DISCUSSION OF U.S. GOVERNMENT CREDIBILITY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000600400018-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 12, 2005
• Sequence Number: 18
• Publication Date: October 11, 1986
• Content Type: TRANS

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
PROGRAM Newsmaker Saturday
DATE October 11, 1986 1:30 P.M.
STATION CNN-TV
Washington, D.C.
SUBJECT Discussion of U.S. Government Credibility
ANTHONY COLLINGS: A newspaper report alleging
Administration efforts to deceive the news media on Libya led to
the resignation of State Department spokesman Bernard Kalb.
BERNARD KALB: So you face a choice, as an American, as
a spokesman, as a journalist, whether to allow oneself to be
absorbed in the ranks of silence, whether to vanish into
unopposed acquiescence, or to enter a modest dissent.
COLLINGS: Administration credibility also came under
strain when a survivor of a plane crash in Nicaragua claimed the
CIA was illegally helping supply arms to rebels. The CIA denied
it. And President Reagan also denied government involvement, but
he admitted the White House did know about private American help
to the Contras.
PRESIDENT REAGAN: We've been aware that there are
private groups and private citizens that have been trying to help
the Contras, to that extent. But we did not know the exact
particulars of what they're doing.
COLLINGS: Some critics on Capitol Hill thought the
Administration knew a lot more than that.
SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY: The Administration is skating on
the knife-edge of credibility.
COLLINGS: I'm Anthony Collings in Washington. Welcome
to Newsmaker Saturday.
Credibility is once again an issue. Critics find it
hard to believe when the Administration says the Iceland meeting
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LOS ANGELES ? CHICAGO ? DETROIT 0 AND OTHER PRINCIPAL CITIES
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is not a summit, the Daniloff release was not an exchange, for a
spy, that the plane in Nicaragua had nothing to do with any
government officials, and that there was no disinformation
campaign over Libya.
With us to discuss disinformation and credibility are
Senator William Cohen, Republican from Maine and member of the
Senate Intelligence Committee; former CIA Director Stansfield
Turner; and Arnaud de_ rch rave, Editor-in-Chief of the
Washington Times.
Senator Cohen, your committee apparently found no
evidence that there was a disinformation campaign over Libya, and
yet there was an article in the Wall Street Journal which seemed
to quote Administration sources saying that Qaddafi was preparing
new terrorism, and so there would be a collision course with the
United States. Wasn't there a disinformation campaign?
SENATOR WILLIAM COHEN: Well, first let me be very
clear. The committee itself did not make an investigation. The
Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Dave Durenberger, and the
chief of staff, Bernie McMahon, made an inquiry. And they were
satisfied there had been no, quote, official campaign for
disinformation. Which is not the same as saying that stories did
not leak into the press or were not deliberately leaked by
certain individuals that may have planted false stories or
misleading stories. But there was no evidence, according to
their inquiry, of an official campaign orchestrated and organized
by the White House.
COLLINGS: But the White House spokesman, Larry Speakes,
used the word "authoritative," referring to the story, as if it
were deliberate and intentional, not just...
SENATOR COHEN: I think there were individuals within
the State Department, perhaps in other facets of the White House
operation, of individuals who indeed did believe it was important
to try and disseminate information that might keep Qaddafi,
quote, off balance. I think that they now recognize the dangers
in using, in any way, the U.S. media to convey information which
is patently false.
COLLINGS: Admiral Turner, do you agree that there is a
danger in this, or do you feel that it's a good thing?
ADMIRAL STANSFIELD TURNER: Oh, I think disinformation
can be used quite to our advantage and it's a good thing to do
from time to time. But on the one extreme, you can have a
disinformation program that disinforms only one person. And I
could cite an actual case that I participated in where we did
that very effectively for our country.
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COLLINGS: Can you cite that case?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Yes. We tried to get the ambassador of
a foreign country, who was democratically inclined, to go back to
his country and engage in a dispute that was going on in the
government about whether it should be moved to the left. And we
disinformed this ambassador about his own status in his own
country, and he went home to take care of his own problem, and we
got him into the fray in fighting for the democratic side. It
was a very useful thing. Didn't happen to win, but nonetheless
we disinformed him and he did do what we wanted him to do.
