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SIX: Propaganda
and Disinformation
In
psychological warfare ...
the intelligence agencies of the
democratic countries suffer
from the grave disadvantage that
in attempting to damage the
adversary they must also
deceive their own public.
-- VICTOR ZORZA
Washington Post
November 15, 1965
By the mid 1960s
most of the professionals in the CIA's
Clandestine Services thought that the day of the balloon as an effective
delivery vehicle in propaganda operations had long since
passed. Years before, in the early rough-and-tumble era of the
Cold War, agency operators in West Germany had often used balloons
to carry anti-communist literature into the denied areas behind
the Iron Curtain. These operations, although lacking in
plausible deniability, normally a prerequisite in covert propaganda
efforts, had scored high-judging from the numerous angry protests
issued by the Soviet Union and its East European satellites.
Since then the propaganda game had evolved into a subtle
contest of wits, and the agency's Covert Action Staff had developed
far more sophisticated methods for spreading ideological messages.
Thus, there was a sense of "deja vu" among the covert-action
staffers when officers of the Far East Division suggested in 1967
that a new balloon operation be undertaken. The target this time
was to be mainland China.
The People's Republic was at that time in the midst of the
cultural revolution. Youthful Red Guards were rampaging throughout
the country, shattering customs and laws alike; confusion, near
chaos, engulfed the nation. But the CIA's China watchers in Hong
Kong and elsewhere on the periphery of the mainland had detected
that a reaction was setting in, especially in southern China around
Canton and Foochow in the provinces of Kwangtung and Fu~ien.
They believed that a kind of backlash to the excesses of the Red
Guards was building, for increasingly groups within the military
and among the workers were beginning to resist the Red Guards
and to call for a return to traditional law and order.
To the agency's operators, these were conditions worth exploiting.
No one really believed that communism could be eliminated
Propaganda and Disinjormation 157
from the mainland, but the short-term political objectives which
might be achieved through covert propaganda were too tempting
to pass up. China was an avowed enemy of the United States, and
the CIA felt that each bit of additional domestic turmoil that could
be stirred up made the world's most populous country-already
experimenting with long-range ballistic missiles-that much less
of a threat to American national security. Furthermore, if Peking
could be kept preoccupied with internal problems, then the likelihood
of Chinese military intervention in the Vietnamese war, in a
manner similar to that so effectively employed years earlier in
Korea, could be diminished. Perhaps, too, China could be forced
to reduce its material support to North Vietnam and to cut back
on its export of revolution to other areas of the developing world.
The operation was accordingly approved by the 303 Committee
(now the 40 Committee) and the agency took its balloons out of
storage, shipping them to a secret base on Taiwan. There they were
loaded with a variety of carefully prepared propaganda materials
-leaflets, pamphlets, newspapers-and, when the winds were
right, launched to float over the mainland provinces due west of the
island. The literature dropped by the balloons had been designed
by the agency's propagandists to appear as similar as possible in
substance and style to the few publications then being furtively
distributed on a small scale by conservative groups inside China.
Names of no genuine anti-revolutionary organizations were used;
fictitious associations, some identified with the army, others with
agricultural communes or urban industrial unions, were invented.
The main thrust of all the propaganda was essentially the same,
criticizing the activities (both real and imaginary) of the Red
Guards and, by implication, those leaders who inspired or permitted
such excesses. It was hoped that the propaganda and its
attendant disinformation would create further reactions to the
cultural revolution, on one hand adding to the growing domestic
confusion and on the other disrupting the internal balance of power
among the leadership in Peking. The CIA calculated that when the
Chinese realized they were being propagandized, the U.S. govemment
could confidently disclaim any responsibility. The assumed
culprit would most likely be Chiang Kai-shek's Taiwan regime, the
158 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
agency's witting and cooperative host for the operation.
Almost immediately after it began, the balloon project was a
success. The CIA's China watchers soon saw evidence of increased
resistance to the Red Guards in the southern provinces. Peking,
apparently believing the reaction to the cultural revolution to be
greater than it actually was, displayed strong concern over developments
in the south. And within weeks, refugees and travelers
from the mainland began arriving in Hong Kong with copies of the
leaflets and pamphlets that the agency's propagandists had manufactured-
a clear indication of the credence being given the false
literature by the Chinese masses. It was not long, therefore, before
the Clandestine Services were searching for other ways to expand
their propaganda effort against the new target.
A decision was therefore made to install on Taiwan a pair of
clandestine radio transmitters which would broadcast propaganda
-and disinformation-of the same nature as that disseminated
by the balloon drops. If the Chinese people accepted the radio
broadcasts as genuine, the CIA reasoned, then they might be
convinced that the countermovement to the cultural revolution was
gaining strength and perhaps think that the time had come to
resist the Red Guards and their supporters still more openly.
