![]() U Ted Price joined Kroll in 1995 after 35 years in the CIA, including a stint as chief of clandestine services. His wife, Deidre, works in CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. U Charles Englehart, a vice president in Kroll's Washington, D.C., office, joined Kroll last year after a 30-year career in the CIA. U Brian Jenkins, a former Green Beret in Vietnam who briefed Henry Kissinger several times, recently left Kroll to start his own consulting agency. Kroll provided the following thumbnail descriptions of its investigative team members: It was a profoundly moving assignment to walk back on a piece of history, to speak to the people who lived during that period." One of the things that impressed me about the assignment was that we were given no restrictions on how far we could go. "Our job was not to comment on the judgment made in the CNN piece. "We were asked to investigate and find facts," she said. Wood, who supervised the CNN investigation for Kroll, noted that the agency was not asked to perform a news analysis. "We were told to use our sources to find information and report back whether it turned out to be in favor of or against the broadcast." "The people at Kroll have the highest integrity," said Wood, a former assistant U.S. The New York Times said Abrams told reporters in a conference call after he announced his findings, that he used "enlisted former intelligence officers" from Kroll Associates to help him in his investigation.Įlaine Wood, managing director of Kroll Associates, a division of Kroll-O'Gara, confirmed that five former CIA officials were involved in the CNN investigation. The Abrams report noted only that "we have utilized the services of independent investigators retained by us." My view is that they were wrong."Ībrams said he did not mention the role the ex-CIA members played in his investigation because they did not come up with any information he could use in his 54-page report. I know that the reporters were deeply committed to their story. "The very idea that we tapped into the intelligence community was a sign that the report was not flawed. "That is preposterous and utter nonsense," said Abrams, who was involved in the 1971 Pentagon Papers court case. Abrams angrily denied that his report was tainted by the use of ex-CIA operatives. Earlier, she noted that "those officials would have a vested interest in not confirming what we had found."įloyd Abrams, the First Amendment attorney who ran the CNN investigation, told E&P he had hoped the former CIA officials would unearth "information that might support the broadcast."Ībrams concluded there was not enough information to confirm the nerve gas thesis and advised CNN and Time to "retract the story and apologize," which they did. "The fact that the CIA was involved is a big story," said Oliver. The CNN story, which also appeared in Time magazine, claimed the alleged secret mission in September 1970, called "Operation Tailwind," was a CIA-approved operation.Īpril Oliver and Jack Smith, the CNN producers who were fired in the wake of the story's retraction, contend that using the CIA to investigate itself undermined CNN's internal probe.Į&P's revelations about the ex-CIA operatives, originally published on the E&P Web site on Monday, were a topic at the Wednesday press conference held by Oliver and Smith on the mezzanine of the Freedom Forum's Newseum in New York. military with using nerve gas to kill American defectors in Laos. Wolper is a professor of journalism at Rutgers University and an E&P reporter.Įditor & Publisher has learned cNN used ex-CIA officials who were on active duty during the Vietnam War to investigate its broadcast charging the U.S. Internal CNN review that caused CNN to retract its story about nerve gas attacks in Laos By: allan wolper E&P has learned that ex-CIA agents from the Vietnam War era participated in the
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