all. It is the concern for the safety of 500 people on our staff who must work in areas where any suggestion of collusion, not only with the CIA but with the American Government in general, could be quite dangerous, and has been quite dangerous.

I think that even when they suspect, have no knowledge of, but only suspect, that we would be collusive with any arm of the American Government, not only is our job made impossible but in today's world, the likelihood of retribution is great, and it has happened in 1977 and 1978, and will happen in 1979.

What can we do then is to-for my part, it is not a question of legislation or administrative edict. It is a question of not really having any contact with the CIA in its work. Our product, our news will reflect the lack of news manipulation if it is absent. I find that in many countries I could name where we have to deal with sources that are on both sides, the legitimate government and the terrorists and dissidents and so forth, any suggestion that we are not there strictly as objective reporters of the news is itself a total danger, not only to the people on that story, but could reverberate around the world where these situations are duplicated. So as we discuss this matter today, I will listen and learn with great interest because when you are working in 89 countries of the world where you are already suspect just by being from the Western press, the so-called Western press, it is the substance rather than the theory that I am concerned with.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Gentlemen, do you all concur-excuse me, I'm sorry. I didn't know whether you wanted to make any statement.

STATEMENT OF MIKE WALLACE, CBS, "60 MINUTES" NEWS REPORTER

Mr. WALLACE. Thank you, Senator.

My colleagues, Senator Bayh, are involved to a greater degree in management than am I. First of all, I speak not in any sense for CBS news. I speak only for myself, and I would add only one thing to what has been said here. We are talking about journalists generally. The one thing, it seems to me, in the bill as drawn, that is probably not sufficiently gone into, is the fact that the electronic press, as I believe was suggested by Daniel Schorr, involves more than a man with a pencil and a piece of paper, or a pencil and a notebook. Television journalism as you know, is a collaborative venture which involves not just the reporter, but frequently a producer, a cameraman, a sound man, a light man, and frequently in foreign countries, involves foreign nationals. It may be a U.S. reporter, a U.S. producer, an Egyptian cameraman or light man, or sound man.

Therefore, it seems to me that as the bill is drawn, it should pay very serious attention to the fact that there are on a television crew, or a radio crew, three, four, five men or women who are involved in the story. And we have found from time to time that whereas the individual reporters and producer have one kind of relationship with the management of the journalistic enterprise, the technicians involved do not. They operate on different standards, and conceivably they are more vulnerable to suggestions from people who want to employ them.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Wallace, would you include the same prohibitions as far as the contractual and monetary relationships with all members of the crew?

Mr. WALLACE. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Anyone associated in anyway with the news media would be prohibited from such relationships.

Mr. WALLACE. If the bill, as drawn-Yes, indeed, I would. With respect to anybody on a television crew involved in gathering news, because they are just as much involved in the gathering of news as is the reporter. Their functions may be different, but they have access to the same kind of information that the reporter and the producer have in putting together a story in backgrounding a story.

The CHAIRMAN. Do all four of you concur in the assessment that was made by at least a couple of you that the skepticism that exists traditionally in the Communist world, that everybody is suspect, that the skepticism and the blame that might occasionally be directed at Americans, would not be removed by statute? I think we need to assess rather what we can reasonably accomplish and not think we are dealing with some sort of utopian effort here. Mr. LEONARD. Senator, if I could speak on that point, I agree with the cynical Mr. Fuller here that this is not going to remove such suspicion immediately, but it is a step in that direction. It is an assurance that carries the full faith and the weight of the U.S. Congress, and I think that is important, to serve notice to people that we are not going to be meddling in their internal news and the news that comes from those countries.

It is not just Communist countries. It is countries that are on the border of freedom that we are trying to make a part of the world's communication network. It is the Third World countries in Africa and Latin America. We are saying look at the free press of the United States. We are a great example of how people can communicate. We don't want to do anything in those countries that is going to make them suspicious or destroy their faith.

So I don't think it is going to clear it up right away, but it is going to be a step toward it.

The CHAIRMAN. It certainly puts us on the record.

