On October 20th, 1977, Rolling Stone magazine published a lengthy article by Carl Bernstein about the relationship between the media and CIA. The article contained many shocking revelations and allegations. Much of the article was later corroborated, but the press, for obvious reasons, was reluctant to pursue the story. I think it is important that people understand the history of journalists and publishers working for our intelligence services because I think it gets to the heart of the Judith Miller case, and helps to piece together how the Saddam=WMD=Al Qaeda myth was created and sustained. So, below I provide some clips. Someday I will do my own piece on this subject.

And remember the words of former DCI, William Colby when he was testifying about media manipulation before the Church Committee:

“Lets’s not pick on some poor reporters, for God’s sake. Let’s go to the management. They were witting.”

And:

When asked in a 1976 interview whether the CIA had ever told its media agents what to write, William Colby replied, “Oh, sure, all the time.”

From Bernstein’s column:

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 25 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 journalists are still posted abroad.

Further investigation into the matter, CIA officials say, would inevitably reveal a series of embarrassing relationships in the 1950’s and 1960’s with some of the most powerful organizations and individuals in American journalism.

Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Services. 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.

More history:

The reaction to Bernstein’s piece among mainstream media was to ignore it, or to suggest that it was sloppy and exaggerated. Then two months later, the New York Times published the results of their “three- month inquiry by a team of Times reporters and researchers.” This three-part series not only confirmed Bernstein, but added a wealth of far-ranging details and contained twice as many names. Now almost everyone pretended not to notice.

The Times reported that over the last twenty years, the CIA owned or subsidized more than fifty newspapers, news services, radio stations, periodicals and other communications facilities, most of them overseas. These were used for propaganda efforts, or even as cover for operations. Another dozen foreign news organizations were infiltrated by paid CIA agents. At least 22 American news organizations had employed American journalists who were also working for the CIA, and nearly a dozen American publishing houses printed some of the more than 1,000 books that had been produced or subsidized by the CIA. When asked in a 1976 interview whether the CIA had ever told its media agents what to write, William Colby replied, “Oh, sure, all the time.”

Since domestic propaganda was a violation of the their charter, the CIA defined the predictable effects of their foreign publications as “blowback” or “domestic fallout,” which they considered to be “inevitable and consequently permissible.” But former CIA employees told the Times that apart from this unintended blowback, “some CIA propaganda efforts, especially during the Vietnam War, had been carried out with a view toward their eventual impact in the United States.” The Times series concluded that at its peak, the CIA’s network “embraced more than 800 news and public information organizations and individuals.”[15]

By the time the Times series appeared, Congress was looking for a way out of the issue. Obligingly, Stansfield Turner promised that the CIA would avoid journalists “accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.” There were at least three problems with this that most press coverage overlooked: many stringers and freelancers are not accredited; it didn’t cover any foreign-owned media; and as Gary Hart complained at the time, the new policy included a provision that allowed the CIA to unilaterally make exceptions whenever it wished.[16]

Within several years of this alleged policy, the new Reagan administration ignored it in favor of a shooting war in Central America, one component of which was an illegal CIA-administered propaganda war at home. Edgar Chamorro, a contra sympathizer in Miami with a background in public relations, was recruited by the CIA in late 1982. After two years of following the CIA’s instructions regarding the manipulation of U.S. journalists and even members of Congress, Chamorro went public with his story.[17] By now Congress was clearly out-maneuvered, even though it alone held the purse strings that controlled funding for the war.

The inability of Congress to address the CIA-media problem in the 1970s meant that more powerful forces were at work. In fact, while Congress was wringing its left hand over illegal CIA activities, its right hand was helping the CIA overhaul its Wurlitzer. Ever since 1967, when the Katzenbach committee was tasked by Lyndon Johnson to study the problem of the CIA’s use of domestic organizations, the agenda at the highest levels had been to remove such activities from the CIA’s payroll and continue them under a new umbrella. In the unclassified portion of their report, this committee recommended giving money openly through a “public-private mechanism.” “The CIA’s big mistake was not supplanting itself with private funds fast enough,” observed Gloria Steinem, who had been part of the CIA’s global network.[18]

In the case of Iraq, I don’t know whether publishers, editors, and reporters were ‘witting’ about the absolute garbage they were reporting. As for the CIA, they were institutionally opposed to the invasion. But, perhaps, they had their orders. Or, perhaps the CIA finally got around to privatizing their propaganda wurlitzer.