COLLINGS: Are you saying you lied?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Yes, we lied to him and we made this
man believe something was going on that affected him in his home
country that was not going on. But we got him back into the
fray, so to speak.
On the other extreme, you can disinform the whole
American public, or the whole world, practically. And in
thiscase, the Administration was insensitive to the degree which
they were moving away from a single disinformation to a very
broad disinformation.
COLLINGS: Arnaud de Borchgrave, the Soviet Union has a
campaign of disinformation, as we know. Aren't we stooping to
their level when we do the same thing?
ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE: Well, first, I have to make a
correction about the Wall Street Journal story. It was
authoritative. As a matter of fact, what was happening in
Tripoli at that time was a meeting with President Assad of Syria;
Ghebril (?), a well-known Palestinian terrorist; Abu Moussa,
another well-known Palestinian terrorist; the head of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards. And French counterintelligence happens to
know that they were at that very moment plotting some terrorist
actions in Western Europe.
COLLINGS: But we know that Poindexter talked about
Qaddafi being quiescent.
DE BORCHGRAVE: He was not quiescent. There was...
COLLINGS: Whatever reports there were, they weren't
clear that he was planning new terrorism.
DE BORCHGRAVE: Because we in the media were not doing
our job. They put out a statement, the Libyan news agency -- I
don't know why we didn't pick it up. They said, "We are setting
up special revolutionary -- secret revolutionary cells in many
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Western countries in order to launch attacks against America in
such a way that they will not be able to retaliate with their
aircrft carriers and intercontinental ballistic missiles." This
was a direct quote from the Libyan news agency.
He was not quiescent. But again, that's conventional
wisdom right away, he was quiescent.
As for the Soviet Union, you know that they spend three
to four bil-l,ion d ollars a year an active measures, which
encompasses all forms of disinformation. We have printed as fact
in our media countless Soviet forgeries. And I could spend the
next two hours reciting them from memory.
COLLINGS: Well, don't do that, because we want to talk
about American disinformation.
DE BORCHGRAVE: We don't get involved in that. We do
not plant disinformation in our own media. As the Admiral said,
abroad there are some disinformation operations that go on. But
let's make quite clear that there is a major difference between
strategic deception, which we were involved in against Qaddafi to
destabilize him, psych him, psychological warfare; and all that
was indeed going on, and for a very good reason. He considers
himself to be in a permanent state of war with the United States.
COLLINGS: Strategic deception. Lying, in uther words.
Do you approve?
DE BORCHGRAVE: Strategic deception in a military
COLLINGS: Do you approve?
SENATOR COHEN: I think we have to draw a distinction
once again. It's one thing to have ships steaming toward the
coast of Libya. That is a fact if we are doing it. It's quite
another to, I think, publish reports, feed reports to American
journalists and suggest that there is a coup in the making to
ovrethrow Qaddafi, that he is internally unstable, that we are
giving aid and comfort, as such, to those forces who wish to
overthrow him, when in fact the situation might be quite
different.
As far as Qaddafi himself, it's perhaps a bad example.
But nonetheless what it does is it throws that seed of disbelief
or lack of credibility out there so that we are never believed.
If in fact we have...
COLLINGS: We have to take a break at this point, and we
will be right back.
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COLLINGS: On Newsmaker Saturday, our topic is
disinformation and credibility.
Admiral Turner, in World War II the United States lied
about the location of the invasion at Normandy in order to save
lives of American soldiers. That was wartime. We're not at war
now, and yet we are still lying. Why is that?
ADMIRAL TURNER: There are some times, even in
peacetime, when you do lie. A friend of mine, for instance, was
asked by a newspaperman the day that the Iranian rescue operation
was actually taking place, "Is there not a rescue operation
taking place?" And my friend, very appropriately, said, "No."
He called the newsman the next day and said, "I
apologize. I deliberately lied to you. But there were lives at
stake yesterday, and so I could not even waffle my answer to you.
I had to be categoric in saying no."
COLLINGS: So when lives are at stake, it's all right.
Are there any other conditions when it's all right?
