Reed Irvine, Editor Cliff Kincaid, Associate Editor
On October 14, the President of the United States made an address to the nation from the Oval Office to explain to the electorate why he was continuing to press for a Senate vote on the nomination of Judge Robert Bork as a Supreme Court Justice. The president urged the voters to let their senators know that they wanted judges like Bork "who don't confuse criminals with the victims; who don't invent new or fanciful constitutional rights for those criminals; judges who believe the courts should interpret the law, not make it." Most people, including even Judge Bork, didn't have a chance to hear the president's speech. ABC, CBS and NBC all refused to air it, claiming that it didn't contain any news. Only CNN, which is not available to half the population, including residents of Washington, D.C., carried the address live. This is the third time the broadcast networks have all refused to air a presidential speech from the White House. The censored president in all three cases was Ronald Reagan. That night, ABC, CBS and NBC all carried reports about the speech that they had said contained no news. ABC and CBS gave more time to comments on their refusal to carry the address than on its contents. CBS quoted White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater as saying that the networks were "sadly inadequate." What he actually said was: "The American people deserve to hear their national leaders discuss an issue of such importance (as the Bork nomination). Having devoted hours of broadcast time to the Senate hearing, they have suddenly gone blind to the president's address. That view of their public responsibility is sadly inadequate."
In a thinly veiled message to the White House, ABC's Peter Jennings pointed out that not many people had heard the speech, adding: "It's getting harder for the president to put forward a strictly partisan view." Jennings appeared to be warning that the networks would decide if the president would be permitted to address the American people from the Oval Office via their facilities, a power they didn't presume to exercise in the pre-Reagan era. It could be inferred that this was a power they would share with the opposition party, which could decide whether or not to make the president's programs and nominees partisan issues.
ABC then strongly criticized Reagan for not holding more news conferences. It showed a clip of White House reporters shouting questions at the president, producing an incomprehensible babel. ABC said the reporters claim they have to do this because "they are starved for news." Sam Donaldson, who insists that his liberal anti-Reagan views are never reflected in his reporting, proceeded to deliver what, in the context, was a near-ultimatum. He said: "You can't make the case that Reagan can't handle press conferences but he can handle the presidency. He has to do both." And if he doesn't, the networks will cut off his TV privileges.
Disgraceful Treatment by The Times
The next day The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Chicago Tribune all carried stories about the network-censored presidential address on their front pages. The Washington Post put it on page 6, but the paper that likes to think of itself as our paper of record, The New York Times, carried its anti-Bork crusade to a ridiculous extreme. Only the most thorough or the most determined readers would have learned from The Times that the president had given a speech.
On page D31, the next to the last page in this very bulky paper, we found a story headlined "Quick Senate Debate on Bork Rejected." There was no hint of it in the headline, but buried inside this story were six paragraphs about the president's speech and five paragraphs about the Democratic reply by Senator Terry Sanford of North Carolina. Below this there was a separate seven-paragraph article devoted entirely to an allegation that Reagan, in his talk, bad misrepresented a statement made by one of the anti-Bork witnesses, Prof. Lawrence Tribe. The reporter who wrote this story acknowledged to AIM that The Times had published no analyses of the many misrepresentations of Judge Bork's record and character by his opponents.
If you wish to voice your opinion of this treatment of the president, write to: Thomas Murphy, Chrm. of the Board, Capital Cities/ABC, 1330 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10019; Laurence Tisch, President, CBS Inc., 51 West 52nd Street, New York, N.Y. 10019; Robert Wright, Chrm. of the Board, NBC, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10020; and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Publisher, The New York Times, 229 West 43rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10036.
While the White House reporters are complaining that they are "starved for news," most of them failed to report charges by President Reagan that communist disinformation activities have affected the U.S. Congress and the media. The charges were made in an interview the president gave to Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor in chief of The Washington Times, which The Times featured on page one on September 30. The president recalled his fight against the Communists when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild. He pointed out that the Communists had subsequently organized a campaign to make anti-communism un- popular. "And they have succeeded," he said.
