CORRESPONDENT SAM JAFFE AND THE WEB OF UNCERTAINTY THAT ENTANGLED HIM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403120003-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: February 17, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
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Q!! r;;^ 2 L r BALTIMORE SUN
17 February 1985
Correspondent Sam
_. _ __. ?_ Jaffe and the web
of uncertainty. entangled him
than
tl~ Washington
hey left Sam Jaffe's ashes this week
JL ? ? among the heroes at Arlington Nation
al Cemetery. I am not sure whether it
Was final vindication, or ultimate irony.
Sam was an ABC News correspondent in
-many places, including Moscow in the early
-Sixties. Somehow he got entangled in a web
of gossip and innuendo that linked him at
:Jane time with the FBI, and then with the
t 1{GB. He spent the last years of his life
'-trying to free himself from that web.
In 1983,..as his cancer spread, he won a
Y -federal court Ailing that cleared him of alle-
t,gations that,he had spied for the Soviet
..Union. Before that, the Q& had written him
:a letter admitting that flie-agency's own in-
'-vestigation proved he was a loyal American. eminent.. Assigned to Vietnam, he won'an ties dragons ". few of us ever encounter. His
2"~ Thus be died with his public record clear. O"erseas Press Club award for his covers e. son said "I can tell you personally my father
-But an infinity of questions has never been - But like the rest of his work, his perform- was no spy, because he couldn't, keep a se-
~,answered - about him and his accusers, ance in Vietnam stirred controversy. Some cret more than 15 or 20 minutes."
whoever they were. of his ex-Colleagues spoke at his. funeral andTed Koppel, an. ABC colleague, said
^ praised him. Some who did not attend are
"there was' no ambiguity about the essence
In a shceboz of yellowing snapshots from i-; = ----- -- --- =_ of this man.... There aren't many of us who
the early Sixties, I have some taken on the /much less/generous. They call him "flake" have had our loyalty' certified. by the
Black Sea beach at Mamaia, Rumania, when and worse. They say his work was unsatis- and our patriotism by a federal judge.".
a flock of us Moscow correspondents were factory; and. that is why he was fired. Sam What a waste it was that Sam had to
following Nikita Khrushchev on one of his assert
spend his last years defendi
d th
hi
t h
e
ng
a
s name, he
e was let go because of CIA
:.trips to what were then called satellite coon- pressure after a Soviet defector falsely i ea"-n--' went on - and what a shame that so many
r'tnes. - tified him as a one-time agent. of his erstwhile friends,did not speak out on
T6e..e .. C.? ...L..J ~_a _,
'
' , ?r? ? ^ ?~~ " ? .,,, W. W W u, carter that he worked here and there, but
-_ mustached, red-faced, his body white never held. a big-league journalistic job
:.against` the sand - chain-smoking and again. He'devoted most of his time to free-
-laughing, as he often did. Later on that trip, dom=of-information suits and court efforts
as at every diplomatic reception in Moscow to clear his name.
Sam would push through the knot of corre- In 1976,.he told a congressional commit-
spondents who edged toward Mr. Khrush- tee that while he was with CBS he had r e
chev. "Nikita Sergeyevich!" he would shout,- U athe e FBImo Soa et delegates at the
as if he and the Soviet premier were bosotaking any money from the
pals. - I FBI, and said he never worked for the CIA
The assumption among us then was th
at
Sam's ambition was to get an exclusive in-
t
sam maintained that his career was shat ! llu~g~e One recalled that "he witnessed
tared by allegations that he was an under-'
cover intelligence agent many of mankind's woes, and was beset by
^ more than a few of them himself." As a re-
He started work with the old Internation- porter, he said, Sam "regarded gunfire.as a
a] News Service, then was a marine combat minor Impediment to getting the facts."
correspondent in Korea. From 1955 to 1961, , They remembered his outgoing style, his
he covered the United Nations for CBS. That cavorting Ina native dance at Moscow's Uz-
network sent him to Moscow to cover the ty an restaurant, his historic ere. lor,'s,.
