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
TASS TV and radio stations and over a thousand foreign media outlets. The news agency ran one of the biggest networks of correspondents in the world – 682 offices in the country and 94 bureaus abroad, with reporters in 110 countries. At its peak it employed nearly 5000 people including close to 2,000 journalists and photo correspondents. TASS was organized with five Main Editorial Boards for Union Information, Foreign Information, Socialist Countries, Information for Foreign Countries, Photo information, supplemented by a Main Directorate of Communications. In 1961 Ria Novosti was created to supplement TASS, mainly in foreign reporting and human-interest stories.