TASS After 1971, TASS was elevated to the status of State Committee at the Government of the Soviet Union. The agency was frequently used as a front organization by the Soviet intelligence agencies, such as the NKVD (later KGB) and Main Intelligence Directorate, with TASS employees serving as informants. In 1959, Alexander Alexeyev was dispatched to Cuba on a fact-finding mission, ostensibly working for TASS. In January 1992, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a Presidential Decree signed by Boris Yeltsin re-defined status of TASS and renamed it the "Information Telegraph Agency of Russia". In May 1994 The Russian Government
Korean Central News Agency which has a permanent bureau in Pyongyang. KCNA journalists have trained abroad with the BBC and Reuters. KCNA is a member of Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies. In 2004, the agency had employed 2,000 people. According to its website, KCNA "speaks for the Workers' Party of Korea and the DPRK government". The agency has been described as the "official organ." In June 1964 on one of his first official activities, Kim Jong-il visited KCNA headquarters and said the agency should be "propagating the revolutionary ideology of the Leader (Kim Il-sung) widely throughout the world." However, the agency is also said