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DISINFORMATION - AN EXAMINATION OF SIX YEARS OF INCREDIBLE LYING
Document Type:
CREST
Collection:
General CIA Records
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP90-00965R000807550012-7
Release Decision:
RIPPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
8
Document Creation Date:
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date:
January 17, 2012
Sequence Number:
12
Case Number:
Publication Date:
March 13, 1987
Content Type:
OPEN SOURCE
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STAT Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807550012-7 Y ., ARTICLE APPEARED CN PACE _1A.- LOS ANGELES WEEKLY (CA) 13 March 1987 DISINFORMATION AN EXAMINATION OF SIX YEARS OF INCREDIBLE LYING The term "disinformation" probably enjoyed its greatest-ever public aware- ness last fall - indeed, for many Ameri- cans it was the first time they'd heard the word - when the press revealed that over the summer the administration had initi- ated a campaign of deliberate lies about the supposed "terrorist" intentions of Libya's Colonel Muammar Qadhafi - thus to arouse U.S. and world opinion in support of possible further U.S. military or diplomatic action against the Libyan leader. Although past administration denials had successfully thwarted disclo- sure of other disinformation capers, in this case there was a smoking gun: a memo written by then-National Security Council chief Admiral John Poindexter outlining the Libyan campaign, first re- vealed in the Washington Post by Water- gate hero Bob Woodwa d_ The mass media, especially the television networks, seized on the memo and briefly made it a cause celebre. The subsequent Iran/con- tra scandals, themselves originally ob- scured by intensive disinformation campaigns, shortly subsumed the flap over the Poindexter memo. But taken together, the memo and the two larger scandals have had one impor- tant beneficial effect on the public - it is now possible for the press to report the "dark side" of the United States govern- ment and be taken seriously. This is no small achievement, as during the 40 Cold War years the public has persistently given the benefit of the doubt to its politi- cal leaders. The consequences of this have been two unnecessary wars fought on the Asian mainland; an avoidable massive nuclear-weapons race, and the crushing of progressive social move- ments - a great number of them non- Marxist - in various Third World countries. Disinformation is not new to the United States; it certainly did not ori- ginate ender Ronald Reagan, however much he and his administration may have done in exploiting its varied for manipulating the public. Since end of World War II disiinfarmtf on been employed on innumerable occa- sions to prepare the public for U.S. government actions. The military/intelli- gence establishment of the Truman era used disinformation to sweep the U.S. in- to the Korean War and to defeat prewar Chinese efforts for a negotiated settle- ment. During the Eisenhower years, a disinformation campaign against the elected president of Guatemala preceded a CIA coup intended to protect U.S. banana companies from taxation. In the '60s, the Kennedy administra- tion, in preparing for the Bay of Pigs inva- sion of Cuba, permitted the CIA to mount a disinformati on campaign against Fidel Castro just at the moment Fidel was secretly trying to negotiate a decent relationship with the U.S. rather than having to lock Cuba into the Soviets' or- bit. Lyndon Johnson gave us the entire Vietnam War via disinformation; even the North Vietnamese attack on U.S. ships in the Tonkin Gulf, the incident that provided public support for mass American intervention, turned out to be a fabrication. The Nixon-Kissinger team then nearly outdid Johnson, creating dis- information campaigns to cover up their illegal bombing of Cambodia and to set up the CIA-induced military coup against Chile's elected president. For their parts, Gerald Ford perpetuated the customary disinformation campaign about a Soviet weapons buildup and Jimmy Carter mounted an all-out anti-Soviet disinfor- mation effort to conceal his administra- tion's inventive bungling of pre-invasion Soviet overtures for an Afghanistan set- tlement that would have retained that country's long-standing status quo neu- trality. (Even allowing for the work of the Nation magazine and a handful of scholarly journals, the untold story of Af- ghanistan - including a deliberate Reagan administration effort to prevent a negotiated settlement - remains one of the journalistic felonies of the '80s.) Obviously, then, disinformation is not an occasional tool of a rampant adminis. tration; it is a long-standing adjunct of policy. Since World War U, the U.S. government has used disinformation on a relatively widespread basis in order to win public acceptance of weapons and in- terventionist policies that otherwise would be scorned. There are three com- ponents to this. The "foreign policy establishment" has carried out dis- information largely aimed at protect- ing U.S. business interests abroad; the military-industrial complex has focused on anti-Soviet disinformation needed to convince the public to buy more arms (and particularly more big-ticket strategic arms); and the country's vast inte once complex, for its own zealous causes (par- ticularly regarding Third World coun- tries), has created massive amounts of disinformation while giving disioforma- tional aid and comfort to both other wings of government. (Although at rare times it has undermined the distortion ef- forts of those wings - certain CIA as- sessments of Soviet military expenditures that contradicted the Pentagon, for ex- ample.) Presidents and their White House staffs can be victims of disinformation from these three complexes as well as uti- lizers of it, as both Eisenhower and Ken- nedy came to understand. But what has distinguished the Reagan administration from its predecessors is that in many cases the originating disinformation ma- chinery has been moved from the agen- cies into the White House, while hard-line right-wing disinformation players like William Casey moved into all the agencies. Never before has disinfor- mation been so well coordinated or agreed upon by all potential players, and no previous administration thought to begin almost all its initiatives, including many domestic ones, with a disinforma- tion campaign. Disinformation has been as reflexive with this crowd as "spin