LETTER OF INFORMATION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83-00586R000300260012-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 21, 2013
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: January 25, 1967
• Content Type: MEMO

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25 January 1967
MEMORANDUM FOR: Bureau Chiefs
SUBJECT: Letter of Information
GENERAL
1. Communist China Coverage: FBIS is supplying the intelligence
community with a high volume of material on the current turmoil in Communist
China. Twenty-six percent of the items carried on the FBIS Wire Service
during the first two weeks of January were devoted to the Chinese situation;
by mid-month some 40 percent of the items and 60 percent of the wordage on
the Wire related to CPR developments. The bulk of material emanated from
Peking radio and press broadcasts, Chinese regional radios, East European
and Western press agency material, and Japanese reports. Most of the
material was being filed by the Okinawa, West Coast, Hokkaido, and Tokyo
bureaus, as well as the BBC's Hong Kong unit, although other bureaus
contributed from a variety of sources.
The Okinawa Bureau was engaged in an intensive radio cruising
effort to keep track of some 60 Chinese regional radios which were acting
erratically. Regional broadcasts monitored by Okinawa and Hong Kong
frequently provided valuable and unique material. For example, a Shanghai
broadcast of 11 January reporting that rail service had been restored as
far as Nanking was the first confirmation that the important Shanghai-Peking
railway had been disrupted. The item came from Okinawa monitoring.
RPD analysts prepared items for the Wire Service which noted the
atypical behavior of the provincial radios. A handful of key provinces,
for example, failed to report local support for the Mao-initiated "Shanghai
movement." RPD also supplied Agency components with reports on Soviet
comment concerning CPR developments as well as Peking material bearing on
Chou En-lai's relations with antiparty elements. (SECRET)
2. Togo Coup: An African Bureau FYI summarizing a four-minute
proclamation by the Togo army chief of staff announcing a military takeover
of the country enabled the Wire Service to break the news of the bloodless
. coup ahead of the commercial wire services. The message was carried on
the Wire three minutes ahead of REUTERS and 34 minutes ahead of the ASSOCIATED
PRESS. (UNCLASSIFIED)
Group 1
Excluded from automatic down -
S -E -C -R -E -T grading and declassification
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SUBJECT: Letter of 25 January 1967
37 Reorganization Studies: The study on the feasibility of incorporating
propaganda analysis functions in the Office of Current Intelligence has been
completed with a determination by the DDI that these functions should remain
with FBIS. A second study on the feasibility of combining foreign radio
and document exploitation in overseas installations has not yet been
completed. (SECRET)
it. Asak.2212ureau: The Saigon and Bangkok bureaus were authorized
to proceed with the transfer of several monitors from Saigon to Bangkok as
soon as documentation can be arranged. The Chief, Bangkok Bureau was also
authorized to hire a Thai/Lao/English monitor locally. The bureau has
interviewed and tested some 30 monitor applicants thus far.
Work on the operations site continued, with the bulk of equipment
shipped from Washington expected to arrive the last part of January. The
letter symbol "D" has been assigned to the Bureau for identification of
copy. (CONFIDENTIAL)
5. Caribbean Bureau: A "deed of conveyance" was signed in San Juan
on 30 December which transfers to the U.S. Government 258.9 acres of land
for the Caribbean Bureau. This completes the acquisition of the bureau
site containing some 653 acres.
The main building contract for the bureau is now 29.6 percent
completed. Work is now considered to be on schedule in terms of the present
completion date of 28 May 1967.
Five multilingual, candidates, with capabilities in Spanish, French,
Portuguese, German, Italian, Dutch, and Creole were selected during
December for employment processing. (CONFIDENTIAL)
6. Special Services: Following an announcement by Radio Hanoi
30 December that captured U.S. pilots would be permitted to record messages
to their families for broadcast by the North Vietnam radio, Washington area
consumers requested expeditious handling and tapes of the recorded messages
of U.S. prisoners. In addition to the usual lateral addressees for this
material, the Chief of the State Department Bureau of Security and Consular
Affairs requested that he be added as a wire addressee. An intelligence
community committee on casualties and POW's also requested copies. The
Okinawa Bureau filed the text and sent tapes of more than a dozen such
messages. The tapes were forwarded to DIA which made copies for appropriate
military casualty branches.
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SUBJECT: Letter of Information, 25 January 1967
East Coast Bureau met a request for tape recordings of five Havana
programs in Creole to be used for training purposes. An Organization
component was given permission to release to the Venezuelan Government a
Radio Propaganda Report on "Cuba's Quarrel With the Venezuelan Communist
Party."
