This Was CNN by Heckenlively Kent;Poarch Cary;O'Keefe James; & Cary Poarch

Author:Heckenlively, Kent;Poarch, Cary;O'Keefe, James; & Cary Poarch [Heckenlively, Kent & Poarch, Cary]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 7148555
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2022-10-29T12:59:02+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

CNN Hires Intelligence Spooks. Or Is It the Reverse?

Many of today’s CNN viewers know Carl Bernstein as the older political analyst who often appeared on various shows during the Trump administration to promote the Russia collusion narrative as “worse than Watergate”137 or declare that Trump is a “war criminal.”138 Carl Bernstein is a legendary figure in journalism, being half of the investigative team at the Washington Post, with Bob Woodward, who broke the story of the Watergate scandal, which eventually resulted in the resignation of President Richard Nixon on August 8, 1974.

However, in the Trump era, Bernstein became something of a joke, claiming that the Russia collusion story, President Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, and Trump’s phone call with the Georgia secretary of state in the wake of the disputed 2020 election were all “worse than Watergate” or had “echoes of Watergate.”139

None of this is to take away from the remarkable body of work Bernstein has created over his decades in journalism. Aside from his work on Watergate, probably the most important story he wrote was a 25,000-word piece in Rolling Stone magazine on October 20, 1977, which examined how the CIA worked with the American media. In 2022, it’s ironic how conservatives are the ones who distrust the intelligence services, while in the 1960s and 1970s, it was the liberals who distrusted not only the intelligence agencies but also the influence of large corporations.

Bernstein’s Rolling Stone article opened with what was a bombshell when it was released:

In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.140

To the American public of 1977 this was a shocking accusation. If there is a wall between church and state, there is supposed to be an equally high wall between the media and the government, particularly the intelligence services like the CIA, which are not supposed to be operating in the United States.

It’s difficult to think of anything less democratic than an intelligence agency guiding news coverage.

One begins to suspect that the common claim by America’s adversaries during the Cold War, that many US journalists were in fact spies, has some degree of validity.

Bernstein further detailed how extensive the CIA’s influence operation was, as well as the level at which the media of the time cooperated:

Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty-five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence gathering to serve as go-betweens with spies in Communist countries.

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