Operation Mockingbird - The Subversion Of America's Free Press By The CIA by Alex Constantine from Rense.com
Operation Mockingbird -
The Subversion Of America's
Free Press By The CIA
3-24-00
"You
could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred
dollars a month." CIA operative discussing with
Philip Graham, editor
Washington Post, on the availability and prices of journalists willing to
peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories. "Katherine The Great," by
Deborah Davis (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991)
As
terrible as it is to live in a nation where the press in known to be
controlled by the government, at least one has the advantage of knowing the
bias is present, and to adjust for it. In the United States of America, we
are taught from birth that our press is free from such government meddling.
This is an insideous lie about the very nature of the news institution in
this country. One that allows the government to lie to us while denying the
very fact of the lie itself.
The
Alex Constantine Article
Tales
from the Crypt The Depraved Spies and Moguls of the CIA's Operation
MOCKINGBIRD
By
Alex Constantine
Who
Controls the Media?
Soulless
corporations do, of course. Corporations with grinning, double-breasted
executives, interlocking directorates, labor squabbles and flying capital.
Dow. General Electric. Coca-Cola. Disney. Newspapers should have mastheads
that mirror the world: The Westinghouse Evening Scimitar, The
Atlantic-Richfield Intelligentser . It is beginning to dawn on a growing
number of armchair ombudsmen that the public print reports news from a
parallel universe - one that has never heard of politically-motivated
assassinations, CIA-Mafia banking thefts, mind control, death squads or even federal
agencies with secret budgets fattened by cocaine sales - a place overrun by
lone gunmen, where the CIA and Mafia are usually on their best behavior. In
this idyllic land, the most serious infraction an official can commit __is a
the employment of a domestic servant with (shudder) no residency status.
This
unlikely land of enchantment is the creation of MOCKINGBIRD.
It
was conceived in the late 1940s, the most frigid period of the cold war, when
the CIA began a systematic infiltration of the corporate media, a process
that often included direct takeover of major news outlets.
In
this period, the American intelligence services competed with communist
activists abroad to influence European labor unions. With or without the
cooperation of local governments, Frank Wisner, an undercover State
Department official assigned to the Foreign Service, rounded up students
abroad to enter the cold war underground of covert operations on behalf of
his Office of Policy Coordination. Philip Graham, __a graduate of the Army
Intelligence School in Harrisburg, PA, then publisher of the Washington
Post., was taken under Wisner's wing to direct the program code-named
Operation MOCKINGBIRD.
"By
the early 1950s," writes formerVillage Voice reporter Deborah Davis in
Katharine the Great, "Wisner 'owned' respected members of the New York
Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles, plus stringers, four
to six hundred in all, according to a former CIA analyst." The network
was overseen by Allen Dulles, a templar for German and American corporations
who wanted their points of view represented in the public print. Early
MOCKINGBIRD influenced 25 newspapers and wire agencies consenting to act as
organs of CIA propaganda. Many of these were already run by men with
reactionary views, among them William Paley (CBS), C.D. Jackson (Fortune),
Henry Luce (Time) and Arthur Hays Sulzberger (N.Y. Times).
Activists
curious about the workings of MOCKINGBIRD have since been appalled to f__ind
in FOIA documents that agents boasting in CIA office memos of their pride in
having placed "important assets" inside every major news
publication in the country. It was not until 1982 that the Agency openly
admitted that reporters on the CIA payroll have acted as case officers to agents
in the field.
"World
War III has begun," Henry's Luce's Life declared in March, 1947.
"It is in the opening skirmish stage already." The issue featured
an excerpt of a book by James Burnham, who called for the creation of an
"American Empire," "world-dominating in political power, set
up at least in part through coercion (probably including war, but certainly
the threat of war) and in which one group of people ... would hold more than
its equal share of power."
George
Seldes, the famed anti-fascist media critic, drew down on Luce in 1947,
explaining tha__t "although avoiding typical Hitlerian phrases, the same
doctrine of a superior people taking over the world and ruling it, began to
appear in the press, whereas the organs of Wall Street were much more honest
in favoring a doctrine inevitably leading to war if it brought greater
commercial markets under the American flag."
On
the domestic front, an abiding relationship was struck between the CIA and
William Paley, a wartime colonel and the founder of CBS. A firm believer in
"all forms of propaganda" to foster loyalty to the Pentagon, Paley
hired CIA agents to work undercover at the behest of his close friend, the
busy grey eminence of the nation's media, Allen Dulles. Paley's designated
go-between in his dealings with the CIA was Sig Mickelson, president of CBS
News from 1954 to 1961.
The
CIA's assimilation of old guard fascists was overseen by the Operations
Coordination Board, directed by C.D. Jackson, formerly an executive of Time
magazine and Eisenhower's Special Assistant for Cold War Strategy. In 1954 he
was succeeded by Nelson Rockefeller, who quit a year later, disgusted at the
administration's political infighting. Vice President Nixon succeeded
Rockefeller as the key cold war strategist.