con- trol," and it feeds on itself. Stories thought up by a CIA agent is, say, Nicaragua will be seined upon (and ac- tually believed) by the White House and upper level members of government as fact (Sandinistas physically attacking priests, for example), and will then be Contilw9d Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807550012-7 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807550012-7 embellished with the upper-level members' own concoctions. Similarly, stories contrived by foreign governments have been as avidly pressed into service. The result is that there is very little is- suing from the present government that Americans can believe, though few Americans know yet how pervasively disinformed they've been. (Had the Tower Commission been better inform- ed, it might not so tightly have concluded that Ronald Reagan didn't know much about the Poindexter-North machina- tions.) Three themes have been overrid- ing, of course: the Soviet Union as the great, avaricious enemy, Nicaragua as the great immediate totalitarian threat, and the Middle East as the great test of U.S. resolve (covering up the enormous failure to build on Carter's Camp David peace initiative). In combination, and de- liberately woven together by the adminis- tration, these themes have helped create the mass psychology that the U.S. is under siege by hostile, terrorist forces at every turn and that our only hope is to rally 'round the president and let him fight back for us. Working with such an extraordinarily exploitable impression, the president has asked us therefore to trust him on Star Wars, the contras, Libya, nuclear arms agreements and much more. What follows here is a report on some of the most flagrant disinformation cam- paigns of the Reagan era as assembled by Fred Landis, a long-time chronicler of such events and an expert on CIA disin- formation. Dr. Landis has taught poli- tical science at California State Uni- versity-Los Angeles, the University of Illinois and San Francisco State Uni- versity, and was a consultant to the Senate Select Committee on intelligence in 1976. Its West book, The CIA Ph*. aparda Mackin, is due out later this year from Ramparts Press. Four individuals are mentioned fre- quently here: Arnaud de Borchgnve, edi- tor of the Moonie-owned Washington Tines and former Newsweek correspon- dent; Robert Moss, a journalist and co- author with de Borcbgrave of two norms exploiting disinformation themes; Claire Sterling, a journalist, book author and frequent contributor to The New York Times as a putative "terrorism expert"; and Michael Ledeen, a Georgetown Uni- versity professor and another "terrorism expert" who is now showing up as the key liaison between Israel and the U.S. in the Inngate affair - not sarpeisig, as Ldeen has long been suspected of hav- ing ties to the Mossad, Israel's version of the CIA. (He denies this.) Although the four don't hold government positions, they have often been accused of being purveyors of disinformation that either originates elsewhere or originates with them and is picked up and given wider circulation by government agencies. Each is widely known to have extensive friendships and contacts in right-wing circles both here and abroad. Two disinformation themes frequently covered in the Weekly have been omitted here: the administration's efforts to por- tray Nicaragua as the chief supplier of weapons to the Salvadoran rebels - a story much refuted, most authoritatively by former CIA analyst David Mac. Michael, who quit the agency in disgust over the White House and State Depart- ment fabrications; and the Libya ter- rorism link, often covered by Alexander Cockburn in his column and decimated by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh in the Sunday New York Times of three weeks ago. Citing as sources 70 current and former officials in the White House, the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Na- tional Security Agency and the Pentagon, Hersh wrote that much of what the U.S. public has been told about "evidence" of a Qadhafi role in terrorism has been dis- information, including U.S. government intentions in last year's bombing raid on Libya - which, Hersh reports, was a planned effort to flat-out assassinate Qadhafi. (The report below does cover one Libya-related story: the hit team ostensibly sent to assassinate Presjent The Libyan Hit Team Sent To Kill Reagan Reporter David Martin started it all in the November 30, 1981 Newsweek, for which he was Pentagon reporter. Martin is the son of a career CIA officer. His story was that Muammar Qadhafi had sent a five-than Palestinian hit team to Washing- ton to assassinate President Reagan. Ac- cording to the report, the terrorists planned to set themselves up in a hotel across from the White House and hit the presidential helicopter with a Soviet-made SAM missile. Newsweek hit the streets with the story on November 22. Other media didn't pick up on it until the White House "authen- ticated" the alleged Libyan plot on December 2. Next, Jack Anderson was supplied by Israeli intelligence agents with composite drawings of the alleged ter- rorists. Armed with these drawings, the major media now headlined the plot. The elusive terrorists were variously described as being in Canada, on their way to Washington, or lurking in Tijuana. The Hearst Corporation-owned Los Angeles Herald Examiner began pushing the Tijuana theory and, citing "sources," added infamous international terrorist Carlos to the story. On December 10, the U.S. Border Patrol in San Diego was sup- plied with the IDs of two Libyan hit teams, one of which was supposedly led by Carlos. At this point, Qadhafi went on TV to de- nounce Reagan as "ignorant" and a "liar." This brought Michael Ledeen (discussed above and then a consultant to the State Department) out onto ABC-TV to denounce the irresponsibility of the media in acting as a forum for terrorists by giving Qadhafi air time. Reagan himself answered Qadhafi at a December 17 press conference. "We have complete con- fidence in the evidence, and he [Qadhafi] knows it," the president said. Reagan's staff ostensibly took the threat seriously enough to surround the White House with concrete bunkers, use decoy presidential limousines and helicopters, and propose the permanent diversion of traffic from the Pennsylvania Avenue side of the White House. Those senior staff members who may have known that the story was disinformation certainly didn't teff the Secret Service. The story began to unravel on December 14, when FBI Director William Webster first cast doubt on the existence of such a hit team. By January 3, 1982, Webster had repudiated the story in a television inter- view. Webster said the FBI had never believed the story or been able to confirm any of its details. Continued Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807550012-7 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807550012-7 By the end of December 1981, both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times were describing the story as a hoax. Ronald J. Ostrow and Robert Toth of the Los Angeles Times, citing investigative sources, blamed the original disinforma- tion on the Israelis. If they were correct, the Israelis had accomplished something important: a rupture in U.S.