(
DELETED
Propaganda and Disin/ormation 159
DELETED
)
Against a closed-society target, simply providing information
and news that the government wishes to keep from its people can
have a significant effect. If, in addition, some clever disinformation
can be inserted, then so much the better. The listeners, realizing
that much of what they are hearing is true, tend to believe that all
they are told is accurate.
One source of news used by agency propagandists was the
CIA's own Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), which
daily monitors open radio broadcasting around the world from
more than a dozen listening posts located in such varied places as
Hong Kong, Panama, Nigeria, Cyprus, even San Francisco. The
product of the FBIS was also utilized to determine whether the
broadcasts of the clandestine transmitters were reaching their target
in China and creating the anticipated effect.
There was a third (and deleterious) way, however, in which the
monitoring service played a role in the operation, and the Clandestine
Services were slow to correct it. Unlike most of the intelligence
collected by the agency, the programs monitored by the FHIS are
widely disseminated within the U.S. government and to certain
subscribers
among the press corps and the academic community. These
daily reports, verbatim transcripts translated into English, are
packaged and color-coded according to major geographical area-
Far East (yellow), Middle East! Africa (blue), Latin America
(pink), and so on. But even though the FBIS editors are members
of the CIA's Intelligence Directorate, the operators in the
Clandestine Services are reluctant to reveal their propaganda operations
to them. As a result, for its Far East daily report the
FBIS frequently monitored and distributed the texts of programs
actually originating from the agency's secret stations on Taiwan
160 THE CI A AND THE CU L T 0 FIN TEL L I GENe E
along with the transcripts of broadcasts from real counter-revolutionary
organizations on the mainland.
CIA operators seemed untroubled by this development and the
accompanying fact that the agency's own China analysts back at
headquarters in Washington (along with their colleagues in the
State and Defense departments) were being somewhat misled. Nor
did they appear to mind that unwitting scholars and newsmen
were publishing articles based to some extent on the phony information
being reported by the FBIS. Eventually the CIA analysts
at home were informed of the existence of the clandestine
radios, but no steps were taken to rectify the false data passed on
to the other U.S. government agencies or to the press and
academia; operational security precluded such revelations. Besides,
Communist China was an enemy, and the writings of recognized
journalists and professors publicizing its state of near chaos and
potential rebellion helped to discredit Peking in the eyes of the
world-which was, after all, in keeping with the CIA's interpretation
of American foreign policy at the time. The CIA's secret
radios thus proved to be highly successful, even after the Chinese
government discovered their origin and announced to its people
that the broadcasts were false.
Meanwhile, the agency's operatives turned to outright disinformation
in their effort to exploit China's internal difficulties.
For example, (
DELETED
) began to show results. The Red Guards
turned their fury on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, demanding
Propaganda and Disinjormation 161
that Chinese diplomats, too, be cleansed of Western ways and rededicated
to Mao's principles of communism.
(
DELETED
)
To be sure, propaganda and disinformation are not new phenomena.
Nations and factions within nations have long employed
such techniques to enhance their own images while at the same
time attempting to discredit their enemies and rivals. Yet the
great advances in communications during the twentieth century
have vastly changed the potential of propagandistic effort, making
possible rapid, widespread distribution of propaganda material.
Nazi Germany refined and made enormous use of the "big lie."
The Soviet Union and other communist countries have used many
of the methods invented by the Germans and have added new
twists of their own. Although the United States did not actively
enter the field until World War II, when the ass and the Office of
War Information (OWl) started their psychological-warfare pro162
THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
grams, its propaganda effort has grown-under the eyes of the
Covert Action Staff of the CIA's Clandestine Services-to be
thoroughly expert.
Working on the CA Staff are sociologists, psychologists,
historians, and media specialists-all skilled at selecting "reachable"
targets, such as the youth or intellectuals of a particular
country, and at getting a message through to them. In planning and
carrying out its activities, the branch often works closely with 6ther
agency officers in the area divisions. The idea for an operation
may be initiated by a field component-say, a station in Africa or
Latin America-that sees a special need or a target of opportunity
within its area of responsibility; it may originate at headquarters
in Langley, either in the propaganda branch or in one of the area
divisions; or it may come from the White House, the State Department,
the Pentagon, or any member of the U.S. intelligence
community in the form of a requirement for the CIA to take
action. If it is considered to be a program of major political
significance
or entailing an inherent high-risk factor-that is, if its
exposure would cause substantial embarrassment for the U.S.
government-a project proposal developed in the Clandestine
Services is submitted to the Director's office for review. Subsequently,
the plan will be sent to the 40 Committee for final approval.