Reagan added, "Remember, there was once a Congress in which they had a committee that would investigate even one of their own members if it was believed that that person had communist involvement or communist leanings. Well, they've done away with those committees. That shows the success of what the Soviets were able to do in this country with making it unfashionable to be anti- communist." The president charged that the communists were running a disinformation campaign, which he said was "very sophisticated and very successful." He said that it was influencing the media and Capitol Hill.
The de Borchgrave interview was the subject of several critical questions at the daily White House press briefing, but except for The Washington Times, the media didn't think these observations by the president were important news. The Washington Post ran a brief story on page four, claiming that spokesman Marlin Fitzwater had clarified the president's remarks; he had not specifically referred to communist agents in the media or in Congress. The implication was that the president was backing off his charges. It failed to report Fitzwater's statement that the president "absolutely" believes there is communist influence in Congress and the media, though he refrained from naming names.
Fitzwater said the president believes that "the communists have influence through various disinformation techniques and plans and programs, and that has influence on the Congress, on the public, on the press..." The New York Times ran an editorial attacking the president's remarks as "ill-considered." It said, "The White House now says the president doesn't wish a return of the committee" that investigated communist influence. Not so. Fitzwater had simply noted that the president had not called for the establishment of such a committee. He didn't say if he favored it or not.
The communist influence on Capitol Hill is being increasingly discussed in conservative publications such as The Washington Times, The Washington Inquirer, Human Events and National Review. A July 31 National Review article, "Congress's Red Army" by J. Michael Waller and Joseph Sobran has attracted considerable attention. The article cited the case of Rep. George W. Crockett, D-Mich., chairman of the House Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs. It charged that Crockett has a forty-year record of collaboration with the Communists and echoing the party line.
This information is readily available to the media, but they have shown little interest in disclosing it to their readers and viewers. Eric Breindel, editorial page editor of The New York Post, discussed this at the October 16 AIM conference on Communism in America. He said that the great taboo now is calling a Communist.
Last February, Michael Waller of the Council for Inter-American Security held a news conference where he released evidence regarding Crockett's activities on behalf of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. The news conference was ignored by the net- work news programs. It took The Washington Post a full week to report on the event because Deputy National Editor Rick Atkinson said the news conference "in and of itself didn't seem to us to be particularly interesting." He said Joanne Omang, the reporter who covered the event, was asked to look "deeper" into the controversy and write a more "thoughtful" story. The result was a story that omitted some of the most damaging evidence against Crockett and which dismissed the rest as "commie-baiting."
WCBS-TV, the CBS flagship station in New York City, taped but then refused to air a response to one of its editorials by a viewer, Frank Russo. Russo, using the National Review material, had exposed Rep. Crockett's fellow-traveling record. A CBS lawyer vetoed Russo's well-documented statement on the ground that it might be libelous.
The Detroit Free Press, based in Crockett's congressional district, handled the matter differently. When it received a column from conservative William F. Buckley Jr. exposing the Congressman's record, it asked Crockett to write a response and the Free Press published both of them. Buckley had charged that "... there is nothing to distinguish Crockett from an active communist save a party card, which as a matter of fact is no longer issued." Crockett said in his response that his critics had not actually made the false and libelous charge that he is a communist.
Both CBS and The Free Press avoided their clear duty: to investigate the charges themselves if they were not completely satisfied with the evidence published in National Review and elsewhere. Crockett's record is not as hidden from public view as was Gary Hart's sex life, and it has a lot more bearing on his fitness to hold high office.
Although reporters were also concerned about President Reagan's comment that Communist disinformation had affected the media, they have not shown any willingness to publicize actual examples. A well-known case is when the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather on March 30 aired a Soviet disinformation story blaming the U.S. Government for the AIDS epidemic. This case was alluded to by Kathleen Bailey, deputy assistant secretary of state, during a briefing for reporters on September 29. The briefing was for the purpose of releasing and dis- cussing a State Department document, "Soviet Influence Activities: A Report on Active Measures and Propaganda, 1986-87." Although the report mainly deals with Soviet activities abroad, she was asked specifically if she had any examples of how it has affected the U.S. media. "The AIDS disinformation story was presented on national evening news," she said, referring to the CBS report. She said the Soviet charges blaming the U.S. for the AIDS epidemic had been mentioned without identifying them as part of a Soviet disinformation campaign.
