ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000301480004-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 8, 2010
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: November 14, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
DATE November 14, 1984 12:00 Noon caiV Atlanta, Ga.
SUBJECT Arnaud de Borchgrave
DON WALKER: Nicaragua and the news media, as we've seen
in the past few days, both the United States and Nicaragua
apparently using the news media to rally support, and even set a
sort of tone of policy.
LOIS HART: Intelligence analyst Arnaud de Borchgrave is
a former Newsweek foreign correspondent and is familiar with the
manipulation of the news media.
WALKER: His book The Spike fictionalized the Soviet
skulduggery of the Western press.
The U.S. and Soviet Union are spending millions of
dollars to promote their own special interests and influence
public opinion. If you can -- you know, we've been hearing about
comparisons of Nicaragua with Cuba by the United States, Nica-
ragua saying we're going to invade. Is this sort of a manipu-
lation of the news media going on here?
ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE: Well, Professor Robert S. Laken,
who is the Carnegie Endowment scholar who wrote the democratic
alternative, so-called, to the bipartisan Kissinger Report on
Central America last January, is also the man who wrote the
October 8th cover story for the New Republic, which was a total
repudiation of his previously held pro-Sandinista views, yet
another victim of Nicaraguan disinformation and Cuban disinform-
ation.
And Lincoln, incidentally, comes down very hard on the
U.S. press corps covering Nicaragua, saying that they've been
taken in, in effect co-opted by the Sandinistas. He said that he
had run into disaffected Sandinista intellectuals who poured
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their hearts out to him and said they were actually afraid to
talk to American reporters covering Nicaragua because they knew
that they sympathized with the Sandinistas.
LOIS HART: So you would say the Soviet Union is winning
this one, at least in the media?
DE BORCHGRAVE: Well, we have two other Democrats, both
scholars, Professor Richard Schultz and Roy Godson of the
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Georgetown, who wrote a
book called Dis-i-nfformasia, which is the Russian word for disin-
formation, the first scholarly work on the subject. It came out
five months ago in Washington. And if anything, they have
demonstrated how we, in The-Spike, understated the problem.
WALKER: At the same time, though, you know, we heard
those first accounts that the Soviets were shipping sophisticated
jet fighters, MiGs, to Nicaragua. Now we're told that, apparent-
ly, that is not the case.
Is this a case of the United States with a bit of
disinformation?
DE BORCHGRAVE: Well, they were crates that were
watched, as you know, in the Black Sea when they were being
loaded. These are crates,that have carried MiGs in the past.
There's a whole science at the CIA called cratology. They know
exactly how large these crates are, what they contain, from
previous experience. Shipping MiGs, for instance, to Ethiopia or
Mozambique or Angola. They've had a lot of experience in this
field. And what these crates contain, we still don't know. They
could easily be off-loaded in Peru, for instance, because Peru is
now going through a rather large buildup of Soviet military
hardware. Interestingly enough, the American media has paid no
attention to this. Peru today has 150 Soviet military advisers,
which is more than the United States has in all of South America,
excluding Central America.
WALKER: Let me ask you about the Soviet bomber flyovers
in Japan. Is this in any way linked to what is going on in
Nicaragua, with our spy plane flights flying over Nicaragua?
DE BORCHGRAVE: Well, it could be. I have no idea
what's going through their minds. But the Soviet Union, as you
know, is now faced with the growing phenomenon of anti-Communist
national liberation fronts, in Cambodia, in Afghanistan, in
Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nicaragua. This is a spreading
phenomenon, and they clearly are on the defensive. And what they
are trying to demonstrate, obviously, is that they are still a
global military power,.and there are a variety of ways of doing
this. But they are very much on the defensive.
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First of all, how are they on the defensive?
DE BORCHGRAVE: Well, they're on the defensive because
of the phenomenon that I just mentioned. You know, for 30 years
we have been going through pro-Marxist national liberation
fronts. You now have 250,000 men and women under arms in about
six different countries participating in anti-Communist guerrilla
movements.
HART: Mr. De Borchgrave, on the subject of the U.S.
trying to win over the Nicaraguans, it's been reported in the
press that there is some squabbling going on among the various
agencies and that the news media are being used to promote these
various points of view. This is nothing new. I guess this goes
on all the time.
strategy?
Do you know which agencies are lobbying for which
DE BORCHGRAVE: Well, clearly, the Administration would
like to see aid to the Contras resumed. If you read Dr. Laken's
October 8th cover story in the New Republic, he says the Contras
are not some sort of Mickey Mouse operation run by the CIA.
Quite the contrary. He says they are widely popular. They are
referred to locally, and admiringly, as Los Muchachos, The Boys;
and that the regime is widely despised. And Mr. Laken has made
six different trips to Nicaragua, and he went all over the
country. And he was astonished to discover how popular the
Contras were.
Now, as you know, the $21 million requested by the
Administration to fund the Contras for another year has been
turned down by the House, and the second Reagan Administration is
very anxious to see this aid restored.
HART: Getting back to the subject of using the news
media, the State Department says, Alan Romberg says that there
are all kinds of leaks going on. Is this the Administration at
work here with these leaks?
DE BORCHGRAVE: Well, I think that leaks have been going
on ever since government existed in Washington. I've been a
newspaper man for 38 years, and I think most of us made our
reputations through leaks. So that's nothing new.
WALKER: On the comparison of Nicaragua to Cuba, would
it be your conclusion that the United States press, anyway, news
media, is being misled, as it apparently was just before the
Cuban takeover by Fidel Castro?
DE BORCHGRAVE: Oh, absolutely. I've seen this happen
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over and over again because among younger colleagues there's this
romantic predisposition toward Marxist-led guerrilla movements in
the Third World. And Castro still enjoys a rather romantic image
in the Western media as the bearded revolutionary leader, still
in his combat fatigues after 25 years of revolution.
So, if you read Shirley Christian -- and she actually
won the Pulitzer Prize for her 1981 reporting in Latin America
for the Miami Herald -- she wrote a devastating indictment in the
Washington Journalism Review in March of '82 in which she
explained that the American press covering the Nicaraguan
revolution against the Somoza dictatorship deliberately played
down the Marxist aspects of that movement, all evidence to the
contrary notwithstanding.
HART: Okay. Arnaud de Borchgrave, thank you very much
for being with us today.
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