Thenceforth, control of any propaganda operation and
responsibility for its coordination within the Clandestine Services
and the government may rest with either the Covert Action Staff
or an area division. Certain long-standing operations, such as
Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, were traditionally under
the control of the CA Staff. But responsibility for the newer and
MIlaller oper&.tionsusually is determined on an ad hoc basis, with
the CA Staff serving in either an advisory or controlling capacity,
depending on the circumstances of the particular undertaking.
A propaganda operation might not be anything more sinister
than broadcasting straight news reports or rock music to the
countries of Eastern Europe. Others are far more devious. (
DELETED
Propaganda and Disinjormation 163
DELETED
)
The CIA also makes considerable use of forged documents. *
During the mid-1960s, for instance, the agency learned that a certain
West African country was about to recognize the People's
Republic of China and that the local government intended to force
the withdrawal of the diplomatic representatives of Nationalist
China. This was considered to be contrary to American foreignpolicy
aims, so the CIA went into action. (
DELETED
)
The Pentagon Papers have revealed some other examples of CIA
propaganda and disinformation activities. One top-secret document
written in 1954 by Colonel Edward Lansdale, then an agency
operator, describes an effort involving North Vietnamese astrologers
hired to write predictions about the coming disasters which
would befall certain Vietminh leaders and their undertakings, and
the success and unity which awaited the South.
Lansdale also mentioned that personnel under his control
* Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt was questioned in 1973 about his
forgery of a State Department cable directly linking the Kennedy
administration
to the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.
"After an," Hunt told the federal prosecutor, "I had been given some
training
in my past CIA career to do just this sort of thing ... floating forged
newspaper accounts, telegrams, that sort of thing."
I 64 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
had engineered a black psywar strike in Hanoi: leaflets signed
by the Vietminh instructing Tonkinese on how to behave for
the Vietminh takeover of the Hanoi region in early October,
including items about property, money reform, and a three-day
holiday of workers upon takeover. The day following the
distribution of these leaflets, refugee registration tripled. Two
days later Vietminh took to the radio to denounce the leaflets;
the leaflets were so authentic in appearance that even most
of the rank and file Vietminh were sure that the radio
denunciations were a French trick.
Lansdale's black propaganda also had an effect on the American
press. One of his bogus leaflets came to the attention of
syndicated columnist Joseph Alsop, who was then touring South
Vietnam. The leaflet, indicating that many South Vietnamese were
to be sent to China to work on the railroads, seemed to have been
written by the communists. Alsop naively accepted the leaflet at
face value and, according to Lansdale, this "led to his sensational,
gloomy articles later. ... Alsop was never told this story." Nor,
of course, was the false impression left with Alsop's readers ever
corrected.
CIA propaganda activities also entail the publication of books
and periodicals. Over the years, the agency has provided direct
subsidies to a number of magazines and publishing houses, ranging
from Eastern European emigre organs to such reputable firms
as Frederick A. Praeger, of New York-which admitted in 1967
that it had published "fifteen or sixteen books" at the CIA's request.
(
DELETED
Propaganda and Disinformation 165
DELETED
Many other anti-communist publishing concerns in Germany,
Italy, and France were also supported and encouraged by the
agency during the post-World War II years. (
DELETED ) According to a former high-ranking agency
official, (
DELETED ) and the Parisian newspaper, "Le
Combat." This same ex-official also recalls with an ironic smile that
for several years the agency subsidized the New York communist
paper, The Daily Worker. In fairness to the Worker's staff, it must
be noted that they were unaware of the CIA's assistance, which
came in the form of several thousand secretly purchased prepaid
subscriptions. The CIA apparently hoped to demonstrate by this
means to the American public that the threat of communism in
this country was indeed real.
Although the CIA inherited from the ass responsibility for covert
propaganda operations, the agency has no specific authority in the
open law to engage in such operations-other than the vague
charge to carry out "such other functions and duties related to
intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security
Council may from time to time direct." Yet since its founding in
1947 the CIA has spent over one billion dollars for propaganda
activities (mainly foreign but also domestic) to further what it
perceived to be the national interests of the United States.
Sometimes this means simply telling the truth to an audience
(called "white" propaganda); other times a mixture of truths,
half-truths, and slight distortions is used to slant the views of the
audience ("gray" propaganda); and, on occasion, outright lies
("black" propaganda) are used, although usually accompanied
for credibility's sake by some truths and half-truths.
"Black" propaganda on the one hand and "disinformation" on
the other are virtually indistinguishable. Both refer to the spreading
of false information in order to influence people's opinions or
actions. Disinformation actually is a special type of "black"
propaganda which hinges on absolute secrecy and which is usually
supported by false documents; originally, it was something of a
I 66 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
Soviet specialty, and the Russian word for it, dezinformatsiya, is
virtually a direct analogue of our own. Within the KGB there is
even a Department of Disinformation.