"Nixon,"
writes John Loftus, a former attorney for the Justice Department's Office of
Special Investigations, took "a small boy's delight in the arcane tools
of the intelligence craft - the hidden microphones, the 'black'
propaganda." Nixon especially enjoyed his visit to a Virginia training
camp to observe Nazis in the "special forces" drilling at covert
operations.
One
of the fugitives recruited by the American intelligence underground was
heroin smuggler Hubert von Blcher, the son of A German ambassador. Hubert
often bragged that that he was trained by the Abwehr, the German military
intelligence division, while still a civilian in his twenties. He served in a
recon unit of the German Army until forced out for medical reasons in 1944,
according to his wartime records. He worked briefly as an assistant director
for Berlin-Film on a movie entitled One Day ..., and finished out the war
flying with the Luftwaffe, but not to engage the enemy - his mission was the
smuggling of Nazi loot out of the country. His exploits were, in part, the
subject of Sayer and Botting's Nazi Gold, an account of the knockover of the
Reichsbank at the end of the war.
In
1948 he flew the coop to Argentina. Posing as a photographer named Huberto
von Bleucher Corell, he immediately paid court to Eva Peron, presenting her
with an invaluable Gobelin tapestry (a selection from the wealth of artifacts
confiscated by the SS from Europe's Jews?). Hubert then met with Martin
Bormann at the Hotel Plaza to deliver German marks worth $80 million. The
loot financed the birth of the National Socialist Party in Argentina, among
other forms of Nazi revival.
In
1951, Hubert migrated northward and took a job at the Color Corporation of
America in Hollywood. He eked out a living writing scripts for the booming
movie industry. His voice can be heard on a film set in the Amazon, produced
by Walt Disney. Nine years later he returned to Buenos Aires, then Dsseldorf,
West Germany, and established a firm that developed not movie scripts, but
anti-chemical warfare agents for the government. At the Industrie Club in
Dsseldorf in 1982, von Blcher boasted to journalists, "I am chief
shareholder of Pan American Airways. I am the best friend of Howard Hughes.
The Beach Hotel in Las Vegas is 45 percent financed by me. I am thus the
biggest financier ever to appear in the Arabian Nights tales dreamed up by
these people over their second bottle of brandy."
Not
really. Two the biggest financiers to stumble from the drunken dreams of
world-moving affluence were, in their time, Moses Annenberg, publisher of The
Philadelphia Inquirer, and his son Walter , the CIA/mob-anchored publisher of
the TV Guide. Like most American high-rollers, Annenberg lived a double life.
Moses, his father, was a scion of the Capone mob. Both Moses and Walter were
indicted in 1939 for tax evasions totalling many millions of dollars - the
biggest case in the history of the Justice Department. Moses pled guilty and
agreed to pay the government $8 million and settle $9 million in assorted tax
claims, penalties and interest debts. Moses received a three-year sentence.
He died in Lewisburg Penitentiary.
Walter
Annenbeg, the TV Guide magnate, was a lofty Republican. On the campaign trail
in April, 1988, George Bush flew into Los Angeles to woo Reagan's kitchen
cabinet. "This is the topping on the cake," Bush's regional
campaign director told the Los Angeles Times. The Bush team met at
Annenberg's plush Rancho Mirage estate at Sunnylands, California. It was at
the Annenberg mansion that Nixon's cabinet was chosen, and the state's social
and contributor registers built over a quarter-century of state political
dominance by Ronald Reagan, whose acting career was launched by Operation
MOCKINGBIRD.
The
commercialization of television, coinciding with Reagan's recruitment by the
Crusade for Freedom, a CIA front, presented the intelligence world with
unprecedented potential for sowing propaganda and even prying in the age of
Big Brother. George Orwell glimpsed the possibilities when he installed
omniscient video surveillance technology in 1948, a novel rechristened 1984
for the first edition published in the U.S. by Harcourt, Brace. Operation
Octopus, according to federal files, was in full swing by 1948, a
surveillance program that turned any television set with tubes into a
broadcast transmitter. Agents of Octopus could pick up audio and visual
images with the equipment as far as 25 miles away.
Hale
Boggs was investigating Operation Octopus at the time of his disappearance in
the midst of the Watergate probe.
In
1952, at MCA, Actors' Guild president Ronald Reagan - a screen idol recruited
by MOCKINGBIRD's Crusade for Freedom to raise funds for the resettlement of
Nazis in the U.S., according to Loftus - signed a secret waiver of the
conflict-of-interest rule with the mob-controlled studio, in effect granting
it a labor monopoly on early television programming. In exchange, MCA made
Reagan a part owner. Furthermore, historian C. Vann Woodward, writing in the
New York Times, in 1987, reported that Reagan had "fed the names of
suspect people in his organization to the FBI secretly and regularly enough
to be assigned 'an informer's code number, T-10.' His FBI file indicates
intense collaboration with producers to 'purge' the industry of
subversives."