DE BORCHGRAVE: We think of ourselves as being at, peace
and we think of peace treaties and armistices and truces and war
and declarations of war. Some our adversaries in this day and
age don't think that way. They consider themselves to be in a
permanent state of war with Western democracies, albeit conducted
through indirect means, whether it's subversion or penetration or
disinformation or state-sponsored terrorism.
COLLINGS: But that's what they consider.
DE BORCHGRAVE: Yes.
COLLINGS: Why should we think the same way they do?
Why should we behave the same way they do?
DE BORCHGRAVE: If people consider themselves to be at
war against the citadel of capitalism -- namely, the United
States -- as they call it, well, then, obviously we have to
react. And you're not going to be conducting this according to
the Marquis of Queensberry's rules, are you?
COLLINGS: Senator Cohen, do you think we should use the
same means that they do?
SENATOR COHEN: Well, I think one of the difficulties
with making such a broad statement is that if you adopt. the
policies that the Libyans or the Soviets or any other countries
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who have declared war, active or covert, or terroristic or
conventional, against the United States, it seems to me if that's
the general proposition, then you can always say it's open for us
to deceive the enemy. And the question is, how does one go about
deceiving the enemy?
It seems to me that if we adopt that as a general
policy, that it's all right to put deceptive measures into the
media to convey that to keep the enemy guessing, then we have a
question of when do the American people really believe that
the President or the White House or the Congress is actually
telling them the truth. Right now...
DE BORCHGRAVE: That's our job, Senator. As
journalists, we can't be spoon-fed. When we say in our
profession, "We've been lied to," that is sanctimonious,
hypocritical nonsense. What government has not lied? What
government has not misled or tried to mislead the press?
So, what are we? Are we journalists, or are we just
conveyor belts for government information?
SENATOR COHEN: That assumes that the government is in a
state of constantly lying to the press. I don't believe that to
be the case.
DE BORCHGRAVE: No, it isn't. But we can see through
ADMIRAL TURNER: And that's what was so foolish in this
case. Because the day after the Wall Street Journal printed that
story, Leslie Gelb of the New York Times just decimated it in his
paper because it was a bad story. And the Administration should
have recognized that planting something like that in the U.S.
media was bound to blow up in their face, as it did.
DE BORCHGRAVE: They did not plant it in the U.S. media.
That has been determined. There was nothing planted in the U.S.
media.
ADMIRAL TURNER: That certainly is not true. That's
just an assertion by...
DE BORCHGRAVE: No. No, not at all. You can check it
out. And in fact, the Intelligence Committee has checked it out.
There was a memo floating around, a memo floating around -- I
think the Senator can confirm this. No disinformation was
planted in the U.S. media.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Oh, that's certainly untrue.
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DE BORCHGRAVE: At that time?
ADMIRAL TURNER: That's certainly untrue. Now, it may
not have been authorized by the President of the United States,
but disinformation was planted by somebody in the Administration.
DE BORCHGRAVE: Even the Wall Street Journal will tell
you that they were not victims of disinformation.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, they're trying to cover their
number, too.
DE BORCHGRAVE: No. Because there were two things that
were correct there, Admiral, and we just discussed them at the
top of the program.
ADMIRAL TURNER: You have heard they are correct. I
don't agree with what you said.
DE BORCHGRAVE: You're not part of the Administration.
Here's someone who's on the Intelligence Committee.
ADMIRAL TURNER: He's not part of the Administration.
He's in the Congress.
DE BORCHGRAVE: He's done his homework. And Bernie Kalb
resigned on the strength of Bob Woodward's piece in the
Washington Post, not on the strength of anything else he
discovered.
COLLINGS: All right, but he did resign. And that
implies that he felt that the Administration had lied and had, in
fact, gotten caught lying.
DE BORCHGRAVE: He took Bob Woodward's piece at face
value. And even Bob Woodward corrected his piece three days
later.
SENATOR COHEN: The nature of the problem is, as we're
seeing now with the alleged involvement in Nicaragua of the CIA,
if you took a poll on the streets of America, I suppose that the
majority would come back and say, "We don't believe the denial."
