How the CIA tried to nobble the world's press
The CIA and the Labour Party - part 4
Introduction Part 1: Background Part 2: Censorship Part 3: Fellow travellers Part 5: European Movement
HAROLD EVANS is the professional newsman par excellence. Starting on the local paper in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, at the age of 16, some 20 years later he was Editor of the "Sunday Times". Born in 1928, he served in the RAF from 1946 to '49 and then spent three years at Durham University. He joined the "Manchester Evening News" in 1952 becoming Assistant Editor in 1958.
In 1956 he was awarded a travelling fellowship by the Commonwealth Fund of New York and spent 15 months studying at Chicago and Stanford Universities and working and advising on many newspapers throughout the United States.
From 7th to 18th November, 1960 Evans was in New Delhi as an Editorial consultant helping to run the first Asian Seminar of the International Press Institute for News Editors and Chief Sub-editors of Indian newspapers. This was the first venture in the I.P.I.'s Asian Programme which was funded by the Asia Foundation. One of Evans fellow-instructors in New Delhi was Vincent Jones, Executive Editor of Gannett Newspapers, Rochester, New York. The director of the Asian Programme was a Singalese journalist Tarzie Vittachi who had been London Editor of the Associated Newspapers of Ceylon, 1952-53, and was the I.P.I.'s Asian Representative from 1960-65. He subsequently became director of Forum World Features, an agency centred on Paris set up by Melvin Lasky in 1957 to "supply news and articles to editors and journalists throughout the world."
Another active participant in the Asia Programme was Armand Gaspard, Head of Research at I.P.I. headquarters, Zurich, and soon to become Editor of Preuves Informations, Paris, the French language edition of Forum, closely linked to the magazine Preuves published by the Congress for Cultural Freedom. C.C.F.
Earlier Vittachi spent some time at the American Press Institute, attached to Columbia University, New York, learning the technique of running seminars for journalists from the A.P.I.'s director Montgomery Curtis who helped to plan the first Asian seminar.
The seminar was opened by Jim Rose who was director of the I.P.I. at its Zurich headquarters from 1951 to '62. Since 1970 he has been Editorial Director of the Westminster Press. Prominent in I.P.I. affairs at the time were the late Charles Fenby, Chairman of the British Section, and Peter Calvocoressi, both of Westminster Press.
Shortly before the first Asian Seminar they were both in Bonn for the I.P.I.'s first conference of British and German editors with Melvin Lasky, Heilmut Jaesrich- Editor of Der Monat, the C.C.F.'s German magazine- and other pressmen.
Evans' "cool professionalism" was so successful at the Far East seminars that he was asked by those directing the Asian Programme to write a handbook aimed primarily at newsmen in developing countries. This manual appeared early in 1962 as "The Active Newsroom" published by I.P.I. and funded by the Asia Programme.
In 1961 Evans was appointed Editor of the Northern Echo, a daily paper centred on Darling-ton and belonging to the Westminster Press group. In 1963 he be-came, in addition, Editor-in-Chief of North of England Newspaper Co., the local Westminster subsidiary.
During this period the Asian seminars took him to Malaysia, and Korea in the Autumn of 1965; he also toured the United States as consultant to Gannett Newspapers, a group of over 100 papers centred on Rochester, N.Y., whose president, Allen Neuharth, was connected with the American Press Institute between 1956 and '63.
Gannett - a major group with some 14,000 employees and turnover 300m. dollars - had given the I.P.I. the same sort of technical back-up from the United States as it had received from Westminster Press in Britain throughout its existence. R. D. Rivett, who succeeded Rose as director of I.P.I. in 1962 spent a month with the Westchester Rochland newspaper group - a Gannett subsidiary - in May of that year, while Gannett newsmen and women assisted in the overseas programmes of both I.P.I. and the International Federation of Newspaper Editors with which it organised joint activities.
Throughout the 'sixties the I.P.I. extended its activities. In 1963 - with support from the Ford Foundation - it set up an African training programme and press centre on the model of the Asian programme, with Tom Hopkinson, former Editor of Picture Post, as director until 1966.
The Asia Programme received a further grant of 90,000 dollars from the Asia Foundation for the two year period ending 1968.
I.P.I. had close links with the Thomson organisation through Denis Hamilton, a member of the I.P.I. Executive and Editor of the Sunday Times, 1961-'67 and now chairman of Times Newspapers. Roy Thomson himself was guest of honour at several I.P.I. functions in the 'sixties.
According to his biographer, Russell Braddon. Thomson was desperate to receive a peerage. Let down in the 'fifties by Dief en-baker, Canadian Prime Minister, Thomson started quite shamelessly to lobby British P.M. Macmillan who let it be known that he could do nothing unless Thomson took out U.K. citizenship. This he did shortly after, sending the papers to Macmillan who returned them duly noted.
