THE JOURNAL'S KWITNY NEVER QUITS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00845R000100120005-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: November 1, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/12/23: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100120005-9
AIM REPORT
(ACCURACY IN MEDIA,
NOVEMBER 1982
THE JOURNAL'S KWITNY NEB
Jonathan Kwitny. one of the Wall Street journal's star
reporters, is familiar to regular readers of the AIM
Report. In 1981, we pointed out that a major story he had
written about the State Department White Paper on El
Salvador was based largely on an analysis written by
CIA defector Philip Agee. The Agee critique of the State
Department's charge that communist-bloc countries
were supplying arms to the guerrillas in El Salvador had
been released in Washington by the editors of the Covert
Action Information Bulletin. This publication is devoted
to .Agee's project of exposing the identities of CIA
agents, and Agee is on its advisory board.
Kwitny obtained a copy of the Agee article on the White'
Paper from these editors. He studied it and produced a
front-page story for the Wall Street journal which
contained 13 criticisms of the White Paper. Every one of
them had been made first by Agee. It is no wonder that
Agee himself told the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
that K-.v'itny's story was based on his analysis, even
though Kwitny did not acknowledge his debt to Agee.
Frederick Taylor, executive editor of The Journal, was
sufficiently stung by the letters of criticism of Agee that
he received from AIM members and others that he
published a 1400-word defense of Kwitny. He only
made matters worse. since he pointed out that another of
Kwitnv's sources had been John Kelly, editor of.the
notorious magazine CounterSpy. CounterSpy is like
Covert Action )n f ormction Bulletin, only worse.
Kwitny Cuddles Up To Castro
Despite our devastating expose of Kwitny and his
reliance on extremist sources, The Wall Street journal
next dispatched him to Cuba to do a story for its readers
on how Castro was getting along. The result was a story
published on November 16, 1981, which no doubt
pleased Castro immensely, but which brought forth
stinging rebukes from readers familiar with the facts
about Cuba and even from one of the Journal's editorials.
The AIM Report for January-I 1982 covered Kwitny's
pro-Castro story in depth, but here is a reminder of how
far he was willing to go in his efforts to make Castro's
communist catastrophe look good. He wrote: The
average Cuban lives very well these days by Third
World standards. He also suffers political repression,
but accepts it as a price for his economic gains. He
strongly supports his government's foreign and
domestic policies." Later he argued that Cubans believe
"that real restrictions on their lives are less now than
under previous right-wing dictatorships." These
statements are obviously contradicted by the behavior
of the Cuban people. Over one million Cubans have fled
their homeland to escape what Kwitny would have us
believe is an improvement in their economic condition
and their freedom.
Kwitny Goes Down Under
On August 24, 25.and 26, 1982, Kwitny again appeared
on the front page of The journal with three long articles
about a small merchant bank in Australia that had gone
bankrupt two years earlier. Bank failures are not such a
rarity these days that one in Australia merits front-page
treatment in this country. And though Australia is a
long way off, it should not take over two years for news
of any event of importance to reach New York City.
Why was The Wall StreetJournal giving such play to a
two-year-old story about the failure of an obscure
Australian bank? It was not as if the bank's collapse had
threatened the solvency of any American financial
institutions. Nugan Hand. Ltd. was a merchant banking
enterprise embracing some 40 related corporations
scattered around the globe. It has been described as "a
tv,wo-bit merchant banking firm."
Jonathan Kwitny's interest in Nugan Hand was
political, not financial. The Australian Communist
Party newspaper. The Tribune. had floated charges that
the bank was involved with the CIA and had been the
channel for CIA funds into Australia. The allegations
covered drug dealing, arms running and funding
opposition to Prime Minister Gough Whitlam back in
1975. These charges, which remain unsubstantiated
allegations to this day, were picked up by the
sensationalist press in Australia and they found their
way into CounterSpy in this country. As Frederick
Taylor, executive editor of The journal admitted in
print, CounterSpy is a source that Jonathan Kwitny has
relied upon in the past. It seems likely that this is what
whetted his interest in Nugan Hand.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/12/23: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100120005-9