Carl Bernstein, CIA and the Media, Rolling Stone Magazine

[John Simkin]

Over the years several members have refered to Carl Bernstein's article, CIA and the Media, that appeared in Rolling Stone Magazine on 20th October, 1977. I thought it might be a good idea to publish the full article. It is worth noting that Bernstein wrote the article soon after leaving the Washington Post. Bernstein of course did not mention the Washington Post as being part of the CIA media campaign.

In 1979 Deborah Davis published a book about the CIA and the Washington Post (Katharine the Great). Davis became the first person to write in detail about Operation Mockingbird (in fact, she was the first person to give it this name). In the book she names Robert Ober as Deep Throat. I recently asked Deborah if it was Bernstein who gave her this information. She denied it and said it was a senior figure in the CIA.

When the book was originally published in 1979 Katharine Graham and Ben Bradlee (probably under instructions from the CIA) persuaded the publishers William Jovanovich, to pulp 20,000 copies of the book. Davis filed a breach-of- contract and damage-to-reputation suit against Jovanovich, who settled out of court with her in 1983. I have a copy of the original printing (some reached the public before they were destroyed). I highly recommend anyone who is interested in the subject of the CIA and the media to read this book.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKdavisD.htm

In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.

Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty-five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters.

Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services -- from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go-betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested it the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles, and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements America’s leading news organizations.

The history of the CIA’s involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception...

Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, The Miami Herald, and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune. By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with The New York Times, CBS, and Time Inc.

From the Agency’s perspective, there is nothing untoward in such relationships, and any ethical questions are a matter for the journalistic profession to resolve, not the intelligence community...

Many journalists were used by the CIA to assist in this process and they had the reputation of being among the best in the business. The peculiar nature of the job of the foreign correspondent is ideal for such work; he is accorded unusual access, by his host country, permitted to travel in areas often off-limits to other Americans, spends much of his time cultivating sources in governments, academic institutions, the military establishment and the scientific communities. He has the opportunity to form long-term personal relationships with sources and -- perhaps more than any other category of American operative - is in a position to make correct judgments about the susceptibility and availability of foreign nationals for recruitment as spies.

The Agency’s dealings with the press began during the earliest stages of the Cold War. Allen Dulles, who became director of the CIA in 1953, sought to establish a recruiting-and-cover capability within America’s most prestigious journalistic institutions. By operating under the guise of accredited news correspondents, Dulles believed, CIA operatives abroad would be accorded a degree of access and freedom of movement unobtainable under almost any other type of cover.

American publishers, like so many other corporate and institutional leaders at the time, were willing us commit the resources of their companies to the struggle against “global Communism.” Accordingly, the traditional line separating the American press corps and government was often indistinguishable: rarely was a news agency used to provide cover for CIA operatives abroad without the knowledge and consent of either its principal owner; publisher or senior editor. Thus, contrary to the notion that the CIA era and news executives allowed themselves and their organizations to become handmaidens to the intelligence services. “Let’s not pick on some poor reporters, for God’s sake,” William Colby exclaimed at one point to the Church committee’s investigators. “Let’s go to the managements. They were witting” In all, about twenty-five news organizations (including those listed at the beginning of this article) provided cover for the Agency...

Many journalists who covered World War II were close to people in the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime predecessor of the CIA; more important, they were all on the same side. When the war ended and many OSS officials went into the CIA, it was only natural that these relationships would continue.

Meanwhile, the first postwar generation of journalists entered the profession; they shared the same political and professional values as their mentors. “You had a gang of people who worked together during World War II and never got over it,” said one Agency official. “They were genuinely motivated and highly susceptible to intrigue and being on the inside. Then in the Fifties and Sixties there was a national consensus about a national threat. The Vietnam War tore everything to pieces - shredded the consensus and threw it in the air.” Another Agency official observed: “Many journalists didn’t give a second thought to associating with the Agency. But there was a point when the ethical issues which most people had submerged finally surfaced. Today, a lot of these guys vehemently deny that they had any relationship with the Agency.”

The CIA even ran a formal training program in the 1950s to teach its agents to be journalists. Intelligence officers were “taught to make noises like reporters,” explained a high CIA official, and were then placed in major news organizations with help from management. “These were the guys who went through the ranks and were told, “You’re going to be a journalist,” the CIA official said. Relatively few of the 400-some relationships described in Agency files followed that pattern, however; most involved persons who were already bona fide journalists when they began undertaking tasks for the Agency. The Agency’s relationships with journalists, as described in CIA files, include the following general categories:

* Legitimate, accredited staff members of news organizations - usually reporters. Some were paid; some worked for the Agency on a purely voluntary basis.

* Stringers and freelancers. Most were payrolled by the Agency under standard contractual terms.

* Employees of so-called CIA “proprietaries.” During the past twenty-five years, the Agency has secretly bankrolled numerous foreign press services, periodicals and newspapers -- both English and foreign language -- which provided excellent cover for CIA operatives.

