ANTI-CIA PUBLICATION TARGETED EL SALVADOR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00845R000100120018-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 15, 2010
• Sequence Number: 18
• Publication Date: January 17, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/15: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100120018-5
ACCURACY IN MEDIA
EDITOR & PUDLISH_-R
17 January 1981
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By Reed Irvine the Marxist Allende regime in Chile.
Arnold also noted that the CIA-AIFLD
connection was raised on the Public Tele-
WASHINGTON-Accuracy in Media vision series, "On Company Business."
has learned that a publication called The star of the series was none other
CounterSpy attacked the-American Insti- than Phillip Agee. In another publication,
tute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) Arnold recently expressed his concern ab-
as a_CiA front shortly before the two out the AIFLD program in Nicaragua,
Americans and peasant leader associated ' -
with the institute were assassinated in EI. sayng that it was "small but a potential
That
Salvador.Theevidence suggests that Mark article app the Marxist M in the tSandinistas. World, the
Pearlman, Michael Hammer, and Rodolfo Daily
of the Communist Party USSA.
Viers had been targeted. by members of newspaper appeared
the Marxist left, who want to destroy the The other Counterspy article called on
CIA and anybody they think is associated. .the AFL-CIO to end its involvement with
with and
the-AIFLD. The article included personal
,`attacks on Viera and Hammer and it
CounterSpy Attacked Hammer 'praised the Revolutionary Democratic
In the wake of those assassinations, ele-
ments of the media have resurrected
charges that the AIFLD, a project of the
AFL-CIO, which ishelping run the land
reform in El Salvador, was linked to the
CIA. A reporter for National Public Radio
(NPR) threw that charge in the face of
AIFLD executive director William Doher-
ty in a recent interview. NPR reported his
denial but censored his description of
Phillip Agee, a source of the charge, as a
soviet KGB agent. The real possibility that
associates of Agee, who published Coun-
terspy, had a role in the assassinations has
been totally ignored by the Big Media.
Counterspy is the publication that re-
Front, the left-wing terrorist group in El
Salvador that murders peasants who
cooperate with the land reform program-
The author of the article, Richard Hobbs,
quoted from a report issued by the
Ecumenical Program for Inter-American
Communication and Action (EPICA),
which claimed that the peasant union
once headed by Viera and supported by
the AIFLD was somehow aligned with the
right-wing terrorist group ORDEN. Not
mentioned, of course, is the fact that the
director of EPICA, Rev. Phillip Wheaton,
served with Agee on the advisory board of
OC-5.
Mudslinging from the Left
vealed the identity of the CIA station chief - Hobbs also claimed that University of
in Greece, Richard Welch, before his :- Wisconsin Professor John Strasma, who in
assassination in 1975_ Phillip Agee, the 1977 investigated the financial affairs of
CIA defector who has collaborated. with = the peasant union, found that Viera had
communist intelligence agents in their. _"pocketed" some of the money for the
efforts to destroy the agency, was a men- land reform and that Mike Hammer "did
her of the advisory board of the Organiz--; nothing about it." Hobbs went onto ques-
ing Committee for a Fifth Estate (OC-5), tion Viera's honesty and reliability and
which- published Counterspy,- in 1976... Hammer's association with him. Howev-
OC-5's subversive operations were the er, Professor Strasma told Accuracy in
subject of a congressional investigation = Media in an interview that he did not find
that same year. Hearings disclosed- that that Viera had "pocketed" any funds. He
one .of. OC-5's objectives- was to agitate-.. described Viera as a respected, charisma-
against organizations such as the AIFLD - tic leader'who was well-liked by the
that were combatting communist domina- peasants.
tion of labor-unions. One of. the slain . Shortly: before: CounterSpy's blast at
Americans, Michael: Hammer,. -slain Hammer-and Viera"; it published what it
strong anti-communist who believed that called a list of "CIA Cops in El Salvador,"
the land reform would.undercut the com which purportedly identified about 75
munist appeal" to the peasants. ` =- Salvadoran police officers who hadu . rider-
.
The- November . 1980-January ? 1981 gone "CIA-directed training" in the U.S.
issue of CounterSpy contained two arti- CounterSpy charged that the training was
ACC RAC IN MEDIA is a weekly
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