EP 089 CIA and the Press | The Media Conspiracy in the Church Committee Record

 In February of 1976, the CIA announced a new 📍 rule. It would no longer enter paid or contractual relationships with certain American news correspondents. Well, that raises a question, doesn't it? Why did that even need to be announced? The Senate's investigation, well, that later gave us that answer. At the time of the announcement, the agency had covert relationships with about 📍 50 American journalists or employees of American media organizations. About half of those were paid, and the committee reported that fewer than half of those 50 relationships would be ended under the new rules. Not all of them, mind you, fewer than half. That is where this story starts to get interesting. Not at the moment someone whispers that the press might be compromised, but at the moment that the government puts that relationship on paper, announces a reform, and leaves us to read the 📍 fine print. Because the press card can open a door that a government badge would probably get slammed shut. Once that door opens, who the person carrying that press card, who are they really working for? Let's follow the byline behind the byline with some unapproved thinking.   📍 You weren't crazy, you were just early Let's begin   📍 There was a man in the church committee report whose name we are not given. 📍 He was a CIA staff officer working under journalistic cover, but the reporting job became more demanding. Eventually, he decided he could not properly serve both his media employers and the agency, so he resigned from the CIA. He stayed in journalism, and the report says he still occasionally passed information to the agency from the countries where he worked. His media employers had not known about his CIA role. No secret meeting needs to be invented here. That little account sitting inside the Senate report already contained the entire problem: two employers, two sets of expectations, and one audience that could not see that arrangement. Now, let's pull back. 📍 During the Cold War, American intelligence was competing with the Soviet Union for information, for influence, and of course, for access. That conflict was very real. So was the fear that was driving all that conflict. 📍 A foreign correspondent could travel, could ask questions, could develop friendships, and could meet officials without every conversation looking like some intelligence operation, some Mission Impossible scene from a movie. No. Those are the useful qualities that a reporter has. They are also useful qualities in someone who's out there collecting 📍 intelligence. The question wasn't whether the two jobs had anything in common. The question was whether the public got to know when they overlapped one another. In 1977, Carl Bernstein published an investigation in the Rolling Stone about the CIA and the American press. His opening example was columnist Joseph 📍 Alsop, who Bernstein reported had gone to the Philippines in 1953 at the CIA's request. Bernstein quoted Alsop defending his cooperation as a duty to his country. Consider that defense before you dismiss it, okay? Some people involved did not see themselves as corrupt. They believed they were helping their country against a dangerous opponent. That makes the story more uncomfortable, not less comfortable. Y- you feel me? Okay. Because you don't need every person inside a bad argument to think that they're doing something bad. Sometimes they just need to believe that their obligation is way more important than telling you about it, Joe and Jane Public. An intelligence agency wants useful information. A journalist wants useful sources. An editor wants an exclusive. Put all those interests close enough together, keep the arrangement hush-hush and secret, and the conflict can grow without anyone introducing themselves as a villain in this story. Hmm? Yeah You've probably heard the whole story called Operation Mockingbird. We need to stop at that name for a moment, shall we? Because this is the documented Project Mockingbird that's in the historical record. Records held by the Ford Presidential Library describe a CIA telephone tapping operation against two newspaper columnists back in 1963. Their homes and shared office were targeted as the agency tried to identify sources of classified material, and that, my friends, is reporters being watched. The broader history we're tracing includes reporters secretly cooperating, intelligence officers using press cover, and propaganda moving through our publications. Related concerns about intelligence and the press. This is not the same operation. So when I use the familiar Mockingbird label, maybe you've heard it 100 times in your viewing and listening pleasure, I do not want you to picture one master document proving that every newsroom was run from one room at Langley. The sources that I went through do not establish that. What they do establish, though, is serious enough without adding some control panel Right? Without all the blinking lights, without all the screens in the smoke-filled rooms. The CIA used parts of the media world to collect information, to conceal officers, and to influence audiences. Different people, different arrangements, and different levels of knowledge. And that matters because if we flatten all of those relationships into one giant claim, the weakest part of the claim gives people an excuse to ignore the strongest evidence. We are not doing their cleanup work for them, okay? So let's go to the Church Committee. The Church Committee was a Senate investigation into intelligence activities chaired by Senator Frank Church. Its 1976 report has a section called, quote, "Covert Relationships With the United States Media," unquote. That section was not called Things That People On The Internet Might Be Worried About. No, it was called Covert Relationships. The report says that before the February policy announcement, the CIA maintained those relationships with about 50 American journalists or employees of the American media organizations, and half involved payments. The payment did not mean one standard arrangement. It could mean a salary operative using journalism as a cover, it could mean a journalist receiving regular payments as an independent contractor, and it could mean occasional gifts or reimbursements. The report also says more than a dozen American news organizations and commercial publishing houses had previously provided cover for CI agents abroad. Let that one sink in for a quick second. A few did not know they were providing it. That distinction is very important. A