No
one ever turned a suspicious eye on Walter Cronkite, a former intelligence
officer and in the immediate postwar period UPI's Moscow correspondent.
Cronkite was lured to CBS by Operation MOCKINGBIRD's Phil Graham, according
to Deborah Davis.
Another
television conglomerate, Cap Cities, rose like a horror-film simian from CIA
and Mafia heroin operations. Among other organized-crime Republicans, Thomas
Dewey and his neighbor Lowell Thomas threw in to launch the infamous Resorts
International, the corporate front for Lansky's branch of the
federally-sponsored mob family and the corporate precursor to Cap Cities.
Another of the investors was James Crosby, a Cap Cities executive who donated
$100,000 to Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign. This was the year that
Resorts bought into Atlantic City casino interests. Police in New jersey
attempted, with no success, to spike the issuance of a gambling license to
the company, citing Mafia ties.
In
1954, this same circle of investors, all Catholics, founded the broadcasting
company notorious for overt propagandizing and general spookiness. The
company's chief counsel was OSS veteran William Casey, who clung to his
shares by concealing them in a blind trust even after he was appointed CIA director
by Ronald Reagan in 1981.
"Black
radio" was the phrase CIA critic David Wise coined in The Invisible
Government to describe the agency's intertwining interests in the emergence
of the transistor radio with the entrepreneurs who took to the airwaves.
"Daily, East and West beam hundreds of propaganda broadcasts at each
other in an unrelenting babble of competition for the minds of their
listeners. The low-price transistor has given the hidden war a new
importance," enthused one foreign correspondent.
A
Hydra of private foundations sprang up to finance the propaganda push. One of
them, Operations and Policy Research, Inc. (OPR), received hundreds of
thousands of dollars from the CIA through private foundations and trusts. OPR
research was the basis of a television series that aired in New York and
Washington, D.C. in 1964, Of People and Politics, a "study" of the
American political system in 21 weekly installments.
In
Hollywood, the visual cortex of The Beast, the same CIA/Mafia combination
that formed Cap Cities sank its claws into the film studios and labor unions.
Johnny Rosselli was pulled out of the Army during the war by a criminal
investigation of Chicago mobsters in the film industry. Rosselli, a CIA asset
probably assassinated by the CIA, played sidekick to Harry Cohn, the Columbia
Pictures mogul who visited Italy's Benito Mussolini in 1933, and upon his
return to Hollywood remodeled his office after the dictator's. The only
honest job Rosselli ever had was assistant purchasing agent (and a secret
investor) at Eagle Lion productions, run by Bryan Foy, a former producer for
20th Century Fox. Rosselli, Capone's representative on the West Coast, passed
a small fortune in mafia investments to Cohn. Bugsy Seigel pooled gambling
investments with Billy Wilkerson, publisher of the Hollywood Reporter.
In
the 1950s, outlays for global propaganda climbed to a full third of the CIA's
covert operations budget. Some 3, 000 salaried and contract CIA employees
were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts. The cost of disinforming the
world cost American taxpayers an estimated $265 million a year by 1978, a
budget larger than the combined expenditures of Reuters, UPI and the AP news
syndicates.
In
1977, the Copely News Service admitted that it worked closely with the
intelligence services - in fact, 23 employees were full-time employees of the
Agency.
Most
consumers of the corporate media were - and are - unaware of the effect that
the salting of public opinion has on their own beliefs. A network anchorman
in time of national crisis is an instrument of psychological warfare in the
MOCKINGBIRD media. He is a creature from the national security sector's
chamber of horrors. For this reason consumers of the corporate press have
reason to examine their basic beliefs about government and life in the
parallel universe of these United States.
How
the Washington Post Censors the News
[Note:
Look for the paragraph indicated by asterisks]
How
the Washington Post Censors the News
A
Letter to the Washington Post by Julian C. Holmes ________________
April
25, 1992 Richard Harwood, Ombudsman The Washington Post 1150 15th Street NW
Washington, DC 20071
Dear
Mr. Harwood,
Though
the Washington Post does not over-extend itself in the pursuit of hard news,
just let drop the faintest rumor of a government "conspiracy", and
a klaxon horn goes off in the news room. Aroused from apathy in the daily
routine of reporting assignations and various other political and social
sports events, editors and reporters scramble to the phones. The klaxon
screams its warning: the greatest single threat to herd-journalism, corporate
profits, and government stability -- the dreaded "CONSPIRACY
THEORY"!!
It
is not known whether anyone has actually been hassled or accosted by any of
these frightful spectres, but their presence is announced to Post readers
with a salvo of warnings to avoid the tricky, sticky webs spun by the wacko
"CONSPIRACY THEORISTS".
Recall
how the Post saved us from the truth about Iran-Contra.
Professional
conspiracy exorcist Mark Hosenball was hired to ridicule the idea that Oliver
North and his CIA-associated gangsters had conspired to do wrong (*1). And
when, in their syndicated column, Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta discussed some
of the conspirators, the Post sprang to protect its readers, and the
conspirators, by censoring the Anderson column before printing it (*2).
