CIA influence on public opinion
Encyclopedia
At various times, under its own authority or in accordance with directives from the President of the United States
or the National Security Council
staff, the Central Intelligence Agency
has attempted to influence domestic and international public opinion
, and sometimes law enforcement
. This article does not address, other than incidental to influencing opinion or actions reasonably associated with CIA security, possibly illegal domestic surveillance.
It also does not address narrowly focused psychological warfare
in support of covert or military action. The focus of this article is on long-term influence on opinion leaders, including journalists, artists, labor leaders, etc., rather than starting rumors to assist in supporting a coup.
This is an area with many shades of gray. There is little argument, for example, that the CIA acted inappropriately in providing technical support to White House operatives conducting both political and security investigations, with no legal authority to do so. While there is an established history of assigning responsibilities for international psychological operations
to various organizations, depending if the operation is overt or clandestine, there are also questions of the wisdom of a particular operation.
Things become much more ambiguous when law enforcement may expose a clandestine operation, a problem not unique to intelligence but also seen among different law enforcement organizations, where one wants to prosecute and another to continue investigations, perhaps reaching higher levels in a conspiracy.
Not all inappropriate activities were initiated or conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency, but by other members of the United States Intelligence Community
. In particular, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
took a very broad view of its mandate to collect information to protect the state from domestic subversion
. In other cases, the National Security Agency
intercepted electronic communications without the warrants deemed necessary at the time.
It has been suggested that a number of things assigned to the CIA really did not need to be clandestine, and having an overt organization support initiatives desired by the U.S. government has much less political risk. The United States Information Agency
(USIA) has always been an overt white propaganda
organization. Radio Free Europe
and Radio Liberty, as distinct from the Voice of America
(VOA), had been clandestinely funded through the CIA, but, with the VOA, now all come under the authority of a quasi-public corporation, the Broadcasting Board of Governors
(BBG). BBG was part of USIA until 1999.
Another overt organization, the National Endowment for Democracy
, was created in 1983. William Blum
, an author and critic of the CIA and U.S. foreign policy, suggests it was set up to legally continue the CIA's prohibited activities of support to selected political parties abroad. See additional discussion under USA 1983.
General
Hoyt Vandenberg
testified in 1947 that this restriction was intended to "draw the lines very sharply between the CIG and the FBI" and to "assure that the Central Intelligence Group can never become a Gestapo
or security police
." Secretary of the Navy
James Forrestal
testified that the CIA would be "limited definitely to purposes outside of this country, except the collection of information gathered by other government agencies." The FBI would be relied upon "for domestic activities." The CIA, however, did receive information gleaned from the activities of other agencies, and did not necessarily notify internal or external oversight of inappropriate activities of which it was witting.
CIA authority came from a 1947 National Security Council
directive:
In the House floor debate, congressman Chester E. Holifield
stressed that the work of the CIA:
Consequently, the National Security Act of 1947 provided specifically that the CIA "shall have no police, subpoena, law-enforcement powers, or internal security functions." However, the 1947 Act also contained a vague and undefined duty to protect intelligence "sources and methods" which later was used to justify domestic activities ranging from electronic surveillance and break-ins to penetration of protest groups.
CIA, however, was under no restriction in sponsoring organizations outside the US. In 1967 it was revealed that the Congress of Cultural Freedom, founded in 1950, had been sponsored by the CIA. It published literary and political journals such as Encounter
(as well as Der Monat in Germany
and Preuves in France
), and hosted dozens of conferences bringing together some of the most eminent Western thinkers; it also gave some assistance to intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain
. The CIA states that, "Somehow this organization of scholars and artists — egotistical, free-thinking, and even anti-American in their politics — managed to reach out from its Paris headquarters to demonstrate that Communism, despite its blandishments, was a deadly foe of art and thought".
(OCB), which, in 1954, was the White House organization that approved or disapproved covert and clandestine activities. Policy-level control has always been under the Department of State.
usually hostile in nature. The interest of the U.S. Government is concealed and the U.S. Government would deny
responsibility. The content may be partially or completely fabricated, but that which is fabricated is made to appear credible to the target audience. Black activity is also usually designed to cause embarrassment to the ostensible source or to force the ostensible source to take action against its will.
Black propaganda can be considered clandestine, as the source is unknown.
, with oversight by the Department of State. The overall psychological operations of the United States, overt and covert, were to be under the policy direction of the Department of State during peacetime and the early stages of war:
After the OPC was consolidated into the CIA, there has been a psychological operations staff, under various names, in what has variously been named the Deputy Directorate of Plans, the Directorate of Operations, or the National Clandestine Service
.
) was created by Joseph Stalin
. The conference, at which it was created, was a response of Eastern European countries to invitations to attend the July 1947 Paris Conference on the Marshall Plan
. The Cominform's stated purpose was to coordinate the work of Communist parties, under Soviet direction, so the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin called the conference in response to divergences among the eastern European governments on whether or not to attend the Paris Conference on Marshall Aid in July 1947.
The initial seat of the Cominform was located in Belgrade (then the capital of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). After the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the group in June 1948, the seat was moved to Bucharest, Romania. The expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform for Titoism initiated the Informbiro period in that nation's history.
The intended purpose of the Cominform was to coordinate actions between Communist parties, and a scores of Communist-controlled professional, artistic and intellectual groups under Soviet direction. The Kremlin had set up the Cominform in the early years of the cold war to coordinate the activities of the Cominform acted as a tool of Soviet foreign policy and Stalinism.
In response, CIA psychological operators decided that the Cominform-controlled groups could best be countered by Western groups not only of intensely anti-Communist right-wing groups, but groups across the ideological spectrum. Many of them were unaware of CIA subsidy, or only a few leaders knew of the subsidy, and were not expected to follow orders. Wilford cited, as examples, the small magazines Partisan Review and The New Leader, received C.I.A. funds in one way or another, owed nothing to the agency, either in their founding or in their operations, and were not "front" organizations. Other groups formed by the CIA, however, were true fronts, although some of the individuals being sponsored were unaware of the source of funds.
assets, both foreign and domestic, for its covert operations. It was first reported on in the late 1960s, when it became known that the Congress for Cultural Freedom was largely funded by the CIA. In 1973, the Washington Star-News reported that CIA had enlisted more than thirty Americans working abroad as journalists, citing an internal CIA inquiry ordered by CIA director William E. Colby. The Church Committee
was the first congressional committee established in the 1970s to look specifically into the CIA's past activities. Some classified information in the (unpublished) report of the Pike Committee was leaked to The Village Voice
, which showed more details on the CIA's media manipulation
. The Committee mentioned that the:
Such review, of course, does not apply to books written by people who have left the country and declared enmity against the Agency, such as Philip Agee
and the book Inside the Company. Sam Adams' book War of Numbers was published posthumously, based on notes he had hidden while a Vietnam analyst.
One book that would up in court was The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence
, by Victor Marchetti
and John Marks.
, The Sum of All Fears
, Enemy of the State, Bad Company
and In the Company of Spies. He has consulted for television programs including The Agency, Alias
and JAG. He has appeared on Discovery
, Learning Channel, History Channel, PBS
, A&E
, and has been interviewed on E-Entertainment, Access Hollywood
, and Entertainment Tonight
.
