Was a 1970s "news clipping on Israel" censored by the CIA and released in 2004 only through a Freedom of Information Act request, proving the CIA censors the press? No, that's not true: The "news clip" shown in the video was published in Penthouse magazine in February 1978 and has been publicly available since then. The Information Act request material, released in 2004, was internal correspondence within the CIA regarding the published 1978 article.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on Instagram on January 25, 2024. It opened with a person in the video saying:
Sometimes the CIA will actually have news articles retracted that they think is a threat for national security. And other times they'll actually release documents that they previously had retracted.
This news clipping on Israel was actually approved for release back in 2004.
This is what the post looked like on Instagram at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Tues Feb 13 15:37:17 2024 UTC)
The caption on the Instagram post read:
CIA's released news clippings on the 🇮🇱 Lobby.
#lobbyist #cia #lobbying #america
The video has the caption, "Released CIA News Clipping on Israel," which is false. The "news clipping" was not released in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, it was an opinion piece written by then-U.S. Sen. James Abourezk of South Dakota (archived here) that was published in the February 1978 issue of Penthouse magazine. It can be seen in an archived link here. It was titled, "The Relentless Israeli Propaganda Machine." It was never censored or hidden by the CIA. What was published in the FOIA was an internal communication about the article.
In the video, before the copy of the article itself, a January 16, 1978, "transmittal slip" to OLC (presumably the Office of Legislative Counsel) is shown. The memo part reads:
Per our conversation today concerning Senator Abourezk's article in PENTHOUSE.
Here is a screenshot of the transmittal slip from the video:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Tues Feb 13 15:45:28 2024 UTC)
The article was fully published in the February 1978 issue of Penthouse magazine, and nothing in the 2004 FOIA material or the January 2024 Instagram post proves any attempt to censor or actual censorship by the CIA. The transmittal slip and the article are easily accessible on the CIA website (archived here). And here in pdf form (archived here) as this screenshot shows:
(Source: CIA website screenshot taken on Tues Feb 13 15:48:11 2024 UTC)
Other Lead Stories fact checks about Israel can be found here and about the CIA can be found here.
