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
Mehr News Agency has become OANA member since 2007, ranked second among the OANA member agencies in number of news and photos published on the organization's website. MNA initiated the OANA flag, and the 50-year-old OANA adopted the flag. MNA has so far signed contracts with more than 18 foreign news agencies including the Japanese Kyodo News Agency, the Spanish EFE, the Chinese Xinhua News Agency, Cuba's official Prensa Latina (PL), the Press Trust of India (PTI), Korea's YONHAP, the Vietnam News Agency (VNA), the Turkish Cihan News Agency, Malaysia's BERNAMA, Indonesia's ANTARA, the Azerbaijani Trend News Agency, Mongolia's MONTSAME, the Syrian Arab