-Libya com- mercial and diplomatic relations. (The ad- ministration asked U.S. citizens to leave Libya and requested U.S. oil companies to withdraw.) On the other hand, if it was an administration plot, the story served another important purpose, as it helped prepare the mass of Americans who don't have access to either coast's Times for stepped-up U. S. intervention in the Mid- dle East and for a renewal of the hard-line Cold War stance toward those Libyan "allies," the Soviets. (Editor's note: In Seymour Hersh's re- cent New York Times article, which ap- peared after the above was written, Hersh quotes his sources as claiming that the story came from William Casey, not Israel, and was part of a larger disinformation campaign mounted by Casey against Libya, one in which Casey contrived phony "evidence" that was passed around government circles as official CIA reports and was leaked to the press by Michael Le- deen. Hersh writes that Casey acted with the approval of President Reagan, then- Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Assistant Secretary of State William Clark, one of Reagan's closest friends. Hersh quotes "an intelligence official who has direct access to communications in- telligence reports" as saying, "The stuff I saw did not make a substantial case that we had ;threat. There was nothing to cause us to act', as we have, saying Qadhaf is enemy No. I." Hersh also quotes an official who served on a special task force assessing the Libyan information as telling him that William Casey was "in effect, running an operation inside the American govern- ment ... He was feeding the disinforma- tion into the system sot it would be seen as separate, independent reports, and taken seriously by other government agencies. " Still another source told Hersh, "The whole thing was a big fabrication." If Hersh is correct, then any Israeli role in the event - the "terrorist' sketchesyfor ex- ample - would have been opportunistic capitalizing on Casey's scheme,.) Nicaraguan Drug Smuggling In 1984, the administration mastermind- ed an attempted drug sting in Nicaragua - one that, as an article in the L.A. Times Opinion section noted last December, bears the fingerprints of Oliver North. The key link is a cargo airplane that would become famous and would be associated with North ally Richard Secord and Southern Air Transport. In 1984, the plane, a C-123K, was turned over to DEA informer Adler Seal, presumably by Secord, and outfitted with cameras hidden under both wings. Seal then landed the plane in Managua. A Sandinista security official, Frederico Vaughn, was captured standing near the aircraft by the plane's cameras. The plane then returned to the U.S., drugs were found, and Seal testified that he got them from Vaughn, whom a Miami grand jury proceeded to indict. The White House made maximum propaganda use of this incident, accusing the San- dinistas of widespread drug dealing. As it happens, like the proverbial albatross, this same C-123 K returned to Nicaragua last October carrying Eugene Hasenfus. A few weeks ago CNN reported that planes obtained by North and Secord from Southern Air Transport and used in the contra supply operation regularly flew back to the U.S. with cocaine after taking guns to Central America for the contras. While it has not been demonstrated that North knew about this drug smuggling (assuming it happened - the Senate is in- vestigating), this has all the earmarks of a North dirty trick: using drugs to finance weapons for the contras while spreading disinformation accusing the Sandinistas of this kind of activity. The case against Vaughn? Despite the grand jury indictment, Seal's testimony was the only evidence linking Vaughn to the drugs. Just when it appear that the case was unraveling and that Seal's background as a "compelled" witness and drug dealer was becoming known, Seal was found murdered, effectively terminating the case. (The Colombians have been ar- rested. The murder weapon has been traced to a group allegedly engaged in ille- gal gun-running to the contras.) The White House, however, persisted in using the story to smear the Sandinistas; President Reagan, in fact, made much of it in a March 16, 1986 special TV address seeking aid for the contras. Referring to the Seal airplane, the president accused the San- dinista leadership of complicity in cocaine running. The next day, DEA director John C. Lawson told The New York Times that there was no evidence whatever to support Reagan's assertion. (Again, it is useful to remember that most of the public does not get to read The New York Times.) To spread the disinformation, former Senator Paula Hawkins (R-Florida), a close ally of President Reagan, in September 1984 turned her Subcommittee on Alco- htrlism and Drug Abuse into a plat- form for Michael Ledeen to expand on the subject of Sandinista-Cuban drug smuggl- continued Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807550012-7 GA, Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807550012-7 ing. (Ollie North, it might be noted, was very active last year in fund-raising for Hawkins' unsuccessful re-election bid.) Hawkins also helped in another way: The term "narco-terrorism," as applied to the Sandinistas, first appeared on September 18, 1984, in an article by Hawkins in the Washington Times, a newspaper that serves, as a propaganda organ for the Moonies. (Notably, the term was also used in con- nection with the "Bulgarian plot to kill the pope" at hearings held by another North ally, former Senator Jeremiah Denton [R- Alabama], for his Subcommittee on Ter- rorism. Testifying were Robert Moss and the ubiquitous Michael Ledeen.) All of this recalls a similar dis...
