REPORTERS, SPIES HAVE CLOSE TIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403120001-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 21, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11
an wrs- is
Reporters,
spies have
close ties
Their `affinity'
breeds suspicion
By FRANK GREVE
Herold Woihington Bur w,
WASHINGTON - While no
evidence has been offered that
U.S. News & World Report corre-
spondent Nicholas Daniloff spied
for the CIA in Moscow, It is not
surprising that Soviet officialp
espionage.
Indeed, reporters and ' CI?'
agents historically have been *O
chummy that Joseph Fromm, then
chief foreign editor for U.S. News,
told a congressional committee in
1977 that "a foreign government
could be forgiven for assuming
that there is some kind of informal
link."
Fromm's testimony came amid a
series of embarrassing disclosures
about the CIA's use of reporters as
informants, conduits of disinfor-
mation, spies - and even spy
masters. The disclosures produced
reforms and a climate of mutual
suspicion that shattered what
Washington Post reporter Ward
Just calls "the natural affinity
between journalists and spies."
And yet, while reporters and
CIA operatives are separated to-
day by CIA regulations, they are
not divorced. Though agency rules
bar the actual hiring of accredited
American journalists for. covert
missions. Informal information-
trading - what former CIA
Director William Colby terms
"mutual back-scratching' - still
is encouraged.
"We'd be stupid to cut that off,"
Kathy Pherson. the CIA's media
director, said last week. "Journal-
ists have the same rights as any
other American citizen."
In addition. CIA Director Wil-
liam Casey can declare exceptions
to the reporter-hiring bait in "an
emergency involving human lives
or critical national interests." For-
mer Director Stansfleld Turner
authorized three such. exceptions
- one involving Iran - between
1977 and 1980.
MIAMI HERALD
21 September 1986
Editors'naive'
Turner told a convention of
newspaper editors in 1980 that
they were "naive" to think any
formal regulation could end alli-
ances between reporters and the
CIA. "I think a lot of correspon-
dents are patriotic enough' to
serve the CIA - perhaps without
even informing their superiors,
said Turner, adding he "would not
hesitate" to approach them.
Many analysts believe Turner's
remarks were intended to improve
the cover available to CIA agents
by forcing foreign counterintelli-
gence agencies to include report-
ers as suspects.
Soviet officials hardly needed
the encouragement. In the past 30
years, they have expelled 28 U.S.
correspondents who, in that closed
and suspicious society, must adopt
the nosy and secretive habits of
spies to do their jobs.
Last week, Daniloff said he may
have triggered Soviet suspicions
when he "worked energetically
and probed deeply" to report on
such subjects as Soviet military
units in Afghanistan, nuclear
waste dumps and the shooting
down of Korean Airlines Flight
007.
Such topics involved "secret
information," according to Foreign
Ministry spokesman Genitadi Ger-
asimov.
Daniloff denied "any connection
with any government agency" and
Soviet allegations that he "acted
on instructions" from two former
U.S. Embassy diplomats identified
by Soviet officials as CIA spies.
But he did not address the question
of whether the two men had been
sources or acquaintances.
"It's a fair supposition that, in a
community like Moscow, he might
have made their acquaintance,"
ventured U.S. News senior'editor
James C. Kilpatrick. "Other for-
mer Moscow correspondents have
told me they knew nearly every-
one in the U.S. Embassy."
No special relationship
He added that the magazine's
policy is "that our correspondents
should have no special relationship
of any kind with any intelligence
agency. It's a no-no." Kilpatrick
acknowledged that the policy does
not rule out CIA personnel as
sources: "The operant word is
special."
Intelligence sources say, howev-
er, that Moscow long has been
considered too risky for "deep
cover" CIA operations, including
those that might involve a report-
er. Significantly, although exposes
during the late 1970s named
dozens of reporters and news
organizations that. had cooperated
with the CIA for pay or patrio-
tism, no Moscow-based American
correspondent ever has been
linked publicly to the agency.
Much. of what is known about
reporter-spy relations comes from
an extraordinary series of House
and Senate Intelligence Committee
hearings held In 1977, plus the
CIA's published regulations and a
Freedom of Information Act law-
suit settled in 1982.
Together these sources establish
that, through the mid-'70s, hun-
dreds of American reporters
worked hand-in-glove with the
CIA. and dozens were employed
by the agency.
