people who can speak like journalists and then are placed to work with them with the help of the management of major news organizations." "But very few of the 400 or so people recorded by the CIA had this experience, and most of them were actually real journalists when they started their missions for the C.I.A.
Categories of cooperation between the CIA and journalists
According to CIA documents, the CIA's partnership with journalists includes the following categories:
1. Legitimate, qualified staff of news organizations – usually journalists. Some of these jobs are paid, some are purely voluntary, and many of them are well-known journalists. Documents show that news or broadcasters sometimes pay journalists in part of their salaries in the name of the CIA, supplementing them with voluntary expenses, or prepaying expenses or reimbursing travel. Remuneration is paid in cash and is also paid to photographers, managers of foreign news organizations and members of broadcast technical groups.
According to CIA officials, the intelligence service's most valuable relationship with individuals in the 1960s was with Washington Star reporter Jerry Orery, who covered Latin America, and Miami news reporter Hal Hendricks, a Pulitzer Prize winner. The former is seen as a very valuable person in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, while the latter provides information on people living in the Cuban penal colony of Miami that is extremely helpful to the CIA. The CIA archives record at length the work done by two people on behalf of the CIA.
Oleri insists his business is limited to normal reciprocal relationships between normal expatriate journalists and units. But a C.I.A. official said there was "no doubt Jerry was at our service" and that "he did a better job as a journalist who served us." In response to Laurey's denials, the official added, "I don't know what exactly he has to worry about unless he has to stubbornly comply with the Senate's integrity requirements for journalists." However, according to some CIA officials, neither Hendricks nor Olerry accepted funding from the CIA.
2. Special and freelance journalists. Most of them are paid by the CIA under standard contractual terms. Their journalistic credentials are usually provided by partner news organizations. In some cases, news organizations don't know that their special correspondents work for the CIA while working for them.
3. Employees of so-called CIA multi-purpose commercial companies (companies run by the C.I.A. that also have intelligence work). Over the past two five years, the CIA has secretly funded a large number of multilingual foreign news services, periodicals, and newspapers to provide cover for its intelligence efforts. For example, the founding of the Daily American in Rome, the CIA held a 40% stake in the newspaper until the 1970s.
4. Editors, publishers and executives of broadcast systems. The C.I.A.'s relationship with most news executives is fundamentally different from that with journalists and special correspondents: the latter are more receptive to the C.I.A. A handful of news executives would sign secret agreements, such as Arthur Hayes Suzberg of The New York Times. But such formal agreements are rare, and the relationships between CIA officials and media executives are often social.
5. Columnist and commentator. Many columnists and broadcast commentators have a much more relationship with the CIA than the CIA normally maintains with news organizations. They are known within the CIA as "known assets" and can be counted on to perform various secret missions; They were deemed to be receptive to the CIA's views on a variety of issues.
The three most closely watched columnists who maintain such a relationship with the CIA are The New York Times' C. Miller. L. Sulzberg, Joseph Elthorpe and the late Stuart Althorp, whose columns appeared in the New York Herald Tribune, The Saturday Evening Post and Newsweek. According to a senior CIA official, the young C. Sulzberg had signed a confidentiality agreement because he had access to some classified information from the CIA.
A C.I.A. official said the cooperation "has something to share, give and harvest." Suzberg claimed that he had never been formally commissioned by the CIA to carry out a mission, and that he would never be caught spying. "Our relationship is completely informal — I have a lot of friends," he said.
Stewart Elsep's relationship with the CIA was much broader than Suzberg's. One official, who had once held the highest level of the CIA, put it bluntly: "Althorpe is a CIA agent. Another official of the same rank declined to account for Mr. Erthorp's relationship with the CIA, saying only that the relationship was formal. Other sources say Mr. Elthorp has been particularly helpful in his discussions with foreign dignitaries when asking questions that the CIA wants answers to, issuing misinformation in favor of U.S. policy and assessing the CIA's chances of recruiting suitable foreigners.
"Utterly ridiculous," Joseph Althorpe said when he heard others say his brother was a CIA agent. "I'm closer to the CIA than Stuart, even though he's also closer. I dare say he did carry out some missions —but he just did the right thing to do as an American... The CIA founders were close personal friends of ours. It's a social matter, my dear friend. I never took a penny and never signed any confidentiality agreement. I don't need to... I sometimes do things for them because I think it's legitimate, and I call it the duty of a citizen. "Elsep is only willing to talk about the two documented missions he has carried out.
One was a visit to Laos on behalf of the CIA; The other was a visit to the Philippine elections in 1953. In his view, his report was nothing more than a truthful record of the situation, and he insisted that he was not under the control of the CIA. "What I wrote was true. My point is to know the truth. If the CIA guy's point of view is wrong, I won't talk to him anymore." He said, "The CIA would not be open at all to people he did not trust." They trust me and Stewart and I'm proud of that. ”
Fourth, the American media serving the CIA
With the first revelation in 1973 that the CIA sometimes hired journalists, the secrets between the C.I.A. and journalists and news organizations began to tap into the public eye. Those reports and new information were used by the CIA for intelligence work purposes as case studies of how journalists could be used. include:
1. The New York Times. According to CIA officials, the CIA's relationship with The New York Times is by far the most valuable. Between 1950 and 1966, about a dozen CIA personnel were covered by the New York Times, which was arranged with the approval of the late New York Times publisher Arthur Hayes Sulzberg. Cover-up was part of the New York Times' general policy set by Suzberg to help the CIA whenever possible.
