DID BRITAIN USE SPY NEWSMEN?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00845R000201010002-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 11, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: December 15, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/11: CIA-RDP90-00845R000201010002-2
A M C ? !t. RED
ON
NEW YORK MAGAZINE
15 December 1980
STAT
BY CRAIG UNGER AND SHARON CHURCHER
Did Britain Use Spy Tewsran'?
AN UNPUBLISHED REPORT
to the United Nations claims
British intelligence agents
set up a worldwide news-
and-book-publishing opera-
tion as cover for spreading
anti-Communist propagan.
da during the Cold War.
The effort had Washing
ton's "'complete coopera-
tion," according to a 1949
United States State Depart
ment cable cited by the
report's author, Richard
Fletcher. -
His study says a British
Secret Service official helped
launch wire services in the
Mideast, Africa, Asia, and
Latin America. Until re-
cently, the news agencies
allegedly were feeding sto-
ries to local media. This
"covert planting" of infor-
mation was used to weaken
support for regimes and
movements of which the
West disapproves, adds the
report, prepared for the
U.N. Educational, Scien-
tific and Cultural Organ-
ization probe of the media.
Fletcher alleges that one
"bogus company funded by
the Secret Service" was set
up with a sizable staff os-
tensibly to distribute Reu-
ters wire service in the Arab
world, and functioned into
the late 1960s. Reuters has
denied a 1977 New York
Times story that quoted a
CIA source as saying the
company knew it was used
for covert activities. Last]
week, Reuters managing di-,
rector Gerald Long re-
sponded to Fletcher's report,
saying, "It was suggested;
that they [the Secret Service
company] were a govern-
ment organization, but it
didn't worry me greatly be-
cause they had no possibil-
ity of influencing Reuters."
In any event, Britain's
James Bonds are said to
have pulled out of most of
their journalism ventures
by the end of 1979. i
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/11: CIA-RDP90-00845R000201010002-2