Carrie Mathison, spy reporter
Journalism and espionage are cousins who should not kiss
The revelation earlier this week that the FBI in 2007 tricked a school-bombing suspect into revealing his whereabouts by getting him to click on a link to a fake Associated Press article infected with tracking software was a reminder of the perennial dance between journalism and espionage in which each seeks to exploit the other.
“We are extremely concerned and find it unacceptable that the FBI misappropriated the name of The Associated Press and published a false story attributed to AP,” spokesman Paul Colford said in a statement. quoted by the Washington Post.
The disclosure came when Christopher Soghoian, chief technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, tweeted out a reference to the ruse in a set of documents obtained in 2011 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. under the Freedom of Information Act, according to the Washington Post
Law enforcement is also using social media to do its work. Earlier this this month that the Drug Enforcement Administration created a phony Facebook account in a New York woman’s name as a way to identify other suspects in an alleged drug ring. The Post reported the fake page included photos of the woman in a bra and underwear. The Justice Department is reviewing the DEA case.
Of course, law enforcement and intelligence agencies have always sought to coopt news organizations—and vice versa. David Ignatius, Washington Post columnist and spy novelist, explained the similarities between journalism and espionage to Fox News’ James Rosen yesterday. “The funny thing about what intelligence officers do in real life that it’s so much like what, say, journalists do. You know, it’s the human interactions: the ability to establish trust – the term of art in the CIA is ‘rapport’ – with somebody whose secrets you’re trying to pull out of him. And much as you or I have to be faithful to our viewers or our readers, the intelligence officer has to be faithful to the agency that sent him.”
Journalism has shown up on the resume of many a spy.
Richard Helms, CIA director from 1967 to 1973, started out as a United Press International reporter, with ambitions to become a newspaper publisher. He did much more that in the news business. He oversaw Operation Mockingbird, a covert operation which recruited and sought to manipulate hundreds of journalists at scores of news organizations in the United States and overseas.
When Kim Philby, a senior British intelligence officer and Soviet spy was first suspected of being a communist, he retired and became a roving Middle East correspondent for a British magazine—and he continued spying for the Soviet Union all the while.
The professions of spying and journalism are entwined as human limbs in the latest episode of “Homeland.” in which CIA’s Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) poses as a journalist to seduce a college student who can lead her to his uncle, a Taliban leader.
In real life, the manipulation of the media is a constant chore for the CIA.
As Ryan Deveraux reported in The Intercept, the agency closely monitored the media attack of reporter Gary Webb, the reporter whose investigation of ties between drug traffickers and the agency is recounted in movie Kill the Messenger. A declassified CIA study, entitled “Managing the Nightmare,” described how the agency shaped news coverage of the Webb story without disclosing its hand.
The nightmare for the CIA and other government agencies that seek to manipulate journalists for their own ends is that the public will find out, Congress will object, their budgets might be cut, and their prerogative to manipulate the media might be curbed.
Government manipulation of journalists first came to public attention with the investigations by congressional intelligence committees in 1976. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, known as the Church Committee after Chairman Frank Church (D-Idaho), revealed CIA and FBI practices that regularly used journalists.
Carl Bernstein, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the Washington Post, wrote the story of the CIA and the news media in 1977. But the findings were too controversial for the late Ben Bradlee, and Bernstein had to publish “The CIA and the Media” in Rolling Stone.
The CIA adopted regulations in 1977 that barred the practice of using journalists. But according to a 2003 study by the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press, the CIA guidelines included a loophole that allowed the agency to use journalists under “extraordinary” circumstances with the “specific approval” of the CIA director. The loophole only came to public attention 20 years later in 1996, when the Washington Post exposed the waiver in the regulation’s language that few even knew existed.
Such operations threaten the integrity of journalists, some say. I don’t rate the integrity of journalists a whole lot higher (or lower) than the rest of humanity, so I’m not that concerned.
The real threat, I think, is to the businesss of journalism. The FBI’s action in 2007 in creating a fake AP constituted a threat to the integrity of the AP brand. “This ploy violated AP’s name and undermined AP’s credibility,” the wire service spokesman said. The FBI didn’t care. It acted in its own interests—and in secret.
It’s no surprise that the government is willing to harm news organizations to advance its own goals. Eric Holder may now express “regrets” that Fox News’ Rosen was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism case for merely doing his job. But Holder also says prosecutors acted lawfully. The government has not conceded any of its prerogatives to use journalists for its own ends. Carrie Mathison is still out to seduce us.
Jefferson Morley is a Washington writer. His latest book is Snow-Storm in August.
