MISLEADING AMERICANS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580041-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 41
• Publication Date: September 11, 1988
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580041-6
Misleading
Americans
By Robert Perry and Peter Kornbluh
WASHINGTON
I f George Bush has his way, the
Iran-Contra affair will be the forgot-
ten issue of the fall campaign. The
vice president's men feel Bush has
artfully dodged questions about his
role while relying on press and public
boredom to bury the issue once and for all.
But now a troubling new question rises:
What did Bush know about a covert
White House propaganda bureaucracy
that sought to manipulate the American
public, Congress and the news media in
support of Contra military aid?
The question could be difficult because
it recalls the darker side of the Central
Intelligence Agency, the outfit Bush once
headed. According to documents un-
earthed by the congressional Iran-Contra
committee, the domestic campaign, di-
rected out of the National Security Coun-
cil, was crafted by a senior CIA propagan-
da veteran and was staffed, in part, by
U.S. Army psychological warfare special-
ists. Ultimately, it came to resemble the
sort of covert political operation the CIA is
allowed to run against hostile forces
overseas but is forbidden from conducting
at home.
Last year, as the Iran-Contra commit-
tee was writing its report, House investi-
gators drafted a chapter on the domestic
operation. It said that the propaganda
campaign had used "one of the CIA's most
senior specialists, sent to the NSC by Bill
Casey [the late CIA director William J.
Casey), to create and coordinate an inter-
agency public diplomacy mechanism.
(This network] did what a covert CIA
operation in a foreign country might
do-attempted to manipulate the media,
the Congress and public opinion to sup-
port Reagan Administration policies. The
problem with all this is-they tried to do it
in America, to their own people, to their
own Congress, to their own free press."
Inside the committee, the chapter's
dramatic conclusion was hotly opposed by
Republicans, who argued it was outside
the panel's investigative mandate, and by
some Democrats, who feared it would
jeopardize support for the report's chief
findings from moderate Senate Republi-
Date
cans. In the rush to complete its work, the
committee dropped the draft chapter,
which was only recently obtained by the
authors of this article.
Iran-Contra documents reflect three
connections between the propaganda ap-
paratus and the vice president:
- Bush's national security adviser,
Donald P. Gregg, another ex-CIA hand,
recommended CIA propaganda specialist.
Walter Raymond Jr. for the NSC staff in
1982, according to Raymond's deposition.
With Casey's guidance and blessing, Ray-
mond quickly assumed responsibility for
creating a "public diplomacy" apparatus
that employed overt and covert means to
push for Contra aid.
- Bush, as a member of the NSC, would
have had direct oversight of the public
diplomacy ntpchinery and, secori ag to
one document, favored its creation. In a
1986 memo to Casey, Raymond said the
public diplomacy operation "reports di-
rectly to the NSC." Even budget and
personnel questions were cleared through
the NSC, according to Iran-Contra docu-
ments. After discussions at senior White
House levels, President Reagan autho-
rized creation of the public diplomacy
bureaucracy in National Security Deci-
sion Directive 77, signed in January, 1983.
- A private arm of the propaganda
apparatus planned to support Bush's 1988
presidential bid. In early 1986, Richard R.
Miller and Carl R. (Spits) Channell, who
worked closely with Lt. Col. Oliver L.
North, developed a pro-Bush program
called "Future of Freedom Forums." One
internal memo at Channell's National
Endowment for the Preservation of Lib-
erty said, "The vice president needs a
vehicle which he can utilize to reach the
high-dollar donors in the conservative
ranks." It continued, "These donors per-
ceive him as a liberal Republican unsure
of himself and without determination to
lead in tough circumstances." . In a Jan.
16, 1986, letter, Bush praised Channell's
proposed forums as "of great interest to
me, as well as to the President. My
personal interest is such that I hope to be
able to participate." But the forums never
CONTINUED
The Washington Post
The New York Times
The Washington Times
The Wall Street Journal
The Christian Science Monitor
New York Daily News
USA Today
The Chicago Tribune
/ . pr. 5 I .
2-3.
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came off, apparently because of schedul-
ing problems
Although Administration public diplo-
macy participants defended their opera-
tion as a legitimate means of informing
the American people, some voiced unease,
in private, about its clandestine methods.
In an interview, a senior NSC official
acknowledged that the public diplomacy
apparatus was modeled after CIA covert
operations overseas: "They were trying to
manipulate public opinion . .. using the
tools of Walt Raymond's trade craft
which he learned from his career in the
CIA covert operation shop."
