Presswatch/Hot Times on the Potomac

...Once upon a time, the CIA—and its cousins in the executive branch—believed they had an absolute right to maintain the secrecy of their sources and methods...

...Since a conservative leaker was identified by Newsweek, retribution was taken out on a liberal source (again, someone who, having left his post on the Intelligence Committee, was no longer in a position to provide such juicy leaks...

...The objective of Congress should be to reverse that trend, thus strengthening the defense of all...

...A: The Central Committee was—apart from Austria, which was neutral and apart from Finland, up in the north of Europe, we needed to have a non-socialist country which would be a very close ally of ours in our attempts to break up the North Atlantic Alliance and get rid of American bases and at the same time drive a wedge between relations in the Western European countries and the United States of America...

...Next month, I shall examine in detail a fascinating Greek disinformation campaign, which is particularly interesting in light of the libel trial in London this past spring, in which Ethnos, the most popular Greek daily, failed to convince a British jury that the Economist's "Foreign Report" had wrongfully accused Ethnos of being a mouthpiece of Soviet propaganda...

...We will do well to keep our eye on the ball: the media consider themselves to be the rightful heirs of the secret intelligence service...

...Remember all the stories that followed the sensational flight of a West German boy into Red Square in his little airplane...

...Still, at this time of year, with the hearings over, almost anything becomes newsworthy...

...There were quick results: the Indians rioted, smashing an American cultural center...

...This would seem to have been a perfect slogan for Gorbachev's people to use in their campaign for the liberalization of the Soviet Union...

...Looking Backwards With the passage of time, we can now look back at some of the more spectacular journalistic excesses, and try to take stock of where we stand...

...As will be seen, this was precisely what Ethnos—and several other Greek newspapers—were aiming at in July and August 1986, when they published a truly remarkable series of lies about American policy in Greece...

...This story made the front page of the New York Times in December, and ran, if my memory serves me well, on every major radio and television network...

...Isn't that right...

...What I had to say Michael Ledeen is senior fellow in international affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C...

...No correction, and no apology...

...instead it fell under the censor's scalpel...

...I offer you this excerpt from a beautifully reasoned editorial on July 7: At the bottom of the propeller fiasco is defense "free-riding" by our allies...

...Otherwise, journalists might have to go out there and work hard for their stories...

...Glasnost has kicked off all manner of debate inside the Soviet Union, some positive (the economy is a disaster, and everyone now says so), some awful (there is a new wave of anti-Semitism...

...I asked my lawyers to bring this to the attention of the Journal's editors...

...If anything, my experiences with the Israelis suggested that there was precious little in the way of a hidden Israeli agenda, and I suspect the most useful thing I had to say to the committee staffers who took my depositions was to remind them that the Israeli government was as divided as the American Administration...

...The same cannot be said about other leading newspapers...

...was, so far as I can tell, already on the public record...

...He's still in the slammer, and his trial will probably start in the autumn...

...I give you a simple example, from my own experience...

...The day after Attorney General Edwin Meese testified, the Wall Street Journal ran a summary of his remarks, which contained a sentence claiming that Meese had said that I had gone to him in November 1986, to encourage him to support another arms shipment to Iran...

...As you might imagine, the forgery had Casey congratulating Heritage for their study on "how to destabilize India...

...Dzhirkvelov had some interesting things to say about the purpose of Soviet propaganda efforts in Greece—especially those aimed at the creation of a KGB-controlled newspaper there: Q: What were you trying to achieve in relation to Greece in particular...

...Interestingly enough, at the same time that Comrade Falin was lying about the Rust affair, the Soviet press—deep in the throes of Glasnostization—was censoring remarks by the German president, Richard von Weizsaecker, who had the temerity to quote Karl Marx to the Russians: "No person opposes freedom...

...They have grown so accustomed to America bearing the burden of common defense that their citizens seem to think little of doing business with the enemy...

...he at most opposes the freedom of others," adding, "but freedom is the freedom of people with other views...

...Join me, dear readers, in cancelling our subscriptions to the Washington Post (which blew the whole story) and subscribing to the splendid Detroit News...

...There is a mini-debate raging on this matter, with journalists, editors, and publishers taking sides on the propriety of exposing a source...

...In the course of that trial, the Economist called a KGB defector, Ilya Dzhirkvelov, to testify for the defense...

...This will not last long, however...

...It was, no doubt, the politicization of the question that led to the exposure of Senator Patrick Leahy as the source of the leaked copy of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee report...

...Valentin Falin, the official spokesman for the Kremlin, told the world on July 8 that Rust would be freed "within a few hours or a few days...