Patterson criticizes the CIA assistance as being only to complimentary productions, including not running material, such as
"the original pilot episode of The Agency, which was pulled. It featured the spymasters preventing a plot by a Bin Laden-backed terrorist cell to blow up a fictionalized Harrods. The airing of such an episode might have pointed up the real CIA's corresponding lack of success in foiling the World Trade Center
attacks."
According to Brandon, the agency would not endorse Spy Game
, starring Robert Redford
and Brad Pitt
. The final rewrite "showed our senior management in an insensitive light and we just wouldn't want to be a part of that kind of project", said Brandon, who also withheld approval from 24
, a Fox series about a fictional intelligence agency, CTU, that also suggests all is not hunky-dory in the company's upper echelons. And The Bourne Identity
, based on the 1984 novel by Robert Ludlum
, was "so awful that I tossed it in the burn bag after page 25".
Patterson observed "It used to be the case that if a movie explicitly condemned CIA actions - such as Under Fire
- the studios could be counted on to bury it. That was no longer true after Costa-Gavras's Missing
won Jack Lemmon an Oscar in 1982, and Iran-Contra slimed the CIA in the late 1980s. Since then, "CIA renegade" has become a dependable staple not just of big-budget movies like Enemy of the State, but also of a million straight-to-cable action-schlockfests starring Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal."
suggested that funding from the CIA to the National Student Association
, which had been formed in 1947, may have begun in 1950. Tom Braden, head of the CIA International Organizations Division, is not clear, in an article, whether it was 1950 or 1951, but it clearly began in the 1950s and continued until 1967. Braden said that the Division was established in 1950, when Director of Central Intelligence
Allen W. Dulles overruled Frank Wisner
, who headed the quasi-autonomous Office of Policy Coordination
(OPC). Until 1952, OPC was the covert action branch of the U.S. government, loosely part of CIA but also with direct access and appeal to the Secretaries of Defense
and State
.
Agee cites a New York Times interview with Frederic Delano Houghteling, then NSA secretary, as saying that the CIA gave him several thousand dollars to pay traveling expenses for a delegation of 12 representatives to a European international student conference.
and the Office of Policy Coordination
, Operation Mockingbird
was set up to put anticommunist messages into US news media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, to run the news aspects of the operation. Columbia Broadcasting System began co-operating with the CIA. "To understand the role of most journalist‑operatives, it is necessary to dismiss some myths about undercover work for American intelligence services. Few American agents are “spies” in the popularly accepted sense of the term. “Spying” — the acquisition of secrets from a foreign government—is almost always done by foreign nationals who have been recruited by the CIA and are under CIA control in their own countries. Thus the primary role of an American working undercover abroad is often to aid in the recruitment and “handling” of foreign nationals who are channels of secret information reaching American intelligence.
"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." Formal recruitment of reporters was generally handled at high levels—after the journalist had undergone a thorough background check. The actual approach might even be made by a deputy director or division chief. On some occasions, no discussion would he entered into until the journalist had signed a pledge of secrecy.
“The secrecy agreement was the sort of ritual that got you into the tabernacle,” said a former assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence. “After that you had to play by the rules.” David Attlee Phillips, former Western Hemisphere chief of clandestine services and a former journalist himself, estimated in an interview that at least 200 journalists signed secrecy agreements or employment contracts with the Agency in the past twenty‑five years. Phillips, who owned a small English‑language newspaper in Santiago, Chile, when he was recruited by the CIA in 1950, described the approach: “Somebody from the Agency says, ‘I want you to help me. 1 know you are a true‑blue American, but I want you to sign a piece of paper before I tell you what it’s about.’ I didn’t hesitate to sign, and a lot of newsmen didn’t hesitate over the next twenty years.”
Agee wrote that the CIA, in 1952, funded then NSA president William Dentzer, who later went on to become [ United States Agency for International Development
] (AID) director in Peru. The New York Times also identified Cord Meyer, Jr. as having headed the NSA operation.
NSA leaders knew of the CIA sponsorship, although members, including those representing the organization internationally, may have had no more direction than persuasion from the leadership. The former were members, not employees, and could not be directed with threats of expulsion. In addition to representation as a form of psychological operation, some of the leadership, according to Agee, provided intelligence reports to CIA.
Another organization set up on 26 June 1950, as the cultural arm of the International Organizations Division, was the Congress for Cultural Freedom. According to libcom.org, which describes itself as "libertarian communist," it was intended to be anti-communist without necessarily pro-Western or pro-American. The Congress intended to
Yet more complex is the clandestine support of perfectly legal organizations and individuals, especially with no interference with their expression, when it is believed that their beliefs, perhaps expressed in other places in the world, advance American policies. In 1967, a number of clandestine subsidies to associations and journals became public. Given the CIA's prohibition from domestic activities, support of US groups with worldwide presence, such as the National Student Association
, were especially problematic. The exposure, by Ramparts magazine, of CIA subsidies to the National Association, according to Time, led to the term "orphans", referring to nearly 100 private agencies that had been getting CIA money, and were affected by a Presidential order that support must end by the end of 1967. Time succinctly summarized the issue with "the question is whether, in a free society, it is right, wise—or necessary—for supposedly independent organizations to receive secret subsidies."
was a committee commissioned by CIA in 1952 in response to widespread Unidentified Flying Object
reports, especially in the Washington, D.C.
area. The panel was briefed on U.S. military activities and intelligence; hence the report was originally classified Secret. Later declassified, the Robertson Panel's report concluded that UFOs were not a direct threat to national security, but could pose an indirect threat by overwhelming standard military communications due to public interest in the subject. Most UFO reports, they concluded, could be explained as misidentification of mundane aerial objects, and the remaining minority could, in all likelihood, be similarly explained with further study.
The Robertson Panel concluded that a public relations
campaign should be undertaken in order to "debunk
" UFOs, and reduce public interest in the subject, and that civilian UFO groups should be monitored. See the more recent article Arthur C. Lundahl#Unidentified Flying Objects, which addresses discussions in 1967.
had just spent a year and half in India, where, we are told, she befriended Indira Gandhi and the widow of the “revolutionary humanist” M. N. Roy, and had met a researcher who seems to have been a C.I.A. agent or contact. Attractive and progressive, Steinem was hired to run the I.S.I. and to recruit knowledgeable young Americans who could debate effectively with the Communist organizers of the festival, defending the United States against Communist criticism of segregation and other American failings.
through a series of foundation cutouts. Resulting journalistic and other investigations led to the cessation of most CIA subsidies.
After reading of the disclosures, Tom Braden wrote about looking at "a creased and faded yellow paper. It bears the following inscription in pencil:
Relationships with organized labor are not surprising, given the World War II activity of the Office of Strategic Services
(OSS) Labor Branch under Arthur Goldberg
. European labor groups often provided OSS with volunteers to penetrate occupied Europe, and, with greatest danger, into Nazi Germany. " [Arthur] Goldberg
, head of the Labor Division of the OSS clandestine intelligence unit, later appointed to the US Supreme Court by President John F. Kennedy—was known at the time for his defense of the Chicago Newspaper Guild during its 1938 strike against the Hearst Corporation
. Joining OSS/London in 1943, Goldberg convinced colleagues and OSS director, Gen. William J. Donovan, of the need to establish contact with underground labor groups in occupied and Axis countries. ... Because such groups were already major forces of internal resistance behind enemy lines, they constituted a readymade source of valuable military and political intelligence."