On June 2, 1961 (less than two months after the CIA's humiliating
failure at the Bay of Pigs), Richard Helms, then Deputy
Director of the Clandestine Services, briefed the Senate Internal
Security Subcommittee on communist forgeries. Helms discussed
thirty-two fraudulent documents "packaged to look like communications
to or from American officials." Twenty-two were
meant to demonstrate imperialist American plans and ambitions;
seventeen of these asserted U.S. interference in the affairs of
several free-world countries. Of the seventeen, eleven charged
U.S. intervention in private business of Asian nations. One was a
fake secret agreement between the Secretary of State and Japanese
Premier Kishi permitting use of Japanese troops anywhere in Asia.
Another alleged that American policy in Southeast Asia called for
U.S. control of the armed forces of all S.E.A.T.O. nations. Two
forgeries offered proof that the Americans were plotting the
overthrow of Indonesia's Sukarno; the remaining two were merely
meant to demonstrate that the U.S. government, despite official
disclaimers, was secretly supplying the anti-Sukarno rebels with
military aid.
These last examples concerning Indonesia are especially interesting.
A cursory examination of the documents, as submitted by
Helms, indicates that they were indeed rather crude forgeries,
but their message was accurate. Not only did the CIA in 1958 support
efforts to overthrow the Sukarno government, but Helms
himself, as second-ranking official in Clandestine Services, knew it
well. And he knew that the "official disclaimers" to which be referred
were deceptions and outright lies issued by U.S. government
spokesmen. Helms' testimony was released to the public with
the approval of the CIA, which was, in effect, targeting a
propaganda operation against the American people. Not only did
he lie about the communists' lying (which is not to say that they
are not indeed culpable), but Helms in the process quite ably
managed to avoid discussion of the pervasive lying the CIA commits
in the name of the United States.
Propaganda and Disinformation 167
The Radios
Until 1971, the CIA's largest propaganda operations by far were
Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL). RFE broadcast
to Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria,
while RL was aimed at the Soviet Union. These ostensibly private
stations had been started by the agency in the early 1950s at the
height of the Cold War. They operated under the cover provided
by their New York-based boards of directors, which were made up
principally of distinguished statesmen, retired military leaders,
and corporate executives. With studios in Munich and transmitters
in West Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Taiwan, the two stations
broadcast thousands of hours of programs a year into the communist
countries. Their combined annual budgets ranged from $30
to $35 million, and the CIA financed over 95 percent of the costs. *
In their early years, both RFE and RL quite stridently promoted
the "rolling back" of the Iron Curtain. (Radio Liberty was
originally named Radio Liberation.) The tone of their broadcasts
softened considerably in the aftermath of the 1957 Hungarian
revolt, when RFE was subjected to severe criticism for its role in
seeming to incite continued, but inevitably futile, resistance by
implying
that American assistance would be forthcoming. During and
after the Hungarian events, it became quite clear that the United
States would not actively participate in freeing the captive nations,
and the emphasis at both RFE and RL was changed to promote
liberalization within the communist system through peaceful
change. The CIA continued, however, to finance both stations, to
provide them with key personnel, and to control program content.
The ostensible mission of RFE and RL was to provide accurate
* A particularly deceptive aspect of the RFE operation was, and is, the
annual fund-raising drive carried out in the United States. Under the
auspices of the Advertising Council, RFE solicits funds with the clear
implication that if money is not donated by the American public the
station
will no longer be able to function and the "truth" will not get through
to
Eastern Europe. Although between $12 and $20 million in free advertising
time was made available in 1969, for example, less than $100,000 was
raised from a not terribly alarmed public.
I 68 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
information to the people of Eastern Europe. In this aim they
were largely successful, and their programs reached millions of
listeners. While RFE and RL broadcasts contained a certain
amount of distortion, they were, especially in the early years,
considerably
more accurate than the Eastern European media. But to
many in the CIA the primary value of the radios was to sow discontent
in Eastern Europe and, in the process, to weaken the
communist governments. Hard-liners in the agency pointed to the
social agitation in Poland which brought Wladyslaw Gomulka to
power in 1956, the Hungarian uprising in 1957, and the fall of
Czech Stalinist Antonin Novotny in 1967 as events which RFE
helped to bring about. Others in the CIA did not specifically connect
RFE or RL to such dramatic occurrences, but instead stressed
the role of the two stations in the more gradual de-Stalinization
and liberalization of Eastern Europe.