Bailey's briefing--and the veiled reference to CBS was ignored by the evening news programs and The Washington Post and The New' York Times, although UPI carried a good story that was available to them. The Washington Times ran an excellent story by its national security correspondent Bill Gertz.
Bailey later told AIM's director of media analysis, Cliff Kincaid, that she did not name CBS at that briefing because she had not been used to giving press briefings on the subject and didn't know if it was against the rules to be that specific. She said she has since found out there's no problem and that, in the future, she intends to draw upon the CBS example extensively in alerting the public to the dangers of Soviet disinformation. She said she is also planning to send CBS President Laurence Tisch a copy of the State Department report.
CBS still has not admitted to its viewers that it was caught in the act of airing a Soviet disinformation story, although months later it acknowledged the Soviets were waging a disinformation campaign on AIDS. When Reed Irvine confronted Tisch on this at the CBS annual shareholders meeting, Tisch said it was only Irvine's opinion that the story was disinformation. When Irvine noted it was also the opinion of the State Department and the Pentagon, Tisch said, "CBS News doesn't have to agree with the Pentagon in everything." Later, he said the viewers would have to make up their own minds. But Howard Stringer, the president of CBS News, acknowledged in a letter to a viewer that, "There is no doubt that Soviet disinformation is at the heart of the story. We recognized that. We ran the story to make that clear. If we failed to communicate our own skepticism effectively, then we may have lacked clarity. We were in no way fooled by Soviet propaganda as has been implied. We believe that our audience was not fooled either."
Bailey, however, says that many people are fooled. Regarding the Soviet AIDS disinformation campaign, Bailey said, "The bureau of public affairs has sponsored me in some public speaking, including on radio, and the callers ask me, over and over, why is it untrue? I really mean not just the majority (of callers)... it's almost 100 percent."
Bailey, who heads the Office of Soviet Active Measures Analysis and Response, says the Soviet campaign to smear the U.S. consists of political influence operations, disinformation, forgeries and front group activities. Although Soviet ruler Mikhail Gorbachev continues to get good press in the West for his glasnost policy, Bailey says the number of forgeries circulated by the Soviets to discredit the U.S. has actually increased since his assumption of power. And these activities are having a dramatic impact, she emphasized. Several months ago, she noted, a forgery of a U.S. document suggesting the destabilization of India surfaced in an Indian Communist paper and caused an anti-American riot at the U.S. Information Agency office.
Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) noted in a speech on the House floor that the Soviet AIDS campaign against the U.S. "is very dangerous to U.S. national security." He said the charges blaming the U.S. for AIDS resulted in Costa Rica denying a port call for a U.S. ship.
Yet Bailey says the U.S. media don't seem to care. "Aside from selected individuals who are interested personally in the issue," she said, "I've gotten virtually no coverage." She says the American reporters have tended to focus on the cost of what her office is doing, suggesting it's a regrettable use of tax dollars. She said the articles fail to explore the substance of what she's doing. Ironically, she said, the Soviet news agency Tass and the Soviet newspaper New Times "give us far more coverage than the U.S. media."
NBC Exposed as Disinformation Conduit
As Bailey was trying to focus attention on CBS's role in spreading Soviet disinformation, an FBI Report on "Soviet Active Measures in the United States" was pointing the finger at the NBC television network. The report identifies NBC as a channel through which the Soviets have tried to "influence the arms control and disarmament movements in the United States." It notes the case of Mikhail Milshteyn, a retired Soviet general "who enjoys extended media access in the West." The report says that he has "traveled to the United States on numerous occasions and usually pro- motes Soviet views and Soviet disinformation on arms-control issues."