Philip Agee
left CIA employment, taking notes for his book, Inside the Company. In that book, he stated that he left with a good reputation. John Barron
reports his resignation was forced "for a variety of reasons, including his irresponsible drinking, continuous and vulgar propositioning of embassy wives, and inability to manage his finances".
and a group of associates founded the Covert Action Information Bulletin, which promoted "a worldwide campaign to destabilize the CIA through exposure of its operations and personnel."
was established as an overt quasi-public corporation, primarily funded by the U.S. government. In his doctoral dissertation, Hale cites a widespread opinion that NED provides, overtly, political assistance previously provided clandestinely by the CIA. "This has led most observers – including many NED supporters – to conclude that NED is attempting to do overtly what was done covertly by the CIA in the past....NED has been careful to avoid any links with the CIA." NED's own history cites the problems created by CIA clandestine approaches to affecting opinion related to U.S. goals: "When it was revealed in the late 1960s that some American PVO's were receiving covert funding from the CIA to wage the battle of ideas at international forums, the Johnson Administration concluded that such funding should cease, recommending establishment of "a public-private mechanism" to fund overseas activities openly." It contains four institutes, which, in some cases, parallel groups, such as the International Organizations Division, that had been in the CIA Directorate of Plans, the predecessor to the National Clandestine Service
:
"*National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), representing the Democratic Party,
The NED recognizes the somewhat controversial inclusion of institutes for the main American political parties as "Even some who favored the Endowment's program questioned why—contrary to American political tradition—organizations affiliated with America's two political parties should receive federal funding... As for their being favored over other entities, these four Institutes represent large public American institutions with substantial nationwide constituencies. This sets them apart from NGOs that work in the areas of democracy and human rights."
, by Tom Clancy
. This movie varied substantially from the book, although not as far as other movies based on Clancy novels.
. He argued, up to the DCI level, that the figures were being manipulated to satisfy the White House and Department of Defense.
, counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, states that the CIA withheld information from the Warren Commission
and frustrated the efforts of the Congressional Committee he represented.
According to a 1997 New York Times article, the CIA conducted a covert propaganda campaign to squelch criticism of the Warren Report. The CIA urged its field stations to use their "propaganda assets" to attack those who didn't agree with the Warren Report. In a dispatch from CIA headquarters, the Agency instructed its stations around the world to:
book, The Sum of All Fears
. This film may well have been the most different from the book.
, received CIA assistance. Director Roger Donaldson
said "
When the Agency commits to providing their support to a project, that can include letting a photographer shoot stills to help in designing sets, or, in certain instances, having the actors spend time in the building. By visiting Langley, the director says, he came to “understand how the space worked and looked. I needed a real sense of how a new person would feel when they saw the place for the first time."
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
or the National Security Council
United States National Security Council
The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...
staff, the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
has attempted to influence domestic and international public opinion
Public opinion
Public opinion is the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by the adult population. Public opinion can also be defined as the complex collection of opinions of many different people and the sum of all their views....
, and sometimes law enforcement
Law enforcement agency
In North American English, a law enforcement agency is a government agency responsible for the enforcement of the laws.Outside North America, such organizations are called police services. In North America, some of these services are called police while others have other names In North American...
. This article does not address, other than incidental to influencing opinion or actions reasonably associated with CIA security, possibly illegal domestic surveillance.
It also does not address narrowly focused psychological warfare
Psychological warfare
Psychological warfare , or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations , have been known by many other names or terms, including Psy Ops, Political Warfare, “Hearts and Minds,” and Propaganda...
in support of covert or military action. The focus of this article is on long-term influence on opinion leaders, including journalists, artists, labor leaders, etc., rather than starting rumors to assist in supporting a coup.
This is an area with many shades of gray. There is little argument, for example, that the CIA acted inappropriately in providing technical support to White House operatives conducting both political and security investigations, with no legal authority to do so. While there is an established history of assigning responsibilities for international psychological operations
Psychological Operations (United States)
Psychological operations are planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.The purpose of United States...
to various organizations, depending if the operation is overt or clandestine, there are also questions of the wisdom of a particular operation.
Things become much more ambiguous when law enforcement may expose a clandestine operation, a problem not unique to intelligence but also seen among different law enforcement organizations, where one wants to prosecute and another to continue investigations, perhaps reaching higher levels in a conspiracy.
Not all inappropriate activities were initiated or conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency, but by other members of the United States Intelligence Community
United States Intelligence Community
The United States Intelligence Community is a cooperative federation of 16 separate United States government agencies that work separately and together to conduct intelligence activities considered necessary for the conduct of foreign relations and the protection of the national security of the...
. In particular, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
took a very broad view of its mandate to collect information to protect the state from domestic subversion
Subversion
Apache Subversion is a software versioning and a revision control system distributed under a free license. Developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation...
. In other cases, the National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
intercepted electronic communications without the warrants deemed necessary at the time.
It has been suggested that a number of things assigned to the CIA really did not need to be clandestine, and having an overt organization support initiatives desired by the U.S. government has much less political risk. The United States Information Agency
United States Information Agency
The United States Information Agency , which existed from 1953 to 1999, was a United States agency devoted to "public diplomacy". In 1999, USIA's broadcasting functions were moved to the newly created Broadcasting Board of Governors, and its exchange and non-broadcasting information functions were...
(USIA) has always been an overt white propaganda
White propaganda
White propaganda is propaganda which truthfully states its origin. It is the most common type of propaganda. It generally comes from an openly identified source, and is characterized by gentler methods of persuasion than black propaganda and grey propaganda...
organization. Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a broadcaster funded by the U.S. Congress that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East "where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed"...
and Radio Liberty, as distinct from the Voice of America
Voice of America
Voice of America is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors . VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio...
(VOA), had been clandestinely funded through the CIA, but, with the VOA, now all come under the authority of a quasi-public corporation, the Broadcasting Board of Governors
Broadcasting Board of Governors
The Broadcasting Board of Governors is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for all non-military, international broadcasting sponsored by the U.S government. It was previously a department within the United States Information Agency until 1999.-Origins:Starting in...
(BBG). BBG was part of USIA until 1999.
Another overt organization, the National Endowment for Democracy
National Endowment for Democracy
The National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, is a U.S. non-profit organization that was founded in 1983 to promote US-friendly democracy by providing cash grants funded primarily through an annual allocation from the U.S. Congress...
, was created in 1983. William Blum
William Blum
William Blum is an American author, historian, and critic of United States foreign policy. He studied accounting in college. Later he had a low-level computer-related position at the United States Department of State in the mid-1960s. Initially an anti-communist with dreams of becoming a foreign...
, an author and critic of the CIA and U.S. foreign policy, suggests it was set up to legally continue the CIA's prohibited activities of support to selected political parties abroad. See additional discussion under USA 1983.
History: pre-CIA and CIA
This was an issue even before the CIA was formed. "The vagueness of Congress's prohibitions of "internal security functions" by the CIA left room for the Agency's subsequent domestic activity. A restriction against "police, law enforcement or internal security functions" first appeared in President Truman's order establishing the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) in 1946.General
General
A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....