Like most propaganda operations, RFE's and RL's principal
effect has been to contribute to existing trends in their target areas
and sometimes to accentuate those trends. Even when events in
Eastern Europe have worked out to the agency's satisfaction, any
direct contribution by the radios would be nearly impossible to
prove. In any case, whatever the success of the two stations, the
CIA intended from the beginning that they play an activist role
in the affairs of Eastern Europe-well beyond being simply
sources of accurate news. For, in addition to transmitting information
to Eastern Europe and harassing the communist governments,
RFE and RL have also provided the Clandestine Services with
covert assets which could be used against the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe.
The two radio stations, with their large staffs of Eastern
European refugees, are a ready-made source of agents, contacts,
information, and cover for operations. Among further radio-derived
sources of intelligence was the comparatively large number of
letters RFE and RL received from their listeners in Eastern
Europe. Delivered by mail and by travelers coming to the West,
these letters were considered by the agency's clandestine operators
to be an intelligence-collection resource. RFE and RL emigre
personnel used the letters and other information available to the
Propaganda and Disinjormation 169
stations to prepare written analyses of what was happening in the
East. Much of this analysis, however, was thought to be of
doubtful value back at CIA headquarters, and was held in low
esteem throughout the U.S. intelligence community.
However debatable the direct effect of RFE and RL on events in
Eastern Europe, the governments of the communist countries obviously
were quite disturbed by the stations. Extensive efforts were
made to jam their signals, and by the late 1950s the communist
intelligence
services were actively trying to discredit the stations and
to infiltrate the radios' staffs. In many cases, they succeeded, and
by the mid-1960s the general view at CIA headquarters was that
the two facilities were widely penetrated by communist agents and
that much of the analysis coming out of Munich was based on
false information planted by opposition agents. During this same
time the spirit of East-West detente was growing, and many officers
in the CIA thought that RFE and RL had outlived their usefulness.
Supporters of the stations were finding it increasingly difficult at
budget time to justify their yearly costs. Even the Eastern European
governments were showing a declining interest in the stations,
and the jamming efforts fell off considerably.
The agency carried out several internal studies on the utility of
RFE and RL, and the results in each case favored phasing out
CIA funding. But after each study a few old-timers in the CIA,
whose connections with the stations went back to their beginnings,
would come up with new and dubious reasons why the radios
should be continued. The emotional attachment of these veteran
operators to RFE and RL was extremely strong. Also defending
the stations were those influential personalities, like former
N.A.T.O. chief Lucius Clay, CBS president Frank Stanton, and
General Motors chairman James Roche, who made up the radios'
boards of directors. All of these efforts ran counter to attempts
of the CIA's own Planning, Programming and Budgeting Staff to
end agency support. Additionally, the CIA's top management appeared
reluctant to part with the stations because of a fear that
if the $30 to $35 million in annual payments were ended, that
money would be irrevocably lost to the CIA. Each internal agency
study which called for the end of the CIA's involvement invariably
170 THE C I A AND THE C U L T °FIN TEL L I G ENe E
led to nothing more than yet another study being made.
Thus, bureaucratic inertia, the unwillingness of the USIA to
take over the radios' functions, and well-placed lobbying efforts
by RFL and RE boards of directors combined to keep CIA funds
flowing into both stations through the 1960s. Even when agency
financing of the stations became widely known during the 1967
scandal surrounding the CIA's penetration and manipulation of the
National Student Association, the agency did not reduce its support.
In the aftermath of that scandal, President Johnson's special
review group, the Katzenbach committee, recommended that the
CIA not be allowed to finance "any of the nation's educational or
private voluntary organizations." Still, with the approval of the
White House, the agency did not let go of RFE or RL.
No change occurred until January 1971, when Senator Clifford
Case of New Jersey spoke out against the CIA subsidies to the
radios and proposed legislation for open funding.
Case's move attracted quite a bit of attention in the media and
it became obvious that the Senator was not going to back down
in the face of administration pressure. When the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee scheduled hearings on Case's bill and the
Senator threatened to call former RFE employees as witnesses,
the CIA decided that the time had come to divest itself of the two
stations. Open congressional funding became a reality, and by the
end of 1971 CIA financial involvement in RFE and RL was officially
ended. Whether the agency has also dropped all its covert
assets connected with them is not known, but, given past experience,
that is not likely. For the time being, the largest threat to the
future of RFE and RL would seem to be not Congress, which will
prob'ably vote money indefinitely, but the West German government
of Willy Brandt. Now that the stations are in the open, Bonn
faces pressure from the Eastern European countries to forbid
them to broadcast on German soil. (
DELETED
) but he still might at some point accept the argument,
as part of an effort to further the East-West detente, that RFE and
RL represent unnecessary obstacles to improved relations.