Although Milshteyn is portrayed by our media as just a retired general, military expert or a scholar, the FBI report says he is "affiliated with the Soviet intelligence services." It adds, "During 1986 and 1987, he made several television appearances on the major networks in the United States." On August 1, 1986, for example, he was interviewed on NBC's "Today Show," in Hannibal, Missouri, where he had been traveling as a member of the "Mississippi River Peace Cruise." He returned to the "Today Show" on April 21, 1987, together with retired Navy Rear Admiral Gene La Rocque, the director of the Center for Defense Information (CDI). The FBI says they discussed "arms control."
Milshteyn and La Rocque were introduced by host Jane Pauley as retired military officers who were working together for the reduction of nuclear weapons. Pauley did not ask Milshteyn why his regime opposes U.S. work on a strategic defense while building one of its own. But she did ask a silly question about how they could work together when they had spent their military careers "trying to out- smart" each other. La Rocque said the U.S. and the Soviets had been allies in the second World War, and that as "professional military men," they realize that "all war is stupid" and that "nuclear war is insane."
The FBI says that Milshteyn has met with La Rocque "on numerous occasions" and compares the CDI to a European group, Generals for Peace and Disarmament (GPD), which "has been targeted by the Soviet intelligence services and the International Department of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) in Moscow." The FBI says the GPD "has echoed views consistent with Soviet arms control objectives and against NATO."
"Although the CDI is not officially affiliated with the GPD," the report adds, "it engages in similar activities and supports the activities and statements of the GPD and former Soviet military officers." The Soviets, in turn, "have effectively utilized statements made by GPD and CDI officials in their active measures campaigns," it says. The U.S. media play their important role by using the statements of these former military officers in coverage of defense and foreign policy issues.
The "American Sakharov" Campaign
Most Americans recognize the name of Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet dissident who spent many years in internal exile in the Soviet Union. The FBI report refers to a Soviet disinformation campaign designed to convince Americans that we had our own Sakharov by the name of Charles Hyder.
The report says, "On the ABC News program 'Nightline,' which aired on March 5, 1987, Ted Koppel reported that he and other members of the U.S. media had received a direct communication from Moscow concerning the hunger strike of an American scientist who opposed SDI and all nuclear weapons. The telex was from Georgi Arbatov, the Director of the Institute of the USA and Canada, who is a member of the Communist Party's Central Committee.... Because of his status, he receives numerous requests for interviews and invitations from television talk shows when he visits the United States. This media exposure allows him to present Soviet active measures themes to a vast American audience. Arbatov is a skillful propagandist who uses disinformation, intelligently designed half-truths, and factual omissions to support his contentions. Ted Koppel, who is well aware of Arbatov's background, stated that he was indeed surprised to receive such a blatant anti-SDI telex from Arbatov."
However, the FBI report doesn't point out that one of Arbatov's telegrams went to Dan Rather and that a report on the American scientist Charles Hyder did air on the CBS Evening News. The story by Lem Tucker raised the question of whether the Soviets were using Hyder for propaganda purposes. But Arbatov appeared on camera to deny this was the case. Indeed, Tucker himself fed the Soviet disinformation machine by summing up the controversy this way: "In the past, the U.S. has invoked the name of Sakharov and others to embarrass the Soviets on human rights. Now the Russians are using Charles Hyder in an attempt to prove that two can play at that game."
Equating Hyder with Sakharov shows how far "Soviet-think" has spread at CBS News. Sakharov went on a hunger strike to protest the mistreatment he and his wife endured. Hyder was a free man engaging in a publicity stunt.
Apparently, according to the FBI report, Arbatov's days as an official Soviet spokesman are numbered. It says, "The hard-line Soviet rhetoric of older and oftentimes arrogant spokesmen such as Arbatov and Joe Adamov, a Radio Moscow commentator, is being replaced by the more refined approach of younger and articulate Soviet spokesmen. Recent television appear- ances by Vladimir Pozner, who appeared on the 'Donahue' television show in 1986; Dimitry Titov, of the Soviet Mission to the U.S.: and Vitaliy Churkin, a First Secretary at the Soviet embassy who spoke before Congress on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, are three examples of Soviets who speak almost perfect English and present their messages in a Western style that the American public and media can better identify with and appreciate. This new generation of scholars, journalists and Soviet officials is more knowledgeable about the West and the importance of the media. They realize that American television can be useful and that they can have an impact on the public's impression of certain issues just by appearing candid and forthright in their contacts."