Thomson's first major killing in Britain had been The Scotsman whose Editor, Murray Watson, had been a founder Executive member of I.P.I. In 1955 Thomson hired James Coltart, one of Beaver-brook's top Scottish executives to run the Scotsman. Coltart's passionate commitment to Moral Re-armament remained apparent in the Scottish Daily Express until its recent collapse. According to M.R.A. propaganda at the time "In Canada and the United States the floodtide of Communism washes over the nation every day" -every libertarian or social reformer was a Communist in disguise. Coltart became Thomson's closest aide, helping him to buy the Sunday Times from Lord Kemsley in 1959 - and with it stayed Denis Hamilton, Executive member of the International Press Institute, and shortly to become Editor.
Thomson's marked Philistinism, meanness and singleminded pursuit of profit - illustrated by the "licence to print money" remark - had not gone down well in Britain.
Coltart stressed the need to improve his image as a public benefactor if he were to have a chance of a title.
According to Braddon "Coltart (with whom Thomson now shared a Piccadilly flat: to save money) impressed upon him the duty of a publisher like himself to spread to less enlightened countries the gospel of the freedom of the Press, literacy and democracy. . . . Coltart was fortunate at this time that his missionary fervour coincided with Thomson's desire for well - publicised philanthropy." In Thomson's words . . "these African peoples have no idea what journalism means . . . if someone doesn't get in there soon and give it to 'em - teach 'em - other people we don't like so much are going to do it, and in a way we won't like at all" - that is, the Communists.
Thus the Thomson Foundation was born in 1962 with an initial grant of £5m. Its purpose was "the development of mass communications in emerging countries" and it aimed "to give aid without political or economic strings by training and advising those working in television, the Press and other media." Its chairman was Coltart and one of its trustees was trade unionist Lord Williamson, Executive member of the Public Services International which helped topple Jagan in British Guiana in 1963. Its Director is a former top colonial civil servant in Kenya.
The Thomson Foundation runs an Editorial Study Centre in Cardiff for overseas journalists sent on 12-week courses, generally on the nomination of their editors, many of whom have participated in the I.P.I.'s Asian and African programmes.
In 1966 Evans left the Northern Echo to become Chief Assistant to Hamilton, then Managing Editor of the Sunday Times. In January 1967 he was appointed Editor on the recommendation of Hamilton who became Chief Executive. "I liked his work with the International Press Institute, especially in Asia," said Hamilton in support of his appointment.
Under Evans' guidance the Insight team, with the immense resources of Thomson House behind it, set new standards for investigative journalism.
In general these resources have been employed in hounding unfortunate, if undesirable, "foreigners" like Emile Savundra & Robert Maxwell, or exposing nasty goings-on amongst wine merchants and antique dealers, rather than digging into the power structure of Britain or the United States - a task left to such shoestring publications as Private Eye and I. F. Stone's Weekly.
In 1971 it was announced that Evans had become Adviser on the Press to the International Association for Cultural Freedom and the same year he conducted a seminar for the Association in Turin on "The press we deserve".
Recently Ron Knowles, Editor of "The Journalist", published by the National Union of Journalists, was invited to University College, Cardiff, by Tom Hopkinson to speak to students on a course in journalism which he had been running there since 1970. Knowles' topic was "democratisation of the press" which, he said, could best be brought about by action through the Union, rather than nebulous bodies like the I.P.I. and others which he named. Hopkinson was not pleased by this remark. Soon afterwards Knowles was surprised to receive a phone call from Harold Evans who said that I.P.I. was a fine body. It had been set up at the end of the war when it was realised how easily the Press could succumb to dictatorship - as under Hitler and Mussolini - and to prevent this happening again. Further, Evans deplored such remarks coming from a responsible journalist as they could well be exploited by governments of Communist countries whose treatment of their own newsmen was under constant criticism from the I.P.I.
The I.P.I. was set up as an instrument in the Cold War. It worked to secure favourable treatment of U.S. foreign policy in the world's press by influencing editorial staff. As an anti-Communist "house journal", the "I.P.I. Report" performed the same function for newspaper editors as the "New Leader" did for politicians. In 1967 it was revealed in the United States that the Asia Programme - like the Congress for Cultural Freedom, Forum News Services, Preuves, Monat, etc. -was a front for the C.I.A., with the Asia Foundation as funding "conduit", and Tarzie Vittachi as go-between. The methods used both in Europe and in the developing countries are illustrated by the following quotations from I.P.I. sources:--
Facts and Propaganda studies at Montreux seminar
It was a far cry from the sternly practical exercises in newspaper techniques now being inculcated in the I.P.I.'s Asian seminars to the more recondite problems of Disarmament which were the subject of the meeting held at the Montreux Palace Hotel from May 9th to 11th. But in the cause of "improving the practices of journalism" the I.P.I. has traditionally held that depth and real understanding in the reporting of difficult matters is no less important than efficient presentation of news. Thus the Montreux seminar, while not primarily concerned with technical press problems, was in the clear line of succession to previous "background" seminars.