Arthur Hayes Sulzberg
Suzberg's relationship with Alan Dulles was particularly close. "Their interaction at that level is a powerful conversation," said one C.I.A. official who had been involved in their discussions. "There is an agreement between us in principle, yes, yes, that we will help each other. The issue of cover has been raised on several occasions. The two sides agreed that the specific arrangements would be handled by subordinates... The top doesn't want to know the specifics, they want a reasonable prevarication. ”
On September 15, 1977, a senior CIA official, after spending two hours reviewing documents of CIA reporters, said he found five documented examples of the New York Times providing cover for C.I.A. employees between 1954 and 1962. And he said every arrangement was the responsibility of the New York Times executives, and the documents were in the standard CIA's official language. "It shows that these arrangements were reviewed by the top management of the New York Times." But the document did not mention Suzberg's name — but the names of his subordinates, but the official declined to say who they were.
CIA employees accredited by the New York Times were sent overseas as special correspondents and worked as civilians in foreign offices of the Times. The CIA's work with the New York Times was usually about delivering information and "finding" potential agents among foreigners.
According to CIA officials, Arthur Hayes Sulzberg signed a confidentiality agreement with the CIA in the 1950s, a news confirmed by his nephew C.L. Suzberg. But they have no clear word as to the purpose of signing the agreement. Attempts were made to find out who was the specific New York Times who was providing proof to the CIA employees, but they were unsuccessful.
According to former New York Times reporter Wayne Phillips, who worked at the New York Times until 1961, he later obtained CIA documents under the Freedom of Intelligence Act, which indicated that the C.I.A. had intended to develop him into a secret "resource" that could be used abroad. As early as 1952, when Arthur Hayes Suzberg was still studying at Columbia University's Institute of Russian Studies, the CIA tried to recruit him as an undercover agent, according to him.
On January 31, 1976, the New York Times published a short article about the CIA's attempts to recruit Phillips. The article quoted publisher Arthur Oaks Suzberg as saying, "Whether as a publisher or as the son of the late Mr. Suzberg, I have never heard of anyone from the CIA approaching the New York Times." More particularly, the late publisher made a promise to Alan Dulles's brother, then U.S. Secretary of State John Foster, that New York Times staff would not be invited to visit China without john Foster Dulles' consent.
In the 1950s, the publisher's nephew received such an invitation. Arthur Suzberger did not allow him to accept the invitation. C. L. Suzberg recalled, "It was seventeen years before another New York Times reporter received such an invitation. ”
2. CBS. There is no doubt that CBS is the CIA's most valuable broadcast asset. Then-CBS Chairman William Paley and Alan Dulles had easy and enjoyable work and social relationships. For years, broadcasters sheltered CIA employees; Providing clips of news films for the CIA; Established formal communication channels for the Washington bureau chief and the CIA; Allowing corporate reporters' reports to enter Washington and New York newsrooms is subject to regular CIA inspections. Once a year in the 1950s and early 1960s, CBS journalists would have dinner and briefings with C.I.A. executives.
William Paley
The specifics of CBS-C.I.A. cooperation were arranged jointly by Dulles and Payley's subordinates. "The company's boss doesn't want to know the specifics, and the CIA director doesn't want to know." A CIA official put it this way. "Both sides will send assistants to take care of specific work. That way they don't get involved in specific matters. According to the disclosure of follow-up investigation information, several CBS employees became undercover CIA agents with Pali's approval.
At CBS News headquarters in New York, despite some denials, Pelley's cooperation with the C.I.A. is no secret to many news executives and journalists. Paley, 76, was not interviewed by Sarente's investigation. "It's not going to do any good," said one CBS executive, "and he doesn't remember it." ”
In an interview with this newspaper last year, Sarent mentioned his own relationship with the CIA and the fact that he continued the practices of his predecessors. He said the connection with the CIA began in February 1961, "I got a call from a CIA guy who said he was working with Sieg Mickelson. The man said, 'Your bosses know all the situations.' According to Sarent, the CIA man asked cbs to continue to provide the C.I.A. with unedited news tapes, and also asked CBS reporters to be ready to report to C.I.A. officials at all times. Sarent said: "My attitude is no when it comes to letting reporters report, I let them watch the radio tapes for themselves. This continued for many years, all the way to the early 70s. ”
Between 1964 and 1965, Sarent joined a super-stealthy four-member CIA task force specializing in ways to send American propaganda broadcasts to China. The other three members of the research group were Zbignev Brzezinski, then Colombian professor; William Griffith, then professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and John Haworth, then vice president of The Washington Post Corporation Radio TV5.
The main government officials involved in this research program are CIA's Codd Meyer; Mike George Bundy, then Special Adviser to the President of the United States for National Security Affairs; Leonard Max, then director of the U.S. Information Service; and Bill Moyes, then a special assistant to the President, who is now a CBS reporter.
