CBS Corrects A Twelve-Year-Old Error
Media Monitor | By Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid | September 24, 1999
60 Minutes displayed a big headline from the London Sunday Express of October 24, 1986 over a story reporting this KGB-created story. It did not mention that on March 30, 1987, Dan Rather put the story on the CBS Evening News.
Vasily Mitrokhin, a former KGB officer who in 1992 escaped from Russia with six trunks of documents copied from KGB archives, has been instrumental since his defection in exposing foreigners who were spies for the Soviet Union. These have included an American Army code clerk at the National Security Agency, and an 87-year-old British woman who provided the Soviets with information that helped them build their first atomic bomb. Christopher Andrew, who collaborated with Mitrokhin on a book published this month titled The Sword and the Shield, was interviewed on CBS’s 60 Minutes on September 12. He described Soviet plans to cripple the United States by planting explosives designed to blow up oil pipelines, dams and electric power facilities in the event of war. Andrew claimed that if executed the plans could have cut off electric power to all of New York state, creating chaos. Efforts to find and remove these explosives have been only partially successful. The KGB also attacked the U.S. with disinformation that was calculated to damage the reputation of the country, important public officials and the American people. One of the charges they spread was that the U.S. military had created the AIDS virus and introduced it into Africa, where it was wreaking havoc. Christopher Andrew said that in the first six months of 1987, this story was reported on the front pages of newspapers in over 40 third-world countries. But it was not only third-world countries that reported this KGB disinformation. 60 Minutes displayed a big headline from the London Sunday Express of October 24, 1986 over a story reporting this KGB-created story. It did not mention that on March 30, 1987, Dan Rather put the story on the CBS Evening News. His source was a Soviet military publication that attributed the story to “unnamed scientists in the United States, Britain and East Germany.” He did not report any U.S. reaction to this charge. Nor did he mention that five months earlier reporters at the State Department had been told all about this Soviet disinformation campaign. AIM tried to get Rather to admit on the air that he had spread Soviet disinformation without success. It brought it up at the CBS annual shareholders meeting, explaining why there was no doubt that this story was Soviet disinformation. Laurence Tisch, who was then the chairman of CBS replied, “That’s your opinion that it’s disinformation.” It wasn’t just AIM’s opinion, and we are pleased that after twelve years and five months, a CBS News program has finally told the truth about it. But we wish that CBS had taken the suggestion made by an expert that a 60 Minutes producer had called to see if he would be willing to be interviewed about the new revelations about the KGB success in spreading disinformation. Suggesting that what they needed was a good soundbite, this expert suggested that they use an excerpt from Dan Rather’s 1987 report in which he spread the KGB’s AIDs story. Needless to say, this suggestion was not accepted.
Reed Irvine is the former Chairman of Accuracy In Media and Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of the AIM Report.
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