According to a newly declassified document, the CIA planted
propaganda directly on news wire services during the Bay of
Pigs incident in the 1960s.
The document says that the agency?s headquarters had ?the
capability of placing items directly on the wire service tickers?
as part of its ?regular propaganda apparatus.?
It was declassified under the Freedom of Information Act
after efforts by Jon Elliston, a journalist and author of the
book "Psywar on Cuba: The Declassified History of US Anti-
Castro Propaganda."
In the 1970s, it was revealed that during the Cold War, the
CIA placed agents, or ?assets,? in news organizations like the
Associated Press and United Press International. Major
newspapers like The New York Times have allegedly hired ?ex?
CIA agents as reporters, sometimes without the knowledge of
these news organizations.
The ?propaganda plan? document reveals that the CIA could
dictate articles and have them sent around the world. It
states that ?One report on United Press International, for
example, will be repeated on nearly every radio station and
most of the newspapers??.
After the 1970s disclosures, UPI said it was satisfied that
none of its current employees were involved in any way with
the CIA, but was unable to say what might have occurred in
the past. An AP executive said then that internal
investigations had found that none of its employees had been
involved with the CIA.
The CIA has said that it no longer manipulates the media and
would only do so in the case of a dire national emergency. It
reaffirmed that policy several times in the 1990s.
When David McGowan, author
of ?Derailing
Democracy: The America the Media Don?t Want You to See,?
was a guest on Dreamland, he informed listeners that CIA
involvement in the media is well known among reporters.
Aside from agency denials, there is no certainty that CIA is
no longer involved with news manipulation. Until the release
of the present document, CIA had claimed that it had never
exerted influence over organizations like AP and UPI
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