Sarent's participation in the research program began the moment he received a call from Leonard Max, "he told me that the White House wanted to create a special committee of four people to study American overseas communications behind the Iron Curtain." "When Sarent arrived in Washington for the first meeting, he learned that the plan had been initiated by the CIA." Its purpose is to study the best way to bring radio broadcasting into Red China. ”
Four members of the committee, accompanied by a CIA official named Paul Heyyens, began to travel the world to inspect the facilities of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (both of which were involved in the operation of both stations at the time), the Voice of America, and Radio Armed Forces. After more than a year of research, the committee submitted a report to Moyes recommending that the government establish a broadcasting service run by VOA and sent to China. Sarent has served two terms as CBS News Manager from 1961 to 1964 and from 1966 to the present. During the project in China he worked as a manager at CBS.
3. Time Magazine and Newsweek. According to the CIA and the Senate, the CIA documents contain written agreements signed by the C.I.A. with former foreign and special correspondents of both magazines. But the source declined to say whether the CIA had cut off all ties with both magazine employees. Alan Dulles often interceded with his close friend, the late Henry Ruth, founder of Time and Life magazines, who promised to allow some of his employees to serve the CIA and provide jobs and qualifications for other inexperienced CIA agents.
Henry Ruth
For years, Ruth's personal envoy, C.D. Jackson, was responsible for liaising with the CIA. Jackson was a vice president at Time Corporation and served as publisher of Life Magazine from 1960 until his death in 1964. While working as a Time magazine executive, Jackson co-authored a CIA-sponsored study that recommended a reorganization of U.S. intelligence agencies in the early 1950s. Jackson's tenure at Time and Life magazine was interrupted for a year by a transfer as an assistant to U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower. But during his tenure, he approved specific arrangements for Time and Life magazine to provide cover for CIA employees.
Some of the arrangements were made with the knowledge of Ruth's wife, Claire Booth. According to CIA officials, including those who dealt with Ruth, the other arrangements were made with the knowledge of Hedley Donovan, the current editor-in-chief of Time. Donovan took over all editing business published by Time Corporation in 1959. He denied in a telephone interview that he was aware of the arrangements. "Ruth never approached me, and I would be surprised if Ruth had approved such a business arrangement," Donovan said. "Ruth pays great attention to the boundaries between the media and the government."
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Time magazine's foreign correspondents attended a briefing dinner similar to the CIA's presentation for CBS. According to CIA officials, After returning from several visits abroad, Ruth made it routine to report to Dulles and other CIA officials. Ruth and the people who ran his magazine in the 1950s and 1960s encouraged their foreign correspondents to help the CIA, especially some intelligence information that would be useful to the CIA or useful for recruiting foreigners.
According to the CIA, the CIA hired some of their foreign and special correspondents with the approval of Newsweek's senior editors. It was no secret that Rome's correspondents worked for the CIA in the mid-twentieth century.
"I thought there might be some special correspondents who were agents, but I don't know who they are," said Malcolm Muir, who was Newsweek's editor from its inception in 1937 to 1961. "I think the CIA did have close contact with all the journalists in charge at the time. Whenever I hear something that I think Alan Dulles might be interested in, I call him. I have a lot of friends who work with Alan Dulles. Muir said Harry Cohen, who was Newsweek's foreign correspondent from 1945 to 1956, and Ernest K. Lindley, who was also the magazine's Washington bureau chief, regularly visited the CIA with different people.
"As far as I know," Cohen said, "No one in Newsweek works for the CIA." Our relationship is fine. Why sign any agreements or something? We told the people at the CIA and the State Department what we knew. When I go to Washington, I report to Foster or Alan Dulles what happened. I think that's particularly good, we're on the same side. CIA officials said Cohen's cooperation with the C.I.A. was extensive. In 1965, he left Newsweek to start Foreign Report, a Washington-based agency that provides newsletters, and Cohen declined to say who his subscribers were.
Ernest Lindley remained in Newsweek until 1961. In a recent interview, he said he would often seek the advice of Dulles and other senior CIA officials before leaving the country and would report back to them when he returned home. "Alan helped me a lot and I would repay him when I got the chance," he said. "I'll tell him who I've met abroad. Sometimes he asked me to report on information on the intelligence officers concerned; For example, when I came back from the Asian-African Conference in 1955, they mainly wanted to understand the situation of different people. ”
When Newsweek was acquired by the Washington Post, CIA officials informed Newsweek publisher Philip Graham that the CIA would occasionally use the magazine for cover. "Phil Graham is known for this reliable and helpful," said a former C.I.A. deputy director. "Frank Wisner dealt with him." Wisner, who served as deputy director of the CIA from 1950 until his suicide until his suicide, was the main planner of the "underground/covert operation," including a number of operations in which many journalists were involved. Phil Graham was probably Wesner's closest friend. But CIA sources say it is clear that Graham did not know the specifics of Newsweek's cover for the CIA until his suicide in 1963.
According to then-CIA Hong Kong official Robert M. T. Wood revealed that from 1965 to 1966, Newsweek's appointments to the Far East were actually employees on contracts with the CIA. He receives a monthly salary of $10,000 from the CIA. Some newsweek reporters and special correspondents maintained secret contact with the CIA until the 1970s, according to the CIA. There is very limited information about the CIA's cooperation with the Washington Post. According to CIA officials, some of the Post's special correspondents were former C.I.A. employees, but they did not know whether the Post's management was aware of the situation.