Yes, Mr. Geyelin.

Mr. GEYELIN. Well, I agree. I don't think it is going to clear it up except for those people who are favorably inclined to think generously.

I am also a little disturbed, and I guess I have indicated it, by the passage of a law in this country in order to send a message someplace. It seems to me that a law should stand on its own

merits.

This is a this situation of the press is an unpleasant one in which the reporters are suspect and are openly being accused of CIA connections. Obviously it is easy to make that accusation in the light of the past history, but I am still a little bit dubious about passing a law for the sake of trying to convey a message unless those provisions of law stand on their own merits.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, as far as the committee is concerned, we are not in the message sending business, and you are absolutely right in your assessment of what our primary goal should be, that

it should stand on its own legs, regarding the wording and the extent to which we ultimately go. We are dealing with a very sensitive area. You have pointed out if we have too many prohibitions, we could get ourselves unconstitutionally in an area where there has to be freedom under the Constitution.

Let me ask you gentlemen to deal with this very perplexing area of the correspondent who is a foreign national. This is compounded by the fact that we are not living in the kind of world that we would like to live in, but we are living in a world where in some countries there is a rather gross competition for the minds of other people, and we are confronted with the Soviets' and others' constant barrage of propaganda.

Should that be taken into consideration as far as the use of foreign journalists, not to sell misinformation, but at least try to combat the misinformation from the Communists?

One particular case that was pointed out to me by one of our people in a foreign country was the need to have journalists who could get stories into technical journals and similar publications. Do we have a different need there, or do we still have the same problem?

Mr. LEONARD. Senator, are we talking about false stories or true stories?

The CHAIRMAN. We are talking about true stories.

Mr. LEONARD. True stories? Isn't that a function of the U.S. Information Service, the U.S. Information Agency?

The CHAIRMAN. That is the function, but sometimes the fact that it is the U.S. Information Agency makes it suspect in itself as its credibility in the eyes of the people that are reading it.

I don't know what the answer is, but we are talking about someone who has recognized expertise in a technical area, for example.

Mr. GEYELIN. Well, I don't think I quite-well, let me put it this way. If you can get that kind of information into the press of that country, you don't need the CIA to do it, it seems to me. The real problem is the countries that do not have a free press, and I don't think that the CIA can be very effective in getting into the controlled press of a totalitarian country with the American viewpoint with any regularity. I mean, we do that with the Voice of America. It is a lot easier to do electronically than it is to do in the print media. I think the use of foreign journalists is probably marginal except in countries where they might be-in really totalitarian countries where they are in effect government officials and they might be useful intelligence sources if you could turn them around, I suppose.

I don't really think that is a very big deal for the CIA, and I think the USIA can deal openly as best it can with its efforts to influence the press, the local press in a foreign country.

Mr. WALLACE. At the risk of belaboring this issue unnecessarily, take the case of a Middle Eastern country, a Far Eastern country. This is why I do not find it difficult to envision the passage of a law governing CIA relationships with journalists. Let us say that you have a camera crew, and that you have a correspondent who works with a cameraman and an electrician, or a cameraman and a sound man, on a regular basis. And let us say that the reporter and

the cameraman are Americans, but for reasons of economy and for reasons of mobility, for reasons of language and so forth, the third man on the crew, the sound man, or the electrician, is a foreign national. Let us say that he is paid, or he gets involved voluntarily, with the Agency.

What you have is a man who is working for the Central Intelligence Agency, either under pay or voluntarily, who is acting as an agent of our Government, who is privy to most of the information that is involved, as far as the work of that journalist and the work of that cameraman are concerned. He knows everything that is going on, and yet he is serving, if you will, two masters.

I see nothing wrong under those circumstances with drawing a law which would forbid the Agency to engage in that kind of a relationship.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Huddleston?

Senator HUDDLESTON. Well, just following through on that aspect, the legislation as it is written is intended to include any employee of American news media, whether that employee were foreign or not. The question is, would you make any distinction between a country with a reasonable amount of free press, and a country where obviously the press was just an arm of the government? Would you suggest that the latter kind of a country ought to be free game for our CIA or for other intelligence agencies to develop contacts, even agents?