But
for some time the lid had been coming off the Iran-Contra conspiracy. In
1986, the Christic Institute, an interfaith center for law and public policy,
had filed a lawsuit alleging a U.S. arms-for-drugs trade that helped keep
weapons flowing to the CIA-Contra army in Nicaragua, and cocaine flowing to
U.S. markets (*3). In 1988 Leslie Cockburn published Out of Control, a
seminal work on our bizarre, illegal war against Nicaragua (*4). The Post
contributed to this discovery process by disparaging the charges of
conspiracy and by publishing false information about the drug-smuggling
evidence presented to the House Subcommittee on Narcotics Abuse and Control.
When accused by Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY). of misleading
reporting, the Post printed only a partial correction and declined to print a
letter of complaint from Rangel (*5).
Sworn
testimony before Senator John Kerry's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics,
and International Operations confirmed U.S. Government complicity in the drug
trade (*6). With its coverup of the arms/drug conspiracy evaporating, the
ever-accommodating Post shifted gears and retained Hosenball to exorcise from
our minds a newly emerging threat to domestic tranquility, the "October
Surprise" conspiracy (*7). But close on the heels of Hosenball and the
Post came Barbara Honegger and then Gary Sick who authored independently, two
years apart, books with the same title, "October Surprise" (*8).
Honegger was a member of the Reagan/Bush campaign and transition teams in
1980. Gary Sick, professor of Middle East Politics at Columbia University,
was on the staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Ford,
Carter, and Reagan. In 1989 and 1991 respectively, Honegger and Sick
published their evidence of how the Republicans made a deal to supply arms to
Iran if Iran would delay release of the 52 United States hostages until after
the November 1980 election. The purpose of this deal was to quash the
possibility of a pre-election release(an October surprise). which would have
bolstered the reelection prospects for President Carter.
Others
published details of this alleged Reagan-Bush conspiracy. In October 1988,
Playboy Magazine ran an expose "An Election Held Hostage";
FRONTLINE did another in April 1991 (*9). In June, 1991 a conference of
distinguished journalists, joined by 8 of the former hostages, challenged the
Congress to "make a full, impartial investigation" of the
election/hostage allegations. The Post reported the statement of the
hostages, but not a word of the conference itself which was held in the
Dirksen Senate Office Building Auditorium (*10). On February 5, 1992 a
gun-shy, uninspired House of Representatives begrudgingly authorized an
"October Surprise" investigation by a task force of 13 congressmen
headed by Lee Hamilton (D-IN). who had chaired the House of Representatives
Iran-Contra Committee. Hamilton has named as chief team counsel Larry
Barcella, a lawyer who represented BCCI when the Bank was indicted in 1988
(*11).
Like
the Washington Post, Hamilton had not shown interest in pursuing the U.S.
arms-for-drugs operation (*12). He had accepted Oliver North's lies,and as
Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee he derailed House Resolution 485
which had asked President Reagan to answer questions about Contra support
activities of government officials and others (*13). After CIA operative John
Hull
(from Hamilton's home state). was charged in Costa Rica with
"international drug trafficking and hostile acts against the nation's
security", Hamilton and 18 fellow members of Congress tried to
intimidate Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez into handling Hull's
case "in a manner that will not complicate U.S.-Costa Rican
relations" (*14). The Post did not report the Hamilton letter or the
Costa Rican response that declared Hull's case to be "in as good hands
as our 100 year old uninterrupted democracy can provide to all citizens"
(*15).
Though
the Post does its best to guide our thinking away from conspiracy theories,
it is difficult to avoid the fact that so much wrongdoing involves government
or corporate conspiracies:
In
its COINTELPRO operation, the FBI used disinformation, forgery, surveillance,
false arrests, and violence to illegally harass U.S.citizens in the 60's
(*16).
The
CIA's Operation MONGOOSE illegally sabotaged Cuba by "destroying crops,
brutalizing citizens, destabilizing the society, and conspiring with the
Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro and other leaders" (*17).
"Standard
Oil of New Jersey was found by the Antitrust Division of the Department of
Justice to be conspiring with I.G.Farben...of Germany. ...By its cartel
agreements with Standard Oil, the United States was effectively prevented
from developing or producing [fo rWorld War-II] any substantial amount of
synthetic rubber," said Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin (*18).
U.S.
Government agencies knowingly withheld information about dosages of radiation
"almost certain to produce thyroid abnormalities or cancer" that
contaminated people residing near the nuclear weapons factory at Hanford,
Washington (*19).
Various
branches of Government deliberately drag their feet in getting around to
cleaning up the Nation's dangerous nuclear weapons sites (*20). State and
local governments back the nuclear industry's secret public relations
strategy (*21).