All editors-in-chief and editors-in-chief since 1950 say they don't know what formal partnerships the CIA has had with special correspondents or employees of the Post. One employee said, "If there is, it was also done by Phil, and did not let us know." At the same time, CIA officials made no statements about the secret contact between Post employees and the CIA during their work at the Post.
4. The Louisville Courier. From December 1964 to March of the following year, a man named Robert E. Lee H. Campbell's undercover agents at the CIA worked at the Courier. According to CIA executives, Campbell entered the courier under the arrangement of the CIA and Norman Isaacs, then the executive editor of the courier newspaper. The source also said that Barry Bingham, the publisher of the courier newspaper at the time, also knew about the matter. But both Isaacs and Bingham denied they knew he was an intelligence agent when they hired Campbell.
The complex saga of Campbell's employment was originally given to James F. Kennedy during a Senate committee investigation. R. Herzog's article published in the Courier newspaper was disclosed. Herzog begins by describing: "In December 1964, the 28-year-old Robert H. When H. Campbell was hired to work at the Courier, he couldn't type and knew almost nothing about news writing. The article goes on to quote the former editor-in-chief of The Courier as saying that Isaacs told him he hired Campbell because he had the CIA intercede for him: "Norman said that when he was in Washington in 1964, he was called to lunch with his CIA friend, who said he wanted to send the young man down to learn some newspaper knowledge. ”
All about Campbell's recruitment is extremely unusual. There has been no review of his qualifications, and his employment record contains the following two points: "Correspondence and investigative materials relating to this person are available at Isaacs"; "He's a temporary worker — he doesn't do background checks, and he doesn't have to do them." Campbell's journalistic capacity apparently did not improve during his time at the Courier. A former assistant editor for the economic news said: "What Campbell handed over really can't be seen." One of Campbell's main reporting assignments was a feature on woodcut Indian portraits. But the story was never published. During his time at the Courier, he frequented a bar not far from his office, sometimes secretly telling his drinking friends that he was an CIA employee.
According to the CIA, Campbell's appointment at the Courier was intended to provide him with journalism experience in order to provide a better voice for future undercover journalists and to teach him some knowledge of the news business. "We pay the Courier and they pay him in turn," said a CIA official involved in the matter.
Isaacs later left Louisville for The Wilmington News and Daily Media Group in Delaware as president and distributor, saying in a letter responding to the matter: "All I can do is repeat the simple fact that I never, under any conditions, or at any time, knew that I had hired a government agent." I tried to think back, but hiring Campbell wasn't anything special to me, so I couldn't think of anything. ”
Barry Bingham said in a telephone interview last year that he did not have a very clear memory of Campbell's employment and denied that he was aware of any arrangements between Courier management and the CIA. However, CIA officials said the Courier provided other unspecified help to the CIA through Bingham's links in the 1950s and 1960s. The courier's front page detailed the hiring of Campbell, also initiated by Barry Bingham Jr., who succeeded his father as the newspaper's editor and publisher in 1971. This is the newspaper's only major self-survey article on the subject.
5. ABC and NBC. According to CIA officials, the ABC continued to provide cover for some CIA agents until the 1960s, one of whom was Sam Jaffe, who performed secret missions for the CIA. Jaffe only admitted that he had provided information to the CIA. At the Senate hearing, the C.I.A. officials at the highest level declined to say whether the C.I.A. was still in close contact with ABC employees. Sources said all the secret arrangements were made with the knowledge of ABC management.
"That's what people did then," said Richard Wald, who has been president of ABC since 1973. "If all of you here — including journalists at the time — were associated with the CIA at the time, I wouldn't be surprised at all."
6. Copley newspaper and its subsidiary Copley News Agency. The newspaper's relationship with the CIA was first publicly disclosed in the loft magazine by journalists Joe Trento and Dave Roman, whose officials called one of the most fruitful collaborations with the newspaper in terms of providing "foreign aid." Trento and Roman's coverage was funded by the Investigative Journalism Fund. Copley News reported that at least 23 employees have performed missions for the CIA.
In addition, a CIA official revealed that the boss of the Copley newspaper department, James F. S. Copley (who worked until his death in 1973) personally arranged most of his cooperation with the CIA. According to Trento and Roman, Copley volunteered to provide news services to then-President Eisenhower, acting as an eyeliner for the CIA against the communist threat in Latin and Central America. James Copley is also behind the Manipulation of the American Press Association, funded by the CIA, which has a large membership of right-wing journalists in Latin America.
7. Other major news organizations. According to CIA officials, the CIA's archives also record the CIA's secret partnerships with the following news covering agencies: the New York Herald Tribune, the Saturday Evening Post, the Scripps-Howard newspaper, the Hearst newspaper (according to the CIA, Seymour Thompson, who is now the London bureau chief of the Hearst newspaper and former editor and reporter for the Forum Herald, has been a member of the CIA). K. Fredding has been identified as a CIA agent) by The Associated Press, United Press International, The Common Broadcasting System, Reuters and the Miami Herald.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg," said an official who had served at the top of the CIA. Like others familiar with the matter, he said the only way to end suspicions about journalists serving the C.I.A. was to publish the contents of the C.I.A. documents, an approach largely opposed by all the 35 current and former officials interviewed.