And that is the difficulty that one has once you are perceived to
have been deceiving or planting stories or not leveling with the
American people. It tends to undermine everything, even when
you're right. That's sort of the road you walk down. Once you
take a lie and give it the perfume of truth, ultimately what
happens is truth has the perfume of lies. And no matter how
truthful your statement might be, it is perceived to be a
falsehood. And that's the danger we run.
So, we've got to have those c t hick we
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in fact
o
t i
do
engage in disinformation be very, very clearly spelled
u
n
oli
our
own minds as to when it's justified. But as a general
p
cy,
we
lose, ultimately, when we are perceived to have
engaged
or
pursue a policy of engaging in disinformation.
DE BORCHGRAVE: But haven't all Administrations had
credibility gaps, Senator?
SENATOR COHEN: Oh, of course. That's a constant
problem with the Congress, as well: Do we have a credibility gap
between what we say and what we do?
COLLINGS: How does this Administration compare with
others in terms of credibility gap?
DE BORCHGRAVE: I am yet to meet a public official,
whether it's here or abroad, who doesn't speak with three voices:
the on-the-record voice, beyond-the-record voice, and the
background voice. And sometimes they're 180 degrees apart.
ADMIRAL TURNER: But if you look at the record, this
Administration's credibility has been challenged much more often.
I look on it from a rather parochial point of view
because I worry about another wave of public lack of confidence
in the CIA. And these two events, the shooting down of the
airplane in Nicaragua and the disinformation against Libya are
reviving that again, just as we had with the mining of the
harbors in Nicaragua and the manual of assassination and the
assassination effort against a man named Fadlallah in Beirut.
All of these...
COLLINGS: Well, what do you think is the extent of CIA
involvement in Nicaragua?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, I think there's very little
question that the CIA is providing help and support and advice to
these people who are freebooters and are doing things down there.
They're doing it on the verge of the law. I don't think they're
doing anything technically illegal.
COLLINGS: But when they deny it, then it's a
credibility problem.
ADMIRAL TURNER: They're perfectly proper in denying it.
But their credibility is bad because they're working on the
wording of the law, not on the spirit and the intent of the law.
DE BORCHGRAVE: Have you noticed, Admiral, how when
somebody goes down and fights against the communists in a Third
World country he becomes a vulgar mercenary, and if someone is
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fighting on the communists's side he is treated with awesome
veneration?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I certainly don't have any veneration
for the Sandinistas. I don't know what you're talking about.
DE BORCHGRAVE: No, but an American was killed fighting
with the Sandinistas a couple of years ago, and it made a
paragraph or two in the papers and he was called an idealist.
COLLINGS: Well, we'll take a break at this point, and
then we'll be right back?
COLLINGS: We're talking about truth, lies and,
credibility....
Admiral Turner, how much long-term damage is being
caused to the CIA and to the Administration by the kind of
credibility gap you've been talking about?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I think it's considerable because it's
happened over a considerable period of time. We must remember,
Tony, that the most fundamental strength of our country is a
well-informed electorate, well-informed citizens. I think the
citizens have been not well informed in these cases and the
citizens are going to question what the government says in the
future. And that will be very injurious to our democratic
process.
COLLINGS: And yet you yourself say that disinformation
COLLINGS: How can you have it both ways?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Because you don't want to disinform the
American public. The instance I cited to you, the American
public never knew about it, because it was a very limited
disinformation program. You have to take some risks once in a
while. Disinforming one person is an extreme case. Sometimes
you disinform a larger group. When you do it overseas, which you
really should -- you never should do it in the United States --
you are risking that it will come back into the United States
media because we really have one world media. So, again, you
have to be very careful about it.
Much of the disinformation the United States needs to
put out really isn't disinformation. It's getting into other
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countries true information by surreptitious means, often, because
it won't get in any other way.
COLLINGS: We'll put that aside and just talk about
disinformation.
Senator?
SENATOR COHEN: Just to correct a point. Number one,
the CIA was not involved in a disinformation campaign, for
openers. They are not involved.
Number two, I think that the CIA has enjoyed an increase
in its stature in the past four or five years. Certainly the
morale is much higher than it has been in recent years. And I
think that the public has taken a different attitude toward the
CIA, in view of the kind of circumstances we find ourselves in
globally.