"The
National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society and some twenty
comprehensive cancer centers, have misled and confused the public and
Congress by repeated claims that we are winning the war against cancer. In
fact, the cancer establishment has continually minimized the evidence for
increasing cancer rates which it has largely attributed to smoking and
dietary fat, while discounting or ignoring the causal role of avoidable
eposures to industrial carcinogens in the air, food, water, and the
workplace." (*22).
The
Bush Administration coverup of its pre-Gulf-War support of Iraq "is yet
another example of the President's people conspiring to keep both Congress
and the American people in the dark" (*23).
If
you think about it, conspiracy is a fundamental aspect of doing business in
this country.
Take
the systematic and cooperative censorship of the Persian Gulf War by the
Pentagon and much of the news media (*24).
Or
the widespread plans of business and government groups to spend $100 million
in taxes to promote a distorted and truncated history of Columbus in America
(*25). along the lines of the Smithsonian Institution's "fusion of the
two worlds", (*26). rather than examining more realistic aspects of the
Spanish invasion, like "anger, cruelty, gold, terror, and death"
(*27).
Or
circumstances surrounding the U.S. Justice Department theft from the INSLAW
company of sophisticated, law-enforcement computer software which "now
point to a widespread conspiracy implicating lesser Government officials in
the theft of INSLAW's technology", says former U.S. Attorney General
Elliot Richardson (*28).
Or
Watergate.
Or
the "largest bank fraud in world financial history" (*29), where
the White House knew of the criminal activities at "the Bank of Crooks
and Criminals International" (BCCI) (*30), where U.S. intelligence
agencies did their secret banking (*31), and where bribery of prominent
American public officials "was a way of doing business" (*32).
Or
the 1949 conviction of "GM [General Motors], Standard Oil of California,
Firestone, and E. Roy Fitzgerald, among others, for criminally conspiring to
replace electric transportation with gas- and diesel-powered buses and to
monopolize the sale of buses and related products to transportation companies
throughout the country" [in, among others, the cities of New York,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, Oakland, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles]
(*33).
Or
the collusion in 1973 between Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-CT). and the U.S.
Department of Transportation to overlook safety defects in the 1.2 million
Corvair automobiles manufactured by General Motors in the early 60's (*34).
Or
the A. H. Robins Company, which manufactured the Dalkon Shield intrauterine
contraceptive, and which ignored repeated warnings of the Shield's hazards
and which "stonewalled, deceived, covered up, and
covered
up the coverups...[thus inflicting] on women a worldwide epidemic of pelvic
infections." (*35).
Or
that cooperation between McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Company and the FAA
resulted in failure to enforce regulations regarding the unsafe DC-10 cargo
door which failed in flight killing all 364 passengers on Turkish Airlines
Flight 981 on March 3, 1974 (*36).
Or
the now-banned, cancer-producing pregnancy drug Diethylstilbestrol (DES).
that was sold by manufacturers who ignored tests which showed DES to be
carcinogenic; and who acted "in concert with each other in the testing
and marketing of DES for miscarriage purposes" (*37).
Or
the conspiracies among bankers and speculators, with the cooperation of a
corrupted Congress, to relieve depositors of their savings. This
"arrogant disregard from the White House, Congress and corporate world
for the interests and rights of the American people" will cost U.S.
tapayers many hundreds of billions of dollars (*38).
Or
the Westinghouse, Allis Chalmers,Federal Pacific, and General Electric
executives who met surreptitiously in hotel rooms to fix prices and eliminate
competition on heavy industrial equipment (*39).
Or
the convictions of Industrial Biotest Laboratories (IBT). officers for
fabricating safety tests on prescription drugs (*40).
Or
the conspiracy by the asbestos industry to suppress knowledge of medical
problemsrelating to asbestos (*41).
Or
the 1928 Achnacarry Agreement through which oil companies "agreed not to
engage in any effective price competition" (*42).
Or
the conspiracy among U.S. Government agencies and the Congress to cover up
the nature of our decades-old war against the people of Nicaragua
a
covert war that continues in 1992 with the U.S. Government applying pressure
for the Nicaraguan police to reorganize into a more repressive force (*43).
Or
the conspiracy by the CIA and the U.S. Government to interfere in the Chilean
election process with military aid, covert actions, and an economic boycott
which culminated in the overthrow of the legitimately elected government and
the assassination of President Salvador Allende in 1973 (*44).
Or
the conspiracy among U.S. officials including Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
and CIA Director William Colby to finance terrorism in Angola for the purpose
of disrupting Angola's plans for peaceful elections in October 1975, and to
lie about these actions to the Congress and the news media (*45). And CIA
Director George Bush's subsequent cover up of this U.S.-sponsored terrorism
(*46).
Or
President George Bush's consorting with the Pentagon to invade Panama in 1989
and thereby violate the Constitution of the United States, the U.N. Charter,
the O.A.S. Charter, and the Panama Canal Treaties (*47).
Or
the "gross antitrust violations" (*48) and the conspiracy of
American oil companies and the British and U.S. governments to strangle Iran
economically after Iran nationalized the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company in 1951. And the subsequent overthrow by the CIA in 1953 of Iranian
Prime Minister Muhammed Mossadegh (*49).