5. The CIA strives to protect the media intelligence network
In 1973, the CIA's hiring of journalists was first revealed, and the secrets between the C.I.A. and journalists and news organizations began to enter the public eye. Faced with this situation, the CIA began to take measures to safeguard the long-established journalist intelligence network.
William Colby, one of the most sophisticated undercover tacticians in CIA history, joined the Strategic Intelligence Agency in his early years and was airdropped behind enemy lines in Nazi Germany-occupied France and Norway. Before becoming CIA director, he was personally involved in covert operations using journalists. In 1973, reports publicly exposed that the CIA secretly hired American journalists, and in response to these reports, William Colby began to scale back the program. In his public statement, he conveyed the message that the CIA had only used journalists minimally, and that it was of no importance to the CIA. He has since taken a series of steps aimed at convincing the media, Congress, and the public that the CIA has little contact with the press.
William Colby
But according to CIA officials, Colby is actually secretly casting a protective net in the media world to protect intelligence he deems valuable. He ordered his subordinates to maintain contact with the best journalists, while severing formal ties with many journalists who were not active, whose relatively poor results were not fruitful or less important. When reviewing the materials at Colby's request, CIA officials found that many journalists had not played a role for years. The number of such journalists could be as high as hundreds. Between 1973 and 1976, the CIA terminated its cooperation with them.
At the same time, key CIA agents who were placed at major newspaper and broadcast outlets were asked to resign and become special correspondents or freelancers, so that Colby could assure the editors that there were no CIA employees among their staff. Colby is also concerned that if the CIA's relationship with reporters continues, the identities of some important special correspondent agents may be exposed.
Some of them were reassigned to work on so-called proprietary publishing— foreign periodicals and broadcast sites secretly funded by the CIA and employed by CIA employees. Other journalists who had formal contracts with the CIA (making them employees) terminated their contractual relationships with the CIA and were asked to continue to work under (less formal) arrangements than before.
In November 1973, after undergoing several adjustments, Colby told reporters and editors from The New York Times and the Washington Star that the C.I.A. hired more than 30 U.S. journalists, including five from general circulation news organizations.
However, according to C.I.A. executives, when the Senate Intelligence Committee held a hearing in 1976, the C.I.A. continued to be in contact with 75-90 journalists of all kinds — including news management, journalists, special correspondents, photographers, columnists, news station staff, and members of the broadcast technology team. More than half have dissolved their employment relationships with the CIA, but they remain bound by other secret agreements with the CIA. According to an undisclosed report by the House Intelligence Committee (chaired by Otis Pike), as of 1976 at least 15 news organizations were still providing cover services to the CIA.
"That's brilliant," Director Colby often referred to as journalists and news organizations that work for the C.I.A. Others at the CIA call their best news assets "brands." "Colby's concern is that he could lose those resources entirely unless we become more cautious about who to use and how to get those people," explains a former assistant director. The focus of Colby's follow-up will be to detach the CIA from the so-called big newspaper relationship and focus instead on smaller newspaper groups, radio and television groups and specialized publications such as trade journals and newsletters.
After Colby left the CIA on January 28, 1976, replaced by George Bush, the C.I.A. announced a new policy: "With immediate effect, the C.I.A. will no longer have a payment or contractual relationship with any full-time or part-time journalist approved by any news agency, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network in the United States or on a television network." In announcing the new policy, the CIA acknowledged that the new rules would lead to the termination of cooperation with nearly half of U.S. journalists who still have ties to the CIA. The content of the notice indicates that the CIA will continue to welcome journalists to voluntarily cooperate with the CIA free of charge. Therefore, many relationships are allowed to remain unchanged.
The CIA's reluctance to end the use of journalists and the partnerships it maintains with news executives is largely due to two basic natures of intelligence work: the use of journalists as cover is very appropriate, because of the inquisitive nature of the work itself; Agencies in other areas that have worked with the CIA in recent years, such as businesses, foundations and educational institutions, have refused to cover the CIA.
"It's hard to run an intelligence agency in this country," a senior CIA official explained. "We have a curious ambivalence about intelligence. In order to better serve overseas related jobs, we need to go undercover. But we've been playing a 'defender battle' to provide undercover. The U.S. Peace Corps couldn't get in, the Press Agency ignored us, and since 1967 foundations and volunteer organizations have ignored us, and Fulbright scholars have set up their own lines of defense. Even the Foreign Affairs Office doesn't need us. If you ask Americans to vote on how many people are willing to work for the CIA and how many are not, very few people believe in the willingness. So where do we go from here? Working with the commercial sector is good, but the media has a natural advantage. A reporter can stand up to twenty agents. Because journalists can get close to their goals, they can ask a lot of questions without arousing suspicion. ”
6. The cover of the Church Committee
1975 was the most difficult year in the history of the CIA. Under great pressure, the U.S. Presidential Committee, the Senate, and the House of Representatives have successively investigated the CIA, which is also known as the "Washington Intelligence Year." One of those investigative bodies is the Senate Intelligence Committee chaired by Frank Church in the Senate.