company being used without its knowledge is not the same as an executive knowingly helping them out, and an employee doing secret work is not proof that every person in the building they worked in knew. The committee described freelancers, occasional correspondents, authors, propaganda writers, and people working under publishing house cover. It also described unpaid occasional covert contracts. Sometimes information changed hands over lunch or via a telephone call, and no payment was required That makes this, uh, harder to reduce to a photograph of a man accepting an envelope like you see on television. Sometimes there was an envelope. Sometimes there was access. Sometimes there was a favor. Sometimes there was a sincere belief that helping the agency was simply the right thing to do. But from the reader's side, the missing information was the same. There was another relationship in the room, and you weren't told about it. A year after the Senate report, Bernstein put a much larger number into circulation. More than 400 American journalists, he reported, had secretly carried out assignments for the CIA over the preceding 25 years. He attributed that account to CIA records and reporting that included interviews with the people involved. Now, I want you to listen closely to what those two numbers really mean. The Senate's roughly 50 described relationships at a particular point in time. Bernstein's more than 400 covered nearly a quarter-century, roughly a quarter-century of time. Those are not interchangeable counts, and neither number means 400 people were all being paid to write false stories. Don't get me wrong here. Bernstein described a range of activity, including gathering intelligence, helping make contacts, carrying messages, or just providing cover. His article also alleged that the Senate investigation had understated the scale of the relationship. That is, is Bernstein's reported allegation. It is not something we can prove merely by noticing that 50 and that 400 are two different numbers. Well, duh, of course, it's two d- different numbers. This is the discipline that this subject demands. When a story is already disturbing, there's a temptation to round every detail toward the darkest possible conclusion. Don't do that. If you want an allegation to survive contact with any scrutiny, and it's gonna get a lot of it, don't make it carry more evidence than it can hold, than it should hold. And the evidence is about to take us somewhere stranger than just a paid reporter. Because you can influence what Americans read without recruiting that American reporter who brings it to them. The committee called it fallout, not radiation. Information intended for audiences abroad coming back into the American information supply. Here's the basic mechanism. A story appears in a foreign publication. Another outlet picks it up. A news service carries it. An American publication reports it. To a reader, that may look like several sources confirming the same thing, but several appearances are not necessarily several independent sources. Sometimes there are several stops on the same trip That's the mechanism. Now here's a documented case. The Senate report discusses CIA propaganda surrounding Chile in 1970. It reproduces a September 25th cable summary describing the circulation of Chile-related material across several Latin American cities. The summary also noted that items had appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Pause on what that proves. The committee documented propaganda material reaching prominent America outlets. It does not follow that every American reporter who handled it was knowingly working for the CIA. That is precisely why this route matters. You don't have to secretly employ every person downstream if the material enters upstream. An honest reporter can be used. An honest editor can also pass along something whose hidden origin neither person knows or even understands. The committee warned that this problem could arise even when no American journalist or publication was used to carry out the original propaganda operation. So if we only ask, "Was this reporter on the payroll?" Y- you can miss the more useful question, "Where did the story enter into the system?" Yeah? Let that go. Let that sit in your head for a second. I want you to think about that the next time five seemingly separate articles seem to confirm one another. Five outlets might have done five different investigations, or more probably, they might all be quoting the same damn report. The difference, my friends, is not cosmetic. It's the difference between five witnesses and one witness stepping in front of five microphones. Yeah, or getting on five different podcasts telling the same story. The comparison is ours. The historical example is in the Senate record, and the route wasn't limited to newspapers. The same report says the CIA has produced, subsidized, or sponsored well over, wait for it, 1,000 books before the end of 1967. Approximately a quarter of those were in English. It also says authors were often unaware of the CIA subsidy, though some books do involve direct collaboration. Books, yeah. Things that you put up on the shelf, things that you underline, and things that you lend to a friend. Things that can feel more considered, that can feel more permanent, w- far more permanent than just a headline in a newspaper One of the report's examples was the Penkovsky's Papers, published in the United States in 1965. According to the committee, people knowingly working with the agency prepared the book using actual case material. Publication rights were sold through a trust created for that very purpose. The publisher did not know the government's interest. Actual case material, hidden sponsorship, both, my friends, can be true at the same time. Propaganda does not have to mean every sentence is invented. You can influence understanding through selection, through emphasis, through timing, and through the identity that you conceal. Yeah. A true detail can serve a hidden purpose, and a reader can be denied important context without being handed a completely fabricated book I, I want you to know that. That's why checking whether one sentence is accurate does not settle who shaped the entire account. The committee also reported that at least one New York Times review of an agency-backed book had been written by a writer under CIA contract. The book has a hidden connection. Then the review has a hidden connection. To the reader, it can look like one independent voice evaluating another independent voice. Now, ask what independence means