Or
the CIA-planned assassination of Congo head-of-state Patrice Lumumba (*50).
Or
the deliberate and wilful efforts of President George Bush, Senator Robert
Dole, Senator George Mitchell, various U.S. Government agencies, and members
of both Houses of the Congress to buy the 1990 Nicaraguan national elections
for the presidential candidate supported by President Bush (*51).
Or
the collective approval by 64 U.S. Senators of Robert Gates to head the CIA,
in the face of "unmistakable evidence that Gates lied about his role in
the Iran-Contra scandal" (*52).
Or
"How Reagan and the Pope Conspired to Assist Poland's Solidarity
Movement and Hasten the Demise of Communism" (*53).
Or
how the Reagan Administration connived with the Vatican to ban the use of
USAID funds by any country "for the promotion of birth control or
abortion" (*54).
Or
"the way the Vatican and Washington colluded to achieve common purpose
in Central America" (*55).
Or
the collaboration of Guatemalan strong-man and mass murderer Hector Gramajo
with the U.S. Army to design "programs to build civilian-military
cooperation" at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort
Benning, Georgia; five of the nine soldiers accused in the 1989 Jesuit
massacre in El Salvador are graduates of SOA which trains Latin/American
military personnel (*56).
Or
the conspiracy of the Comanche Peak Nuclear Plant administration to harass and
cause bodily harm to whistleblower Linda Porter who uncovered dangerous
working conditions at the facility (*57).
Or
the conspiracy of President Richard Nxion and the Government of South Vietnam
to delay the Paris Peace Talks until after the 1968 U.S. presidential
election (*58).
Or
the pandemic coverups of police violence (*59).
Or
the always safe-to-cite worldwide communist conspiracy (*60).
Or
maybe the socially responsible, secret consortium to publish The Satanic
Verses in paperback (*61).
Conspiracies
are obviously a way to get things done, and the Washington Post offers little
comment unless conspiracy theorizing threatens to expose a really important
conspiracy that, let's say, benefits big business or big government.
Such
a conspiracy would be like our benevolent CIA's 1953 overthrow of the Iranian
government to help out U.S. oil companies; or like our illegal war against
Panama to tighten U.S. control over Panama and the Canal; or like monopoly
control of broadcasting that facilitates corporate censorship on issues of
public importance (*62). When the camouflage of such conspiracies is stripped
away, public confidence in the conspiring officials can erode -- depending on
how seriously the citizenry perceives the conspiracy to have violated the
public trust. Erosion of public trust in the status quo is what the Post
seems to see as a real threat to its corporate security.
Currently,
the Post has mounted vituperative, frenzied attacks on Oliver Stone's movie
"JFK", which reexamines the U.S. Government's official (Warren
Commission. finding that a single gunman, acting alone, killed President John
F. Kennedy. The movie also is the story of New Orleans District Attorney Jim
Garrison's unsuccessful prosecution of Clay Shaw, the only person ever tried
in connection with the assassination. And the movie proposes that the Kennedy
assassination was the work of conspirators whose interests would not be
served by a president who, had he lived, might have disengaged us from our
war against Vietnam.
The
Post ridicules a reexamination of the Kennedy assassination along lines
suggested by "JFK". Senior Post journalists like Charles
Krauthammer, Ken Ringle, George Will, Phil McCombs, and Michael Isikoff, have
been called up to man the bulwarks against public sentiment which has never
supported the government's non-conspiratorial assassination thesis. In spite
of the facts that the Senate Intelligence Committee of 1975 and 1976 found
that "both the FBI and CIA had repeatedly lied to the Warren
Commission" (*63) and that the 1979 Report of the House Select Committee
on Assassinations found that President Kennedy was probably killed "as a
result of a conspiracy" (*64), a truly astounding number of Post stories
have been used as vehicles to discredit "JFK" as just another
conspiracy (*65).
Some
of the more vicious attacks on the movie are by editor Stephen Rosenfeld, and
journalists Richard Cohen, George Will, and George Lardner Jr (*66). They
ridicule the idea that Kennedy could have had second thoughts about
escalating the Vietnam War and declaim that there is no historical
justification for this idea. Seasoned journalist Peter Dale Scott, former
Pentagon/CIA liaison chief L. Fletcher Prouty, and investigators David Scheim
and John Newman have each authored defense of the "JFK" thesis that
Kennedy was not enthusiastic about staying in Vietnam (*67). But the Post
team just continues ranting against the possibility of a high-level
assassination conspiracy while offering little justification for its
arguments.
An
example of particularly shabby scholarship and unacceptable behavior is
George Lardner Jr's contribution to the Post's campaign against the movie.
Lardner wrote three articles, two before the movie was completed, and the
third upon its release. In May, six months before the movie came out, Lardner
obtained a copy of the first draft of the script and, contrary to accepted
standards, revealed in the Post the contents of this copyrighted movie (*68).