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WHEN THE GOVERNMENT TELLS LIES
Document Type:
CREST
Collection:
General CIA Records
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP90-00965R000504240002-8
Release Decision:
RIPPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
13
Document Creation Date:
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date:
January 11, 2012
Sequence Number:
2
Case Number:
Publication Date:
March 1, 1985
Content Type:
OPEN SOURCE
File:
Attachment Size
PDF icon CIA-RDP90-00965R000504240002-8.pdf 1.35 MB
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STAT Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504240002-8 COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW March/April 1985 WHEN SHE GOVERNMENT T111S. 111S Official deceptions, half-truths, and outright lies impose a heavy burden on the press. A veteran journalist surveys the scope of the problem - and suggests ways reporters can cope with it by ANTHONY MARRO NOVEMBER 25, 1957 - Dwight Eisenhower, sixty-seven years old and recently recovered from both a heart attack and abdominal surgery, is in his office. He tries to pick up a document, and can't. He tries to read it, and fails. The words, he later says, "seemed literally to run off the top of the page." He tries to get up, and nearly falls down. He tries to tell his secretary what is wrong. but she can't make any sense of what he is saying. His physician realizes almost immediately that Eisenhower has suffered some sort of a stroke. The president has developed "a chill," the press office tells reporters. It is not until twenty-four hours later that the nation is told that its president is seriously ill. DECEMBER 7, 1971 - Henry Kissinger is briefing the press on the government's position on the India-Pakistan war. "First of all, let's get a number of things straight," he begins. "There have been some comments that the administration is anti-Indian. This is totally inaccurate." A briefing paper has been handed out at the start of the session. The first sentence reads: "The policy of this administration towards South Asia must be understood. It is neither anti- Indian nor pro-Pakistan." A month later, Jack Anderson publishes the transcript of a meeting attended by Kissinger on December 3, just four days before the briefing for the press. '7 am getting hell even half-hour from the president that we are not being tough enough on India...," Kissinger is quoted as saving. "He wants to tilt in favor of Pakistan.'' spokesman, is talking with Jack Nelson, Washington bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. No military operation is being planned to rescue the hostages in Iran. Powell tells him. A blockade might he feasible, somewhere down the road, but a rescue mission just wouldn't make any sense. The newspapers with Nelson's stony, which says that the Carter White House considers a rescue operation imprac- tical, are still scattered around in living rooms all over Los Angeles when the members of Delta Team board airplanes for the raid on Teheran. OCTOBER 24, 1983 - Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, is asked by reporters whether U.S. troops have landed on Grenada. He checks with a member of President Reagan's national security staff, and relays the response. "Preposterous," he says. and goes on to deny that any invasion is planned. The landing takes place the next day. or starters, Stephen Hess probably is right. The Brookings Institution scholar, who has studied both Washington reporters and government press oper- ations, says that most government spokespersons don't like to lie. For one thing, telling the truth is official U.S. government policy. For another, they prefer telling the truth. To lie, he says, is to "fail to play fair with reporters and the public. to diminish their self-esteem, and to complicate their work." Anthony Marro, managing editor of Newsday. %vas a Washington correspondent for ten years. Continued Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504240002-8 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504240002-8 White House reporters wait for news on Ike's health (above), then run to call in their stories. 'The president [Eisenhower] has developed "a chill," the press office tells reporters. Not until twenty-four hours later is the nation told that its president is seriously ill' But complications and crises are of the essence of gov- ernment, and trying to put the best face on a sensitive sit- uation also is part of the job. Political posturing, face- saving, honest error. bad judgment, and legitimate national security concerns also play a role, and so, to different de- grees in different administrations, do arrogance, deceit, dis- regard for the public, high-handedness, and attempts to cover up stupidity and criminal conduct. The result is that reporters have come to accept some level of deception as part of the routine, and to expect. as Hess delicately phrases it, "less than full candor" on the part of their government. In fact, Washington reporters over the years have had to deal with a steady barrage of deceptions. half-truths, and outright lies - deceptions about national security operations that were so sensitive that they probably wouldn't have published the information even if they had been able to obtain it. and deceits so petty that they wondered why any- one would bother to lie in the first place. There was the time in 1960 when Lincoln White tried to explain away the crash of the U-2 airplane in the Soviet Union. It had been on a weather mission and had just strayed off course, the State Department's chief spokesman said. "Now, our assumption is that the [pilot] blacked out. There was absolutely no - N-0, no - deliberate attempt to violate Soviet air space. There never has been." Within days it became clear that the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was alive, that the Soviets had him, and that he was talking. The principal attachment to the airplane was not a ther- mometer but a camera, and its mission was not weather reconnaissance but spying. There was the time in 1966 that Lyndon Johnson claimed that one of his great-great-grandfathers had died at the 4l- anto (not true), and the time in 1971 that the White House claimed that Tricia Nixon's wedding cake had been based on an old family recipe tit apparently had been created by a White House chef). There was the time in 1975 when FBI Director Clarence Kelley said that while there had been some warrantless break-ins by FBI agents in the past. they had been confined by and large to foreign espionage and counterintelligence matters. and had been ended by J. Edgar Hoover in 1966. In truth, there had been thousands, all of them illegal. most of them against American citizens. many of them against people never charged with any crime. and some as recently as 1972. Kelley's aides were left to explain that the head of the nation's most sophisticated police agency had been misinformed. There was the time in 1954 when Henry Cabot Lodge. ambassador to the UN. described fighting H. Guatemala as "a revolt of Guatemalans against Guatemalans," despite the fact the uprising was being orchestrated. in large part, by Frank Wisner, the deputy director for plans for the CIA. There was the time in 1981 when the Reagan administration released a white paper on Central America that attributed authorship of key documents to several guerrilla leaders who clearly had not written them. There was the time, during the Bay of Pigs invasion. when the government lied in saying that the bombings were being conducted by defectors from Castro's own air force, and then, when reporters dis- covered the lie, groused because the reporters did not create lies of their own to help protect the government's lie. There was the time in a televised debate last October when President Reagan insisted that more people were re- ceiving food stamps than ever before (actually the number had dropped by about 400.000 since he had become pres- ident), and when Walter Mondale claimed that Reagan had sought to "terminate" a housing program for the elderly (in fact, the Reagan administration had made major cuts in the