CIA and Journalists

As I read online, I'm constantly coming across things I have never seen before. Here's one I just found, a piece by journalist Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame) on the issue of the Press and the CIA, first published in 1977. Here's a sample:

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.

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 serving as
go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks
with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer
Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors
without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign
correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their
work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the
spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA
employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents
show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of
the managements of America’s leading news organizations.

Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune.

“I’m proud they asked me and proud to have done it,” said Joseph Alsop who, like his late brother, columnist Stewart Alsop, undertook clandestine tasks for the Agency. “The notion that a newspaperman doesn’t have a duty to his country is perfect balls.”