* Columnists and commentators. There are perhaps a dozen well-known columnists and broadcast commentators whose relationships with the CIA go far beyond those normally maintained between reporters and their sources. They are referred to at the Agency as “known assets” and can be counted on to perform a variety of undercover tasks; they are considered receptive to the Agency’s point of view on various subjects.

Murky details of CIA relationships with individuals and news organizations began trickling out in 1973 when it was first disclosed that the CIA had, on occasion, employed journalists. Those reports, combined with new information, serve as casebook studies of the Agency’s use of journalists for intelligence purposes.

The New York Times - The Agency’s relationship with the Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials. [it was] general Times policy to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible...

CIA officials cite two reasons why the Agency’s working relationship with the Times was closer and more extensive than with any other paper: the fact that the Times maintained the largest foreign news operation in American daily journalism; and the close personal ties between the men who ran both institutions...

The Columbia Broadcasting System -- CBS was unquestionably the CIA’s most valuable broadcasting asset. CBS president William Paley and Allen Dulles enjoyed an easy working and social relationship. Over the years, the network provided cover for CIA employees, including at least one well-known foreign correspondent and several stringers; it supplied outtakes of newsfilm to the CIA; established a formal channel of communication between the Washington bureau chief and the Agency; gave the Agency access to the CBS newsfilm library; and allowed reports by CBS correspondents to the Washington and New York newsrooms to be routinely monitored by the CIA. Once a year during the 1950s and early 1960s, CBS correspondents joined the CIA hierarchy for private dinners and briefings...

At the headquarters of CBS News in New York, Paley’s cooperation with the CIA is taken for granted by many news executives and reporters, despite the denials. Paley, 76, was not interviewed by Salant’s investigators. “It wouldn’t do any good,” said one CBS executive. “It is the single subject about which his memory has failed.”

Time and Newsweek magazines - According to CIA and Senate sources, Agency files contain written agreements with former foreign correspondents and stringers for both the weekly news magazines. The same sources refused to say whether the CIA has ended all its associations with individuals who work for the two publications. Allen Dulles often interceded with his good friend, the late Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life magazines, who readily allowed certain members of his staff to work for the Agency and agreed to provide jobs and credentials for other CIA operatives who lacked journalistic experience...

At Newsweek, Agency sources reported, the CIA engaged the services of several foreign correspondents and stringers under arrangements approved by senior editors at the magazine...

“To the best of my knowledge:’ said [Harry] Kern, [Newsweek’s foreign editor from 1945 to 1956] “nobody at Newsweek worked for the CIA.... The informal relationship was there. Why have anybody sign anything? What we knew we told them [the CIA] and the State Department.... When I went to Washington, I would talk to Foster or Allen Dulles about what was going on .... We thought it was admirable at the time. We were all on the same side.” CIA officials say that Kern's dealings with the Agency were extensive...

When Newsweek was purchased by the Washington Post Company, publisher Philip L. Graham was informed by Agency officials that the CIA occasionally used the magazine for cover purposes, according to CIA sources. “It was widely known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from,” said a former deputy director of the Agency... But Graham, who committed suicide in 1963, apparently knew little of the specifics of any cover arrangements with Newsweek, CIA sources said...

Information about Agency dealings with the Washington Post newspaper is extremely sketchy. According to CIA officials, some Post stringers have been CIA employees, but these officials say they do not know if anyone in the Post management was aware of the arrangements...

Other major news organizations - According to Agency officials, CIA files document additional cover arrangements with the following news gathering organizations, among others: the New York Herald Tribune, Saturday Evening Post, Scripps-Howard Newspapers, Hearst Newspapers, Associated Press, United Press International, the Mutual Broadcasting System, Reuters and The Miami Herald...

“And that's just a small part of the list,” in the words of one official who served in the CIA hierarchy. Like many sources, this official said that the only way to end the uncertainties about aid furnished the Agency by journalists is to disclose the contents of the CIA files - a course opposed by almost all of the thirty-five present and former CIA officials interviewed over the course of a year.

The CIA’s use of journalists continued virtually unabated until 1973 when, in response to public disclosure that the Agency had secretly employed American reporters, William Colby began scaling down the program. In his public statements, Colby conveyed the impression that the use of journalists had been minimal and of limited importance to the Agency.

He then initiated a series of moves intended to convince the press, Congress and the public that the CIA had gotten out of the news business. But according to Agency officials, Colby had in fact thrown a protective net around his most valuable intelligence assets in the journalistic community...

At the headquarters of CBS News in New York, Paley’s cooperation with the CIA is taken for granted by many news executives and reporters, despite the denials. Paley, 76, was not interviewed by Salant’s investigators. “It wouldn’t do any good,” said one CBS executive. “It is the single subject about which his memory has failed.”

