C.I.A. seeks press volunteers

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34146, 6 May 1976, Page 12

C.I.A. seeks press volunteers

.o Zealand Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK. Primising their identity will not be revealed, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (Mr George Bush) says the Central Intelligence Agency welcomes American journalists working abroad to co-operate “on a voluntary basis” as unpaid informers.

“We want your cooperation on a voluntary basis,” Mr Bush said in a policy speech to the Overseas Press Club. “We will continue within the certain limitations, to give briefings to encourage your contacts with our people, and if you do help, or if a businessman helps us — and I say helps our country — or a professor wants to help his country by cooperating with the C.1.A., or a tourist, or a hairdresser, or whoever it is, and if they want their name kept secret, its going to be kept secret,” the director said. Mr Bush said that although the C.I.A. had employed journalists on its payroll in the past, that practice had now been abandoned. He said those who had helped his agency would not be indentified.

“Having changed our over-all policy to eliminate the paid use of journalists, I will not reveal the names of

people who have helped this agency in the past or are willing to help this agency in the future,” Mr Bush said.

There has been pressure on the C.I.A. to disclose the identity of journalists who had worked for the agency. The news media contend that the C.1.A., bv not revealing the identity of journalists who have helped the agency, might cast suspicion on other journalists who had nothing to do with the C.I.A.