REPORTERS AND THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100070001-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 18, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 22, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/18 :CIA-RDP91-00587R00010007000j i MT'
JIHI
NEWSWEEK
22 September 1986
Reporters andfhe CIA
They keep in touch-but at arm's length
~ t>Ittl~ ~~ w ~M ~ K~'= JOH\ PHILflI'
~: Philbv
xactly what are the relations between
American reporters and the CIA? Al-
though U.S. officials confirm that
Nicholas Daniloff had no intelligence ties
whatsoever, his ordeal has churned up that
sensitive question-and the answer isn't
always simple. Clearly, there is no compar-
ingthe KGB's systematic use of journalists
as full-time spies and the CIA's occasional,
informal cultivation of newsmen. Moscow
is also the place where reporters are least
likely to knowingly contact CIA agents,
precisely because of the danger of getting
framed. Elsewhere, however, U.S. corre-
spondents have traded tips with intelli-
gencesources. While those exchanges have
become more guarded since the anti-CIA
backlash of the 1970s, America's "spooks"
and "hacks" still find ways to keep in touch
while staying at arm's length.
By the KGB's standards, the CIA's
courtship of journalists has never been
very ardent. Stanislav Levchenko, a for-
mer KGB officer who defected to the West
in 1979, estimates that at least half of
Soviet reporters are paid intel-
ligence agents. Philip Knight-
ley, aBritish writer who has
done extensive research on the
KGB-particularly on its noto-
rious "turning" of British offi-
cial Kim Philby-says all Sovi-
et newsmen are required to
pass on information. Often, the
size and perks of the Soviet
press corps are clues to their
real function. In Beirut in the
late 1960s the Tass bureau
rarely produced articles and
its correspondents almost nev-
er attended briefings or cov-
ered breaking news. But the
bureau had six staffers (com-
pared with three for United
Press Internationale and the
Tars bureau chief drove a new
Citroen DS 21.
'SrinlNtle -NttMetAl1': Whi le it
has never engaged in that kind
of exploitation, until a decade
ago the CIA did cut deals with
reporters. And at the time,
both parties were quite recep-
tive to those arrangements.
David Atlee Phillips, a former
CI agent w o worked under
journalistic cover in Chile,
says he knows of only a? few
other reporters who actually
joined the agency. "In 98 per-
cent of the cases," he says, "it was
a symbiotic relationship." Occasionally
older reporters, some of whom had served
in World War II or Korea, passed on tips
out of a sense of patriotic duty. Columnist
Joseph Alsop once captured that senti-
ment, saying he had helped the CIA from
time to time and was "proud to have done
it."Other reporters simply regarded intel-
ligence agents as more informed and reli-
able than other U.S. officials. Just before
the fall of Saigon, for instance, U.S. Em-
bassy officers were telling newsmen that
the North Vietnamese had no chance of
taking the city-while the spies were ad-
vising them to pack their bags and evacu-
ate their families.
For its part, the agency once found jour-
nalists useful for a variety of purposes. It
asked some to carry out "drops," just like
case officers. Mostly it traded for informa-
tion and access--sometimes with cash
sometimes with other information. As for
mer CIA Director William Colby puts it
"W hat we used them for was to get to place
and people others couldn't get access to,
without using the CIA Bag." The only thing
the agency didn't ask its journalistic con-
tacts to dowas report disinformation. "The
rule we had," says Colby, "was that you
didn't say anything about what they should
write to their home editors."
The rules began to change, h~STAT in
the mid-1970x. Ex-CIA agent Phinp ngee
published a book naming scores of intelli-
gence officers under embassy cover. Sud-
denly spies around the world stopped re-
turning reporters' phone calls. Congress
also began to pressure the CIA to clean up
its abuses. In 1976 the Senate intelligence
committee released a report disclosing that
the agency had covert relations with about
50 iournalists or employees of U.S. publica-
tions. Itdidn't name names. The New York
Times subsequently published a story iden-
tifyingseveral reporters and the organiza-
tions they worked for.
