The CIA Wants to Protect Cold War 'Phantom' Writer

The CIA is trying to protect a fictitious writer it invented during the Cold War to write pro-capitalist propaganda after a Freedom of Information Act – or FOIA – request was filed by an editor at technology website.

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Guy Sims Fitch was a prolific writer during the Cold War who acted as a proponent and ideologue of U.S. capitalist economics and advocated its spread across the globe.

While Fitch appeared in newspapers across the world, propagating a negative perspective about the Soviet Union and the so-called threat of communism, it has now come to light that the notable author was, in fact, a pure fabrication of the United States Information Agency, or USIA.

Fitch's work was only published outside of the U.S., where foreign publications would often authoritatively cite and translate his seemingly sound economic analyses into local languages.

Matt Novak, editor of technology website Gizmodo, decided to inquire about Fitch’s hazy "past" by submitting a FOIA request to the CIA.

The CIA, however, told Novak that the task would have been impossible simply because it would require obtaining the consent of the real-life writers and editors who wrote under Fitch’s name, including the proofs of death for anyone involved in writing under the Fitch byline.

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“The CIA wants to make sure that the privacy rights of this fictional character aren’t violated. Or, perhaps, that the privacy rights of the people who wrote under that name aren’t violated ... The short version? They’re toying with me,” said Novak on the information request.

Novak said that “it’s actually a brilliant move by the CIA,” because they can release as little information as possible and claim that they are protecting the interests of the real life writers who are behind the ghost writer.

Hundreds of journalists have worked for the CIA over the years for the purpose of creating and disseminating U.S. propaganda, according to reporter Carl Bernstein, who investigated the Watergate Scandal that led to the resignation of then-President Richard Nixon.

Operation Mockingbird was one such CIA campaign – now publically disclosed – that used journalists to help advance the views of U.S. central intelligence throughout the Cold War.

“The use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence-gathering employed by the CIA,” said Bernstein, writing for Rolling Stone magazine in 1977.