Hoyt Vandenberg
Hoyt Vandenberg
Hoyt Sanford Vandenberg was a U.S. Air Force general, its second Chief of Staff, and second Director of Central Intelligence....
testified in 1947 that this restriction was intended to "draw the lines very sharply between the CIG and the FBI" and to "assure that the Central Intelligence Group can never become a Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
or security police
Secret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
." Secretary of the Navy
United States Secretary of the Navy
The Secretary of the Navy of the United States of America is the head of the Department of the Navy, a component organization of the Department of Defense...
James Forrestal
James Forrestal
James Vincent Forrestal was the last Cabinet-level United States Secretary of the Navy and the first United States Secretary of Defense....
testified that the CIA would be "limited definitely to purposes outside of this country, except the collection of information gathered by other government agencies." The FBI would be relied upon "for domestic activities." The CIA, however, did receive information gleaned from the activities of other agencies, and did not necessarily notify internal or external oversight of inappropriate activities of which it was witting.
CIA authority came from a 1947 National Security Council
National Security Council
A National Security Council is usually an executive branch governmental body responsible for coordinating policy on national security issues and advising chief executives on matters related to national security...
directive:
In the House floor debate, congressman Chester E. Holifield
Chester E. Holifield
Chester Earl Holifield was a United States Representative from California. He was born in Mayfield, Graves County, Kentucky. He moved with his family to Springdale, Arkansas in 1912. He attended the public schools and moved to Montebello, California in 1920 where he engaged in the manufacture and...
stressed that the work of the CIA:
Consequently, the National Security Act of 1947 provided specifically that the CIA "shall have no police, subpoena, law-enforcement powers, or internal security functions." However, the 1947 Act also contained a vague and undefined duty to protect intelligence "sources and methods" which later was used to justify domestic activities ranging from electronic surveillance and break-ins to penetration of protest groups.
CIA, however, was under no restriction in sponsoring organizations outside the US. In 1967 it was revealed that the Congress of Cultural Freedom, founded in 1950, had been sponsored by the CIA. It published literary and political journals such as Encounter
Encounter (magazine)
Encounter was a literary magazine, founded in 1953 by poet Stephen Spender and early neoconservative author Irving Kristol. The magazine ceased publication in 1991...
(as well as Der Monat in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Preuves in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
), and hosted dozens of conferences bringing together some of the most eminent Western thinkers; it also gave some assistance to intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain
Iron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
. The CIA states that, "Somehow this organization of scholars and artists — egotistical, free-thinking, and even anti-American in their politics — managed to reach out from its Paris headquarters to demonstrate that Communism, despite its blandishments, was a deadly foe of art and thought".
Definitions
Since psychological operations can involve many variants of truth, it is useful to know the formal definitions used in the Intelligence Community. These definitions come from the Operations Coordinating BoardOperations Coordinating Board
The Operations Coordinating Board was a committee of the United States Executive created in 1953 by President Eisenhower's Executive Order 10483...
(OCB), which, in 1954, was the White House organization that approved or disapproved covert and clandestine activities. Policy-level control has always been under the Department of State.
White Propaganda
White is acknowledged as an official statement or act of the U.S. Government, or emanates from a source associated closely enough with the U.S. Government to reflect an official viewpoint. The information is true and factual. It also includes all output identified as coming from U.S. official sources.Authorized to engage in white activity directed at foreign audiences are: The State Department, USIA, the Foreign Operations Administration (a predecessor of the Agency for International Development), the Defense Department and other U.S. Government departments and agencies as
necessary
Gray Propaganda
The source of gray propaganda is deliberately ambiguous.The true source (U.S. Government) is not revealed to the target audience. The activity engaged in plausibly appears to emanate from a non-official American source, or an indigenous, non-hostile source, or there may be no attribution.
Gray is that information whose content is such that the effect will be increased if the hand of the U.S. Government and in some cases any American participation are not revealed. It is simply a means for the U.S. to present viewpoints which are in the interest of U.S. foreign policy, but which will be acceptable or more acceptable to the intended target audience than will an official government statement.
Responsibility for gray is assigned to the OCB designee, USIA and State. The following criteria will assist in determining the responsibility for the execution of a proposed gray activity. If the answer to any of the three questions below is affirmative, the activity is the sole responsibility of the OCB designee. If government interest is not to be revealed but the answer to all three questions listed below is negative, the activity may fall within the charter of State, USIA or the OCB designee:
a. Would the disclosure of the source occasion serious embarrassment
to the U.S. Government or to the agencies responsible for the
information activity?
b. Would the activity or the materials disseminated be seriously
discredited if it were to become known that the U.S. Government were
responsible?
c. Would the outlet be seriously damaged if it were to become
known that the activity is subsidized or otherwise assisted by the
U.S. Government?
Black Propaganda
The activity engaged in appears to emanate from a source (government, party, group, organization, person)usually hostile in nature. The interest of the U.S. Government is concealed and the U.S. Government would deny
responsibility. The content may be partially or completely fabricated, but that which is fabricated is made to appear credible to the target audience. Black activity is also usually designed to cause embarrassment to the ostensible source or to force the ostensible source to take action against its will.
Black propaganda can be considered clandestine, as the source is unknown.
Responsibility for engaging in black propaganda and other related activities is assigned solely to the designee of the OCB. Likewise it should be kept in mind that activities, either gray or black, conducted into denied areas from their peripheries, other than radio, are the sole responsibility of the OCB designee.
CIA authority to perform psychological operations
Psychological operations was assigned to the pre-CIA Office of Policy CoordinationOffice of Policy Coordination
The Office of Policy Coordination was a United States covert psychological operations and paramilitary action organization. Created as an independent office in 1948, it was merged with the Central Intelligence Agency in 1951....
, with oversight by the Department of State. The overall psychological operations of the United States, overt and covert, were to be under the policy direction of the Department of State during peacetime and the early stages of war:
The Secretary of State shall be responsible for:
(1)The formulation of policies and plans for a national foreign information program in time of peace. This program shall include all foreign information activities conducted by departments and agencies of the U. S. Government.
(2)The formulation of national psychological warfare policy in time of national emergency and the initial stages of war.
(3) The coordination of policies and plans for the national foreign information program and for overt psychological warfare with the Department of Defense, with other appropriate departments and agencies of the U.S. Government, and with related planning...
(4)Plans prepared by this organization for overt psychological
warfare in time of national emergency or the initial stages of war shall
provide for:
a. Coordination of overt psychological warfare with:
- Covert psychological warfare.
- Censorship
Censorshipthumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
.- Domestic information.
b. The employment and expansion, insofar as is feasible, of the activities and facilities which compose the national foreign information program in time of peace, in order to assure rapid transition to operations in time of national emergency or war.
c. Control of the execution of approved plans and policies by:
(1) the Department of Defense in theaters of military operations;
(2) the Department of State in areas other than theaters of military operations.
d. Transmittal of approved psychological warfare plans and policies to theater commanders through the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
After the OPC was consolidated into the CIA, there has been a psychological operations staff, under various names, in what has variously been named the Deputy Directorate of Plans, the Directorate of Operations, or the National Clandestine Service
National Clandestine Service
The National Clandestine Service is one of the four main components of the Central Intelligence Agency...
.
Subsidies of groups not under CIA control
In 1947, the Soviet-dominated Communist Information Bureau (CominformCominform
Founded in 1947, Cominform is the common name for what was officially referred to as the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties...
) was created by Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
. The conference, at which it was created, was a response of Eastern European countries to invitations to attend the July 1947 Paris Conference on the Marshall Plan
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was the large-scale American program to aid Europe where the United States gave monetary support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II in order to combat the spread of Soviet communism. The plan was in operation for four years beginning in April 1948...
