Who Can Be a Paid Spook?

Not U.S. journalists, the CIA says, and Congressmen agree

It's a kind of mongoose-and-cobra relationship," said Wisconsin's Democratic Congressman Les Aspin last week. That seemed as good a way as any of characterizing the modus vivendi between the press and the Central Intelligence Agency. But as one wag quickly noted, nobody is sure which is which. Sorting out that problem was the task before Aspin's Oversight Subcommittee of the House Intelligence Committee. After three days of hearings, the committee members were still unsure about who were the good and bad guys in the complex game of information-gathering around the globe.

The congressional hearings came after Journalist Carl Bernstein's charges in the Oct. 20 issue of Rolling Stone magazine that at least 400 employees of American news organizations have worked directly for or informally aided the CIA over the past 25 years. According to Bernstein, the reporters often had their bosses' approval. Most of the relationships had ended, Bernstein added, but as of 1976 some 50 American journalists were still bound by secret agreements with "the Company."

Vigorous denials greeted the article. Editors at the wire services, Time Inc., the Hearst chain and newspapers such as the New York Times and the Miami Herald said that none of their staffers were now involved with the agency.

Eight months before Bernstein's piece appeared, the CIA had made its own moves to clean house. In a policy statement, the agency declared that it would not enter into any "paid or contractual relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station." Seven weeks after Bernstein's article appeared, Freshman CIA Director Stansfield Turner strengthened that pledge by plugging a loophole in it. He said that the agency would henceforth prohibit paid contacts with so-called stringers (journalists who contribute to news organizations on an article-by-article basis), who were not specifically mentioned in the earlier statement. Nonetheless, Turner affirmed that the CIA would "continue to permit unpaid relationships" with journalists "who voluntarily maintain contact" with the American intelligence organization.

At last week's hearings, Congressmen got a strong plea from former CIA Director William Colby to let matters stand as they now are. Specifically, he did not want the legislators to prevent the agency from dealing with foreign journalists. Said Colby: "We do not need the self-inflicted wound of being barred from intelligence operations targeted against TASS [the official Soviet news agency]." Moreover, he warned the Congressmen, "You are obliged to ensure that our intelligence services can function so as to protect our country. Intelligence officers cannot be effective in hostile areas of the world if they wear the initials CIA on their hatbands." Colby complained that it was becoming difficult for CIA agents to find "cover."

Journalists who appeared before the committee were unanimous in saying that intelligence-gathering for the U.S. Government is an improper role for American reporters, but they also opposed any restriction on dealing with intelligence agents as sources.

At week's end, Subcommittee Chairman Aspin pronounced general agreement among the legislators that "there should be some relationship, at least on a voluntary basis," between CIA agents and American journalists. The group had two more days of hearings this week in order to determine what, among other things, it thought that the relationship should be. Then, at the end of the month, the Congressmen were scheduled to hear from Agency Director Turner himself. After examining the press, the Congressmen will move on to examine relations between the CIA and other institutions, such as academia and religious groups.

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