The suppressed Iran-Contra chapter
argues that the propaganda bureaucracy
behaved much like the secret Contra
resupply operation -working out of the
NSC to sidestep legal restrictions on the
CIA. President Reagan's Executive Order
12333 bars the CIA from activities "in-
tended to influence United States political
processes, public opinion . . . or media."
Iran-Contra documents show that the
public diplomacy campaign chief archi-
tects were Casey and Raymond. In his
deposition to congressional investigators,
Raymond defended his involvement, ar-
guing that he officially retired from the
CIA in April, 1983, so "there would be no
contamination of this." In Casey's case,
Raymond asserted that the director was
participating "not so much in his CIA hat,
but in his adviser to the President hat."
As the propaganda apparatus took
shape in August, 1983, Casey summoned
advertising specialists to the Old Execu-
tive Office Building to brainstorm selling
a "new product-Central America-by
generating interest across-the-spec-
trum," according to an NSC summary of
the meeting. Sensitive to the prohibitions
on executive-branch propaganda, Ray-
mond noted in one August, 1983, memo
that "the work done within the Admin-
istration has to, by definition, be at arms
length." Raymond added that he hoped to
keep Casey out of the loop.
Yet the documents show that Casey
remained active through November, 1986,
when the scandal broke. In a Sept. 13,
1986, message to North, then-National
Security Adviser John M. Poindexter said
Casey was pushing for a full-time White
House specialist on Central America pub-
licity: "I think what he really has in mind
is a political operative that can twist arms
and also run a high-powered public affairs
campaign."
Working closely with Raymond. the
Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin
America and the Caribbean (S; LPD)
became the most visible arm of the
propaganda machinery. Created in July,
1983, S/LPD was housed at the State
Department, but its director, Otto Reich,
noted in one memo that the office "re-
spond[s] to NSC direction." He explained
that it was created because "the Presi-
dent, the vice president and others were,
to say the least, very upset with the
inability of the executive branch to pub
licly communicate with the American
people" on what the United States was
doing in Central America.
S/LPD generated one-sided publica-
tions on Nicaragua and El Salvador and
pressured the news media to accept
Reagan's stand on Central America.
S/LPD employed Army psychological
warfare specialists, such as Reich's exec-
utive assistant, Lt. Col. Daniel (Jake)
Jacobowitz, and five Army experts from
the 4th Psychological Operations Group at
Fort Bragg, N.C., who were assigned to
find "exploitable themes and trendy."
In a legal opinion dated Sept. 30, 1987,
the General Accounting Office, the con-
gressional watchdog agency, sharply crit-
icized the public-diplomacy office for
sponsoring articles that were printed in
leading newspapers under the names of
presumably independent scholars. The
GAO opinion said the articles amounted to
"prohibited covert propaganda activities
designed to influence the media and the
public to support the Administration's
Latin American policies."
The propaganda campaign also relied
heavily on private-sector intermediaries
to carry out activities that would other-
wise violate laws against executive
branch lobbying. According to the deleted
Iran-Contra chapter, the propaganda bu-
reaucracy "hired outside consultants,
gave encouragement, support and direc-
tion to groups of private citizens outside
the government who were undertaking
efforts to raise money for Contra weap-
ons, lobby the Congress and manipulate
American public opinion and the media."
S/LPD was an important contact point
for these efforts, directly employing a
number of consultants who received no-
z-X
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bid contracts for lobbying and
public relations in behalf of the
Contras. Richard Miller's Interna-
tional Business Communications
(IBC) received more than $440,000
in S/LPD contracts between 1984
and 1986, including a secret-classi-
fied $276,000 for such duties as
monitoring media coverage of Cen-
tral America.
IBC officials worked with North
and Channell in placing pro-Contra
advertisements in the districts of
swing congressmen and hiring pro-
Contra lobbyists. To raise money
for these efforts, Reagan met per-
sonally with wealthy contributors
who had given more than $300,000
and the President was enthusiastic
about the efforts. The minutes of a
May, 1986, National Security Plan-
ning Group meeting record Reagan
asking whether the private groups
could do more.
What the propaganda apparatus
did do was reshape the public
debate on Nicaragua and pave the
way for resumption of Contra aid in
August, 1986.
"It is clear we would not have
won the House vote," Raymond
exulted in an Aug. 7 memo to
Casey, "without the painstaking
deliberative effort undertaken by
many people in the government
and outside."
The question for the vice presi-
dent is whether he agrees that this
was a legitimate use of government
power. p
Robert Parry is a national correspondent
for Newsweek. Peter Kornbluh is an
information analyst at the National Securi-
ty Archive. This report adds new docu-
mentation to the authors' article for the fall
issue of Foreign Policy; the views do not
necessarily reflect those of the National
Security Archive.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580041-6