Also in this article, (*69). Lardner discredits Jim Garrison with hostile
statements from a former Garrison associate Pershing Gervais. Lardner does
not tell the reader that subsequent to the Clay Shaw trial, in a U.S.
Government criminal action brought against Garrison, Government witness
Gervais, who helped set up Garrison for prosecution, admitted under oath that
in a May 1972 interview with a New Orleans television reporter, he, Gervais,
had said that the U.S. Government's case against Garrison was a fraud (*70).
The Post's 1973 account of the Garrison acquittal mentions this controversy,
but when I recently asked Lardner about this, he was not clear as to whether
he remembered it (*71).
Two
weeks after his first "JFK" article, Lardner blustered his way
through a justification for his unauthorized possession of the early draft
ofthe movie (*72). He also defended his reference to Pershing Gervais by
lashing out at Garrison as a writer "of gothic fiction".
When
the movie was released in December, Lardner "reviewed" it (*73). He
again ridiculed the film's thesis that following the Kennedy assassination,
President Johnson reversed Kennedy's plans to de-escalate the Vietnam War.
Lardner cited a memorandum issued by Johnson four days after Kennedy died.
Lardner says this memorandum was written before the assassination, and that
it "was a continuation of Kennedy's policy". In fact, the
memorandum was drafted the day before the assassination by McGeorge Bundy
(Kennedy's Assistant for National Security Affairs) Kennedy was in Texas, and
may never have seen it. Following the assassination, it was rewritten; and
the final version provided for escalating the war against Vietnam (*74) --
facts that Lardner avoided.
The
Post's crusade against exposing conspiracies is blatantly dishonest:
The
Warren Commission inquiry into the Kennedy Assassination was for the most
part conducted in secret. This fact is buried in the Post (*75). Nor do
current readers of this newspaper find meaningful discussion of the Warren
Commission's secret doubts about both the FBI and the CIA (*76). Or of a
dispatch from CIA headquarters instructing co-conspirators at field stations
to counteract the "new wave of books and articles criticizing the
[Warren] Commission's findings...[and] conspiracy theories ...[that] have
frequently thrown suspicion on our organization" and to "discuss
the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts, especially
politicians and editors "and to "employ propaganda assets to answer
and refute the attacks of the critics. ...Book reviews and feature articles
are particularly appropriate for this purpose. ...The aim of this dispatch is
to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the
conspiracy theorists..." (*77).
In
1979, Washington journalist Deborah Davis published Katharine The Great, the
story of Post publisher Katharine Graham and her newspaper's close ties with
Washington's powerful elite, a number of whom were with the CIA.
Particularly
irksome to Post editor Benjamin Bradlee was a Davis claim that Bradlee had
"produced CIA material" (*78). Understandably sensitive about this
kind of publicity, Bradlee told Davis' publisher Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
,"Miss Davis is lying ...I never produced CIA material ...what I can do
is to brand Miss Davis as a fool and to put your company in that special
little group of publishers who don't give a shit for the truth". The
Post bullied HBJ into recalling the book; HBJ shredded 20,000 copies; Davis
sued HBJ for breach of contract and damage to reputation; HBJ settled out of
court; and Davis published her book elsewhere with an appendix that
demonstrated Bradlee to have been deeply involved with producing cold-war/CIA
propaganda (*79). Bradlee still says the allegations about his association
with people in the CIA are false, but he has apparently taken no action to
contest the xetensive documentation presented by Deborah Davis in the second
and third editions of her book (*80).
And
it's not as if the Post were new to conspiracy work.
**************************
Former
Washington Post publisher Philip Graham "believing that the function of
the press was more often than not to mobilize consent for the policies of the
government, was one of the architects of what became a widespread
practice:the use and manipulation of journalists by the CIA" (*81). This
scandal was known by its code name Operation MOCKINGBIRD. Former Washington
Post reporter Carl Bernstein cites a former CIA deputy director as saying,
"It was widely known that Phil Graham was someone you could get help
from" (*82). More recently the Post provided cover for CIA personality
Joseph Fernandez by "refusing to print his name for over a year up until
the day his indictmen twas announced ...for crimes committed in his official
capacity as CIA station chief in Costa Rica" (*83).
******************
Of
the meetings between Graham and his CIA acquaintances at which the
availability and prices of journalists were discussed, a former CIA man
recalls, "You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for
a couple hundred dollars a month" (*84). One may wish to consider Philip
Graham's philosophy along with a more recent statement from his wife
Katharine Graham, current Chairman of the Board of the Washington Post. In a
lecture on terrorism and the news media, Mrs. Graham said: "A second
challenge facing the media is how to prevent terrorists from using the media
as a platform fortheir views. ... The point is that we generally know when we
are being manipulated, and we've learned better how and where to draw the
line, though the decisions are often difficult" (*85).