After Colby left the Agency on January 28th, 1976, and was succeeded by George Bush, the CIA announced a new policy: “Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any US news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.” ... The text of the announcement noted that the CIA would continue to “welcome” the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists. Thus, many relationships were permitted to remain intact.

[Michael Hogan]

In his excellent new book A Certain Arrogance, George Michael Evica writes:

When tensions mounted in the Cold War, President Eisenhower would call together a small, inner "circle" of psyops advisors: Allen Dulles, John Foster Dulles, and C.D. Jackson.

Throughout his career, Jackson was supremely opportunistic, a function of his creative/situational responses to political stimuli. Significantly Jackson played a major part in the Eisenhower administration's response to Stalin's death in March, 1953, developing it into a media-wide propaganda action that included Eisenhower's "Chance for Peace" speech on April 16th, 1953.

In that same year, one of Jackson's OPC psyop consultants

James Burnham

(bold added) estimated that more than one billion dollars a year was being allocated to "a wide variety of [unidentified] psychological warfare projects."

Is this the same James Burnham? http://www.independent.org/publications/ti...mp;articleID=66

According to researcher Peter Levenda:

There is even a growing body of evidence that Michael Paine's father - George Lyman Paine, who was a Trotskyite leader in California - had connections that led straight back to William Buckley, Jr and E. Howard Hunt, through one

James Burnham

, (added) who was George Paine's colleague in the Trotskyite party to which they both belonged, and who was also a consultant to the CIA and a friend of E. Howard Hunt.

[Dick Russell]

In chapter 4, The Media, the CIA, and the Cover-Up”, you quote Carl Bernstein’s article in The Rolling Stone (20th October 1977) that: “For many years, Luce’s personal emissary to the CIA was C. D. Jackson, a Time Inc., vice president who was publisher of Life Magazine from 1960 until his death in 1964. While a Time executive, Jackson co-authored a CIA-sponsored study recommending the reorganization of the American intelligence services in the early 1950s”. You go on to say that according to Richard Stolley, Jackson was “so upset by the head-wound sequence that he proposed the company obtain all rights to the film and withhold it from public viewing at least until emotions calmed.” (pages 34-35)

Jackson indeed played an important role in the cover-up. Soon after the assassination Jackson also successfully negotiated with Marina Oswald the exclusive rights to her story. Peter Dale Scott argues in his book “Deep Politics and the Death of JFK” (1996) that Jackson, on the urging of Allen Dulles, employed Isaac Don Levine, a veteran CIA publicist, to ghost-write Marina's story. This story never appeared in print.

Jackson, like many CIA operatives, was a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the Second World War. Another member of the SOS was Frank Wisner. In 1948 Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the CIA. Later that year Wisner established Operation Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic American media. Wisner recruited former SOS officers, Jackson (Time) and Philip Graham (Washington Post) to run the project within the industry. Graham himself recruited others who had worked for military intelligence during the war. This included James Truitt, Russell Wiggins, Phil Geyelin, John Hayes and Alan Barth. Others like Stewart Alsop, Joseph Alsop and James Reston, were recruited from within the Georgetown Set. According to Deborah Davis (Katharine the Great): "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."

Carl Bernstein was the first journalist to expose Operation Mockingbird (although he never used this term) in his article in the Rolling Stone. The Bernstein article is also interesting for what it left out. For example, there is no mention of Philip Graham and other staff members of the Washington Post. Nor does he mention Ben Bradlee's involvement with the CIA that dated back to the Rosenberg case. Bradlee, of course, joined forces with James Jesus Angleton, the dispose of Mary Pinchot Meyer's diary and letters after her murder in October 1964. It was James Truitt (OSS, Washington Post, Operation Mockingbird) who revealed this story in 1976. However, Mockingbird did its job well and the case received very little publicity.

Interestingly, Phil Graham, Frank Wisner and James Truitt all committed suicide. So also did Len Damore, a journalist working on the case in 1995.

My question is about where Carl Bernstein got his information from for this article. Was it from Truitt or was it a result of his work on the Watergate case. Did Bernstein suspect that Ben Bradlee and Bob Woodward were working on behalf of the CIA during the investigation. According to Deborah Davis' book, Katharine the Great, Deep Throat was Richard Ober, a CIA officer. It is significant that Bradlee attempted to stop Katharine the Great from being published. In fact, Bradlee and Graham persuaded the publishers William Jovanovich, to pulp 20,000 copies of the book. Davis filed a breach-of-contract and damage-to-reputation suit against Jovanovich, who settled out of court with her in 1983.

Wish I could shed further light on Carl Bernstein's sources for his article on CIA and Media. It is, of course, noteworthy that he did not delve into anyone (e.g., Bradlee) from his own newspaper. All I know is what Bernstein set down at the time in Rolling Stone. What I try to do in my new book is make a few links between that, and the ways some of the same "players" covered up in the Kennedy assassination - a leap Bernstein didn't make, if he was even aware of it.