Reply #10: George H. Gallup, the CIA and polling organizations

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The next year, (Edwin) Wilson jumped to the Special Operations Division, which was in charge of covert actions. First, he served as an advance man for Hubert Humphrey's vice-presidential campaign, allowing the Agency to keep tabs on Johnson's running mate. After the election, Wilson opened a front business: Maritime Consulting Associates, an ocean freight forwarder that handled sea logistics for CIA programs. The Agency man in charge of Maritime was Tom Clines, deputy chief of the division's maritime branch.

Wilson ran Maritime Consulting as if it were a regular company. He recruited a figurehead president and worked hard: weapons to Angola, communications equipment to Morocco, materiel to Laos.He also found non-Agency business to conduct-activity that put cash in his pockets. For Langley's fronts, profits meant better cover. Wilson had a golden gig. There was little auditing of his books. No one noticed when he padded his costs. He could be both a secret agent and a wealthy man.


In their 2004 book with a lengthy title (All is Clouded by Desire; Global Banking, Money Laundering, and International Organized Crime) authors Alan Block and Constance Weaver wrote that Wilson's Maritime Consulting Associates "was also a front for a polling firm established in the Philippines in collaboration with George Gallup to influence Philippine politics." ...

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After leaving The Washington Post in 1977, Carl Bernstein spent six months looking at the relationship of the CIA and the press during the Cold War years. His 25,000-word cover story, published in Rolling Stone on October 20, 1977, is reprinted below.

THE CIA AND THE MEDIA

How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up

BY CARL BERNSTEIN

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...

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