IS PRESS AWAKENING TO REAGAN'S DECEPTIONS?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201170003-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: November 13, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201170003-1
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P UM LE APPEARED
ON PAGE 3 R
WALL STREET JOURNAL
13 November 1986
Is Press Awakening to Reagan's Deceptions?
diers must be wondering what hit them.
After nearly six years of brilliant success
in making, shaping and faking the news to
suit their interests, a string of misfortunes
has put them on the defensive. On Oct. 2,
disclosure of the White House disinforma-
tion campaign concerning Libya. On Oct.
5, the crash in Nicaragua of the C-123
cargo plane containing the voluble Eugene
Hasenfus and documents linking officials
including Vice President Bush to an illegal
Viewpoint
By Alexander Cockburn
arms-smuggling operation. In the weeks
that followed, the confusions at Reykjavik
and most recently, -Robert McFarlane's
"guns tor terrorists" mission to Iran.
The press, emboldened by this sequence
of mishap and also by Republican reverses
in the midterm elections, is now showing
some signs of coming to life. Is it conceiv-
able that the charmed existence-so far
as critical coverage is concerned-enjoyed
by this president is coming to an end, that
the lap dogs will at last become watch-
dogs? It is not as though the press has
been uniformly and utterly bad. There's
usually someone, somewhere trying to tear
the lid off the bad news and expose the evil
men. But what's one watchdog on the edge
of town? It's the steady canine chorus that
restrains government and serves the pub-
lic weal. What we need now is a bit of pack
journalism, baying along the fragrant
spoor, but judging by present form we
have a while to wait.
Disinformation: When Bob Woodward
of the Washington Post disclosed the pro-
gram developed in August under the super-
vision of Adm. John Poindexter of the Na-
tional Security Council and designed to
bamboozle U.S. journalists and Moammar
Gadhafi in equal measure, there were bel-
lows of outrage in the press and State De-
partment spokesman Bernard Kalb rushed
for the gangplank holding his nose. From
most of the coverage you would have
thought that disinformation from the Rea-
gan team began and ended in late 1986. But
it would have required no more investiga-
tive zeal than a trip to the clip files to see
that this administration has been practic-
ing disinformation a lot longer than that.
Back on Aug. 3. 1981. Newsweek ra-
ported that CIA director William Casey
had approved "a large scale. multiphase
and costly scheme to overthrow Kaddafi
and his government" by means including
"disinformation program designed to
embarrass Kaddafi and his government"
At whom was the disinformation program House suppliers is as broad as an inter-
to be aimed? Col. Gadhafi, certainly, but state highway. The breaches of the Boland
also at the U.S. press. In December 1981 Amendment, the Neutrality Act and the
headlines trumpeted out the news, leaked Arms Export Control Act are plain for all
by the administration, that Col. Gadhafi to see. Congress banned arms to the con-
had sent a hit team to assassinate Presi- tras in 1984, and the White House promptly
dent Reagan. By the end of the year, after went into the gun-running business. But yet
a bracing spate of Demon Libya stories, the press talks about the "perception" that
the hit-team scare disappeared as sud- the administration "may have broken the
denly as it came. law." Short of a signed confession from
(Even if the watchdogs could be par- Mr. Bush, what does it take to call a spade
doned for ignoring the ancient history of a spade, or a broken law a crime?
1981, one might reasonably have expected Reykjavik: The press found itself in the
them, pondering Mr. Woodward's story, to painful position, a few days after the sum-
scrutinize once more the rationale for the mit, of having to turn to the Russians for
bombing raids on Tripoli and Benghazi in an acceptable
non-disinformational
,
ac
July. Did those famous intercepts really count of the proceedings. Might this not
show that Libya had ordered the bombing prompt the watchdogs to ask themselves
of the West Berlin discotheque? Maybe about misrepresentations of Soviet propos-
not, and indeed on Oct. 29 John Lawrence als in the past, including the disinforma-
of ABC News reported that top West Ger- tion campaign mounted by the White
man officials were now blaming the out- House in late July 1985 to counteract the
rage on Syria. So much for the irrefutable effect of the unilateral Soviet test ban?
evidence cited in July.) The McFarlane mission: The press is
press about Libya would surely have no
compunction in adopting the same tack
about Nicaragua. But when Alfonso
Chardy of the Miami Herald carefully doc-
umented just such a disinformation cam-
paign, the pack was silent.
Mr. Chardy reported on Oct. 13 that the
president had authorized this campaign at
the start of 1983, calling for a "public di-
plomacy" (i.e., disinformation) program
superintended by the National Security
Council and "designed to generate support
for our national security objectives." He
ordered it to be merged with an incipient
effort then called Project Truth. The public
diplomacy program seems to have con-
sisted mostly of leaking anti-Nicaraguan
material to journalists who faithfully re-
layed it to their readers without saying
where it came from. The usefulness of this
hot on the trail of this one, but it's hard to
understand the surprise being voiced at the
administration's arms supplies to Terror
Central in Iran. The story has been around
for a while. In October 1982, Moshe Arens,
then Israeli ambassador to the U.S., told
the Boston Globe that Israel had been sup-
plying arms to the Khomeini regime "in
coordination with the U.S. government .. .
at almost the highest levels." The next day
he informed the Globe that he'd "caught a
little flak from the State Department" for
his indiscretion and then confided that
"The purpose was to make contact with
some military officers who might one day
be in a position of power in Iran." The ad-
ministration may have been trying to buy
back a hostage. It has certainly, in part-
nership with Israel, been trying to buy into
a future Iranian government, down the
post-Khomeini road.
operation, subsequently transferred to the This is an administration that has
State Department, was best demonstrated thought as much about news management,
by the great disinformation coup of Elec- and practiced as much disinformation, as
tion Night 1984, when television reporters- any in peacetime history. The milestones
Bernard Kalb's brother Marvin among of its progress-yellow rain, the El Salva-
those in the lead-breathlessly cited White dor White Paper of 1981, the "pope plot,"
House tips about a shipload of Soviet MiG KAL 007, Sandinista drug-running-stretch
fighters nearing Nicaragua. With tremen- back through the years. The pack slum-
dous Reaganite bluster about worrisome bered and only a few watchdogs rattled
escalation filling the airwaves, any remote their chains. Now perhaps, amid the brave
possibility of benign coverage of Nicara- cries of "lame duck" we can expect the
gua's first elections in history two days pack to start doing its job.
earlier was successfully averted.
Hasenfus: There's been some bracing
journalism about the mechanics of how the
Reagan administration, under the supervi-
sion of Vice President Bush and Lt. Col.
Oliver North, has been funneling arms to
the contras. But the pussyfooting has
reached comical extremes. The trail of evi-
dence linking the contras and their White
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201170003-1