What would be your judgment on that?

Mr. WALLACE. Well, obviously that is the sticky business, one part of the sticky business in this legislation. I get the sense that if you have seen one, you have seen them all. In other words, obviously it would be very useful, for instance, for the Agency to have a man working on a camera crew, if you will, in the Soviet Union or wherever, who is in the pay of the Agency, useful to the Agency. But once he is discovered, it immediately tags that whole team. And therefore it is sensible to draw the inference that all American journalists can be had, or all foreign journalists employed by American organizations can be had.

Senator HUDDLESTON. We want to prevent that. A foreign journalist who is employed by American media is not available to the CIA under this legislation, but a foreign journalist working for a foreign journalistic organization, perhaps even for his government, is fair game the way the bill is structured at the present time. The question is, is there a legitimate distinction? Are we in fact protecting our own press, protecting the Agency from being involved in socalled corruption of the American press, and at the same time permitting them to corrupt-to the extent that such a press may have some area that is left to be corrupted-a foreign country's press that is already operating principally as a propaganda vehicle for its country?

Mr. WALLACE. I find myself in agreement with Mr. Leonard. That it is probably a pretty good idea-what I understand him to say, anyway-that it is a good idea to stay out of it totally.

Senator HUDDLESTON. All of it totally, regardless of the system. Do you have further comment, Mr. Leonard?

Mr. LEONARD. Yes, Senator. I worry when somebody gets caught, and the big problem is when you get caught. If you are an Indone

sian journalist working for the CIA and all of a sudden throughout Indonesia it becomes known that the CIA is involved in the news that is either being distributed there or reported from there, is the effect any different whether the journalist is a national of the United States or a citizen of Indonesia?

I have here a copy of the publication of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO which has been working around the world trying to combat the Soviet influence on the press. All of their efforts have been aimed at assuring the world that we are not doing exactly what we are talking about here right now, and if we are going to have any credibility I think you have got to steer clear of foreign journalists whether they are citizens of the United States, of Indonesia, Africa, whatever they may be.

Senator HUDDLESTON. Mr. Geyelin, you have seen some of it from both sides, at least.

Mr. GEYELIN. Well, not really.

Senator HUDDLESTON. OK.

Mr. GEYELIN. But I think I have said what I think about it. I think we have encountered so many varieties of the foreign press, we tend to think of it as being like ours and it isn't. Obviously there is no purpose and nothing to be said for the CIA trying to subvert a member of the British press or the French press or a lot of the Japanese or whatever, any country where there is a free press.

I think that probably the results are so marginal that it would be-that that is one place where you can legislate. It doesn't trouble me because it doesn't have anything much to do with our own. I mean, we are not talking about legislating for the American press. We are talking about the rules of engagement for the CIA around the world.

And that is a wider, wider question. Obviously it would be better if we don't do it, and if we foreswear it because we are then saying, if we foreswear it by law, because we are then saying that we will do unto others as we will do unto ourselves, and we are true to our values and all the rest.

I still have a little bit of a problem with the definition of what is a foreign journalist, because it is self-evident that these delegations, say People's Republic of China journalists that come here, or Soviet journalists that come here who may or may not be themselves working for the KGB, I think to tell the CIA that that is off limits when what you are dealing with is demonstrably not a journalist but a government official who may in fact be working in the intelligence business against this country, I think you might have trouble with definitions.

Senator HUDDLESTON. Mr. Fuller.

Mr. FULLER. Well, Senator, if you believe as we do, and I am sure you do, that in the function of the press, the free press of the United States, in just achieving our goals, doing our own thing our own way, that we are as much a support for what we believe in this country and in many other Western countries as would be the CIA or any other arm of the Government, then I can assure you that we can best achieve this by acting on our own and without alliances of any sort with any Government arm. And it is so difficult even under the best of circumstances to maintain a pos