The Key West Bureau has been supplying for Organization use an
unusually large number of videotapes of Havana television items--28 tape
segments-totaling 8.5 hours of broadcast time in a four-week period. These
included the 2 January Havana military parade and Fidel Castro's speech on
the occasion, as well as newsreel clips described by Havana as the first
films of damage to Hanoi from U.S. bombing. (CONFIDENTIAL)
7. RPD Services on Vietnam: Requests to RPD continued to relate
primarily to Vietnam. The Southeast Asia and Vietnam specialist of the
National Security Council staff at the White House was supplied at his
request with Hanoi and Liberation Radio statements on the use of guerrilla
forces in Vietnam, as well as with Trends and Survey articles bearing on
guerrilla warfare. Defense Secretary McNamara's office was given detailed
information on communist, particularly Soviet, charges since January 1962
that the United States uses bacteriological and chemical warfare in Vietnam.
State Department inquiries have concerned Soviet elite references to the
bombing of Hanoi; past Hanoi treatment of Thai-U.S. "collusion" in Vietnam;
countries with which the DRV has signed aid agreements; Yugoslav policy on
aid to Vietnam in mid-1965; "enlistment" of East European volunteers for
service in Vietnam; and Viet Minh propaganda about the Korean war.
(CONFIDENTIAL)
8. Research and Analysis: Agency, RAND Corporation, and congressional
inquiries dealt with such questions as a Mao interview in August 1964;
Soviet attention to Press Day; Moscow and Peking attention to the Ben Barka
case; Albanian radio publicity for a "progremmatic pamphlet of the Soviet
Revolutionary Communists/Bolsheviks"; and information on Supreme Soviet
sessions since 1957. A Radio Propaganda Report on "Cuba's Quarrel With the
Venezuelan Communist Party," assembling evidence of conflict over
revolutionary tactics, has generated a number of requests for additional
copies. The analyst responsible for the report was invited to discuss
aspects of Cuban relations with Latin American communist parties and support
for insurgent movements with the ONE staff member for Latin America.
(CONFIDENTIAL)
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SUBJECT: Letter of Information, 25 January 1967
9. Reports and Supplements: A World Reaction Report on the President's
State of the Union message was published on 13 January by the Editorial and
Radio Propaganda divisions. (UNCLASSIFIED)
10. Uses of FBIS Material: A variety of State-USIA dispatches referred
to FBIS material. An airgram from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad cited an
Israeli broadcast in Arabic concerning an Iraqi pilot who defected to Israel.
A USIA message to New Delhi noted FBIS reports that All-India radio and Radio
Moscow are discussing exchanges of radio and television programs. A State
cable of 15 December asked several African and Latin American embassies to
comment on an FBIS report from ANSA that Congolese and Cubans are leading
guerrilla forces in Venezuela. (SECRET)
11. Commendation: The Panama Bureau received a letter from U.S.
Ambassador to Panama Adair expressing appreciation for support by FBIS
and coverage of Panamanian events in particular. (FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY)
12. Lateral Services: At the request of the U.S. Embassy in Japan,
the Tokyo Bureau began sending to the American Consulate General in Hong
Kong items from Japanese sources relating to developments in China. Several
military requester; including the 441st Intelligence Corps Detachment of
the First Special Forces Group, contacted the Okinawa Bureau in regard to
material from Far East radios. On 22 December the Mediterranean Bureau
added Cairo domestic service press reviews and "Voice of the Arabs"
commentaries to the wire file for the American Embassy in Cairo. At the
request of the German Bureau. Kyrenia also began filing the Cairo press
review to The Panama Bureau mailed directly
to an Agency requester a tape of Venezuelan President Leoni's speech of
16 December. .(SECRET)
13. Lateral Service Surveys: Bureaus are encouraged to survey lateral.
service consumers once a year to confirm the validity of requirements. The
Liaison and Requirements Staff should be notified prior to a survey in order
tO assure coordination with other bureaus. The Mediterranean Bureau has
begun a survey of its lateral consumers plus several in the multibureau
sections of the Lateral Services List which can most easily be handled by
the bureau. USSR/EE Roundup, World Health Organization Bulletin, and
Economic-Abstract consumers are also currently being surveyed.
To assist in Headquarters planning, when new regular field consumers
are added to the Lateral Services List it should be clear whether the
consumer is affiliated with the Organization, other national security agency,
or a non-USIB agency. (SECRET)
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SUBJECT: Letter of Information, 25 January 1967
14. North China Survey: The test monitoring of Northeast China and
Inner Mongolian regional radios at the Hokkaido Bureau, conducted 2-23
December, yielded substantial information on radios beyond the operational
range of the Okinawa Bureau. Recordings were sent to the West Coast Bureau
for transcription and to FOS for evaluation. The summaries produced by
WCB Chinese-language monitors were collated and circulated among potential
consumers. (SECRET)
15. ADP Proposals: FBIS has proposed to higher authority that a
computer system be adopted for pre-editing copy for publication in the
Daily Report. Under the proposed system, the field would indicate
capitalization in copy by a special teletype function. Items would be
relayed automatically to a computer system in Washington; the computer
would remove communications headings and other extraneous material and
cause copy to be printed out in upper and lower case. Headquarters
editors would then select for publication, add headlines, and make
additional changes as necessary. It is believed the system would assist
substantially in coping with the increasing amount of information supplied
the Daily Report by field bureaus.
