DON'T LET A DEAL SMEAR U.S. JOURNALISM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605650002-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 1, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: September 10, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605650002-1
R ?A'PEA*O
N -6--l M...0
NEW YORK POST
10 September 1986
nAMtI& !wi . j . ~1 ---- - -- - ^ ^ w ? .l
By;CARL T. ROWAN(
A DEAL involving accused many nations
Soviet spy Gennady Zak- In early 1980 President
bl h 1 .
h is b
t
arov pro y
a
eon y
way to get American re-
porter Nicholas Daniloff
out of that Moscow prison.
But there are worrisome
aspects to, such a deal. and
they- ought to re-alert
American journalistic in-
stitutions to the need to re-
main absolutely aloof from
the nation's spy networks.
Even if Daniloff, a U.S.
News & World Report cor-
respondent, is allowed to
come home, while Zakha-
rov is eventually brought
to trial, the "deal- will
keep alive in a lot of totali-
tarian countries the notion
that many American jour-
nalists are spies.
Leaders of a police-state
mentality will say, "Danil-
off. must have been guilty
of something," even
though everything we
know indicates that he is a
victim of one of those
"setups" for which the
Soviet KGB is notorious.
Any _"deal" that feeds the
idea that ourna sts
are tools of the CIA or
other intelli ence a encies
is dangerous even to the
point of being a death war-
rant for newsmen whose
aggressiveness Americans
depend on to give them
some measure of truth
about what is going on in
the Soviet Unio China.
South Africa, Chile and
Jimmy Carter and his di-
rector of central intelli-
gence. Stansfield Turner,
erred grievously in their
insistence that the CIA
should occasionally turn
journalists into spies.
Turner had sold Carter
the spurious argument -
that iournalists are "citi-
zens first." and that if "na-
tional security" regimes
them to SK, then they
must 00 their. duty everyone else.
Unfortunately, a few pub-
lishers and editors swal-
low this be-a-patriot
hokum. So we have had
just enou h newsmen dou- not government agents, as
b ng as spies to lend some are so many of the so-
credence even to trumped- called Soviet reporters
up KGB charges. _ posted around the world.
The world's freest press N the Soviets may not
cannot remain free, at believe us, but it won't hurt
home or abroad, if we fall for U.S. editors and publish-
into the trap of cloak-and- erg to say loudly, over and
dagger patriotism. That is over, that their newsmen
because free, energetic, are forbidden to engage
in
probing newsmen are not thm ce activities, and
welcome anywhere - no, that anyone found doing so
not even by the leaders of' will be drummed out of
this democracy. American Journalism.
That is because good That surely would impress
journalists, by definition, some world leaders. And it
dig up and print or broad- would leave American news-
cast things that rulers and men reasonably free to
bureaucrats prefer not to . gather and write the infor-
have revealed. mation we must have if we
. I know that we will never are to make the right deci-
convince the Kremlin that sions on matters crucial to
American newsmen are our survival as a democracy.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605650002-1