when the relationship you would need to judge is the part that you can't see in the first damn place. There is a problem with the neat version of history, and especially this h- particular p- bit of history. The version where all journalists are simply obedient pieces on the same chessboard. Journalists helped to expose it. In, in February 1967, Ramparts magazine publicly announced its investigation into covert CIA funding of the National Student Association. The State Department's published historical record describes the announcement, the front page coverage that followed, and the resulting government review. Students were not the same story as the reporters on the payroll, but the exposure pulled at a broader thread, secret government support flowing through institutions that appeared to be independent. Yeah, there's, there's something shocking, right? President Lyndon Johnson appointed a review committee. The Senate later described a 1967 CIA order barring publication of books, magazines, or newspapers in the United States. That sounds like the line was being drawn in the sand. But in discussing that very same order, the Senate report quotes an extraordinary judgment about publications supported overseas. Their fallout in the United States was considered, quote, "Inevitable and consequently permissible." Inevitable, that was the word, and consequently permissible. Not inevitable, so we need a better safeguard. Inevitable, so we'll allow it, so it's permitted. The foreign audience was the stated target. The American audience could still receive the product, and the distinction between those two things did not keep the product from crossing the border Now, let's go back to February 11th of 1976. George Bush was the new CIA director. The agency announced that it would not enter paid or contractual relationships with full-time or part-time news correspondents accredited by the American news organizations. Existing relationships, however, were to be brought into line as soon as feasible. But the statement also said the CIA would continue welcoming voluntarily provided information, and the committee explained that the prohibition did not cover unaccredited Americans working in media organizations or perhaps even freelance writers. It reported that fewer than half of the approximately 50 existing relationships would even be terminated. That's the line that I started with here. Now, as you've gone through all of this, you can see why this matters. The announcement restricted real activity, but it was not the promise that every covert relationship was gonna be ended. Paid, contractual, accredited, those are the words that defined the boundaries. Leave them out when you retell the announcement, and you described a much larger reform than the record supports. It doesn't mean that nothing changed. It means you need to read what actually changed, what was actually impacted, what you were actually being told. The press release is the invitation. The definitions tell you what room you're actually gonna step into. So What are you left with? Not proof that every journalist was an intelligence officer. No, no. Not proof that a single historic operation explains everything on your screen today. Hell no. You have documented covert relationships, documented paid arrangements, documented use of journalistic cover, and documented propaganda reaching American audiences through routes that did not require every person involved to even know its origin, or even care. I'm sure most of them did care. We also have reporters who exposed their relationships. I think that belongs in the story, too. If the record could only fit our theory after we removed the people who challenged the system, then our theory never really works, does it? I keep coming back to that unnamed officer I started off with in the beginning of the episode, the one that could manage both jobs. He could see both of his employers. He knew them both. His media employers could not see both. Well, neither could the public. That's the danger hiding underneath the label, not simply that somebody might lie to you, that you might be denied the information you would need to judge why someone is telling you the part of the truth or a carefully selected version of the truth. And there is another trap waiting here. Once you discover a real deception, someone else can sell you a new shortcut. Maybe you don't trust any newspaper. Maybe you don't trust any reporter. You just trust the person telling you not to trust them. That's a convenient business model, isn't it? Yeah. It asks you to replace one automatic belief with another one H- history, I think, earns scrutiny. It does not earn anybody a lifetime exemption from scrutiny, that's for sure. A declassified document from decades ago is not proof that a particular reporter today is an agent or is not an agent. That accusation needs its own evidence. And when a claim confirms everything you have already suspected, well, that's a good time to look for its original source. Not because you're afraid of the answer, but because you want an answer that holds water. If you want the other half of the story, maybe go back to episode 86, where I talk about who owns the news. That episode looks at ownership and incentives. That one follows some more c- covert relationships, different mechanisms. The same question about whose interests shape what's actually reaching you in the media. And if you wanna follow the paper trail for yourself, I put the records, the timeline, and a worksheet for testing all the claims I've been talking about here in a free Mockingbird, uh, source dossier. You can get it all at someapprovedthinking.com/s1e89. Season 1, episode 89. I'll dr- I'll drop the link down in the show notes down below so that you can check it out for yourself. Look, a press card is supposed to tell us who's asking the questions. In these records, sometimes it's concealed who is asking for the answers. So the next time a story arrives with a familiar name above it, I want you to remember the part you cannot learn from the byline alone. Who else has had a hand in getting that information to you? That's a question you need to ask. This, my friends, has been Some Unapproved Thinking. Tracy out. If this story didn't sit right with you, good. You're not here to be comforted. You're here to see what others overlook. Thanks for exploring some unapproved thinking. Learn more at someunapprovedthinking.com. New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe, share, and keep questioning because the pattern's still playing out, and next time, we're going deeper