CIA Instructions to Media Assets
This document caused quite a stir when it was discovered in 1977.
Dated 4/1/67, and marked "DESTROY WHEN NO LONGER NEEDED",
this document is a stunning testimony to how concerned the CIA was
over investigations into the Kennedy assassination. Emphasis has been
added to facilitate scanning.
CIA Document #1035-960, marked "PSYCH" for presumably
Psychological Warfare Operations, in the division "CS", the
Clandestine Services, sometimes known as the "dirty tricks"
department.
RE: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report
1. Our Concern. From
the day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been
speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was
stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report, (which appeared at
the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan
the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for
questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles
criticizing the Commission's findings. In most cases the critics have
speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and often
they have implied that the Commission itself was involved. Presumably
as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission's
report, a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the
American public did not think that Oswald acted alone, while more than
half of those polled thought that the Commission had left some
questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or
possibly more adverse results.
2. This trend of opinion is a matter
of concern to the U.S. government, including our
organization. The members of the Warren Commission were naturally
chosen for their integrity, experience and prominence. They
represented both major parties, and they and their staff were
deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just because of
the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude
and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American
society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint
that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to
have benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination.
Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the individual
concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government.
Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we
contributed information to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have
frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by
falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this
dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims
of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such
claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a
classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.
3. Action. We do not recommend that
discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not
already taking place. Where discussion is active [business] addresses
are requested:
a. To discuss the publicity problem with
[?] and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors),
pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an
investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics
are without serious foundation, and that further speculative
discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out
also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately
generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their
influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.
b. To employ propaganda assets to [negate]
and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature
articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The
unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful
background material for passing to assets. Our ploy should point
out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories
adopted before the evidence was in, (II) politically interested,
(III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their
research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories. In the course
of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful
strategy may be to single out Epstein's theory for attack, using the
attached Fletcher [?] article and Spectator piece for background.
(Although Mark Lane's book is much less convincing that Epstein's
and comes off badly where confronted by knowledgeable critics, it is
also much more difficult to answer as a whole, as one becomes lost
in a morass of unrelated details.)
4. In private to media discussions not directed at any particular
writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming,
the following arguments should be useful:
a. No significant new evidence has emerged
which the Commission did not consider. The assassination is
sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten and Bertrand Russell)
with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the attack on the
Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits
have been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among
the critics. (A better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be
with the Reichstag fire of 1933, which some competent historians
(Fritz Tobias, AJ.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt) now believe was set by
Vander Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for either Nazis
or Communists; the Nazis tried to pin the blame on the Communists,
but the latter have been more successful in convincing the world
that the Nazis were to blame.)
b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others.
They tend to place more emphasis on the
recollections of individual witnesses (which are less
reliable and more divergent--and hence offer more hand-holds for
criticism) and less on ballistics, autopsy, and photographic
evidence. A close examination of the Commission's records will
usually show that the conflicting eyewitness accounts are quoted out
of context, or were discarded by the Commission for good and
sufficient reason.
c. Conspiracy on the large scale often
suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United
States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large
royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy, Attorney General at the
time and John F. Kennedy's brother, would be the last man to
overlook or conceal any conspiracy. And as one reviewer pointed out,
Congressman Gerald R. Ford would hardly have held his tongue for the
sake of the Democratic administration, and Senator Russell would
have had every political interest in exposing any misdeeds on the
part of Chief Justice Warren. A conspirator moreover would hardly
choose a location for a shooting where so much depended on
conditions beyond his control: the route, the speed of the cars, the
moving target, the risk that the assassin would be discovered. A
group of wealthy conspirators could have arranged much more secure
conditions.
d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual
pride: they light on some theory and fall in
love with it; they also scoff at the Commission because it
did not always answer every question with a flat decision one way or
the other. Actually, the make-up of the Commission and its staff was
an excellent safeguard against over-commitment to any one theory, or
against the illicit transformation of probabilities into
certainties.
e. Oswald would not have been any
sensible person's choice for a co-conspirator. He was a
"loner," mixed up, of questionable reliability and an
unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service. [Archivist's
note: This claim is demonstrably untrue with the latest file
releases. The CIA had an operational interest in Oswald less than a
month before the assassination. Source: Oswald and the CIA, John
Newman and newly released files from the National Archives.]
f. As to charges that the Commission's report was a rush job, it
emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the
degree that the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was
largely due to the pressure of irresponsible
speculation already appearing, in some cases coming from the
same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting
out new criticisms.
g. Such vague accusations as that
"more than ten people have died mysteriously" can always
be explained in some natural way e.g.: the individuals
concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the
Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses (the FBI interviewed far
more people, conduction 25,000 interviews and re interviews), and in
such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected.
(When Penn Jones, one of the originators of the "ten mysterious
deaths" line, appeared on television, it emerged that two of
the deaths on his list were from heart attacks, one from cancer, one
was from a head-on collision on a bridge, and one occurred when a
driver drifted into a bridge abutment.)
5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging reference to
the Commission's Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should
still be impressed by the care, thoroughness, objectivity and speed
with which the Commission worked. Reviewers
of other books might be encouraged to add to their
account the idea that, checking back
with the report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its
critics.
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any
significance in the major media."
--William Colby, former CIA Director, cited by Dave Mcgowan, Derailing
Democracy
"You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl,
for a couple hundred dollars a month."
--CIA operative, discussing the availability and prices of journalists
willing to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories. Katherine the
Great, by Deborah Davis
"There is quite an incredible spread of relationships. You don’t need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are [Central Intelligence] Agency people at the management level."
--William B. Bader, former CIA intelligence officer, briefing members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, The CIA and the Media, by Carl Bernstein
"The Agency's relationship with [The New York] Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials. [It was] general Times policy ... to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible."
--The CIA and the Media, by Carl Bernstein
"Senator William Proxmire has pegged the number of employees of the federal intelligence community at 148,000 ... though Proxmire's number is itself a conservative one. The "intelligence community" is officially defined as including only those organizations that are members of the U.S. Intelligence Board (USIB); a dozen other agencies, charged with both foreign and domestic intelligence chores, are not encompassed by the term.... The number of intelligence workers employed by the federal government is not 148,000, but some undetermined multiple of that number."
--Jim Hougan, Spooks
"For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government.... I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations."
--former President Harry Truman, 22 December 1963, one month to the day after the JFK assassination, op-ed section of the Washington Post, early edition
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