IP: espionage and Japan

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Date: Tue, 24 Oct 1995 13:25:42 -0400
From: dasang () nytimes com (David Sanger)




There has been a lot of speculation among Fukuzawa-ites that the New York
Times article that referred to spying during the car talks was planted by
someone with a hidden agenda: the C.I.A. itself, MITI, American officials
who want to discredit the agency. I thought that a few facts about the story
-- and the process by which it was written -- might help dispel some of the
conspiracy theories.


1) For those who have not seen it, the story was not solely about spying on
Japan, although for understandable reasons that is the part that has gotten
all the attention in Tokyo. The story attempted to evaluate how well the
Agency is doing in the new world of economic intelligence. The Agency's
involvement in the car talks was just an example -- a telling one, because
almost everybody we interviewed concluded that whatever was picked up
electronically did not make much of a difference on the outcome of the
negotiations. And that raises the obvious question of whether spying on an
ally is worth the economic and political cost.


2) I wish the world operated the way some contributors to this forum have
suggested: That sources wander into our office and offer juicy documents and
leaks to advance their own causes, and those leaks turned into great
stories. In 14 years here, that has happened to me exactly once, a decade
ago. Obviously I can't say much about our sources, but I can say that there
were many of them. None came to me or the co-author of the article, Tim
Weiner, who covers the intelligence agencies. We went to them. All of them
had somewhat different motives for talking, and we considered those motives,
as best we could, and checked the facts with other sources who had different
motives. Were we used? Perhaps, but no more than newspaper reporters are
used every day, on subjects as varied as the potential impact of Federal
budget cuts to the potential outcome of changes in zoning regulations. The
more important question is whether the facts were right, and whether they
were presented in a context in which readers can draw their own conclusions
about whether this is a role for the CIA that makes sense.


3) Chalmers Johnson questions whether this was news. News is in the eyes of
the reader, and clearly he believes that this did not pass the test (a view
that he extends to other stories I wrote from Tokyo between 1988 and 1994.)
I respectfully disagree.
        Certainly Japanese and American officials have known for years that
the two governments conduct espionage on each other. Obviously, they have to
feign shock when the practice is made public. Prof. Johnson and other
Japan-hands also know that this sort of espionage takes place daily, and for
them the story certainly was not news. But most New York Times readers did
not know this takes place, or why, and I suspect that most Japanese who read
the follow-on stories did not know, either.
        A few readers have made the point that the LA Times carried a story
over the summer that contained some of the same facts. I am embarrassed to
say that I didn't see that story when it appeared and it did not turn up in
an electronic search prior to the publication of the article. It would not
have made a difference, however, even if I had seen it: The car negotiations
were the most recent example of the complexities of spying on an ally that
we were trying to illustrate.


I hope this sheds some light. Needless to say, any opinions expressed above
are mine and not my newspaper's.




David E. Sanger
Washington Economics Correspondent
The New York Times