In the commission's 1976 investigation, senior CIA officials, including former C.I.A. Directors William Colby and George Bush, persuaded the commission to limit its investigation into the matter and deliberately misrepresented the actual scope of the C.I.A.'s activities in its final report.
Despite evidence of heavy use of journalists by the CIA, the Senate Intelligence Committee and its members decided not to interrogate journalists, editors, distributors, or broadcast executives who had a partnership with the C.I.A. and had detailed records in the C.I.A. archives. According to the Senate and the CIA, the use of journalists (the CIA's drastic cuts) was part of the two major investigations. Another element is that the CIA continues to make extensive use of academia to recruit agents and gather information.
In either case, former C.I.A. Kolby and Bush, as well as CIA special adviser Mitchell Rogovin, could persuade key members of the Commission of Inquiry that a full investigation into the scope of their activities, or even a limited exposure, would cause irreparable damage to the national intelligence agency and the reputations of hundreds of people. Kolby is particularly vocal, arguing that exposure will lead to a modern political persecution in which the victims will be journalists, publishers and editors.
Walter Elder, an assistant to former C.I.A. Director McCone and the CIA's primary point of contact with Church's committee, said the committee had no jurisdiction because the CIA did not abuse journalists; Their partnership is voluntary. Citing the Louisville Courier case, Elder said: "Church committee members didn't know much about the Courier at the time," said one CIA official, "until we said we had gone to the editor about going undercover, and the editor said 'OK.'" "For God's sake, let's not pick poor journalists," William Colby once told the Investigators on Church Committee, "and we went straight to management." They know the situation very well."
Some on the Church Commission and staff fear that CIA officials have gained control of the investigation and that they have been deceived. "The C.I.A. is very shrewd, and the committee is being manipulated in the palm of its hand," said a Congressional source familiar with the entire process of the investigation. "The Church Commission and some other members are more interested in making headlines than in doing serious and difficult investigations. Whenever someone asked something flashy —an assassination, a secret weapon, or James Bond—the CIA pretended to give up a lot. But when it comes to the more important things they don't want to give up about the CIA, Colby is able to give reasons for it. The Committee was convinced. ”
The Senate Committee's investigation into the use of journalists was led by former CIA officer William W. Bush. B. Bud is in charge of supervision. He returned to the CIA briefly this year as an assistant to Director Stanfield Turner, who is now a senior intelligence officer at the Department of Defense. Bud has been helped by David Aaron, who is now an aide to U.S. President Carter's national security adviser, Zbignev Brzezinski.
According to colleagues on the Senate investigation team, both Bud and Aaron were confused about the contents of the CIA's relevant journalist's documents; They urged the permanent CIA Oversight Committee to investigate further. But that committee was drafting a new CIA charter for the first year, and committee members said they had little interest in continuing to investigate the CIA's use of the media.
Bud's investigation was conducted under extremely difficult circumstances. His first request for specific information on the use of journalists was rejected by the CIA on the grounds that there was no abuse of power, and said that current intelligence efforts may also be "compromised." Senators Walter Huddleston, Howard Baker, Gary Hart, Walter Mondale and Charles Marcellis — who expressed interest in the media and the CIA on this topic — could understand Bud's distress after receiving CIA feedback.
In a series of phone calls and meetings with the CIA director and other officials, senators stressed that members of the commission of inquiry should have access to information on the scope of cooperation between the CIA and the media. Eventually, Bush agreed to order an investigation into the documents and to bring up records related to the use of journalists. But Bush also stressed that the original documents could not be provided to Bard or the committee. Instead, Bush decided to have his assistants condense the material into a paragraph-length summary that described in the most general language the relevant activities that each journalist attended.
What's more, Bush ordered that the names of journalists and their news organizations be omitted from the summaries. However, there may be some traces of the region in which the journalist served, and from the rough description it is clear that he worked for the news organization.
But according to the CIA officials in charge of the work, compiling the summaries was not easy. Essentially, there is no "journalist's document," and the relevant information must be collected from multiple sources, which also reflects the highly closed characteristics of the CIA. CIA officials who had been involved in investigating the journalists provided some names. Different documents related to undercover operations have been brought up, and from the documents, it seems logical that the CIA's use of journalists seems logical. It is worth noting that all the work that journalists do for the CIA is classified as covert operations, not foreign intelligence. Records of the old intelligence stations were stripped away.
A few weeks later, Bud received the abstracts, which by the time the CIA was complete, had more than four hundred.
The CIA played an interesting numbers game with the investigative committee. Those who prepared the materials said it was physically impossible to gather information on all the journalists the CIA used. "We're just giving them some broad, representative information," a C.I.A. official said. We would never pretend that this is material for all the events of the past 25 years, or all the journalists who have done things for us. Relatively few abstracts tell the story of the activities of foreign journalists—including special correspondents working for U.S. publishing agencies. Officials who know the matter best say the 400 figure is less than the number of journalists who actually maintain secret ties with the C.I.A. and carry out secret missions.
Bud and those who listened to his description of the summary quickly came to some basic conclusions: There were far more journalists in secret relationships with the CIA than the CIA had mentioned; In addition, the journalists and news executives employed by the CIA are the most important intelligence assets of the CIA. These journalists were involved in almost every operation imaginable. Of the more than 400 journalists summarized, between 200 and 250 were journalists in the usual sense – journalists, editors, correspondents and photographers; Others are employed, at least nominally, in the fields of book publishing, trade publishing, and newsletters.
