Volume 36
No. 2 Spring 2019
Matthew Cecil is dean of the College of Arts & Humanities at Minnesota State University, Mankato. In an interview with Editorial Assistant Ashley Walter, he discusses his article on the CIA’s use of public relations and the research that went into it.
How did you first learn about the CIA’s 1964 press conference and why do you think it was an important historical event to study?
In 2017, the CIA posted 13 million documents on the Web complete with a useful search engine. Those documents had previously been available only at four terminals in CIA headquarters. The terminals were prehistoric computers connected to broken-down printers available for limited hours each week. A FOIA lawsuit by the public records online repository mucrock.com forced the CIA to post the documents. Muckrock prevailed after a judge rejected the CIA’s claims that it was in compliance with FOIA and scoffed at the agency’s claim it would take years to prepare the records for posting online. It took six months. Because of my prior work on FBI public relations, I was interested in the CIA’s practice of PR. Using the online search engine made quick work of finding relevant documents, and the 1964 press conference was one of the events that naturally rose to the top of search engine results. It is important to understand that the online documents are only a fraction of CIA documents that should be available. Still, given the ease of access, it is an extremely useful cache of information.
You noted that you got access to the CIA records under the Freedom of Information Act. What was that process like?
Actually the CIA released the documents online, but only after someone sued them. I have considerable experience working with the FBI under FOIA, though. To date, I have received thousands of FBI files under FOIA, more than a million pages of documents. In 2016, in response to a request about frequent requestors, the FBI included me on a list of “vexsome” FOIA users. (I think they meant to use the term “vexatious.”) The implication was that by requesting many files, those of us on the list were somehow bothering the FBI. In contrast to that pejorative administrative description, I have found the actual document processors in the FBI’s records office to be extremely helpful. I have come to appreciate their diligence and have worked with them to limit the scope of requests to speed up document processing. My experience with the few CIA requests I have done was less positive. It is clear the CIA for many years was doing the bare minimum to comply with FOIA. The CIA’s online search engine may have been forced on them by a lawsuit, but it is among the most useful FOIA tools available today.
You wrote that President Harry Truman reluctantly presided over the CIA. Why was he reluctant?
Truman envisioned the CIA as a superficial intelligence-gathering organization only, providing a daily “newspaper” of world events to inform the president. Truman correctly predicted what the CIA actually became. He feared that the agency would become a covert army with a secret budget, working to overthrow governments and operating as an uncontrollable force on behalf of presidents or, worse yet, operating beyond the control of presidents. No doubt Truman’s concerns were shaped by his experience watching the growth of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI into an American secret police. Truman realized the importance of intelligence to presidents. He simply rejected the notion of an army of secret agents manipulating governments and even perpetrating covert wars or assassinations in the name of American foreign policy.
Do you think the CIA could have had a successful public relations operation had it not blundered this press conference? Or, is the agency too deeply rooted in its “cloak and dagger” image?
I do not think the media would have allowed an FBI-style open, no-holds-barred public relations operation at the CIA. While the FBI had a public, law enforcement role, the CIA’s dual intelligence analysis and covert activities missions, both top secret, did not allow for easily understood public relations devices like public enemies or most wanted lists. The first audience for public relations messages, of course, is often reporters, editors, publishers and news directors. Their expectations shape how any public relations message will be received and whether or not it will be broadcast or published. With the FBI, there was an expectation of detective action hero stories. Journalists were comfortable with that from the beginning. With the CIA, journalists were skeptical about why a top secret agency had suddenly decided to go public. With the FBI, reporters knew readers loved FBI content and thus asked for more and more information. With the CIA, reporters assumed they were being manipulated and that became the story.
CIA Director McCone cited several consequences of the negative publicity, however his fifth consequence was redacted by the CIA FOIA staff. Have you speculated as to what he could have written?
I suspect the fifth consequence was related to recruitment of new CIA employees. The CIA worked very hard, courting favor with university presidents and visiting campuses, to find the best and brightest employees it could. Undoubtedly, negative publicity would have hampered those efforts, considering that CIA recruitment was already a controversial topic on many college and university campuses.
What are additional resources for people who would like to learn more about this topic?
I would recommend first Tim Weiner’s book Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government provides insight into the CIA’s development and the agency’s “J. Edgar Hoover,” Allen Dulles. Anyone interested in digging into CIA documents should check out the agency’s FOIA search engine: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/advanced-search-view