. The Cominform's stated purpose was to coordinate the work of Communist parties, under Soviet direction, so the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin called the conference in response to divergences among the eastern European governments on whether or not to attend the Paris Conference on Marshall Aid in July 1947.
The initial seat of the Cominform was located in Belgrade (then the capital of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). After the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the group in June 1948, the seat was moved to Bucharest, Romania. The expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform for Titoism initiated the Informbiro period in that nation's history.
The intended purpose of the Cominform was to coordinate actions between Communist parties, and a scores of Communist-controlled professional, artistic and intellectual groups under Soviet direction. The Kremlin had set up the Cominform in the early years of the cold war to coordinate the activities of the Cominform acted as a tool of Soviet foreign policy and Stalinism.
In response, CIA psychological operators decided that the Cominform-controlled groups could best be countered by Western groups not only of intensely anti-Communist right-wing groups, but groups across the ideological spectrum. Many of them were unaware of CIA subsidy, or only a few leaders knew of the subsidy, and were not expected to follow orders. Wilford cited, as examples, the small magazines Partisan Review and The New Leader, received C.I.A. funds in one way or another, owed nothing to the agency, either in their founding or in their operations, and were not "front" organizations. Other groups formed by the CIA, however, were true fronts, although some of the individuals being sponsored were unaware of the source of funds.
Use of mass media
The Central Intelligence Agency has made use of mass mediaMass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
assets, both foreign and domestic, for its covert operations. It was first reported on in the late 1960s, when it became known that the Congress for Cultural Freedom was largely funded by the CIA. In 1973, the Washington Star-News reported that CIA had enlisted more than thirty Americans working abroad as journalists, citing an internal CIA inquiry ordered by CIA director William E. Colby. The Church Committee
Church Committee
The Church Committee is the common term referring to the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1975. A precursor to the U.S...
was the first congressional committee established in the 1970s to look specifically into the CIA's past activities. Some classified information in the (unpublished) report of the Pike Committee was leaked to The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, which showed more details on the CIA's media manipulation
Media manipulation
Media manipulation is an aspect of public relations in which partisans create an image or argument that favours their particular interests. Such tactics may include the use of logical fallacies and propaganda techniques, and often involve the suppression of information or points of view by crowding...
. The Committee mentioned that the:
Publication review and controversies
CIA employees and contractors do sign an agreement to submit their works for pre-publication review. In some cases, there was no major problem, but other security review took litigation to resolve. It has been argued that some of the deletions requested by CIA were more to cover embarrassments than actual sources and methods, but various disclosures or subsequent declassifications, in other cases, might have been judgment calls, but the proposed deletion made some sense.Such review, of course, does not apply to books written by people who have left the country and declared enmity against the Agency, such as Philip Agee
Philip Agee
Philip Burnett Franklin Agee was a Central Intelligence Agency case officer and writer, best known as author of the 1975 book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, detailing his experiences in the CIA. Agee joined the CIA in 1957, and over the following decade had postings in Washington, D.C., Ecuador,...
and the book Inside the Company. Sam Adams' book War of Numbers was published posthumously, based on notes he had hidden while a Vietnam analyst.
One book that would up in court was The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence is a 1974 controversial non-fiction political book written by Victor Marchetti, a former special assistant to the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and John D. Marks, a former officer of the United States Department of State.The authors claim...
, by Victor Marchetti
Victor Marchetti
Victor Marchetti is a former special assistant to the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and a prominent paleoconservative critic of the United States Intelligence Community and the Israel lobby in the United States....
and John Marks.
Assistance to entertainment
In 2001, the CIA named Chase Brandon, an operations officer who was assigned to South America, as liaison to Hollywood. Brandon's film credits include The RecruitThe Recruit
The Recruit is a 2003 American spy thriller film directed by Roger Donaldson, starring Colin Farrell, Al Pacino and Bridget Moynahan. It was released on January 31, 2003 in North America by Touchstone Pictures....
, The Sum of All Fears
The Sum of All Fears (film)
The Sum of All Fears is a 2002 American action film/political thriller directed by Phil Alden Robinson and based on the novel The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy...
, Enemy of the State, Bad Company
Bad Company (2002 film)
Bad Company is a 2002 action-comedy film directed by Joel Schumacher, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and starring Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock.-Plot:...
and In the Company of Spies. He has consulted for television programs including The Agency, Alias
Alias (TV series)
Alias is an American action television series created by J. J. Abrams which was broadcast on ABC for five seasons, from September 30, 2001 to May 22, 2006...
and JAG. He has appeared on Discovery
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
, Learning Channel, History Channel, PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
, A&E
A&E Network
The A&E Network is a United States-based cable and satellite television network with headquarters in New York City and offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, London, Los Angeles and Stamford. A&E also airs in Canada and Latin America. Initially named the Arts & Entertainment Network, A&E launched...
, and has been interviewed on E-Entertainment, Access Hollywood
Access Hollywood
Access Hollywood is a weekday television entertainment news program covering events and celebrities in the entertainment industry. It was created by former Entertainment Tonight executive producer Jim Van Messel, and is currently directed by Robert Silverstein. In previous years, Doug Dougherty and...
, and Entertainment Tonight
Entertainment Tonight
Entertainment Tonight is a daily tabloid television entertainment television news show that is syndicated by CBS Television Distribution throughout the United States, Canada and in many countries around the world. Linda Bell Blue is currently the program's executive producer...
.
Patterson criticizes the CIA assistance as being only to complimentary productions, including not running material, such as
"the original pilot episode of The Agency, which was pulled. It featured the spymasters preventing a plot by a Bin Laden-backed terrorist cell to blow up a fictionalized Harrods. The airing of such an episode might have pointed up the real CIA's corresponding lack of success in foiling the World Trade Center
World Trade Center
The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...
attacks."
According to Brandon, the agency would not endorse Spy Game
Spy Game
Spy Game is a 2001 American spy film directed by Tony Scott and starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. The film grossed $62,362,785 in the United States and $143,049,560 worldwide.-Plot:...
, starring Robert Redford
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime...
and Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt
William Bradley "Brad" Pitt is an American actor and film producer. Pitt has received two Academy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations, winning one...
. The final rewrite "showed our senior management in an insensitive light and we just wouldn't want to be a part of that kind of project", said Brandon, who also withheld approval from 24
24 (TV series)
24 is an American television series produced for the Fox Network and syndicated worldwide, starring Kiefer Sutherland as Counter Terrorist Unit agent Jack Bauer. Each 24-episode season covers 24 hours in the life of Bauer, using the real time method of narration...
, a Fox series about a fictional intelligence agency, CTU, that also suggests all is not hunky-dory in the company's upper echelons. And The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Identity (2002 film)
The Bourne Identity is a 2002 American spy film loosely based on Robert Ludlum's novel of the same name. It stars Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, an amnesiac attempting to discover his true identity amidst a clandestine conspiracy within the Central Intelligence Agency . The film also stars Franka...
, based on the 1984 novel by Robert Ludlum
Robert Ludlum
Robert Ludlum was an American author of 23 thriller novels. The number of his books in print is estimated between 290–500 million copies. They have been published in 33 languages and 40 countries. Ludlum also published books under the pseudonyms Jonathan Ryder and Michael Shepherd.-Life and...