Number three, the lack of credibility, I think, starts
from the top-down. A point you made in your opening statement.
It seems to me incomprehensible as to why the Administration
would say no deal has been made with respect to Mr. Daniloff. A
deal clearly was made, a bargain was struck, and they ought to
say so. Everybody else knows that. And for the Administration,
the President to say, "No trade," it simply starts taking the
shine off the credibility. And that tends to filter down.
But as far as the CIA is concerned, we have known for
several years the Administration does want to maintain a vigorous
campaign of support for the Contras. The CIA will in fact play a
role in that support. Both Houses of Congress have voted for
such a measure. It's waiting for conference action at this
point.
So, I would say it's somewhat misleading to suggest that
the CIA now has a lack of credibility. It's something that may
affect all of government, to the extent that we don't level vith
people on items that are clearly within the public domain and
which common sense tells them...
COLLINGS: Let me ask you this. Your committee has
oversight responsibility for the intelligence community. How
much attention do you devote to the question of disinformation,
to make sure that there's no violation of the guidelines on not
misleading the American public?
SENATOR COHEN: We maintain a very vigorous oversight
program. I think that's why we're satisfied the CIA was not
involved in any disinformation campaign. To the extent there
were individuals within the White House or within the State
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Department who may have briefed a reporter and gave him
misinformation or disinformation, that should not be attributed
to the CIA. This was specifically n of a CIA program. The CIA
is looked at very closely by us.
COLLINGS: Admiral, you were about to make a point.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, I was going to say that it is
illegal, I believe, Senator, today for the CIA to support the
Contras.
SENATOR COHEN: That's correct.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Other than with intelligence support.
SENATOR COHEN: Other than with communications...
ADMIRAL TURNER: Communications and intelligence. So if
they had any role in the airplane incident, it was an illegality.
It may not be illegal tomorrow, if the Congress passes this new
law, but it has been illegal up till now, was illegal if they did
something yesterday.
I think the genesis of the whole Wall Street [Journal]
disinformation problem was a misinterpretation by the CIA of an
intelligence report that said Qaddafi was on the verge of being
able to be toppled. I think they fell for that one when they
shouldn't have because they wanted to believe that.
SENATOR COHEN: Can I kind of just contradict that for a
moment? The CIA was never misled by any report that said Qaddafi
was on the verge of being toppled. From all the information that
I saw, that clearly was not the case. That information, wherever
it came, did not come from intelligence sources.
COLLINGS: Let me ask you about...
DE BORCHGRAVE: The Admiral made a point about credibi-
lity and said that it's very important that we not question our
government, that we believe our government. I hope that in this
profession, Admiral, we never stop questioning our government.
That's part of the democratic process. Always question your
government. That's what makes it a healthy society.
COLLINGS: But the government has to take into
consideratin the fact that it's being questioned by the press.
But it has certain objectives, which include goals that can be
achieved by lying, in effect.
DE BORCHGRAVE: Every Administration, Tony, tries
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every Administration, Tony, tries to manage the news...
DE BORCHGRAVE: ...and put the best face possible on
what they're doing. And our job in the media is to try to see
through it.
COLLINGS: Let me ask you about the Soviets. How much
mileage do you think they will get out of the problems that have
cropped up recently with Administration credibility, on Libya, on
Nicaragua, on other matters?
SENATOR COHEN: Well, in a recent item that appeared in
the newspaper, the Soviet Union jumped upon Secretary
Weinberger's statement that the Soviets, to the extent that they
pulled any troops out of Afghanistan, will only replace them with
fresh troops. The Soviet paper clearly jumped on that and said,
"We are surprised and shocked that a high official would engage
in such, quote, a falsehood."
COLLINGS: We have only a few seconds left.
Admiral Turner, what's your view on the Soviet
exploitation of this credibility problem?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, I think they will do everything
they can to exploit it. I'm not sure it will get them a lot of
mileage, truly.
DE BORCHGRAVE: Our problem is that we're choirboys
trying to deal with Jack the Ripper.
COLLINGS: Okay. That's all we have time for.
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