program, but hadn't tried to abolish it). There was the time that John Mitchell. the former attorney general, was indicted for lying about Watergate, the time that Richard Helms, the former head of the CIA, was in- dicted for lying about Chile. and the time that Rita Lave! a former official with the Environmental Protection Agency, was indicted for lying about the EPA's handling of toxic waste. There was the time that Ron Nessen, President Ford's press secretary, began a response to a question by saving "To tell you the truth ..." only to be overwhelmed by sarcastic applause. The manifold forms of deception I. F. Stone has said that "Every government is run by liars, and nothing they say should be believed." James Deakin, who covered the White House for many years for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, pretty much agreed with Stone, but worded it differently. "Every government is run by people who seek to wield and retain power," he wrote in Straight Sniff, his brilliantly witty book on Wash- ington journalism. "To do this, they must convince the public of certain things: That their policies are correct. That their facts and explanations should be accepted. That they are in control of events and situations. That sounds nicer Continued Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504240002-8 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504240002-8 2. [than Stone]. And it comes out at the same place." To achieve these things. it's necessary not only for gov- ernments to deceive, but also to hype, slant, tilt, and gloss over, trying at the same time to present a situation in its most favorable light, while hiding, or hedging on. or de- flecting reporters away from any information that might conflict with its version. Indeed, Stephen Hess has written, "It is hard to find a discussion of modern government's relations with the press that does not include the words 'manage,' 'manipulate.' and 'control.' " It probably is a fool's errand to try to measure degrees of deception from one administration to the next. or to try to show whether Democrats are more or less deceptive than Republicans. Clearly, much misinformation was produced by the Reagan administration during its first four years, on such matters as the invasion of Grenada. revolution in Cen- tral America. its concern for the handicapped, and its com- mitment to civil rights. But there is no way of assessing how it compares with, or whether it's even in the same league with, the massive amounts of misinformation put out by the Johnson administration during the Vietnam War, for example, or by the Nixon administration during the Wa- tergate years. For one thing, it often takes years for deceptions to sur- face. It took congressional hearings, criminal prosecutions, and serious reporting by people like Nicholas Horrock and John Crewdson, both then working for The New York Times, to expose the degree to which the FBI had been staging illegal break-ins against American citizens. And even in 1985, fifteen years after the fact, we were still learning in the libel trial of General Westmoreland against CBS about the degree to which key officials in the Johnson adminis- tration knew that, despite their public statements to the contrary, there wasn't any light at the end of the tunnel. `Kelley said warrantless break-ins by FBI agents had been largely confined to foreign espionage. In truth, there had been thousands, most against American citizens' For another thing. there is the question of degree. and the issue of whether, and at what point, numerous small deceptions begin to equal major ones. There was a time, early in the Reagan administration, when the president's aides argued that it didn't matter whether some of his stories were literally true - his nu- merous misstatements of fact, his confusion about detail, and his repeated anecdotes about supposed welfare cheats that no one was ever able to confirm, for example - because they contained a larger truth. "We've been dealing with four years of an administration that freely states - and stated early - that literal truth was not a concern," says Bill Kovach. the Washington news editor of The New York Times. "This is the first time I've heard that literal truth is not important to the presidency." To begin with, Reagan's administration hadn't actually T here also is the matter of attitude. "This admin- istration is much more arrogant with the press," says one career government official who has served through several administrations. "The attitude is, 'Screw you, we don't need you. The Reagan administration is going to be successful despite the editorials in The Washington Post and The New York Times, and the cartoons in the Los Angeles Tines.' " And Morton Halperin, the director of the left-leaning Center for National Security Studies, says that many key officials in the Reagan administration have a philosophy of government that doesn't include public discussion and de- bate. "These guys came here straight out of nineteen forty- six." he says. "They came out of World War Two, when the government lied all the time, and it was all-right to lie. The whole Normandy invasion, and the covert operations that surrounded it, are an important part of that mind-set. ... They still think fundamentally that foreign policy should be left to the executive branch and that people shouldn't even try to find out what they're up to.,, Deceptions by government officials take many forms, and it's not always easy to show what they amount to. They can include simple face-saving, such as Geraldine Ferraro claiming she felt "vindicated" by a House report critical of her failure to disclose her husband's financial interests, and routine political posturing, such as the White House announcing full support for people like Anne Burford and James Watt, when both had clearly become major liabilities and were on their way out of the government. And there is the endless, predictable attempt by administrations to por- tray themselves in the best light, as Reagan did in a speech to the National Council of Negro Women in July 1983. "We have authorized for filing three school desegregation cases, more than were authorized by the previous admin- istration during its first thirty months in office." he said. At first blush, this looks like a simple statement of fact. But when James Nathan Miller took a look at the numbers. he concluded in an article in The Atlantic on Reagan's civil rights record that "This seemingly straightforward twenty- four-word sentence contains three carefully crafted semantic deceptions." Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504240002-8 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504240002-8 filed only one. while Carter's had filed two. Secondly, while after they leave office, and using polygraphs to search out Reagan seemed to he saying that he had filed more cases, people who talk to the press all have the effect of restricting he hadn't really said that. What he had said was that his access to information. and of making it harder for reporters administration had authorized that the suits be filed. And to report on the way Reagan is running the government. thirdly. while he implied that he was talking about his record Jack Landau. who heads the Reporters Committee for Free- and Carter's on the same terms, in truth he was using an dom of the Press, goes so far as to say that such actions by apples and oranges comparison of legal suits his people had the Reagan administration constitute the greatest restrictions authorized (hut not yet acted on), with suits that Carter on public access to government information since World actually had taken to court. War 11. There is no question but that the Reagan adminis- The fact that it took Miller about twelve hours' worth of tration is seeking restrictions and kinds of censorship in digging just to deal with that one sentence gives some notion peacetime that Eisenhower. Kennedy. Johnson. and even of the problem at hand. Richard Nixon didn't ask for in times of war. There is a temptation to shrug that politicians have always The Reagan twist - and John Mitchell's maxim lied and that the Republic nonetheless