Moreover, since the whole international debate on disarmament plays a special part in that intricate game known as "psychological warfare" - as at least two of the speakers at the seminar pointed out - it is particularly useful for newspapermen to be well-informed on the realities of the whole subject and to be able to differentiate, on behalf of their readers, between fact and propaganda.
This, at least, seems to have been the view of all the 24 participants from eleven European, Asian and American countries who took part in the seminar.
Some aspects of the American approach to the problem were outlined by William Frye, U.N. correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor. The basic strategic considerations which at least partly explain the Soviet attitude to the whole disarmament question were brilliantly made clear by Malcolm Mackintosh, consultant on Soviet Affairs to the Institute for Strategic Studies.
Thanks must go to the eight principal speakers, as well as to the Ford and Carnegie Foundations who were the meeting's sponsors and to the London Institute of Strategic Studies, in collaboration with whom the Montreux programme was planned.
Professor Wilson, Adam Smith Professor of Economics at the University of Glasgow, dealt effectively with the time-worn "leftist" argument that if the "capitalist" countries cut down on the profitable business of arms manufacture they would be threatened with economic collapse. Quite the reverse might well be possible, the professor suggested.
Finally Alastair Buchan, director of the Institute for Strategic Studies, London, made clear the important role played by the disarmament debate in the cold war.
As with other I.P.I. meetings, not the least useful part of the Montreux Seminar was the possibility it offered for newspapermen of different lands to meet and talk informally of many other matters besides the ones immediately in hand. On the social side of the three-day meeting the highlight was certainly the candle-light dinner so hospitably given in the Chateau de Chillon - immortalised by Lord Byron.
[I.P.I. Report, August 1962.]
The Asian Representative* himself an editor who had never had journalism school or any other training except on the job, spent two weeks at the American Press Institute to learn the technique of running seminars for journalists. A.P.I.'s director, Montgomery Curtis, readily shared his massive experience and showed him the mysteries of seminar management which had been developed at Columbia University. The first seminar of the Asian Programme was planned in consultation with Mr Curtis. It was planned as an all-India exercise to lay open the variety and extent of the problems involved and to prove to the sceptics - and there was no shortage of them - that the Asian Programme was a worthwhile professional undertaking.
Selection of participants was, at that time, a real problem.
Later, when the programme got into its stride and the Asian Representative and his team of consultants had got to know the newspapers individually and intimately, selection was easier. Many I.P.I. members and the men who had attended the seminars to some purpose proved to be reliable advisers on the selection of particicipants and the content of the seminars and the programme in general.
The first Asian seminar set the pace and direction of the Asian Programme. It also broke down the resistance to "foreign" consultants. This was largely due to the practical skill and sense of professionalism displayed by Harry Evans, then Assistant Editor of the Manchester Evening News.
["I.P.I. in Asia", I.P.I. Zurich, 1966.]
*The Asian Representative was Tarzie Vittachi who, in 1966, helped Evans nail Emil Savundra, the financier.
It is clear from these and many other similar reports that those running the I.P.I. were well aware of the value of the technical seminars in securing the confidence of participants and leading them into the more sensitive area of ideology. But there is no suggestion that Harold Evans and the other technical specialists were aware that they were being used for this purpose, and presumably they were given satisfactory explanations as to the source of the substantial sums spent on their trips to the Far East and the ''candle-light dinners''.
The running costs of the Institute in its first three years were about 75,000 dollars per annum. By 1955 it had reduced its staff to 11 and its budget to 55,000 dollars, but this amount was for central administration only; field activities were separately financed by the Asia Foundation, Ford Foundation and other sources. At this time income from members and publishers had grown only to 25,500 dollars.
It is clear that the greater part of I.P.I.'s work was financed by the Americans, the more sensitive activity being funded from covert sources.
One of I.P.I.'s founders was Barry Bingham, also chairman of the American Press Institute Advisory Board. He was Marshall Plan head in France after the war and director of the CIA-financed Asia Foundation.
Who were they travelling with?
Introduction Part 1: Background Part 2: Censorship Part 3: Fellow travellers Part 5: European Movement