, was "so awful that I tossed it in the burn bag after page 25".
Patterson observed "It used to be the case that if a movie explicitly condemned CIA actions - such as Under Fire
Under Fire (film)
Under Fire is a 1983 political film set during the last days of the Somoza regime in 1979 Nicaragua. It stars Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman and Joanna Cassidy. The story is fictional, but was inspired by actual events, namely the murder of ABC reporter Bill Stewart by Somoza forces...
- the studios could be counted on to bury it. That was no longer true after Costa-Gavras's Missing
Missing (film)
Missing is a 1982 American drama film directed by Costa Gavras, and starring Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Melanie Mayron, John Shea, Charles Cioffi and Janice Rule...
won Jack Lemmon an Oscar in 1982, and Iran-Contra slimed the CIA in the late 1980s. Since then, "CIA renegade" has become a dependable staple not just of big-budget movies like Enemy of the State, but also of a million straight-to-cable action-schlockfests starring Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal."
USA 1950
Philip AgeePhilip Agee
Philip Burnett Franklin Agee was a Central Intelligence Agency case officer and writer, best known as author of the 1975 book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, detailing his experiences in the CIA. Agee joined the CIA in 1957, and over the following decade had postings in Washington, D.C., Ecuador,...
suggested that funding from the CIA to the National Student Association
National Student Association
The United States National Student Association, a confederation of American college and university student governments, was founded in 1947 at a conference at the University of Wisconsin. It established its first headquarters in Madison, not far from the U. of Wisconsin campus...
, which had been formed in 1947, may have begun in 1950. Tom Braden, head of the CIA International Organizations Division, is not clear, in an article, whether it was 1950 or 1951, but it clearly began in the 1950s and continued until 1967. Braden said that the Division was established in 1950, when Director of Central Intelligence
Director of Central Intelligence
The Office of United States Director of Central Intelligence was the head of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the principal intelligence advisor to the President and the National Security Council, and the coordinator of intelligence activities among and between the various United...
Allen W. Dulles overruled Frank Wisner
Frank Wisner
Frank Gardiner Wisner was head of Office of Strategic Services operations in southeastern Europe at the end of World War II, and the head of the Directorate of Plans of the Central Intelligence Agency during the 1950s....
, who headed the quasi-autonomous Office of Policy Coordination
Office of Policy Coordination
The Office of Policy Coordination was a United States covert psychological operations and paramilitary action organization. Created as an independent office in 1948, it was merged with the Central Intelligence Agency in 1951....
(OPC). Until 1952, OPC was the covert action branch of the U.S. government, loosely part of CIA but also with direct access and appeal to the Secretaries of Defense
United States Secretary of Defense
The Secretary of Defense is the head and chief executive officer of the Department of Defense of the United States of America. This position corresponds to what is generally known as a Defense Minister in other countries...
and State
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
.
Agee cites a New York Times interview with Frederic Delano Houghteling, then NSA secretary, as saying that the CIA gave him several thousand dollars to pay traveling expenses for a delegation of 12 representatives to a European international student conference.
Operation Mockingbird
Under Frank WisnerFrank Wisner
Frank Gardiner Wisner was head of Office of Strategic Services operations in southeastern Europe at the end of World War II, and the head of the Directorate of Plans of the Central Intelligence Agency during the 1950s....
and the Office of Policy Coordination
Office of Policy Coordination
The Office of Policy Coordination was a United States covert psychological operations and paramilitary action organization. Created as an independent office in 1948, it was merged with the Central Intelligence Agency in 1951....
, Operation Mockingbird
Operation Mockingbird
Operation Mockingbird was a secret Central Intelligence Agency campaign to influence foreign media beginning in the 1950s.The activities, extent and even the existence of the CIA project remain in dispute: the operation was first called Mockingbird in Deborah Davis' 1979 book, Katharine the Great:...
was set up to put anticommunist messages into US news media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, to run the news aspects of the operation. Columbia Broadcasting System began co-operating with the CIA. "To understand the role of most journalist‑operatives, it is necessary to dismiss some myths about undercover work for American intelligence services. Few American agents are “spies” in the popularly accepted sense of the term. “Spying” — the acquisition of secrets from a foreign government—is almost always done by foreign nationals who have been recruited by the CIA and are under CIA control in their own countries. Thus the primary role of an American working undercover abroad is often to aid in the recruitment and “handling” of foreign nationals who are channels of secret information reaching American intelligence.
"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." Formal recruitment of reporters was generally handled at high levels—after the journalist had undergone a thorough background check. The actual approach might even be made by a deputy director or division chief. On some occasions, no discussion would he entered into until the journalist had signed a pledge of secrecy.
“The secrecy agreement was the sort of ritual that got you into the tabernacle,” said a former assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence. “After that you had to play by the rules.” David Attlee Phillips, former Western Hemisphere chief of clandestine services and a former journalist himself, estimated in an interview that at least 200 journalists signed secrecy agreements or employment contracts with the Agency in the past twenty‑five years. Phillips, who owned a small English‑language newspaper in Santiago, Chile, when he was recruited by the CIA in 1950, described the approach: “Somebody from the Agency says, ‘I want you to help me. 1 know you are a true‑blue American, but I want you to sign a piece of paper before I tell you what it’s about.’ I didn’t hesitate to sign, and a lot of newsmen didn’t hesitate over the next twenty years.”
Forerunner of Domestic Contact Service/OSINT
This function, run by the Domestic Contact Service(also called the Domestic Contact Division) of the CIA, was legal, as it did not violate the CIA prohibitions of police power or spying on Americans. It was a voluntary debriefing of Americans with useful information. It is now considered part of Open Source Intelligence OSINT.Subsidies to international organizations
As Tom Braden, who headed the agency's International Organization Division between 1951 and 1954, wrote in 1967, when the subsidies were disclosed,Agee wrote that the CIA, in 1952, funded then NSA president William Dentzer, who later went on to become [ United States Agency for International Development
United States Agency for International Development
The United States Agency for International Development is the United States federal government agency primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid. President John F. Kennedy created USAID in 1961 by executive order to implement development assistance programs in the areas...
] (AID) director in Peru. The New York Times also identified Cord Meyer, Jr. as having headed the NSA operation.
NSA leaders knew of the CIA sponsorship, although members, including those representing the organization internationally, may have had no more direction than persuasion from the leadership. The former were members, not employees, and could not be directed with threats of expulsion. In addition to representation as a form of psychological operation, some of the leadership, according to Agee, provided intelligence reports to CIA.
Another organization set up on 26 June 1950, as the cultural arm of the International Organizations Division, was the Congress for Cultural Freedom. According to libcom.org, which describes itself as "libertarian communist," it was intended to be anti-communist without necessarily pro-Western or pro-American. The Congress intended to
build up the reputation of artists in the West whose work could in some way be viewed as supportive or at least uncritical of American foreign policy and free trade, and to show Western Europe as somewhere where the arts were both supported and allowed to flourish uninhibited by the ruling elite. Due to its secrecy (any detection of state intervention in the Arts on this scale would have made a mockery of the idea that the West allowed more cultural freedom than the Soviets), it managed to fund artistic activity which would never have received US State Department funding – the abstract impressionists, serialist composers, and many other “progressive” artists loosely aligned to the Non-Communist Left (NCL). “The CIA estimated the NCL as a reliably anti-Communist force which in action would be, if not pro-Western and pro-American, at any rate not anti-Western and anti-American.”