Nonetheless, the abstracts are also compressed, obscure, sketchy, and incomplete. One can interpret these abstracts differently. And the summary did not point out that the CIA had abused its rights or manipulated the content of American newspapers or radio reports.
Unnerved by what he had discovered, Bud consulted several people with experience in the fields of foreign relations and intelligence. They advised him to try to get more information and to give his most trusted committee members the main takeaways of the summary. Bud again went to Senators Heddlston, Baker, Hart, Mondale and Mathias. At the same time, he told the CIA that he wanted to see more information—the full text of the actions of a hundred or so journalists summarized. His request was flatly denied. The CIA would not have provided more information on this matter.
The C.I.A.'s intransigence led directly to a meaningful dinner meeting at the CIA headquarters at the end of March 1976. Present in attendance were Senator Frank Church (who is now also being interrogated by Bud), and Committee Vice Chairmen John Thor, Budd, Committee Director William Miller, C.I.A. Bush, C.I.A. Adviser Rogovin, Seymour Bolton (senior CIA agent who has been station manager in Germany for many years) and Willy Brandt, head of the case. Bolton was authorized by Bush to handle the committee's request for information from journalists and academia.
At the dinner, the CIA declined to provide any complete documents or the names of any journalists mentioned in the 400 summaries and news organizations associated with the journalists. According to the participants, the discussion later entered a white-hot stage. Delegates on the committee said they would not be able to fulfil their mandate to determine whether the CIA had abused its powers without further information.
The C.I.A. insisted that if they gave the committee more information, they would not be able to protect legitimate intelligence jobs or employees. Bush said most journalists are C.I.A. contractors, and the C.I.A. is more thankful to other agents than they are.
In the end, a highly unusual agreement was reached: Bud and Miller would be allowed to review the "complete information processed" of 25 journalists selected from the summary; But the names of journalists and the news organizations that employ them will be erased, and the identities of other CIA employees mentioned in the documents will be omitted. Church and Thor will be allowed to review all of the unprocessed information of 5 of the 25 — to prove that the CIA is not hiding anything, except by name. The agreement is based on the premise that Bud, Meyner, Thor or Church will not disclose the contents of the documents to committee members or staff.
Bud began to revisit the more than 400 abstracts, and his goal was to pick out 25 of them from these bits and pieces of information to make a cross-sectional view. This includes the date of the operation, the overall overview of the news organization, the type of journalist, and the undercover operation.
According to Senate and CIA officials, an unavoidable conclusion can be drawn from the 25 documents he obtained: This has never been widely suspected to some extent, and the CIA concentrated its contacts in the 1950s and early 1970s on journalists from the most important divisions of News Corporation, including 4 or 5 of the country's largest newspapers, radio and television networks, and two major Newsweek magazines. Although names and work units are omitted from the 25 detailed documents, each document is still 3 to 11 inches thick. This information is usually sufficient to determine the journalist's name, affiliation, or both, especially since many of them are prominent in the field.
"It's unbelievable how well you're networked," Bud said in his report to the Senate, "for example, you don't need to manipulate Time magazine at all, because there are CIA people in management." ”
Ironically, according to CIA officials, there is a major news organization that restricts its dealings with the CIA, but this organization is the CIA's long-term goals and policies: the largest editorial supporter of U.S. News and World Report. The late David Lawrence was a columnist and founding editor of U.S. News and a close friend of Alan Dulles. Sources said he repeatedly rejected the CIA director's request to use the magazine as cover.
According to another senior CIA official, Lawrence had once given orders to his deputy editors that he would fire any U.S. News employee found to have formal ties to the CIA. The previous editorial director of the magazine confirmed that he had indeed issued such an order. However, the CIA declined to say whether the magazine was banned from dealing with the CIA after Lawrence's death in 1973, nor did it say whether the order was enforced.
Bard, meanwhile, tried to get more information from the CIA, especially about current relationships with journalists. But he was in trouble. "Bush hasn't done anything so far," Bud told colleagues. "Not a single major operation has been affected even slightly." The C.I.A. also declined to disclose more information about the use of scholars. Bush began urging commission members to reduce their investigations in both areas, while hiding his findings in the final report.
According to the Senate, "he kept saying, 'Don't harass the media and the people on campus,' pleading that they are the only place in public life where there is credibility."" Colby, Elder, and Rogowyn also implored committee members to keep the staff's findings confidential. "There are many indications that if these things are taken out, then some of the big names in the press will be disgraced," another source said. The C.I.A. fears that exposure to relationships with journalists and academics will lead to the closure of two of the few channels through which agents are recruited. "The danger of exposure is not on the other side," explained a CIA expert involved in the covert operation. "There's nothing here that the other side doesn't know. The CIA was concerned that undercover operations in another area would be rejected. ”
A senator who had been a CIA lobbyist later said: "From the CIA's point of view, this is the highest level and most sensitive of all covert operations." This is the bigger piece of action we know. He added, "I had a strong urge to emphasize this, but it was too late... If we made a request at that time, they would settle it through legal channels. ”
In fact, time was running out for the Committee. Many staff believe that a lot of resources have been wasted searching for CIA assassination plots and anonymous letters. The investigation of journalists was added later. The size of the investigation and the sensitivity of the CIA to providing information in this area have surprised staff and the committee. The CIA Oversight Committee will succeed Church's panel and will patiently and methodically investigate the matter. If (it seems possible) that the CIA refuses to cooperate further, the task of the successor committee will be in a more favorable position to launch a protracted battle... Or it's also possible that Church and some other senators were unfamiliar with Bud's findings and decided not to pursue the matter further.