...it is a way of serving notice on the world...

...36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1987...

...Hence the treatment of North...

...But it has not put an end to a mounting campaign of anti-American disinformation...

...In singling out the Times we should recognize that that publication has been uniquely good about admitting error, and correcting the record...

...This irritated me for two reasons: first, I had not done it (indeed, my opposition to the arms-for-hostages policy is well documented on the public record...

...Newsweek is simply saying, "We want leaks, but if a leaker does something we don't like, we will not hesitate to burn him...

...That accomplishes a double objective: it reasserts the power of the media, and introduces a code of political behavior into the relationship...

...But we haven't heard any protests, either, about the treatment of Rust or about the lies put out by the Kremlin...

...But that's a long story...

...The Wall Street Journal—which, it must be said, has generally distinguished itself in its coverage of the Iran-contra, story—set the pace by speculating, with the help of the usual unnamed committee sources, that Senator Inouye and his colleagues didn't want to delve too deeply into Israel's role in the affair...

...Outstanding Achievements A few months ago, when I wrote about the coverage of the spectacular diversion of submarine technology from Japan and Norway to the Soviet Union ("Exposing a Disaster," TAS, July 1987), I praised the Detroit News and its crack Washington correspondent, John Peterson...

...Early in August, for example, a forgery of a letter allegedly sent from the late CIA Director William Casey to Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner emerged in India...

...For once I rally to the support of the committees: as the record of my depositions will show, I didn't (and don't) have any particularly sensational information about Israel...

...But those journalists whose vacations didn't coincide with the end of the hearings let out a plaintive cry: Why stop now...

...Newsweek decided it didn't like North (and, after all, having left government, he couldn't serve Newsweek any longer, could he...

...By the time you read these words, perhaps the by Michael Ledeen Journal's editors will have settled for the simple truth: Meese didn't say it, and the Journal was wrong to say he said it...

...For some days, many of our leading newspapers occupied themselves with something that didn't happen—no more witnesses—and they tried to uncover some nefarious purpose behind the quite understandable decision of committee senators and congressmen (not a single female, by the way) to call it quits and head for the beaches...

...There has been a lot of press and congressional comment on the affair, and there is a mood to punish the Japanese and the Norwegians for their treachery, perhaps banning imports from the two companies involved (Toshiba and Kongsberg...

...This pretension was destroyed in the seventies, and the media have claimed these prerogatives for themselves...

...I think we can conclude by now that the story was false, since no one has been able to confirm it...

...Having the power to keep secrets, the media also decide when to "burn" one of their agents if the agent behaves in a manner the media don't like...

...The Journal pointed out that Inouye had received more campaign contributions from pro-Israel PACs than any other member of the committees (although the grand total of such contributions to all committee members was barely $250,000, not much in modern campaign terms), and speculated that fear of information damaging to Israel was perhaps one reason why I had not been called...

...Once again, the Detroit News has thought more deeply about the matter than have the more glamorous publications, and has suggested that the proper course of action is to insist that these two countries spend substantially more on defense, and tighten up their espionage laws and their enforcement...

...Within a couple of days, the Soviets had put out the story that the pilot, Mathias Rust, would be released, and the whole prank would be quickly forgotten...

...Blowing Sources Just a short note on Newsweek's decision to identify 011ie North as the source of a story on the Achille Lauro incident...

...My candidate for Most Egregious Sin in the coverage of the Iran-contra story was the suggestion, originating in a hitherto-unknown rag (the Lowell, Massachusetts Sun), that money raised by Oliver North and Carl "Spitz" Channell for the contras had been funneled into conservative political campaigns...

...This was the first American publication to give proper treatment to the story, which by now has erupted into one of the major international scandals of the decade...

...Glasnost and Disinformation "Iron Mike" Gorbachev certainly gets away with murder, but it's only a matter of time before we come sadly to the THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1987 35 conclusion that he's been doing it with mirrors...

...This was a new twist on my own imagined role in the Iran initiative, for heretofore the nastiest stories about me were those suggesting that I was some sort of Israeli agent...

...Theywrote back arguing that it was reasonable for their journalists to conclude from Meese's remarks (which mentioned only that I felt the "first channel," including Manucher Ghorbanifar, might still be useful) that I was talking about an arms shipment...

...now I was someone with such nasty things to say about Israel that the committees dared not hear me out...

...second, Meese had not said it...

...Trade bashing is negative, counterproductive, and adds nothing to defense...

...the media have every interest in protecting at least some of their moles in the government...

...so it did away with his cover...

...It has nothing to do with ethics...