Yet more complex is the clandestine support of perfectly legal organizations and individuals, especially with no interference with their expression, when it is believed that their beliefs, perhaps expressed in other places in the world, advance American policies. In 1967, a number of clandestine subsidies to associations and journals became public. Given the CIA's prohibition from domestic activities, support of US groups with worldwide presence, such as the National Student Association
National Student Association
The United States National Student Association, a confederation of American college and university student governments, was founded in 1947 at a conference at the University of Wisconsin. It established its first headquarters in Madison, not far from the U. of Wisconsin campus...
, were especially problematic. The exposure, by Ramparts magazine, of CIA subsidies to the National Association, according to Time, led to the term "orphans", referring to nearly 100 private agencies that had been getting CIA money, and were affected by a Presidential order that support must end by the end of 1967. Time succinctly summarized the issue with "the question is whether, in a free society, it is right, wise—or necessary—for supposedly independent organizations to receive secret subsidies."
Whatever the merits or demerits of the CIA's methods, most of these groups served the U.S. well in its contest for the faith and understanding of the world's workers and thinkers, students and teachers, refugees from yesterday and leaders of tomorrow. This led to the appointment of a presidential commission, headed by Under Secretary of State Nicholas KatzenbachNicholas KatzenbachNicholas deBelleville Katzenbach is an American lawyer who served as United States Attorney General during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration.-Early life:...
, to figure out how the gap left by the CIA should be filled. ... a politically ambitious former California newspaper publisher who served with the CIA between 1950 and 1954, added further details. In an article in the Saturday Evening Post, Braden indignantly defended the CIA against charges that it had been "immoral" by recording some of the extremely useful things it accomplished early in the cold war.
USA 1951
According to Agee, in 1951, the National Student Association opposed the House Un-American Activities Committee.USA 1952
The Robertson PanelRobertson Panel
The Robertson Panel was a committee commissioned by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1952 in response to widespread reports of unidentified flying objects, especially in the Washington, D.C. area. The panel was briefed on U.S...
was a committee commissioned by CIA in 1952 in response to widespread Unidentified Flying Object
Unidentified flying object
A term originally coined by the military, an unidentified flying object is an unusual apparent anomaly in the sky that is not readily identifiable to the observer as any known object...
reports, especially in the Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
area. The panel was briefed on U.S. military activities and intelligence; hence the report was originally classified Secret. Later declassified, the Robertson Panel's report concluded that UFOs were not a direct threat to national security, but could pose an indirect threat by overwhelming standard military communications due to public interest in the subject. Most UFO reports, they concluded, could be explained as misidentification of mundane aerial objects, and the remaining minority could, in all likelihood, be similarly explained with further study.
The Robertson Panel concluded that a public relations
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
campaign should be undertaken in order to "debunk
Debunker
A debunker is an individual who attempts to discredit and contradict claims as being false, exaggerated or pretentious. The term is closely associated with skeptical investigation of, or in some cases irrational resistance to, controversial topics such as U.F.O.s, claimed paranormal phenomena,...
" UFOs, and reduce public interest in the subject, and that civilian UFO groups should be monitored. See the more recent article Arthur C. Lundahl#Unidentified Flying Objects, which addresses discussions in 1967.
USA 1953
By 1953, according to Braden, the US subsidy program was operating in earnest.By 1953 we were operating or influencing international organizations in every field where Communist fronts had previously seized ground, and in some where they had not even begun to operate. The money we spent was very little by Soviet standards. But that was reflected in the first rule of our operational plan: "Limit the money to amounts private organizations can credibly spend." The other rules were equally obvious: "Use legitimate, existing organizations; disguise the extent of American interest: protect the integrity of the organization by not requiring it to support every aspect of official American policy."
USA 1959
A front organization organized in 1959 was the Independent Service for Information, set up at Harvard specifically for the purpose of getting some young anti-Communist Americans to attend a huge youth festival being organized by the Communists in Vienna. Among those sponsored were Gloria SteinemGloria Steinem
Gloria Marie Steinem is an American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s...
had just spent a year and half in India, where, we are told, she befriended Indira Gandhi and the widow of the “revolutionary humanist” M. N. Roy, and had met a researcher who seems to have been a C.I.A. agent or contact. Attractive and progressive, Steinem was hired to run the I.S.I. and to recruit knowledgeable young Americans who could debate effectively with the Communist organizers of the festival, defending the United States against Communist criticism of segregation and other American failings.
USA 1967
In February 1967, Ramparts magazine reported that the CIA had been funding the National Student AssociationNational Student Association
The United States National Student Association, a confederation of American college and university student governments, was founded in 1947 at a conference at the University of Wisconsin. It established its first headquarters in Madison, not far from the U. of Wisconsin campus...
through a series of foundation cutouts. Resulting journalistic and other investigations led to the cessation of most CIA subsidies.
After reading of the disclosures, Tom Braden wrote about looking at "a creased and faded yellow paper. It bears the following inscription in pencil:
"Received from Warren G. Haskins, $15,000. (signed) Norris A. Grambo." For I was Warren G. Haskins. Norris A. Grambo was Irving Brown, of the American Federation of LaborAmerican Federation of LaborThe American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers was elected president of the Federation at its...
. The $15,000 was from the vaults of the CIA, and the piece of yellow paper is the last memento I possess of a vast and secret operation whose death has been brought about by small-minded and resentful men."
It was my idea to give the $15,000 to Irving Brown. He needed it to pay off his strong-arm squads in Mediterranean ports, so that American supplies could be unloaded against the opposition of Communist dock workers. It was also my idea to give cash, along with advice, to other labor leaders, to students, professors and others who could help the United States in its battle with Communist fronts.
Relationships with organized labor are not surprising, given the World War II activity of the Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
(OSS) Labor Branch under Arthur Goldberg
Arthur Goldberg
Arthur Joseph Goldberg was an American statesman and jurist who served as the U.S. Secretary of Labor, Supreme Court Justice and Ambassador to the United Nations.-Early life:...
. European labor groups often provided OSS with volunteers to penetrate occupied Europe, and, with greatest danger, into Nazi Germany. " [Arthur] Goldberg
Arthur Goldberg
Arthur Joseph Goldberg was an American statesman and jurist who served as the U.S. Secretary of Labor, Supreme Court Justice and Ambassador to the United Nations.-Early life:...
, head of the Labor Division of the OSS clandestine intelligence unit, later appointed to the US Supreme Court by President John F. Kennedy—was known at the time for his defense of the Chicago Newspaper Guild during its 1938 strike against the Hearst Corporation
Hearst Corporation
The Hearst Corporation is an American media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower, Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. Founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, the company's holdings now include a wide variety of media...
. Joining OSS/London in 1943, Goldberg convinced colleagues and OSS director, Gen. William J. Donovan, of the need to establish contact with underground labor groups in occupied and Axis countries. ... Because such groups were already major forces of internal resistance behind enemy lines, they constituted a readymade source of valuable military and political intelligence."