trial of U-2 Pilot Francis Gary Powers in party at the Aragvi restaurant there. One'
1960, and he was booked into the same hotel said that at times, his journalistic eagerness
as Mrs Powers, which gave him entree otii- made him his own worst P''nemy. His son said
er reporters did not have
that "if he couldn't get in the f
t di
h
'd
.
ron
or,
e
The following year, be went to Moscow go in the back" - ' . i ; .'
for ABC, and stayed till 1965. He was thrown And 'either fitly orwbliquely,' every
out by the Russians after ABC broadcast a speaker referred to the web that had en-
en-
or any foreign agency. But it was much
harder to get the government to say so.
He demanded to know the specifics of
caused him to act that way. Some called it I whatever the government had against him.
gauche. But when Mr. Khrushchev finally \ None of those specifics ever came nut But
the
s a
did
hi
vacs
??
gave
mong the Ilrst to ???? ,
m the letter
break the-story. ~ saying it had no case against him.
He and I were not close: The little band of t And then U.S. District Judge Barrington
Western reporters in Moscow worked in two ~_ D. Parker issued "an opinion saying the FBI
competing combines, and I was in the other had no grounds to question his patriotism,
~' ~? s4,~ :. ....- - _ that all the derogatory material against him
one"': Competitive resentment of Sam's occa-? in the files, either came from discredited
sional success and his unctuous manner to.. sources or was gossip or innuendo.
ward Soviet officials may have inspired That is. where it stood when he died of
f 41k
1 l
un
t k
even then
about his being suspiciously close to the Rus-
sians. _
I saw him later, in Hong Kong, Vietnam at the For Myer chapel, across the river in
and Washington But I did
not realize that
something more serious lay behind that gos-
sip until I read that Sam himself had gone
public in his fight against it.
A series of his friends .delivered eulogies
his behalf. Sam
s family can be proud now,
he said - but "I'm not so sure about the
rest
,
of us."
Neither am -I: It was hard' to be. sure of
anything about Sam.-
CHIEF OF THE SUN'S WAsRMTON a EAU
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a
g ~n s wee
some o e talk that went around
erview with Mr. Khrushchev, and that
 STAT
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el~`lF 1rRr f,l ~~
~'~ AR~D WASHINGTON POST
CIA PI.-:1 9 February 1985
OBITUARIES
Sam Jaffe, 55, Former
broadcast Journalist
By J.Y. Smith
W. sh ni ton Post Stiff Writer
Sam Jaffe, 55, a former Moscow
and Hong Kong bureau chief ford
ABC News who won,a court ruling',
last year clearing him of allegations
that he had spied for the Soviet
Union, died of cancer Feb. 8 at his
home in Bethesda.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Mr.
Jaffe had a brilliant run as a news-
paper and broadcast journalist. His
assignments took him from New
York to Siberia to the jungles of
Southeast Asia and they gained him
a standing enjoyed by few in his
profession.
As it turned out, those promising
times were an incongruous prelude
to the shadows that followed him
afterwards. For most of the past 15
years Mr. Jaffe had engaged in a
tenacious and ultimately successful
effort to clear his name of insub-
stantial but persistent suggestions
by the FBI an the CIA that he was
a foreign agent. a origin o these
claims-many of which are still
classified "secret"-has never been
entirely explained.
"The last nine years have been
incredible," Mr. Jaffe said in an in-
terview with The Washington Post
in 1979. "If it weren't for a few
friends, I would be broken .... I
say I am not a Russian spy. The FBI
says, 'Yeah, you are.' Well, I want
them to prove it. I want it all out in
the open. I want my family cleared.
If I should drop dead, I don't want
them living with this stigma. The
CIA has cleared me. Now I want the
tM_ to &o t ie same.
Earlier, Mr. Jaffe's relations with
the FBI had been cordial. In 1976
he disclosed that for several years
beginning in the 1950s he had re-
ported to the agency on his Russian
contacts.
