Déjà Scoop: Journalists and the CIA   

On January 30 Washington Post staff writer Walter Pincus broke a story that shocked the media world. He wrote about a loophole allowing the CIA to use U.S. journalists as cover in clandestine activities overseas in rare circumstances.

The story triggered an immediate uproar. Everyone thought the CIA had been banned from recruiting journalists for covert operations by a 1977 law.

But this wasn't the first time the Post had "broken" this story.

On December 3, 1977, the Post's George Lardner Jr. caused a similar stir when he disclosed the existence of a provision in the new law that would allow the CIA director to waive the ban in rare or unique circumstances.

A bad case of déjà vu? That's what it seems like to Mark Mansfield. All the controversy over the waiver in recent months has left the CIA spokesperson shaking his head.

Since the return of the scoop, Mansfield has received calls from journalists unable to believe that the agency has the power to waive the ban--even though the waiver option has been on the books for nearly two decades. "It's not a new waiver," Mansfield says. "I think people are forgetting this."

Apparently many journalists are experiencing something of a memory lapse.

"We thought this was a dead issue," says G. Kelly Hawes, president of the Society of Professional Journalists. "We thought the ban prohibited any use of any kind. It's 19 years later and no one knew about a loophole or exception to the rule."

Debate over the issue was revived after many journalists, Pincus among them, were sent a draft of a report by a Council on Foreign Relations task force on intelligence. The report urged the Senate Intelligence Committee to reevaluate the CIA's ban and resume the practice of using journalists as cover.

Richard N. Haass, Council on Foreign Relations director and former senior member of the Bush administration National Security Council staff, says even he didn't know about the waiver provision when the council made its initial recommendation in late January. "Our assumption was the use [of journalists] was totally banned," he says.

The council's initial report, officially released on February 22, suggested that the CIA "resume sending out spies posing as American journalists" in order to take on more covert activities abroad. The recommendation was based on the panel's impression that "certain potentially productive CIA activities [were] restricted by legal and policy constraints."

"We were calling for the Senate Intelligence Committee to take a fresh look at the policy," Haass says. "This was just one of many things the panel wanted the committee to look at in terms of intelligence. It was maybe one sentence out of a 40-page report. I had no idea it would cause such a stir."

And so the confusion began, and CIA officials found themselves grappling to reexplain an old issue.

Mansfield would not comment on whether journalists have ever been enlisted by the agency. CIA Director John M. Deutch says the waiver would only be invoked under "extraordinarily rare circumstances," such as situations in which access to certain sources is of critical importance to the interests of the United States. Under the rules of the waiver, foreign nationals or CIA agents could be called upon to pose as American journalists. The waiver also allows for the converse option of calling upon journalists to conduct interviews on behalf of the CIA.

Many journalists are troubled by the notion of allowing the CIA to determine what circumstances merit an exception to the ban. "Generally, the policy is a bad idea. It shouldn't even be done in the rarest of cases," says Evan Thomas, assistant managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Newsweek and author of "The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared," a recent book about the early years of the CIA. "However," he adds, "I think it's one of those situations where we can never say never."

Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner says that in 1980 he approved the use of journalists in secret operations on three occasions, but that none were actually put to work. The CIA won't say why the journalists were never used.

Hawes says SPJ plans to try to close the loophole once and for all. The organization has written letters urging President Clinton and Deutch to "abandon the practice of recruiting journalists as spies or allowing CIA agents to pose as journalists," and has sent out press releases to alert SPJ members to the potential risks of the policy.

Terry Anderson, a former Associated Press foreign correspondent who was kidnapped and held hostage in the Middle East for seven years before being released in December 1991, has personally experienced the potential risks of the policy. "I couldn't count how many times I've been accused of being a spy. I think it is appalling, stupid and very arrogant for the CIA to even think about violating this policy no matter what the situation," says Anderson. "Some countries believe all Americans are spies, especially journalists, because we are always asking questions. I think if Deutch had to look at the end of a gun and have some hairy person say, 'Spy, spy!' he would never violate this policy and truly understand its danger."

In February, Deutch told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he sympathized with the concerns of journalists, but that CIA directors also must consider situations in which American lives are at risk.

But if the Radio-Television News Directors Association has its way, journalists will not be coopted in the future. "It is time for Congress to step in and forbid this dangerous practice once and for all," RTNDA President David Bartlett says. "The CIA should make sure its agents are spending their time learning how to be better spies instead of pretending to be journalists... Otherwise the credibility, and even the lives, of legitimate journalists will be put in danger every day."