It would be wrong to suggest that our Big Media are totally unconcerned about the problem of disinformation. A year ago they were venting their wrath over a report that the U.S. might have planted some disinformation intended to add to Qaddafi's worries, not to fool the American people. Our media treated that as an outrage, giving it great play. A few weeks later when the State Department ex- posed the Soviet disinformation campaign to blame AIDS on the U.S. Army, most of the media treated that as a joke and ignored it.
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NOTES FROM THE EDITOR'S CUFF By Reed Irvine AIM Report November-A 1987
THE LEAD ARTICLE IN THIS REPORT DISCUSSES THE REFUSAL OF ABC, CBS AND NBC TO televise President Reagan's October 14th address to the nation in which he urged voters to support the confirmation of Judge Robert Bork as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. The network's arrogant and shabby treatment of the president in this case is a good illustration of a point I made in an address I delivered at the Yale Political Union on October 20. I said that the media have become active players in the political game in this country. They are no longer merely reporters, if they ever were. President Reagan, like many other people, felt that a grave injustice was being done to Robert Bork by those who had falsely portrayed him as a racist bigot, a man insensitive to women's rights, and as a condoner of government invasions of the privacy of the bedroom. The president was also deeply concerned about the precedent that was being set by the intensive advertising and lobbying campaign that had been mounted to block Bork's confirmation. He quite rightly wanted to communicate those concerns to the electorate. Peter Jennings, the ABC News anchorman, was remarkably candid in stating on the air that it was "getting harder for the president to put forward a strictly partisan view." The confirmation of a Supreme Court justice ought not to be a strictly partisan matter, and President Reagan was trying to make that point to the people. ABC, CBS and NBC displayed their partisanship by blacking him out, leaving it to Cable News Network to provide him with an audience.
OUR SECOND ARTICLE, "NEWS THE MEDIA WON'T PRINT," BRINGS UP THE GREAT MEDIA UNMEN-tionable, the influence of the Communists and their propaganda and disinformation in the United States. It wasn't even news for most of the media when the president discussed it in an interview he gave the editor of The Washington Times, Arnaud de Borchgrave, at the end of September. A lot of attention has been given to the role that Norman Lear's organization, People for the American Way, played in defeating the confirmation of Judge Bork. Zero attention has been given to the very intensive campaign against Bork that was organized by the Communist Party, USA. Dr. Paul Busiek, a close student of the Communist Party press, discussed this at the AIM conference on Communism in Ameri- ca on October 16. Dr. Busiek prepared a thick file of articles from their publications, mainly The People's Daily World, which demonstrated the huge effort they were putting into the drive to beat Bork. I am not at all sure that their grassroots organizational emphasis on phone calls, letters, demonstrations and formation of anti-Bork coalitions was not more effective than the more visible expensive advertising campaign of People for the American Way.
OUR CONFERENCE WAS GREAT, AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. THIS IS FROM a note I got from Herb Philbrick, one of the panelists who discussed his experiences as a Communist Party member who was reporting to the FBI back in the 1940s: "The conference was nothing less than sensational. I have been to many anti-communist seminars, schools, etc., but I can truly say that I have never seen as much high-powered ammunition fired in so short a time." Those of you who couldn't attend can avail yourself of all that high-powered ammunition by getting a set of the audio tapes. The complete set of six tapes in an album can be ordered from Lion Recording, 1905 Fairview Ave., N.E., Washing- ton, D.C. 20002 for $29.95, postpaid. Single tapes are $6.00 each. Here are some of the panels. "The Organizational Weapon": Arnold Beichman, Herb Philbrick, Ronald Radosh, and J. Michael Waller; "The Influence of the Party in Unions, Hollywood, Government and Churches": Murray Baron, Roy Brewer, Robert Morris, and Ernest Lefever; "Party Publications": Harvey Levenstein, Paul Busiek and Sidney Gluck (a Marxist professor); "Fronts and Infiltration": Louise Rees, John Rees and Nicholas Patterson.
