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
Ghana News Agency and deleted any international news critical of the Ghanaian leadership immediately, thus preventing such news from reaching the country's newspapers and radio stations. Until the rise of the Pan African News Agency, the GNA was considered one of the most efficient news agencies in Africa, spreading what Nkrumah called the "clear ideology of the African Revolution" and contributing to "African and Ghanaian emancipation." Initially operating as a government department, the agency became a state corporation on the day Ghana was declared a republic, in 1960. While in general the Ghanaian media are hailed as relatively free, in 2001 still the