Propaganda and Disinformation 171
Other Propaganda Operations
The CIA has always been interested in reaching and encouraging
dissidents in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In the early
days of the Cold War, the agency sent its own agents and substantial
amounts of money behind the Iron Curtain to keep things
stirred up, mostly with disastrous results. In more recent times,
operations against Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R. have become
less frequent and less crude. The agency, however, has continued
to maintain its contacts with emigre groups in Western Europe
and the United States. These groups are sometimes well informed
on what is happening in their home countries, and they often
provide a conduit for the CIA in its dealings with dissidents in
those countries.
(
DELETED
172 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
) has found the emigre group to be of
only marginal usefulness.
Another organization heavily subsidized by the CIA was the
Asia Foundation. Established by the agency in 1956, with a carefully
chosen board of directors, the foundation was designed to
promote academic and public interest in the East. It sponsored
scholarly research, supported conferences and symposia, and ran
academic exchange programs, with a CIA subsidy that reached $8
million dollars a year. While most of the foundation's activities
were legitimate, the CIA also used it, through penetrations among
the officers and members, to fund anti-communist academicians
in various Asian countries, to disseminate throughout Asia a negative
vision of mainland China, North Vietnam, and North Korea,
and to recruit foreign agents and new case officers. Although the
foundation often served as a cover for clandestine operations, its
main purpose was to promote the spread of ideas which were anticommunist
and pro-American-sometimes subtly and sometimes
stridently.
The focus of the Asia Foundation's activities was overseas, but
the organization's impact tended to be greater in the American
academic community than in the Far East. Large numbers of
American intellectuals participated in foundation programs, and
they-usually unwittingly-contributed to the popularizing of
CIA ideas about the Far East. Designed-and justified at budget
time-as an overseas propaganda operation, the Asia Foundation
also was regularly guilty of propagandizing the American
people with agency views on Asia.
The agency's connection with the Asia Foundation came to
light just after the 1967 exposure of CIA subsidies to the National
Student Association. The foundation clearly was one of the organizations
which the CIA was banned from financing and, under the
recommendations of the Katzenbach committee, the decision was
made to end CIA funding. A complete cut-off after 1967, however,
would have forced the foundation to shut down, so the agency
made it the beneficiary of a large "severance payment" in order
to give it a couple of years to develop alternative sources of
fundPropaganda
and Disin/ormation 173
ing. Assuming the CIA has not resumed covert financing, the Asia
Foundation has apparently made itself self-sufficient by now.
During the 1960s the CIA developed proprietary companies
of a new type for use in propaganda operations. These proprietaries
are more compact and more covert than relatively unwieldy and
now exposed fronts like the Asia Foundation and Radio Free
Europe. (
DELETED
) More and more, as the
United States cuts back its overt aid programs and withdraws from
direct involvement in foreign countries, the agency will probably
be called upon to carry out similar missions in other nations.
174 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
The CIA has also used defectors from communist governments
for propaganda purposes-a practice which has had more impact
in this country than overseas. These defectors, without any prodding
by the CIA, would have interesting stories to tell of politics
and events in their homelands, but almost all are immediately taken
under the CIA's control and subjected to extensive secret debriefings
at a special defector reception center near Frankfurt, West
Germany, or, in the cases of particularly knowledgeable ones, at
agency "safe houses" in the United States. In return for the
intelligence supplied about the defector's former life and work, the
CIA usually takes care of his resettlement in the West, even
providing a new identity if necessary. Sometimes, after the lengthy
debriefing has been finished, the agency will encourage-and will
help-the defector to write articles or books about his past life.
As he may still be living at a CIA facility or be dependent on the
agency for his livelihood, the defector would be extremely reluctant
to jeopardize his future by not cooperating. The CIA does not
try to alter the defector's writings drastically; it simply influences
him to leave out certain information because of security considerations,
or because the thrust of the information runs counter to existing
American policy. The inclusion of information justifying U.S.
or CIA practices is, of course, encouraged, and the CIA will provide
whatever literary assistance is needed by the defector. While
such books tend to show the communist intelligence services as
diabolical and unprincipled organs (which they are), almost never
do these books describe triumphs by the opposition services over
the CIA. Although the other side does indeed win on occasion,
the agency would prefer that the world did not know that. And the
defector dependent on the CIA will hardly act counter to its
interests.
In helping the defector with his writing, the agency often steers
him toward a publisher. Even some of the public-relations aspects
of promoting his book may be aided by the CIA, as in the case
of Major Ladislav Bittman, a Czech intelligence officer who defected
in 1968. Prior to the 1972 publication of his book, The
Deception Game, Bittman was interviewed by the Wall Street
Propaganda and Disinformation 175
Journal, which quoted him on U.S. intelligence's use of the
disinformation
techniques. "It was our opinion," the former Czech
operative said, "that the Americans had more effective means than
this sort of trickery-things such as economic-aid programs-that
were more influential than any black propaganda operation."