In December an FOS proposal for processing the complete communication
file by computer for derivation of statistics for management purposes was
selected by ORD as a project to be considered experimentally. The Tokyo-
Washington "Bravo" circuit has been selected for the experimentation. (SECRET)
16. Briefings and Visits: Tours were arranged for FBIS Headquarters
personnel to the Organization's Operations Center and the Voice of America.
The latter visit included a brief meeting with VOA Director John Chancellor,
who expressed VOA's particular interest in fullest coverage of the Chinese
radios.
The Chief, Bangkok Bureau paid calls on the USIS PAO in Bangkok
and the 3-2 MACTHAI/JUSMAG. Both officials said they were looking forward
to receipt of the new bureau's product.
The Director of ORB visited the Okinawa Bureau on 8 December. (SECRE':.
FIELD OPERATIONS AND ENGINEERING
17. Broadcast Developments: The Peking International Service has
doubled its broadcasting in Russian to the USSR, transmitting virtually
around the clock. Soviet transmitters have stepped up jamming of these
broadcasts on both short and medium wave bands. Peking Russian is covered
by the West Coast and Hokkaido bureaus.
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SUBJECTi Letter of Information, 25 January 3967
The clandestine Pathet Lao radio introduced broadcasts in La ye,
a language of southern Laos, on 6 January. The Saigon Bureau is sampling
the transmissions. (FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY)
18. AUTODIN Installation: Western Union installation crews began in
mid-January to install AUTODIN equipment for Headquarters and the West Coast
Bureau. (CONFIDENTIAL)
ADMINISTRATION
19. Trainiag.: The Chief, East Coast Bureau, attended a two-week seminar
on International Affairs and Federal Operations conducted by the Civil Service
Commission at its Executive Seminar Center, Kings Point, New York. The Chief,
Executive Staff attended an orientation on Planning, Programming, and
Budgeting, also conducted by the Civil Service Commission. (ADMINISTRATIVE-
INTERNAL USE ONLY)
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SUBJECT: Letter of Information, 25 January 1967
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SUBJECT: Letter Of Information, 25 January 1967
EDITORIAL
1. Editors are requested to review the Editorial Handbook sections
dealing with editorial reports and summaries. Several pieces of copy
designated as editorial reports have required extensive re-editing to
conform to style because they were either written in summary form or
combined the two formats without proper distinction. There have also
been instances of summaries being filed as editorial reports.
2. Selection of copy in the field should be based on the intrinsic
value of the item rather than on what is or is not published in,the Daily
Report. To base a file on the percentage of material published, given
the many factors influencing the inclusion of an item in the book, is
self-defeating and undermines the overall mission, inasmuch as it does. not
take into consideration the other means of dissemination such as the Wire
or the specific needs of lateral consumers and FBIS Headquarters components.
PERSONNEL
3.- New Employees
4. Reassignments
Assignment
Admin Clerk, Okinawa Bureau
Teletypist, Wire Service Branch, Edit. Div.
Editor, mE/AFRATE/LA Branch, Editorial Div.
Editor,
Editor,
From
Senior Editor
East Coast Bureau
USSR & EE Branch, Editorial Div.
Far East Branch, Editorial Division
Editor
West Coast Bureau
Editor
Editorial Division
Editor
Editorial Division
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To.
SecCh, KE/ARgiviE/LA 50X1
Branch, Editorial Div
Editor
Tokyo Bureau
Editor
West Coast Bureau
Editor
West Coast Bureau
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SUBJECT: Letter of Information, 25 January 1967
4.
Reassignments (Cont'd)
From To
Chief Engineer Engineer
African Bureau Engineering Staff
BI Specialist Cruising Monitor
Field Operations Staf f Okinawa Bureau
Senior Editor Senior Editor
Editorial Division East Coast Bureau
Typist Typist
Editorial Division Radio Prop. Div.
Deputy Chief Deputy Chief
Mediterranean Bureau Editorial Division
5.
Retirement-
From
Senior Editor, West Coast Bureau
6.
Resignation
From
Libr
OG G. SEELY
Director
Foreign Broadcast Information Service
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