HISTORY OF CIA PUBLIC AFFAIRS

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 05547618
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: October 23, 2023
• Document Release Date: August 2, 2023
• Case Number: F-2018-02675

Approved for Release: 2023/07/19 C05547618
WASHINGTON. D.C. 20505
PUBLIC AFFAIRS
Phone: [phone]
HISTORY OF CIA PUBLIC AFFAIRS
Born in 1947 of a war-proven need for intelligence coordination, the Central
Intelligence Agency was accepted implicitly in its early years as essential for
national security. Few questioned its activities, let alone its existence, in a
nation preoccupied with its own post-war emergence as the premier world
power.
But as peacetime normalcy returned and Agency activities expanded, the
American press and public turned their attentions inward, and the CIA fell
under increasing public scrutiny. In its first four years CIA had no individual
officer formally designated to deal with public queries, but in spring of 1951,
current Director of Central Intelligence General Walter B. Smith appointed
Colonel Chester B. Hansen�a former public relations aide to General Omar
Bradley�as the Agency's first "spokesman."
Hansen, called back to Air Force duty after less than two years in this
capacity, was followed by a succession of press officers whose official titles
changed as their duties grew broader. CIA moved into the public affairs area
with no little trepidation. The sensitive nature of the Agency's business made
exchanges with the press necessarily limited, and often as much time was spent
deflecting media queries with the standard "no comment,- as answering them.
Hard as it tried, however, the Agency could not avoid the spotlight. Indeed,
the public affairs function at CIA developed largely in response to a need for
crisis handling�a kind of ad hoc evolution by -flap.- Colonel Hansen dealt
with a 1952 uproar over alleged Communist penetration of the CIA. Colonel
Stanley J. Grogan inherited Hansen's troubles with Senator Joseph McCarthy,
who continued to press the charge that the CIA was infiltrated by Communists.
Grogan also found himself dealing with public and congressional criticism for
CIA activities in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954), along with the U-2/Gary
Powers incident (1961) and the ill-fated Bay of Pigs landing (1962).
Grogan was succeeded by Paul M. Chretien, who encountered a new series of
"flaps- over exposure of CIA operations in Vietnam at the time of the 1963
coup and Diem assassination, former President Truman's public repudiation of
CIA covert action, and acknowledgement by MIT's Center of International
Studies that it was originally subsidized by CIA in 1953.
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Chretien's successor, Navy Commander George F. Moran, fielded inquiries
about accusations in 1966 from Singapore's Prime Minister that the Agency had
attempted to bribe his intelligence authorities six years earlier, and prepared to
cooperate with a Senate investigation of the Agency, called for by Senator
Eugene McCarthy. Moran's successor, Joseph C. Goodwin, handled charges
from Ramparts magazine that the Agency had infiltrated and financed the
National Students Association. Angus Thuermer, who replaced Goodwin in
1971, had his own hands full with the 1972 ITT-Chile story and the Watergate
break-ins, as well as the Rockefeller, Church and Pike committee reports.
Andrew Falkiewicz, Thuermer's successor, also had his share of crises in a very
short term.
CIA press officers sometimes did have the more enjoyable task of handling
inquiries on CIA successes, notably CIA's role in the Cuban missile crisis of
September-November 1962 and the Agency's accurate reporting on the six-day
war between Israel and the Arabs in 1967. But for the most part, as President
Kennedy told CIA employees in 1961, -Your successes are unheralded�your
failures are trumpeted.- CIA press officers frequently were forced to adopt a
defensive posture in dealing with the press and the public.
In the 1970's there has been growing perception that CIA has a critical public
affairs function extending beyond the traditional handling of media queries
provoked by controversy. As public interest in the Agency has increased, the
number of personnel required to handle that interest has grown accordingly,
and their tasks and responsibilities have changed. Admiral Stansfield Turner, in
setting up a special office designated the Public Affairs Office in 1977, with
Herbert E. Hetu as its head, made the Agency's first formal acknowledgement
that CIA's public affairs function had assumed identifiable significance and
proportion.
Thus, CIA Public Affairs today has expanded in many areas: media
responses, arrangements for public appearances by the Director of Central
Intelligence, pamphlets and brochures, background briefings for the media,
chairing of the Publication Review Board for manuscripts to be published
outside the Agency by employees or former employees, handling of public
inquiries, and providing advice to Agency departments on matters involving
the public.
The Public Affairs Office still has the responsibility, as does every CIA
component, of protecting intelligence sources and methods, and of maintaining
secrecy where secrecy is necessary. But no longer is the office encouraged to
say as little as possible about the Agency. The once traditional two-man office
charged with answering media queries with a -no comment- has become an
expanded office intent on informing the public as extensively as possible about
CIA, within the bounds of necessary security.
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