USA 1968
- Verify date
Philip Agee
Philip Agee
Philip Burnett Franklin Agee was a Central Intelligence Agency case officer and writer, best known as author of the 1975 book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, detailing his experiences in the CIA. Agee joined the CIA in 1957, and over the following decade had postings in Washington, D.C., Ecuador,...
left CIA employment, taking notes for his book, Inside the Company. In that book, he stated that he left with a good reputation. John Barron
John Barron (journalist)
John Daniel Barron was a conservative American journalist and investigative writer. He is best remembered as the author of several books dealing with specifics of Soviet espionage.-Early years:...
reports his resignation was forced "for a variety of reasons, including his irresponsible drinking, continuous and vulgar propositioning of embassy wives, and inability to manage his finances".
USA 1974
A book by former CIA employee Victor Marchetti, with John Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, went into litigation over security review. At the appellate level, the judgment was affirmed in part, vacated in part and "remanded for such further proceedings as may be necessary in accordance with this opinion."USA 1975
Phillip Agee's book, Inside the Company, was published without CIA approval. Agee, an avowed CIA opponent who moved to Cuba, disclosed a large number of the names and cryptonyms of personnel and operations. In 1991, Agee told Swiss journalist Peter Studer that “The CIA is plainly on the wrong side, that is, the capitalistic side. I approve KGB activities, communist activities in general. Between the overdone activities that the CIA initiates and the more modest activities of the KGB, there is absolutely no comparison.”USA 1976
"After Colby left the Agency on January 28, 1976, and was succeeded by George H.W. Bush, the CIA announced a new policy: “Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contractual relationship with any full‑time or part‑time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station” At the time of the announcement, the Agency acknowledged that the policy would result in termination of less than half of the relationships with the 50 U.S. journalists it said were still affiliated with the Agency. 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."USA 1977
The CIA urged its field stations to use their "propaganda assets" to attack those who didn't agree with the Warren Report. See the 1997 disclosure.USA 1978
In 1978, Philip AgeePhilip Agee
Philip Burnett Franklin Agee was a Central Intelligence Agency case officer and writer, best known as author of the 1975 book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, detailing his experiences in the CIA. Agee joined the CIA in 1957, and over the following decade had postings in Washington, D.C., Ecuador,...
and a group of associates founded the Covert Action Information Bulletin, which promoted "a worldwide campaign to destabilize the CIA through exposure of its operations and personnel."
USA 1983
The National Endowment for DemocracyNational Endowment for Democracy
The National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, is a U.S. non-profit organization that was founded in 1983 to promote US-friendly democracy by providing cash grants funded primarily through an annual allocation from the U.S. Congress...
was established as an overt quasi-public corporation, primarily funded by the U.S. government. In his doctoral dissertation, Hale cites a widespread opinion that NED provides, overtly, political assistance previously provided clandestinely by the CIA. "This has led most observers – including many NED supporters – to conclude that NED is attempting to do overtly what was done covertly by the CIA in the past....NED has been careful to avoid any links with the CIA." NED's own history cites the problems created by CIA clandestine approaches to affecting opinion related to U.S. goals: "When it was revealed in the late 1960s that some American PVO's were receiving covert funding from the CIA to wage the battle of ideas at international forums, the Johnson Administration concluded that such funding should cease, recommending establishment of "a public-private mechanism" to fund overseas activities openly." It contains four institutes, which, in some cases, parallel groups, such as the International Organizations Division, that had been in the CIA Directorate of Plans, the predecessor to the National Clandestine Service
National Clandestine Service
The National Clandestine Service is one of the four main components of the Central Intelligence Agency...
:
- Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), which represents the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
"*National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), representing the Democratic Party,
- National Republican Institute for International Affairs (later renamed the International Republican Institute or "IRI"), representing the Republican Party,
- American Center for International Labor Solidarity, also known as the "Solidarity Center," and formerly the Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI), which represents the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)
The NED recognizes the somewhat controversial inclusion of institutes for the main American political parties as "Even some who favored the Endowment's program questioned why—contrary to American political tradition—organizations affiliated with America's two political parties should receive federal funding... As for their being favored over other entities, these four Institutes represent large public American institutions with substantial nationwide constituencies. This sets them apart from NGOs that work in the areas of democracy and human rights."
USA 1992
CIA provided assistance in making the movie version of Patriot GamesPatriot Games
Patriot Games is a novel by Tom Clancy. It is chronologically the first book focusing on CIA analyst Jack Ryan, the main character in almost all of Clancy's novels. It is the indirect sequel to Without Remorse...
, by Tom Clancy
Tom Clancy
Thomas Leo "Tom" Clancy, Jr. is an American author, best known for his technically detailed espionage, military science, and techno thriller storylines set during and in the aftermath of the Cold War, along with video games on which he did not work, but which bear his name for licensing and...
. This movie varied substantially from the book, although not as far as other movies based on Clancy novels.
USA 1994
CIA analyst Sam Adams' book, War of Numbers, is published posthumously. Adams had resigned from the Agency in protest over the inaccuracy of CIA estimates (i.e., order of battle) about the size of the opposing forces in the Vietnam WarVietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. He argued, up to the DCI level, that the figures were being manipulated to satisfy the White House and Department of Defense.
Warren Commission
Notre Dame law professor G. Robert BlakeyG. Robert Blakey
George Robert Blakey is an American attorney and law professor. He is best known for his work in connection with drafting the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and for scholarship on that subject.-Education and family:Blakey graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1957,...
, counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, states that the CIA withheld information from the Warren Commission
Warren Commission
The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established on November 27, 1963, by Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963...
and frustrated the efforts of the Congressional Committee he represented.
According to a 1997 New York Times article, the CIA conducted a covert propaganda campaign to squelch criticism of the Warren Report. The CIA urged its field stations to use their "propaganda assets" to attack those who didn't agree with the Warren Report. In a dispatch from CIA headquarters, the Agency instructed its stations around the world to:
- counteract the "new wave of books and articles criticizing the [Warren] Commission's findings...[and] conspiracy theories ...[that] have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization";
- "discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts, especially politicians and editors;" and
- "employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. ... Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. ... The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists..."
USA 2002
CIA cooperated with the movie adaptation of the Tom ClancyTom Clancy
Thomas Leo "Tom" Clancy, Jr. is an American author, best known for his technically detailed espionage, military science, and techno thriller storylines set during and in the aftermath of the Cold War, along with video games on which he did not work, but which bear his name for licensing and...
book, The Sum of All Fears
The Sum of All Fears
The Sum of All Fears is the best-selling thriller novel by Dan Fogelman and Tom Clancy, and part of the Jack Ryan series. It was the fourth book of the series to be turned into a film. An interesting historical note is that this book was released just days before the Moscow uprising in 1991, which...
. This film may well have been the most different from the book.
USA 2003
Another movie, The RecruitThe Recruit
The Recruit is a 2003 American spy thriller film directed by Roger Donaldson, starring Colin Farrell, Al Pacino and Bridget Moynahan. It was released on January 31, 2003 in North America by Touchstone Pictures....
, received CIA assistance. Director Roger Donaldson
Roger Donaldson
Roger Donaldson is an Australian-born New Zealand film producer, director and writer who has made numerous successful movies. He was a co-founder of the New Zealand Film Commission.-Life and career:...
said "
When the Agency commits to providing their support to a project, that can include letting a photographer shoot stills to help in designing sets, or, in certain instances, having the actors spend time in the building. By visiting Langley, the director says, he came to “understand how the space worked and looked. I needed a real sense of how a new person would feel when they saw the place for the first time."