It is clear that one of the most sensitive areas in government is the use by the CIA of media and of reporters as spies "in the national interest." As the CIA is supplying certain information to reporters in the U.S., even at their own request, it should not be forgotten that it is specifically forbidden from engaging in domestic propaganda activity by the 1947 National Security Act.

Nonetheless, the CIA has with impunity violated this part of its charter. It was exposed again and again during the Church Committee hearings which traced the pattern back many years; by Carl Bernstein in the October 1977 Rolling Stone, who asserted that about 400 American media people secretly collaborated with the Agency; and by the New York Times on December 27 and 28, 1977 which revealed operational assistance to the CIA rendered over the years by various editors and journalists whom it named.

The CIA has used major U.S. news organizations as cover for its officers. It has paid editors, reporters, columnists, commentators, and free lancers for their intelligence favors. It has owned or funded over fifty news organizations. And it has sponsored, subsidized or produced more than 1,000 books (about one-fourth of them in English).

Getting Briefed by the CIA

One of the ways in which the CIA exploits media personnel is characterized in an internal Agency regulation dated November 30, 1977 which sanctions the maintenance of "regular liaison with representatives of the news media." How does this process work? Take the case of journalists whose beat is foreign or military affairs, and who periodically travel to Headquarters in Langley. There they sit down with Herbet E. Hetu, the chief CIA spokesperson, or his representative, and receive a "substantive" briefing on some topic. Normally, the briefings are "on background," meaning the informati0n they receive can only be described as deriving from "a government official" or some such label, but can not be attributed to the CIA.

These sessions are, by the admission of the journalists, entered into on their own initiative — a fact which is the CIA's automatic justification of the program. Many observers question the propriety of these liaison activities, both from the standpoint of the CIA and of the journalists who choose the Agency as a news source, particularly when the source is not CIA-attributed, which it rarely is.

The "voluntary" nature of the journalist's relationship with the CIA under such circumstances does not preclude the possibility that it is the CIA which receives the briefing and the journalists who gives it. Some are proud to say they have briefed the Agency.

CAIB has learned that a few chosen journalists in the U.S. receive briefings from the CIA, in printed form, delivered to them by courier, and known to contain a mixture of classified and non-classified material. Our source informed us that in some instances, recipients of these printed briefings have simply put their own by-line on the stories, which are printed almost verbatim by their newspaper.

The best-known case of this kind is that of C.L. Sulzberger, New York Times foreign affairs correspondent. According to an intelligence agency source quoted by Carl Bernstein, Sulzberger was provided with a "background paper" and then "gave it to printers and put his name on it." Even though he acknowledged knowing every CIA director personally since Allen Dulles, Sulzberger denied the incident.

Sowing Seeds on Foreign Soil

Another sensitive area is the CIA's admitted liaison with foreign journalists. It is quite apparent this is a field where the Agency remains tenaciously unyielding to any proposed change or reform. In his 1978 reply to one journalist who challenged the practice, Admiral Stansfield Turner commented that because of "the knowledgeability of media people through their many contacts, foreign media people can be of great value to our intelligence activities." Another letter form Turner boldly claimed that to expand restrictions on the use of journalists "beyond U.S. media organizations is neither legally required nor otherwise appropriate."

Many journalists, U.S. and foreign, have expressed strong opposition to this practice. Gilbert Cranberg, editorial page editor of the Des Moines Register-Tribune, testified before the House Intelligence Committee in January 1978 that the CIA "should be required to quit planting false and misleading stories abroad, not just to protect Americans from propaganda fallout, but to protect all readers from misinformation."

CIA case officers posted abroad under diplomatic cover at U.S. embassies often contact American and foreign journalists at cocktail parties, diplomatic receptions, or over a private lunch together, to discuss matters of common interest. In cases where the particular individual has been tested by the CIA for reliability over a period of time, he or she may be compensated in the form of an occasional tip which can then be converted into a news "scoop."

One of the primary methods the CIA employs is fabrication and orchestration of propaganda as a central part in any cover operation. The Church Committee Final Report (Book 1, page 200) cites a portion of a CIA cable dated September 25, 1970, which was used as part of the Agency's dedicated efforts to discredit Salvador Allende's election:

"Sao Paulo, Tegucigalpa, Buenos Aires, Lima, Montevideo, Bogotá, Mexico City report continued replay of Chile theme materials. Items also carried in New York Times and Washington Post. Propaganda activities continue to generate good coverage of Chile developments along our theme guidance."

Intelligence Community Pow-wows

As with the media, or in major corporations, much of the battle on the Washington intelligence front is fought in the ways the public relations machinery handles the public on a day-to-day basis. How does the Director of Central Intelligence superintend the "public relations" of the intelligence community? The DCI convenes periodic "working lunches' for the PR officers from throughout the "community." The agenda is of course set by the CIA, and it varies from lunch to lunch. Essentially, the aim of these CIA-controlled gatherings is to make sure the various PR people are in line and that all pull together. At one of the recent sessions, there were representatives from the following agencies in attendance:

White House - one person; Vice President's Office - one person' Departments of Justice, Defense, and State, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation - two persons each; Drug Enforcement Agency and Department of Energy - one person each; Central Intelligence Agency - ten persons.

All participating agencies (plus the National Security Agency and the intelligence arms of the three military services - whose absence is somewhat surprising) handle large amounts of classified intelligence everyday, and each is accessible to a greater or lesser degree to the various media. The DCI's "line" on the relations between the intelligence "community" and the media/public is handed down at the meetings.

The Nitty Gritty

The House Select Intelligence Committee held hearings on the CIA and the media between December 1977 and April 1978. Its final report contained three pages of categories (pp. 335-7) developed by subcommittee staff members which described, according to Committee chief counsel Michael J. O'Neill , "what the relationships could be" between the Agency and the media. He asserted that the outline, which was displayed on charts during the hearings, should not be construed as portraying the actual relationships.

Nevertheless, the wealth of information which has emerged about CIA media operations in all the Congressional hearings from persons who have worked in exposing the intelligence network, somehow add up to a picture very close indeed to the one set forth on the charts which we reprint below:

PEOPLE

American Media

·           Full and part-time accredited journalists

·           Stringers