Mr. Jaffe never was formally
charged with espionage. But he
contended that U.S. intelligence
agencies had conspired to deprive
him of his livelihood on the ground
that he was a security risk. With the
help of the American Civil Liberties
Union, he sought relief in the courts
under the Freedom of Information
Act.
Last year,"U.S. District Judge
Barrington D. Parker issued an
opinion saying that the FBI had no
grounds for questioning Mr. Jaffe's
patriotism. In the late 1970s, t e
CIA said in a letter to Mr. Jaffe that
its own investigation had shown him
to be a loyal citizen.
-The years of dull effort that it
took to reach this result were in
stark contrast to Mr. Jaffe's earlier
career. A man who was as cheerful
and disarming as he was resourceful
and aggressive, he had a.happy tal-
ent for being in the right place at
the right time.
In 1955, as a freelancer, he cov-
ered a conference of Third World
countries at Bandung, Indonesia,
and interviewed the late Premier
Chou En-lai of China. As a corre-
spondent for CBS from 1955 to
1961, he covered the United Na-
tions and Soviet Premier Nikita S.
Khrushchev's visit to this country in
1959.
In 1960, he went to Moscow for
CBS to cover the trial of Francis
Gary Powers, the pilot of the U-2
spy plane that was shot down over
the Soviet Union in May of that
year.-The incident led to the can-
cellation of a summit meeting be-
tween Khrushchev and President
Dwight D. Eisenhower and was one
of the most publicized incidents of
the Cold War,
Mr. Jaffe was the only western
newsman covering the trial who
was permitted by Soviet authorities
to sit on the same level of the court-
room as Powers. .He also was quar-
tered in the same hotel as Powers'
wife, who went to Moscow for the
proceedings. In the Moscow con-
text, these circumstances gave Mr.
Jaffe a slight but nonetheless impor-
tant advantage over his competi-
tors.
In 1961, Mr. Jaffe joined ABC
and went to Moscow to open its
first bureau there. He covered the
Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the
signing of the atmospheric nuclear
test ban treaty, and the thaw in the
Cold 'War. He was among the
first-some said he was the very
first-to report the ouster of
Khrushchev from politics on the
night of Oct. 14-15, 1964.
In 1965, he was expelled from
the Soviet capital because of a re-
port ABC carried from Washington
saying that another shake-up in the
Soviet leadership was imminent.
. _ By. then, Mr. Jaffe already had
been assigned to take over ABC's
Hong Kong Bureau. As the war in
Vietnam ' deepened, he was sent
there and for his coverage he won a
prize from the Overses Press Club.
In 1968, he was reassigned to the
United States and moved to Wash-
ington. The following year he re-
signed from ABC.
In 1972 and again in 1974, he
made trips to China as a freelance
correspondent for United Press In-
ternational and the Chicago
Tribune. He had a weekly talk show
Ctilii1,,L'0
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on WRC Radio in the late 1970s.
Unable to find regular work in the
news business in recent years, he
had assisted his wife in her flower
business.
Samuel Adason Jaffe was born in
San Francisco. He served in the
Merchant Marine in World War II
and then the Navy Reserves. He
was a Marine combat correspon-
dent in Korea during the war there.
He attended the University of Cal-
ifornia at Berkeley, Columbia Uni-
versity and the New School for So-
cial Research.
He worked for the old Interna-
tional News Service in San Francis-
co. He worked briefly for the U.N.
in the early 1950s and then joined
Life Magazine, where he was a re-
porter from 1952 to 1955.
Mr. Jaffe, who lived in Bethesda,
was a member of the Council on
Foreign Relations, the Overseas
Writers, the White House and State
Department correspondents asso-
ciations, and the Marine Corps
Combat Correspondents Associa-
tion.
His marriage to the former Jo-
sephine Winters ended in divorce.
Survivors include his wife, Jeune,
and their two daughters, Deborah
and Leah, all of Bethesda, and two
children by his first marriage, Linda
Franklin of Katonah, N.Y., and Da-
vid Jaffe of New York City.
z
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