Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media, Part 1

The post Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media, Part 1 appeared first on WhoWhatWhy.

If you want to know why it is so important that WhoWhatWhy exists, and why it needs to grow into a major news organization capable of influencing the public discourse, read the following. It makes it manifestly clear just how compromised the media — right, left and center — has been, and continues to be. The influencers are not just the more visible ones, such as owners and advertisers. They include the vast and largely unaccountable US intelligence apparatus, whose agendas are often unclear and not entirely in the public interest.

— WhoWhatWhy introduction by Russ Baker

This is the first of two installments from Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood, by Nicholas Schou. (Published by Hot Books, June 2016).  Introduction.

The CIA has a long history of “spooking the news,” dating back to its earliest days when legendary spymaster Allen Dulles and his top staff drank and dined regularly with the press elite of New York and Washington—including the top executives and editors of the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, and CBS—and the agency boasted hundreds of US and foreign journalists as paid and unpaid assets.

In 1977, after this systematic media manipulation was publicly exposed by congressional investigations, the CIA created an Office of Public Affairs that was tasked with guiding press coverage of intelligence matters in a more transparent fashion. The agency insists that it no longer maintains a stable of friendly American journalists, and that its efforts to influence the press are much more above board.

But, in truth, the US intelligence empire’s efforts to manufacture the truth and mold public opinion are more vast and varied than ever before.

During a recent interview at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, a pair of CIA public affairs officers confirmed they provide journalists with frequent background briefings, typically about foreign hot spots. Their mission, they stated, is simply to guide news coverage of national security issues in a truthful direction, while also protecting personnel and operations from public disclosure.

“Our role at the Office of Public Affairs is not to manipulate reporters,” one CIA spokesperson told me. “If they come to us with questions about nonclassified information that makes us look bad, we just give our typical comment.”