has survived. But The problem, in the view of many, is very real, not nec- David Wise, in The Politics of Lying, argues that to dwell essarily because face-saving and political posturing are out- on historical examples of lying is to miss the point entirely, rageous in themselves, but because a pattern of routine and because it was only in the 1960s that government deception systematic deception has very real costs, both in terms of came to be perceived by large numbers of citizens. Many loss of confidence by people in their government, and in actually were shocked to learn at the time of the U-2 incident terms of citizens not learning until it is too late just what it that their government would tell such a lie. And once large is that their government is up to. And while it is not clear numbers of people come to distrust their government, he that the Reagan administration is any more duplicitous than says, a new political environment is created in which the others, it unquestionably has gone well beyond other recent president can no longer assume that most people believe administrations in its attempts to bottle up information, to what he says. prevent public access to government officials and records, According to Wise, a former bureau chief for the New to threaten and intimidate the bureaucracy in order to dry York Herald Tribune, this is a dangerous situation in a up sources of information, and to prevent the press and the society in which the government is supposed to operate with public from learning how their government is functioning. the consent of the governed. Indeed, writing in 1972, he This goes well beyond just shielding the president from termed the erosion of confidence between people and gov- questions (Reagan has had fewer official news conferences ernment - an erosion that was documented by University than any president in modern times), and doing silly things of Michigan studies - "perhaps the single most significant like revving up the helicopters while he's getting ready to political development in America in the past decade." leave for Camp David, so that reporters won't be able to Wise laid much of the blame for this erosion on 'official make themselves heard over the din. The administration's deception, and he in turn laid the blame for much of the proposals for limiting the Freedom of Information Act, cen- deception on the growth of the nation's intelligence-gath- soring the public statements of government officials even ering agencies since World War II. Once the government `Many citizens actually were shocked to to learn at the time of the U-2 incident that their government would tell such a lie' U-2 pilot Francis Gan. Powers testrfeing before the Senate Armed Services Convnittee in 1962 range problems for a democracy if people don't trust their m was in the national interest, argues that while there are long- will be better off in the long run," she writes. "From there, it is a short step to the conclusion that, even if people will not be better off from a particular lie, they will benefit by all maneuvers to keep the right people in office. Once public servants lose their bearings in this way. all the shabby de- ceits of Watergate - the fake telegrams. the erased ta.....hi
Another ok ...
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Studies in Intelligence 67, No. 3 (Extracts, September 2023)
Review—A Philosophy of Lying
Reviewed by Mike R.
A Philosophy of Lying
Lars Svendsen, Matt Bagguley (trans. from Norwegian) (Reaktion Books, 2022), 122 pages, notes, index.
A Philosophy of Lying bills itself as a "comprehensive investigation of lying in everyday life." The intelligence profession is not under the microscope, but the book raises a number of issues that practitioners might find worthy of further reflection or exploration. While the author has occasional missteps, his material could easily form the basis for discussion in an intelligence-themed TED Talk or classes on intelligence ethics or leadership.
The author, Lars Svendsen, a philosophy professor at the University of Bergen in Norway, is not as well known to US readers as fellow Scandinavian Sissela Bok, the Swedish-American famous for her award-winning 1978 work, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. But what Svendsen lacks in name recognition, he makes up for in delivering a product readily accessible to lay readers.
Download PDF to read complete review. [4 pages]
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Home • Washington • Press Releases • 2012 • Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Charged with Disclosing Covert Officer's Identity and Other Classified...
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Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Charged with Disclosing Covert Officer's Identity and Other Classified Information to Journalists and Lying to CIA's Publications Review Board
Investigation Involving Photos Seized from Guantanamo Detainees Concludes no Criminal Violations by Defense Team; Rather, Classified Info Kiriakou Allegedly Illegally Disclosed to a Journalist was Provided by the Journalist to a Defense Investigator
U.S. Attorney's Office
January 23, 2012
Northern District of Illinois
(312) 353-5300
ALEXANDRIA, VA—A former CIA officer, John Kiriakou, was charged today with repeatedly disclosing classified information to journalists, including the name of a covert CIA officer and information revealing the role of another CIA employee in classified activities, Justice Department officials announced. The charges result from an investigation that was triggered by a classified defense filing in January 2009, which contained classified information the defense had not been given through official government channels, and, in part, by the discovery in the spring of 2009 of photographs of certain government employees and contractors in the materials of high-value detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The investigation revealed that on multiple occasions, one of the journalists to whom Kiriakou is alleged to have illegally disclosed classified information, in turn, disclosed that information to a defense team investigator, and that this information was reflected in the classified defense filing and enabled the defense team to take or obtain surveillance photographs of government personnel. There are no allegations of criminal activity by any members of the defense team for the detainees.
Kiriakou, 47, of Arlington, Va., was a CIA intelligence officer between 1990 and 2004, serving at headquarters and in various classified overseas assignments. He is scheduled to appear at 2 p.m. today before U.S. Magistrate Judge John F. Anderson in federal court in Alexandria.
Kiriakou was charged with one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act for allegedly illegally disclosing the identity of a covert officer and two counts of violating the Espionage Act for allegedly illegally disclosing national defense information to individuals not authorized to receive it. Kiriakou was also charged with one count of making false statements for allegedly lying to the Publications Review Board of the CIA in an unsuccessful attempt to trick the CIA into allowing him to include classified information in a book he was seeking to publish.
The four-count criminal complaint, which was filed today in the Eastern District of Virginia, alleges that Kiriakou made illegal disclosures about two CIA employees and their involvement in classified operations to two journalists on multiple occasions between 2007 and 2009. In one case, revealing the employee's name as a CIA officer disclosed classified information as the employee was and remains covert (identified in the complaint as "Covert Officer A"). In the second case, Kiriakou allegedly disclosed the name and contact information of an employee, identified in the complaint as "Officer B," whose participation in an operation to capture and question terrorism subject Abu Zubaydah in 2002 was then classified. Kiriakou's alleged disclosures occurred prior to a June 2008 front-page story in The New York Times disclosing Officer B's alleged role in the Abu Zubaydah operation.