ERIC BREINDEL, THE EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK POST, DELIVERED A BRILLIANT luncheon address titled, "Calling a Communist a Communist: The Great American Taboo." His talk was videotaped and aired by C-SPAN. One audio tape includes his talk and brief remarks that I made. We have the texts of several of the talks in their unabridged form. These include Philbrick's, Breindel's, Louise Rees's paper, "The National Lawyer's Guild and the IADL," John Rees's paper, "Unwitting Dupes and Useful Idiots: Some Contemporary Varieties," and Nicholas Patterson's paper on his expose of the Communist control of powerful tenant associations in Canada. We will make these available to our donors free and to subscribing members at the cost of reproduction and mailing. Those of you who have contributed $500.00 or more to AIM during the past year will be provided with a free set of the conference tapes if you wish them. Let me know if you would like a set.
ON THE HEELS OF THE AIM CONFERENCE, DAVID HOROWITZ AND PETER COLLIER, TWO FORMER leaders of the left in the 1970s, put on a fascinating conference titled "Second Thoughts," under the auspices of Jim Denton's National Forum Foundation. It featured radicals of the Vietnam era who have realized that they were wrong in supporting communist causes from Vietnam to Nicaragua. They were candid, even brutal, in their expressions of error and regret. David Horowitz, a former editor of the virulently anti-Vietnam Ramparts magazine, said bluntly, "We committed treason." I was impressed by the genuine remorse expressed by these former radicals for having contributed to the deaths of millions and the condemnation of millions more to the misery of life under communism. Michael Novak, a Notre Dame professor in those days who is now a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said that he often feels the blood on his hands for having contributed to the tragedy that has befallen the people of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Horowitz said: "I shall never, never pull the plug on an anti-communist movement again." He is the author of an excellent article, published in Commentary magazine, "To My Former Comrades on the Left: Grow Up and See the Real Sandinistas." Reprints of this article are available free from AIM.
HOROWITZ ATTACKED THOSE WHO TODAY GO TO MANAGUA TO ADVISE THE SANDINISTAS ON HOW to manipulate our Congress and our media. He said that was "treason of the heart" if not treason in fact. Ronald Radosh, a former Communist. who is co-author of The Rosen- berg File: A Search for Truth, an excellent book about the Rosenberg case, spoke at both the AIM conference and the Second Thoughts conference. At the latter, he described ob- serving two Americans, Robert Boresage of the radical institute for Policy Studies, and Professor William Leogrande, of the government department of American University, giving advice to Sandinista officials in Managua. Radosh said that Leogrande appears frequently on American television, CBS and MacNeil/Lehrer especially, to comment on Central American developments and policy.
RADOSH SAID THAT HE AND TWO AMERICAN COMPANIONS WERE SEATED IN THE HOTEL BAR AT a table near enough to overhear Boresage and Leogrande brief Alejandro Bendana, the secretary general of the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry on "how to deal with the American media and the liberal community and what strategy they should use." He said Bendana asked Boresage for a report on The New Republic magazine, which explained why Boresage had been observed earlier assiduously studying New Republic clips. Bendana asked about a new leftist magazine, Tikkun, and what role it was going to play. What had happened to, Michael Harrington? Was he still supporting the Sandinistas as much as he used to? Radosh said he couldn't hear every word of the conversation, but he and his two companions, Nina Shea of the Puebla Institute and Devon Gaffney of the Smith-Richardson Foundation, were amazed at one point to hear Leogrande say: "You don't have to worry. The Democrats are going to win. Reagan is going to be out, and you can get--you guys can do anything you want." Radosh commented: "This is advice by somebody who's an adviser to congressmen, to the Democratic Caucus, who appears on television as an objective journalist all the time on Central America." In a letter to The Washington Times, Leogrande denied ever making such a statement. The Times said Shea and Gaffney confirmed Radosh's account. Boresage told The Times it was "balderdash." Neither he nor Leogrande returned my calls.