The abundance of easily obtainable e‑mail exchanges with reporters from the Associated Press, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other major outlets indicate that very close professional (and sometimes personal) relationships seem to exist between journalists and the CIA. Silverstein focused much of his attention on the behavior of Ken Dilanian, a national security reporter for the Los Angeles Times who later joined the Associated Press, and still later, NBC News. His relationship with the CIA certainly raised some troubling questions. Silverstein charged that numerous e‑mails “show that Dilanian enjoyed a closely collaborative relationship with the agency, explicitly promising positive news coverage and sometimes sending the press office entire story drafts for review prior to publication. In at least one instance, the CIA’s reaction appears to have led to significant changes in the story that was eventually published in the Times.” Clearing stories in advance and currying official cooperation and approval automatically compromises the integrity of the journalist’s handiwork.
One of the CIA’s long‐standing, favorite tactics is to generate favorable, including outright bogus, news stories in foreign media outlets, with the expectation that American outlets will eventually pick them up. There is no question that the U.S. government still recruits foreign journalists for propaganda missions in their home countries. For example, the United States and Britain have mounted an extensive joint propaganda effort regarding the Syrian civil war using an array of Middle Eastern reporters and columnists. Among other possible effects, one must ponder how many of those orchestrated “news” stories found their way back into American media, impacting the narrative and domestic debate about the Syrian civil war and what Washington’s stance should be toward that conflict. The potential “blowback” phenomenon is a worrisome example of how the intelligence agencies can manipulate the debate on a foreign policy issue in the United States.
It is unsettling how often most mainstream media outlets advance the agenda of the narrative put forth by the CIA and other portions of the national security state. Most of the press circulated the narrative that the CIA‐orchestrated coups in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s were spontaneous democratic uprisings. More recently, the news media disseminated allegations that Saddam Hussein had a vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Nearly all that information came from Iraqi exiles that the CIA supplied to “friendly” journalists, including New York Times reporter Judith Miller. Perhaps most striking, major media outlets, especially the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN and MSNBC, have avidly joined the national security state’s campaign to demonize Russia. Those media heavyweights enthusiastically promoted the false narrative about collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election. Even worse, they parroted the CIA’s unsupported, far‐fetched allegation that Moscow had paid the Taliban bounties to kill American soldiers.