A few, like the late columnist
Joseph Alsop, admitted volunteer-
ing their services: "I've done
things for them when I thought
they were the right thing to do,"
Alsop said In 1977. "I call it doing
my duty as a citizen." Others, like
New York Times columnist C.L.
Sulzberger, acknowledged helpful-
ness on a "totally informal" basis.
ABC correspondent Sam Jaffe
said he had helped the agency -
but denied reports that he had
been paid to do so. CBS boss
William Paley recalled meeting
with top CIA officials to discuss
opening a CBS News bureau
abroad as a cover for an agency
operative - but said he could not
recall whether the network had
done so.
Scores of reporters acknowl.
edge that they were debriefed by
the CIA after visits to Communist
countries.
*'STAT
41- 1
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403120001-4 e.
Didn't name names
In 1982, the CIA described how
it had used reporters, without
naming names. The disclosure, in
an affidavit. was part of the
settlement of a Freedom of Infor-
mation suit by Judith Miller, a
former Progressive magazine re-
porter now working for The New
York Times, that sought details of
the agency's relationship with
journalists.
"Some, perhaps a plurality,
were simply sources of foreign
intelligence; others provided cover
or served as a funding mecha-
nism" for agency activities, the
affidavit said.
"Some provided nonattributable
material for use by the CIA.
collaborated in or worked on
CIA-produced materials or were
used for the placement of CIA-pre-
pared material in the foreign,
media." It continued.
"Others assisted in nonmedla
activities by spotting, assessing or
recruiting potential sources or by
handling other agents, and still
others assisted by providing access
to individuals of Intelligence inter-
est or by generating local support
for U.S. policies anoactivities."
It concluded: "Finally, with
respect to some of these individu-
als, the CIA simply provided
informational assistance or re-
quested assistance in suppressing a
media item such as a news story."
The term "handling other
agents" means directing and sup-
porting spies, debriefing them.
writing reports based on their
findings and paying the agents,
according to a guide published by
the McLean, Va.-based Association
of Former Intelligence Officers.
Besides using reporters, the CIA
sometimes dispatched Its own
employees on intelligence missions
abroad "who *served as real or
pretended journalists." according
to testimony by Colby. the former
CIA director. before the House
Intelligence Committee in Decem-
ber 1977.
In a few cases, he said, Ameri-
can reporters were told by the CIA
what to report in their dispatches.
Colby said photographers, driv-
ers and other unaccredited person-
nel working for American news
bureaus abroad - includigg some
free-lance writers - were still
considered fair game for agency
employment (though more recent
regulations require the prior con-
sent of the news organization's top
management).
Recruiting foreigners
Colby also successfully opposed
restrictions on recruitment of for.
eign reporters or exploiting for.
eign news media. "I believe that
we should not disarm ourselves in
this contest in the hopes that the
rest of the world will be gentler."
he said.
These days, reporters and CIA
officials recoil when asked to
discuss journalist-spy ties. In Mos-
cow, for example, U.S. briefers
won't even talk about the CIA rule
against hiring reporters. saying,
"We just don't comment on intelli.
gence matters."
Clearly, however. contacts still
are frequent between CIA nerenn.
nel and American journalists
abroad. "I consider, and most
foreign correspondents consider,
intelligence people good sources of
information," Fromm. now a con-
tributing editor to U.S. News, said
Friday.
it"I was just in Japan and Korea,
and a New York Times correspon-
dent was with me. He asked me
who the CIA station chief in Seoul
was. figuring he was probably the
best source of information. There's
nothing illegitimate about it,"
Fromm added, even though, in
Soviet eyes, such contact might
make the reporter seem to be "an
unpaid spy.'
The somewhat different point of
view of a CIA station chief was
argued in an affidavit contained in
the Miller lawsuit.
The unnamed chief said an agent
would approach a correspondent
"because he's the guy who knows
where all the skeletons are, what's
the real story on so-and-so. They
make an appointment. They talk.
The agency man has information
to make him look good. If those
meetings don't prove fruitful to
the agency man, they will end. So
it behooves the journalist to make
them useful."
Fromm himself acknowledged
the point in his December 1977
testimony before the House Intelli-
gence Committee. "Obviously, the
CIA's Interest is to get information
from a correspondent beyond that
which he. would report or have
reported, because otherwise they
could get it." he said.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403120001-4