spies, journalists, propaganda

[chunksmediocrites]

Journalist Roxana Saberi's release from Iranian prison a few weeks ago brought a lot of attention to Iran's accusations that journalist Saberi was acting as a spy. These charges brought by Iran have been largely dismissed as fabrications, according to articles in the media in the West, when the subject of whether she might actually be a spy was discussed at all. There is one exception-

"Saberi said she didn't think the document was classified but said she shouldn't have copied it while working for an Iranian 'governmental think tank,' the Center for Strategic Research. She wanted the document for 'historical perspective' and said 'it didn't contain any information that had not been stated publicly.'"

The Jerusalem Post identifies the CSR as

...a moderate group led by former top nuclear negotiator Hasan Rowhani...

Some journalist organizations publish lists of reporters murdered or killed while reporting in many countries all over the world. They point out that journalists are often murdered for reporting on corrupt political and militant activites.

However, people may pose as journalists, or be journalists and also spies. This most definitely includes intelligence agents.

Until late 1984 and early 1985, Massoud had received relatively little outside assistance. The British Intelligence service, MI6, which operated out of a small windowless office in Britain’s Islamabad embassy, made contact with Massoud early in the war and provided him with money, a few weapons, and some communication equipment. British intelligence officers taught English to some of Masoud’s trusted aides, such as his foreign policy liaison, Abdullah. The French, too, reached out to Massoud. Unburdened by the CIA’s rules, which prohibited travel in Afghanistan, both intelligence services sent officers overland into the Panjshir posing as journalists.

Quoted from Ghost Wars, By Steve Coll, 2004, pg 123. Referencing Ahmad Shah Massoud, Afghani Northern Alliance militia leader. On a related note, Massoud was assassinated on September 9, 2001, by two men posing as journalists, whose camera was rigged with explosives; the linked wiki entry relates a number of theories as to who ordered the murder.

It is important to note the purpose of intelligence agents may not be simply gathering information, but dissemination of propaganda as well. Media, propaganda, intelligence. This relationship may be familiar from the more recent case of military analysts who owned stakes in military hardware contracts and were briefed by the Pentagon regarding how to spin the war:

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Then there's the historical examples:

[CIA Director William Colby]Colby's stonewalling continued for the remainder of his tenure, even as a Senate committee led by Frank Church desperately tried to squeeze more names out of him. George Bush replaced Colby in January, 1976, and eventually agreed to a one-paragraph summary of each file of a CIA journalist, with names deleted. When the CIA said it was finished, the Church committee had over 400 summaries.
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The next article was by Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame. In a long piece in Rolling Stone, he came up with the figure of 400 American journalists over the past 25 years, based primarily on interviews with Church committee staffers. This figure included stringers and freelancers who had an understanding that they were expected to help the CIA, as well as a small number of full-time CIA employees using journalism as a cover. It did not include foreigners, nor did it include numerous Americans who traded favors with the CIA in the normal give-and-take between a journalist and his sources. In addition to some of the names already mentioned above, Bernstein supplied details on Stewart and Joseph Alsop, Henry Luce, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal, Hal Hendrix of the Miami News, columnist C.L. Sulzberger, Richard Salant of CBS, and Philip Graham and John Hayes of the Washington Post.
...>snip<...
The reaction to Bernstein's piece among mainstream media was to ignore it, or to suggest that it was sloppy and exaggerated. Then two months later, the New York Times published the results of their "three- month inquiry by a team of Times reporters and researchers." This three-part series not only confirmed Bernstein, but added a wealth of far-ranging details and contained twice as many names. Now almost everyone pretended not to notice.

The Times reported that over the last twenty years, the CIA owned or subsidized more than fifty newspapers, news services, radio stations, periodicals and other communications facilities, most of them overseas. These were used for propaganda efforts, or even as cover for operations. Another dozen foreign news organizations were infiltrated by paid CIA agents. At least 22 American news organizations had employed American journalists who were also working for the CIA, and nearly a dozen American publishing houses printed some of the more than 1,000 books that had been produced or subsidized by the CIA. When asked in a 1976 interview whether the CIA had ever told its media agents what to write, William Colby replied, "Oh, sure, all the time."

Since domestic propaganda was a violation of the their charter, the CIA defined the predictable effects of their foreign publications as "blowback" or "domestic fallout," which they considered to be "inevitable and consequently permissible." But former CIA employees told the Times that apart from this unintended blowback, "some CIA propaganda efforts, especially during the Vietnam War, had been carried out with a view toward their eventual impact in the United States." The Times series concluded that at its peak, the CIA's network "embraced more than 800 news and public information organizations and individuals."[15]

By the time the Times series appeared, Congress was looking for a way out of the issue. Obligingly, Stansfield Turner promised that the CIA would avoid journalists "accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station." There were at least three problems with this that most press coverage overlooked: many stringers and freelancers are not accredited; it didn't cover any foreign-owned media; and as Gary Hart complained at the time, the new policy included a provision that allowed the CIA to unilaterally make exceptions whenever it wished.[16]

There has been some efforts to curtail this relationship, as it obviously endangers journalists in general.

Press groups protest CIA using journalists as spies (July 24, 1996)

RESTON, Va. -- Four leading news media organizations today called on Congress to prohibit the CIA or any other U.S. intelligence agency from using journalists, either foreign or domestic, as spies or assets.

"As long as the possibility remains that any journalist may be seen as linked to an intelligence agency, all journalists remain at risk of harassment, personal attack, abduction or murder," the four groups said.

Journalist Organizations are interesting in this subject as well. There are groups like The Committee to Protect Journalists, who appear pretty straightforward. Then there is Reporters Without Borders:

An article by John Cherian in the leftist Indian magazine Frontline alleged that RWB "is reputed to have strong links with Western intelligence agencies" and "Cuba has accused Robert Meynard, the head of the group, of having CIA links".[26] The organization has denied the allegation made by Cuba.[27]
...>snip<...
Lucie Morillon, RWB's Washington representative, confirmed in an interview on 29 April 2005 that the organization has a contract with US State Department's Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere, Otto Reich, who signed it in his capacity as a trustee for the Center for a Free Cuba, to inform Europeans about the repression of journalists in Cuba.[28]

Critics of RWB, such as Counterpunch, have cited Reich's involvement with the group as a source of controversy[29]: when Reich headed the Reagan administration's Office of Public Diplomacy in the 1980s, the body partook in what its officials termed “White Propaganda” – covert dissemination of information to influence domestic opinion regarding US backing for military campaigns against Left-wing governments in Latin America.[30] An investigation into the Office’s activities by the US Comptroller-General found that under Otto Reich it was engaged in "prohibited, covert propaganda activities ... beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities".[31]

Sorry for the tl;dr wall o' text. The questions I have are: do you think the media in your country is compromised by intelligence agencies? Do you think some percentage of ostensibly objective media in your country is actually propaganda? If Roxana Saberi was a freelance journalist for Al Jazeera in the U.S. and had been arrested, would anyone care?