'Uh st ~' eisp~tlMe Later that year
George Bush, then head of the CIA, issued a
regulation barring any direct ties between
the agency and American news organiza-
tions. When Adm. Stansfield Turner re-
placed Bush in 1977, he distributed a one?
page memo restating that position and
adding one caveat empowering the director
to make exceptions in what he considered
"life or death" situations. Today, Langley
officials refuse to discuss the ties-with-jour-
nalists issue. But privately sources confirm
CIA Director William Casey STAT~f
firmed the Turner orders.
Since the crackdown both U.S. spies and
journalists have become more cautious
about their dealings. Newswesx's Jerusa-
lem bureau chief Milan J. Kubic reports
that when he first arrived in Israel, he
called the CIA station chief in Tel Aviv,
whose name he had gotten from another
journalist. The officer nervously denied
any agency connection and hung up. Israeli
intelligence sources also insist that for
the last 10 years they haven't discovered
any links between U.S. correspondents in
Israel and the CIA. When London bureau
chief Tony Clifton visits Washington, some
CIA sources he knows from the Third
World refuse. to see him. If they hadn't
already, many reporters have also adopted
Clifton's rule for dealing with CIA officers:
STAT,T
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 Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/18 :CIA-RDP91-005878000100070001-5
tell them only what you were already plan-
ning to print.
American correspondents in Moscow
have become particularly circumspect. As
recently as five years .ago a group of re-
porters in the Soviet capital regularly
played touch football against U.S. Embas-
sy staffers, a game both sides jokingly
referred to as "spiers vs. liars." Because of
the risk of getting branded as CIA agents,
the joke is now wearing thin. The journal-
ists assume-as do their counterparts the
world over-that some embassy officials
are CIA officers and that some of their
discussions with the embassy will be re-
ported to Langley. But most correspond-
ents avoid trying to figure out who the
intelligence agents are. The embassy en-
courages this see-no-evil relationship, re-
fusing to say anything about espionage
cases. At a briefing last week in Moscow,
an official even declined to talk about the
CIA rule against ties with reporters. "We
just don't comment on intelligence mat-
ters," the official said.
Br/IM ofHws: Because the Soviets are
perfectly capable of planting evidence to
make Americans look like spies, Moscow
correspondents are also on constant alert
against setups. They assume that their of-
fices, homes and cars are bugged. They
carefully screen unfamiliar Soviets who
ask for meetings to complain about lost
apartments, denied visas or relatives sent
to the gulag. Since Daniloff's arrest, Mos-
cow reporters have become even more vigi-
lant.Some are agreeing to meet fewer Sovi-
et strangers. Others see them only in their
offices. Even with longtime acquaintances
they are on guard. As Anna Christenson of
UPI puts it, the Daniloff affair "adds a
horrible edge of suspicion to a meeting.
You're always thinking, 'Maybe the KGB
got to them'."
To avoid more Daniloff cases, some
U.S. reporters want Washington to press
Moscow for stronger guarantees of press
freedom. One possibility would be a
strengthening of the 1975 Helsinki ac-
cords,which assure reporters of the right to
travel between East and West and to work
freely. "I can see the necessity," says The
Washington Post's Gary Lee, "of the Sovi-
etsand the Americans having very specific
rules on how to work [as a correspondent]."
But Moscow reporters are'also determined
not to let Daniloff's framing intimidate
them. As one of them puts it, "If we did that,
we would all be writing about the 'Red
October Potato Farm' and its new harvest-
er."American correspondents aren't about
to start reporting disinformation instead of
news-and that is what will always set
them apart from the journalistic apparat-
chiks of the KGB.
MARK WHITAKER lrtlh RICH ARD SAN D2A
~n WashlR~fnn. STEVEN STRASSERIrI.NOSCO1l'.
Tnvv CLIFT01 i~~Lnndonand MILAN J. KcRic
to Jerusalem
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/18 :CIA-RDP91-005878000100070001-5