No reporter will be investigated for their dealings with the CIA — either through staff or through senators, covertly or openly. The spectre of political persecution within News Corp., first raised by CIA officials, haunts some staff and members of the investigative board. One senator said, "We're not going to bring those people to the commission of inquiry and let everyone count their betrayals of professional ideals." ”
According to Bud's colleagues, Bud was pleased with the decision made, and he was confident that the successor committee would continue to complete the investigation of the remaining parts. He objected to the publication of the journalists' names. He has long feared that he may be entering a "gray zone" without moral restraint. In the traditional sense, did the CIA "manipulate" the press? He concluded that there probably wasn't. Major news agencies and executives willingly lent their resources to the CIA.
Foreign journalists see working for the CIA as a service to the country and a way for them to get better news material and climb to the top of their careers. Has the CIA abused its powers? The way it deals with the media is almost identical to that of other agencies, from which the C.I.A. seeks cover from which it —diplomatic services, academic research, businesses. There is nothing in the CIA's charter that states that the CIA cannot access these agencies. As far as the press is concerned, the CIA is much more cautious in its handling than with other agencies, and the CIA has made considerable efforts to limit the role of the media to information gathering and undercover services.
Bud is also said to be concerned because his information is largely provided by the CIA and does not get disparate information from the reporters who interact with the C.I.A. He told his colleagues that all he could see was some "lantern shows." Still, Bud has reason to believe he has seen almost everything in the document. He reasoned that if the CIA had tried to deceive him, it wouldn't have leaked so much. According to the committee's observation, "the CIA was willing to cooperate and showed Bard some information, and from this point of view, the CIA is very powerful." "In this way, if one day the contents of the document surface, the CIA will shirk its responsibility." They can say they have notified Congress. ”
Reliance on CIA documents poses another problem. The CIA's understanding of the relationship with journalists may be completely different from that of journalists. CIA officials may think he has exercised control over the reporters. Reporters would think he was just having a few drinks with an agent. It's possible that CIA officials wrote memos while dealing with journalists, or it could be that, like any other government agency, the CIA had to write some common bureaucratic documents to protect itself.
One CIA official tried to convince the Senate committee that the CIA's use of journalists was irrelevant, insisting that the documents were full of bragging rights from C.I.A. officials. Many journalists, he said, "were recruited to perform exact (specific) missions and were surprised to find that they were listed as C.I.A. agents in CIA documents." "The documents show that the CIA often goes into the press, and the press often goes to the CIA." "In many cases, both sides have formed a tacit understanding that there will be some quid pro quo between them" — that is, journalists will get good news material from the CIA, and the CIA will get valuable services from journalists.
Regardless of how it is interpreted, the Senate Committee's findings into the CIA's use of journalists were deliberately concealed — withheld from all members of the committee, the Senate, and the public. Someone explained: "People have different opinions on how to deal with this matter. "Some (senators) think these are abuses of power and should be stopped." Others say, 'We don't know if this is good or bad.' ’”
Bud's findings on this issue were never discussed in the Committee of the Whole, not even in executive councils. This may lead to the disclosure of secrets – especially given the explosive nature of the facts themselves. Leaking information has been the biggest concern of the entire panel since the Church Committee investigation began, and it is also a real threat to the entire mission. In the event of any sign of a leak, the CIA could follow the example of several other fields, cutting off the flow of all sensitive information and claiming that the commission could not be trusted to keep secrets.
"It was as if we were being interrogated — not the CIA," one member of the committee said. If the committee's final investigative report were to state the true story of the CIA's use of journalists, it would cause an uproar in the media and in the Senate. And that would put considerable pressure on the CIA and would lead to a halt to the use of all journalists. "We're just not ready to get there," one senator said.
A similar decision was to conceal the CIA's use of academic findings. Bud, who oversaw investigations in two areas, agreed with such a decision and drafted these sections of the commission's final report. Pages 191 to 201 are titled "Secret Relationships with the American Media." "It's hard to reflect our findings," Senator Gary Hart said. We had a protracted and complex negotiation (with the CIA) on what could be made public. ”
Covering up the truth is relatively simple. The report did not mention 400 abstracts or their findings. Instead, the report lightly notes that committee members studied 50 journalists recently contacted by the C.I.A. — conveying the impression that the CIA is limited to dealing with those journalists. The report notes that there is no evidence in the C.I.A. documents that the editorial content of the U.S. News report was influenced by the CIA's dealings with journalists. Colby's misleading public statements about the use of journalists are repeated, but there are no serious contradictions or need to be refined. The role of press officials working with the CIA was overlooked. The fact that the CIA focused on important sectors of the media is not mentioned, and there is no indication of the CIA's intention to continue to compete for the press.