Room
for a View
The Return
of
Otto Reich
Will Government Propagandist Join Bush Administration?
By Jeff Cohen
art by carl welden Jeff Cohen, founder of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
(FAIR), a media watch group based in New York, posted this article on
the FAIR Web site (www.fair.org) on June 8, 2001, prophesying President
Bush’s recess appointment of Otto Reich in early January of this
year.
In totalitarian countries, government propaganda officers wield great
power. They’re authorized to use the media to stir up state-sanctioned
passions and fears through the selective dissemination of information—sometimes
factual, sometimes phony.
If you think the United States has never employed propaganda officers,
meet Otto Reich. He may soon be our country’s chief diplomat in
Latin America if the Bush administration has its way.
In March, Bush announced his intention to nominate Reich as assistant
secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere. If he’s officially
nominated, it will be interesting to see how journalists handle Reich—because
from 1983 through 1986, it was Reich’s job to handle journalists.
That’s when he commanded the State Department’s Office of
Public Diplomacy, whose main mission was to inflame fears about Nicaragua
and its left-wing Sandinista government that had come to power by overthrowing
a corrupt, US-supported dictator.
By covertly disseminating intelligence leaks to journalists, Reich and
the OPD sought to trump up a Nicaraguan “threat”, and to sanctify
the US-backed Contra guerrillas fighting Nicaragua’s government
as “freedom fighters.” The propaganda was aimed at influencing
Congress to continue to fund the Contras.
Take the scary news that Soviet MiG fighter jets were arriving in Nicaragua.
With journalists citing unnamed “intelligence sources,” the
well-timed story surged through US media on the night of Ronald Reagan’s
reelection. At NBC, Andrea Mitchell broke into election coverage with
the story. The furor spurred a Democratic senator to discuss a possible
airstrike against Nicaragua. But the story turned out to be a hoax.
Several journalists later acknowledged they’d been handed the story
by Reich’s office.
It isn’t the only erroneous story journalists link to the OPD.
According to the Miami Herald, for example, Reich’s office promoted
the fable that Nicaragua had acquired chemical weapons from the Soviets.
According to Newsweek, the OPD told reporters that high-level Sandinistas
were involved in drug trafficking, but US drug officials said there
was no evidence for such a charge.
Reich’s office worked alongside the White House National Security
Council, collaborating with CIA propaganda experts, Army psychological
warfare specialists and a then-obscure Marine lieutenant colonel named
Oliver North. Declassified documents detailing OPD activities are on
file and online at the National Security Archive, a DC-based nonprofit
(www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/).
In a March 13, 1985 “Eyes Only” memo to Pat Buchanan, then-White
House Communications Director, the OPD bragged about the recent results
of its “White Propaganda” operation in support of the Contras.
The OPD said it helped write an anti-Sandinista column for the Wall
Street Journal that ran two days earlier; assisted in a “positive
piece” on the Contras by Fred Francis that aired the night before
on NBC; wrote op-eds for the Washington Post and New York Times that
would run with the bylines of Contra leaders; arranged an extensive
media tour for a Contra leader “through a cut-out” (to hide
the OPD’s role); and prepared to leak a State Department cable
that would embarrass the Sandinistas: “Do not be surprised if this
cable somehow hits the evening news.”
The memo said that the Wall Street Journal column, “Nicaragua is
Armed for Trouble,” was written by an OPD “consultant”,
but cautioned that “officially, this office had no role in its
preparation.” Weeks later, after the Journal published a news report
on Nicaragua that Reich disliked, the OPD chief wrote an angry letter-to-the
editor touting the “Armed for Trouble” column and complaining
that the news report was “an echo of Sandinista propaganda.”
It was an audacious charge since Reich himself was “echoing”
propaganda his office had covertly boasted to have assisted in.
Besides media manipulation through planted stories and leaks, there
was also cajoling and bullying of journalists. Reich visited CBS in
April 1984 to complain at length about its Central America coverage.
In a memo to President Reagan, Secretary of State George Shultz described
the meeting as an example of “what the Office of Public Diplomacy
has been doing to help improve the quality of information the American
people are receiving. It has been repeated dozens of times over the
past few months.”
Six months later, Reich met with a dozen National Public Radio reporters
and editors about their allegedly biased Nicaragua coverage. According
to NPR Foreign Affairs correspondent Bill Buzenberg, “Reich bragged
that he had made similar visits to other unnamed newspapers and major
television networks...Reich said he had gotten others to change some
of their reporters in the field.” Buzenberg told me in a 1987 interview
that he viewed the OPD chief’s comments as a “calculated attempt
to intimidate.”
Reich had little tolerance for independent-minded reporters. In the
summer of 1985, his office helped circulate a specious story suggesting
that US reporters received sexual favors from Sandinista-provided prostitutes
in return for favorable coverage. “It isn’t only women,”
Reich told New York magazine; for gay journalists, they’d procure
men.
The OPD viewed many in the media as allies to be rewarded, particularly
on the weekend pundit shows. According to a February 1985 OPD memo,
certain correspondents on the McLaughlin, Brinkley and Agronsky programs
had “open invitations for personal briefings.”
After Reich had left to become ambassador to Venezuela, the OPD was
shut down in 1987, in the wake of a US comptroller general’s report
which concluded that Reich’s office had “engaged in prohibited,
covert propaganda activities.” According to the Miami Herald, a
“senior US official” described the OPD as “a vast psychological
warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population
in enemy territory.” But the population targeted was not an enemy—it
was the US public.
A confrontation is brewing on Capitol Hill over Otto Reich. He is supported
by the Cuban-American lobby, which is so powerful with the Bush White
House that Reich reportedly got the nod for the assistant secretary
state job over a career foreign service officer favored by Secretary
of State Colin Powell. The Cuban-born Reich, now a corporate lobbyist,
helped draft the Helms-Burton Act tightening the embargo of Cuba.
Reich is opposed by Democratic senators who remember his exploits at
the OPD. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass) commented in March that Reich’s
“office may have been the genesis of acts of propaganda not just
prohibited in this country, but which reflect a kind of carelessness
about the truth.”
A key player to watch in any confirmation battle will be the press corps
itself. What will be the reaction of journalists who were manipulated
by leaks from his office? Or of the newspapers that may have run op-ed
columns unaware that his office was behind them?
If senators don’t adequately raise questions about Otto Reich’s
history as a media manipulator, one would hope that journalists will.
© FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting)
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