"Safeguarding classified information, including the identities of CIA officers involved in sensitive operations, is critical to keeping our intelligence officers safe and protecting our national security," said Attorney General Eric Holder. "Today's charges reinforce the Justice Department's commitment to hold accountable anyone who would violate the solemn duty not to disclose such sensitive information."
Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, who was appointed Special Attorney in 2010 to supervise the investigation, said: "I want to thank the Washington Field Office of the FBI and the team of attorneys assigned to this matter for their hard work and dedication to tracing the sources of the leaks of classified information." Mr. Fitzgerald announced the charges with James W. McJunkin, Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and they thanked the Central Intelligence Agency for its very substantial assistance in the investigation, as well as the Air Force Office of Special Investigations for its significant assistance.
"Protecting the identities of America's covert operatives is one of the most important responsibilities of those who are entrusted with roles in our nation's intelligence community. The FBI and our intelligence community partners work diligently to hold accountable those who violate that special trust," said Mr. McJunkin.
The CIA filed a crimes report with the Justice Department on March 19, 2009, prior to the discovery of the photographs and after reviewing the Jan. 19, 2009, classified filing by defense counsel for certain detainees with the military commission then responsible for adjudicating charges. The defense filing contained information relating to the identities and activities of covert government personnel, but prior to Jan. 19, 2009, there had been no authorized disclosure to defense counsel of the classified information. The Justice Department's National Security Division, working with the FBI, began the investigation. To avoid the risk of encountering a conflict of interest because of the pending prosecutions of some of the high-value detainees, Mr. Fitzgerald was assigned to supervise the investigation conducted by a team of attorneys from the Southern District of New York, the Northern District of Illinois, and the Counterespionage Section of the National Security Division who were not involved in pending prosecutions of the detainees.
According to the complaint affidavit, the investigation determined that no laws were broken by the defense team as no law prohibited defense counsel from filing a classified document under seal outlining for a court classified information they had learned during the course of their investigation. Regarding the 32 pages of photographs that were taken or obtained by the defense team and provided to the detainees, the investigation found no evidence the defense attorneys transmitting the photographs were aware of, much less disclosed, the identities of the persons depicted in particular photographs and no evidence that the defense team disclosed other classified matters associated with certain of those individuals to the detainees. The defense team did not take photographs of persons known or believed to be current covert officers. Rather, defense counsel, using a technique known as a double-blind photo lineup, provided photograph spreads of unidentified individuals to their clients to determine whether they recognized anyone who may have participated in questioning them. No law or military commission order expressly prohibited defense counsel from providing their clients with these photo spreads.
Further investigation, based in part on e-mails recovered from judicially-authorized search warrants served on two e-mail accounts associated with Kiriakou, allegedly revealed that:
Kiriakou disclosed to Journalist A the name of Covert Officer A and the fact that Covert Officer A was involved in a particular classified operation. The journalist then provided the defense investigator with the full name of the covert CIA employee;
Kiriakou disclosed or confirmed to Journalists A, B, and C the then-classified information that Officer B participated in the Abu Zubaydah operation and provided two of those journalists with contact information for Officer B, including a personal e-mail address. One of the journalists subsequently provided the defense investigator with Officer B's home telephone number, which the investigator used to identify and photograph Officer B; and
Kiriakou lied to the CIA regarding the existence and use of a classified technique, referred to as a "magic box," in an unsuccessful effort to trick the CIA into allowing him to publish information about the classified technique in a book.
Upon joining the CIA in 1990 and on multiple occasions in following years, Kiriakou signed secrecy and non-disclosure agreements not to disclose classified information to unauthorized individuals.
Regarding Covert Officer A, the affidavit details a series of e-mail communications between Kiriakou and Journalist A in July and August 2008. In an exchange of e-mails on July 11, 2008, Kiriakou allegedly illegally confirmed for Journalist A that Covert Officer A, whose first name only was exchanged at that point, was "the team leader on [specific operation]." On August 18, 2008, Journalist A sent Kiriakou an e-mail asking if Kiriakou could pick out Covert Officer A's last name from a list of names Journalist A provided in the e-mail. On Aug. 19, 2008, Kiriakou allegedly passed the last name of Covert Officer A to Journalist A by e-mail, stating "It came to me last night." Covert Officer A's last name had not been on the list provided by Journalist A. Later that same day, approximately two hours later, Journalist A sent an e-mail to the defense investigator that contained Covert Officer A's full name. Neither Journalist A, nor any other journalist to the government's knowledge, has published the name of Covert Officer A.
At the time of Kiriakou's allegedly unauthorized disclosures to Journalist A, the identification of Covert Officer A as "the team leader on [specific operation]" was classified at the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) level because it revealed both Covert Officer A's identity and his association with the CIA's Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation (RDI) Program relating to the capture, detention, and questioning of terrorism subjects. The defense investigator was able to identify Covert Officer A only after receiving the e-mail from Journalist A, and both Covert Officer A's name and association with the RDI Program were included in the January 2009 classified defense filing. The defense investigator told the government that he understood from the circumstances that Covert Officer A was a covert employee and, accordingly, did not take his photograph. No photograph of Covert Officer A was recovered from the detainees at Guantanamo.
In a recorded interview last Thursday, FBI agents told Kiriakou that Covert Officer A's name was included in the classified defense filing. The affidavit states Kiriakou said, among other things, "How the heck did they get him? . . . [First name of Covert Officer A] was always undercover. His entire career was undercover." Kiriakou further stated that he never provided Covert Officer A's name or any other information about Covert Officer A to any journalist and stated "Once they get the names, I mean this is scary."