While Bittman may well have been reflecting attitudes held by
his former colleagues in Czech intelligence, his words must be
considered suspect. The Czechs almost certainly know something
about the CIA's propaganda and disinformation programs, just as
the CIA knows of theirs. But Bittman's statement, taken along with
his extensive descriptions of Czech and Russian disinformation
programs, reflects exactly the image the CIA wants to promote to
the American public-that the communists are always out to defraud
the West, while the CIA, skillfully uncovering these deceits,
eschews such unprincipled tactics.
To the CIA, propaganda through book publishing has long
been a successful technique. In 1953 the agency backed the
publication of a book called The Dynamics ot Soviet Society,
which was written by Walt Rostow, later President Johnson's
Assistant for National Security Affairs, and other members of
the staff of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. The center had been set up
with CIA money in 1950, and this book was published in two
versions, one classified (for the CIA and government policymakers)
and the other unclassified (for the public). Both versions,
except in some minor details, promoted the thesis that the Soviet
Union is an imperialistic power bent on world conquest, and that
it is the responsibility of the United States to blunt the communist
menace.
Most CIA book operations, however, are more subtle and
clandestine. A former CIA official who specialized in Soviet affairs
recalls how one day in 1967 a CIA operator on the Covert Action
Staff showed him a book called The Foreign Aid Programs ot the
Soviet Bloc and Communist China by a German named Kurt
Muller. The book looked interesting to the Soviet expert, and he
asked to borrow it. The Covert Action man replied, "Keep it.
We've got hundreds more downstairs." Muller's book was some176
THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
thing less than an unbiased treatment of the subject; it was highly
critical of communist foreign assistance to the Third World. The
Soviet specialist is convinced that the agency had found out Muller
was interested in communist foreign-aid programs, encouraged
him to write a book which would have a strong anti-communist
slant, provided him with information, and then helped to get the
book published and distributed.
Financing books is a standard technique used by all intelligence
services. Many writers are glad to write on subjects which will
further their own careers, and with a slant that will contribute to
the propaganda objectives of a friendly agency. Books of this
sort, however, add only a false aura of respectability and authority
to the information the intelligence agency would like to see spread
-even when that information is perfectly accurate-because they
are by definition restricted from presenting an objective analysis
of the subject under consideration. And once exposed, both the
writer and his data become suspect. (
DELETED
)
Spies, however, do not keep journals. They simply do not take
that kind of risk, nor do they have the time to do so while they
are leading double lives.
(
DELETED
Propaganda and Disinformation 177
DELETED
) Allen Dulles seemed to be rubbing salt
in their wounds when he wrote in The Craft of Intelligence that the
Penkovsky defection had shaken the Soviet intelligence services
with the knowledge that the West had located Russian officials
willing to work "in place for long periods of time," and others who
"have never been 'surfaced' and [who] for their own protection
must remain unknown to the public."
And, of course, the publication of The Penkovsky Papers opened
the Soviets up to the embarrassment of having the world learn that
the top level of their government had been penetrated by a Western
spy. Furthermore, Penkovsky's success as an agent made the CIA
look good, both to the American people and to the rest of the
world. Failures such as the Bay of Pigs might be forgiven and
forgotten if the agency could recruit agents like Penkovsky to
accomplish the one task the CIA is weakest at-gathering intelligence
from inside the Soviet Union or China.
The facts were otherwise, however. In the beginning, Penkovsky
was not a CIA spy. He worked for British intelligence. He had
tried to join the CIA in Turkey, but he had been turned down, in
large part because the Soviet Bloc Division of the Clandestine
Services was overly careful not to be taken in by KGB provocateurs
and double agents. To the skittish CIA operators, Penkovsky
seemed too good to be true, especially in the period following the
Burgess-McLean catastrophe. The CIA had also suffered several
recent defeats at the hands of the KGB in Europe, and it was
understandably reluctant to be duped again.
178 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
Penkovsky, however, was determined to spy for the West, and
in 1960 he made contact with British intelligence, which eventually
recruited him. The British informed the CIA of Penkovsky's availability
and offered to conduct the operation as a joint project.