Regarding Officer B, the affidavit states that he worked overseas with Kiriakou on an operation to locate and capture Abu Zubaydah, and Officer B's association with the RDI Program and the Abu Zubaydah operation in particular were classified until that information was recently declassified to allow the prosecution of Kiriakou to proceed.
In June 2008, The New York Times published an article by Journalist B entitled "Inside the Interrogation of a 9/11 Mastermind," which publicly identified Officer B and reported his alleged role in the capture and questioning of Abu Zubaydah—facts which were then classified. The article attributed other information to Kiriakou as a source, but did not identify the source(s) who disclosed or confirmed Officer B's identity. The charges allege that at various times prior to publication of the article, Kiriakou provided Journalist B with personal information regarding Officer B, knowing that Journalist B was seeking to identify and locate Officer B. In doing so, Kiriakou allegedly confirmed classified information that Officer B was involved in the Abu Zubaydah operation. For example, Kiriakou allegedly e-mailed Officer B's phone number and personal e-mail address to Journalist B, who attempted to contact Officer B via his personal e-mail in April and May 2008. Officer B had provided his personal e-mail address to Kiriakou, but not to Journalist B or any other journalist. Subsequently, Kiriakou allegedly revealed classified information by confirming for Journalist B additional information that an individual with Officer B's name, who was associated with particular contact information that Journalist B had found on a website, was located in Pakistan in March 2002, which was where and when the Abu Zubaydah operation took place.
After The New York Times article was published, Kiriakou sent several e-mails denying that he was the source for information regarding Officer B, while, at the same time, allegedly lying about the number and nature of his contacts with Journalist B. For example, in an e-mail dated June 30, 2008, Kiriakou told Officer B that Kiriakou had spoken to the newspaper's ombudsman after the article was published and said that the use of Officer B's name was "despicable and unnecessary" and could put Officer B in danger. Kiriakou also denied that he had cooperated with the article and claimed that he had declined to talk to Journalist B, except to say that he believed the article absolutely should not mention Officer B's name. "[W]hile it might not be illegal to name you, it would certainly be immoral," Kiriakou wrote to Officer B, according to the affidavit.
From at least November 2007 through November 2008, Kiriakou allegedly provided Journalist A with Officer B's personal contact information and disclosed to Journalist A classified information revealing Officer B's association with the RDI Program. Just as Journalist A had disclosed to the defense investigator classified information that Kiriakou allegedly imparted about Covert Officer A, Journalist A, in turn, provided the defense investigator information that Kiriakou had disclosed about Officer B. For example, in an e-mail dated April 10, 2008, Journalist A provided the defense investigator with Officer B's home phone number, which, in light of Officer B's common surname, allowed the investigator to quickly and accurately identify Officer B and photograph him. Both Officer B's name and his association with the RDI Program were included in the January 2009 classified defense filing, and four photographs of Officer B were among the photos recovered at Guantanamo.
In the same recorded interview with FBI agents last week, Kiriakou said he "absolutely" considered Officer B's association with the Abu Zubaydah operation classified, the affidavit states. Kiriakou also denied providing any contact information for Officer B or Officer B's association with the Abu Zubaydah operation to Journalists A and B prior to publication of the June 2008 New York Times article. When specifically asked whether he had anything to do with providing Officer B's name or other information about Officer B to Journalist B prior to the article, Kiriakou stated "Heavens no."
As background, the affidavit states that sometime prior to May 22, 2007, Kiriakou disclosed to Journalist C classified information regarding Officer B's association with Abu Zubaydah operation, apparently while collaborating on a preliminary book proposal. A footnote states that Journalist C is not the coauthor of the book Kiriakou eventually published.
Prior to publication of his book, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror, Kiriakou submitted a draft manuscript in July 2008 to the CIA's Publication Review Board (PRB). In an attempt to trick the CIA into allowing him to publish information regarding a classified investigative technique, Kiriakou allegedly lied to the PRB by falsely claiming that the technique was fictional and that he had never heard of it before. In fact, according to a transcript of a recorded interview conducted in August 2007 to assist Kiriakou's coauthor in drafting the book, Kiriakou described the technique, which he referred to as the "magic box," and told his coauthor that the CIA had used the technique in the Abu Zubaydah operation. The technique was also disclosed in the June 2008 New York Times article and referred to as a "magic box."
In his submission letter to the PRB, Kiriakou flagged the reference to a device called a "magic box," stating he had read about it in the newspaper article but added that the information was "clearly fabricated," as he was unaware of and had used no such device. The affidavit contains the contents of an August 2008 e-mail that Kiriakou sent his coauthor admitting that he lied to the PRB in an attempt to include classified information in the book. The PRB subsequently informed Kiriakou that the draft manuscript contained classified information that he could not use, and information regarding the technique that Kiriakou included in the manuscript remained classified until it was recently declassified to allow Kiriakou's prosecution to proceed.
Upon conviction, the count charging illegal disclosure of Covert Officer A's identity to a person not authorized to receive classified information carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, which must be imposed consecutively to any other term of imprisonment; the two counts charging violations of the Espionage Act each carry a maximum term of 10 years in prison; and making false statements carries a maximum prison term of five years. Each count carries a maximum fine of $250,000.
A complaint contains only allegations and is not evidence of guilt. The defendant is presumed innocent and is entitled to a fair trial at which the government has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
The government is being represented in court by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Iris Lan (Southern District of New York) and Mark E. Schneider (Northern District of Illinois), and DOJ trial attorney Ryan Fayhee, of the Counterespionage Section of the National Security Division. Assistant U.S. Attorney Li
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