CIA operators in Moscow and elsewhere participated in the elaborated
clandestine techniques used to receive information from
Penkovsky and to debrief the Soviet spy on his visits to Western
Europe. (
DELETED
)
The Penkovsky Papers was a best-seller around the world, and
especially in the United States. Its publication certainly caused
discomfort in the Soviet Union. (
DELETED
)
Richard Helms years later again referred to Penkovsky in this
vein, although not by name, when he claimed in a speech before
the American Society of Newspaper Editors that "a number of
well-placed and courageous Russians ... helped us" in uncovering
the Soviet move. One person taken in by this deception was Senator
Milton Young of North Dakota, who serves on the CIA oversight
subcommittee. In a 1971 Senate debate on cutting the intelligence
budget, the Senator said, "And if you want to read something very
interesting and authoritative where intelligence is concerned, read
the Penkovsky papers ... this is a very interesting story, on why
the intelligence we had in Cuba was so important to us, and on
what the Russians were thinking and just how far they would go."
Yet the CIA intelligence analysts who were working on the
Cuban problem at the time of the missile crisis and preparing the
Propaganda and Disinformation 179
agency's intelligence reports for the President up to and after the
discovery of the Soviet missiles saw no such information from
Penkovsky or any other Soviet spy. The key intelligence that led
to the discovery of the missiles came from the analysis of satellite
photography of the U.S.S.R., Soviet ship movements, U-2 photographs
of Cuba, and information supplied by Cuban refugees.
Penkovsky's technical background information, provided well before
the crisis, was of some use-but not of major or critical importance.
Several scholars of the Soviet Union have independently characterized
The Penkovsky Papers as being partly bogus and as not
having come from Penkovsky's "journal." The respected Soviet
expert and columnist for the Manchester Guardian and the Washington
Post, Victor Zorza, wrote that "the book could have been
compiled only by the Central Intelligence Agency." Zorza pointed
out that Penkovsky had neither the time nor the opportunity to
have produced such a manuscript; that the book's publisher (Doubleday
and Company) and translator (Peter Deriabin, himself a
KGB defector to the CIA) both refused to produce the original
Russian manuscript for inspection; and that The Penkovsky
Papers contained errors of style, technique, and fact that Penkovsky
would not have made.
British intelligence also was not above scoring a propaganda
victory of its own in the Penkovsky affair. Penkovsky's contact
officer had been MI-6's Greville Wynne, who, working under the
cover of being a businessman, had been arrested at the same time
as Penkovsky and later exchanged for the Soviet spy Gordon Lonsdale.
When Wynne returned to Britain, MI-6 helped him write a
book about his experiences, called Contact on Gorky Street. British
intelligence wanted the book published in part to make some money
for Wynne, who had gone through the ordeal of a year and a half
in Soviet prisons, but the MI-6's main motive was to counteract
the extremely unfavorable publicity that had been generated by the
defection of its own senior officer, Harold "Kim" Philby, in 1963,
and the subsequent publication of his memoirs prepared under the
auspices of the ~GB.
180 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
Interestingly, nowhere in Contact on Gorky Street does Wynne
cite the help he received from the CIA. The reason for this omission
could have been professional jealousy on the part of British
intelligence, good British manners (i.e., not mentioning the clandestine
activities of a friendly intelligence service), or most likely,
an indication of the small role played by the CIA in the operation.
Another book-publishing effort in which the CIA mayor may
not have been involved-to some degree-was Khrushchev Remembers,
and the second volume of Khrushchev memoirs scheduled
for publication this year. While these autobiographical and somewhat
self-serving works unquestionably originated with the former
Soviet premier himself, there are a number of curious circumstances
connected with their transmission from Moscow to Time Inc. in
New York, and to its book-publishing division, Little, Brown and
Company. Time Inc. has been less than forthcoming about how it
gained access to the 180 hours of taped reminiscences upon which
the books are based, and how the tapes were taken out of the
U.S.S.R. without the knowledge of the Soviet government or the
ubiquitous and proficient KGB. The whole operation-especially
its political implication-was simply too important to have been
permitted without at least tacit approval by Soviet authorities.
Unlike Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Khrushchev was subsequently
neither denounced nor exiled by Moscow's all-powerful party
chiefs.
Most of the explanations offered by Time Inc. to clarify the
various mysteries involved in this episode have a slightly disingenuous
air. They may be true, but a number of highly regarded
American and British scholars and intelligence officers dealing with
Soviet affairs find them difficult to accept in toto. Why, for example,
did Time Inc. find it necessary to take the risky step of sending a
copy of the bound galleys of the book to its Moscow bureausecretly
via Helsinki-before it was published? The complete story
of the Khrushchev memoirs, in short, may never be publicly
known. And if it is, it may turn out to be another example of secret
U.S.-Soviet cooperation, of two hostile powers giving wide circulation
to information that each wants to see published, while
Propaganda and Disinjormation 181
collaborating to keep their operations away from the eyes of the
general public on both sides. After all, the publication of the first
volume, in 1971 had a relatively happy effect-it supported
Moscow's anti-Stalinists, and in turn increased the prospects for
detente.
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