Today,
the Post and its world of big business are apparently terrified that our
elite and our high-level public officials may be exposed as conspirators
behind Contra drug-smuggling, October Surprise, or the assassination of
President Kennedy. This fear is truly remarkable in that, like most of us and
like most institutions, the Post runs its business as a conspiracy of
like-minded entrepreneurs -- a conspiracy "to act or work together
toward the same result or goal" (*86). But where the Post really parts
company from just plain people is when it pretends that conspiracies
associated with big business or government are "coincidence". Post
reporter Lardner vents the frustration inherent in having to maintain this
dichotomy. He lashes out at Oliver Stone and suggests that Stone may actually
believe that the Post's opposition to Stone's movie is a
"conspiracy". Lardner assures us that Stone's complaints are
"groundless and paranoid and smack of McCarthyism" (*87).
So
how does the Post justify devoting so much energy to ridiculing those who
investigate conspiracies?
The
Post has answers: people revert to conspiracy theories because they need
something "neat and tidy" (*88) that "plugs a gap no other
generally accepted theory fills', (*89. and "coincidence ...is always
the safest and most likely explanation for any conjunction of curious
circumstances ..." (*90).
And
what does this response mean? It means that "coincidence theory" is
what the Post espouses when it would prefer not to admit to a conspiracy. In
other words, some things just "happen". And, besides, conspiracy to
do certain things would be a crime; "coincidence" is a safer bet.
Post
Ombudsman Richard Harwood, who, it is rumored, serves as Executive Director
of the Benevolent Protective Order of Coincidence Theorists, (*91) recently
issued a warning about presidential candidates "who have begun to mutter
about a press conspiracy". Ordinarily, Harwood would simply dismiss
these charges as "symptoms of the media paranoia that quadrennially
engulfs members of the American political class" (*92). But a fatal
mistake was made by the mutterers; they used the "C" word against
the PRESS! And Harwood exploded his off-the-cuff comment into an entire
column -- ending it with:"We are the new journalists, immersed too long,
perhaps, in the cleansing waters of political conformity. But conspirators we
ain't".
Distinguished
investigative journalist Morton Mintz, a 29-year veteran of the Washington
Post, now chairs the Fund for Investigative Journalism. In the December issue
of The Progressive, Mintz wrote "A Reporter Looks Back in Anger -- Why
the Media Cover Up Corporate Crime". Therein he discussed the
difficulties in convincing editors to accept important news stories. He
illustrated the article with his own experiences at the Post, where he says
he was known as "the biggest pain in the ass in the office" (*93).
Would
Harwood argue that grief endured by journalists at the hands of editors is a
matter of random coincidence?
And
that such policy as Mintz described is made independently by editors without
influence from fellow editors or from management? Would Harwood have us
believe that at the countless office "meetings" in which news
people are ever in attendance, there is no discussion of which stories will
run and which ones will find inadequate space? That there is no advanced
planning for stories or that there are no cooperative efforts among the
staff? Or that in the face of our news-media "grayout" of
presidential candidate Larry Agran, (*94) a Post journalist would be free to
give news space to candidate Agran equal to that the Post lavishes on
candidate Clinton? Let's face it: these possibilities are about as likely as
Barbara Bush entertaining guests at a soup kitchen.
Would
Harwood have us believe that media critic and former Post Ombudsman Ben
Bagdikian is telling less than the truth in his account of wire-service
control over news: "The largely anonymous men who control the syndicate
and wire service copy desks and the central wire photo machines determine at
a single decision what millions will see and hear. ...there seems to be
little doubt that these gatekeepers preside over an operation in which an appalling
amount of press agentry sneaks in the back door of American journalism and
marches untouched out the front door as 'news'" (*95).
When
he sat on the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington, Judge Clarence
Thomas violated U.S. law when he failed to remove himself from a case in
which he then proceeded to reverse a $10 million judgment against the Ralston
Purina Company (*96). Ralston Purina, the animal feed empire, is the family
fortune of Thomas' mentor, Senator John Danforth. The Post limited its
coverage of the Thomas malfeasance to 56 words buried in the middle of a
1200-word article (*97). Would Harwood have us believe that the almost
complete blackout on this matter by the major news media and the U.S. Senate
was a matter of coincidence? Could a Post reporter have written a story about
Ralston Purina if she had wanted to? Can a brick swim?
Or
take the fine report produced last September by Ralph Nader's Public Citizen.
Titled All the Vice President's Men, it documents "How the Quayle Council
on Competitiveness Secretly Undermines Health, Safety, and Environmental
Programs". Three months later, Post journalists David Broder and Bob
Woodward published "The President's Understudy", a seven-part
series on Vice President Quayle. Although this series does address Quayle's
role with the Competitiveness Council, its handling of the Council's
disastrous impact on America is inadequate. It is 40,000 words of mostly
aimless chatter about Quayle memorabilia: youth, family, college record,
Christianity, political aspirations, intellectual aspirations, wealthy
friends, government associates, golf, travels, wife Marilyn, and net worth --
revealing little about Quayle's abilities, his understanding of society's
problems, or his thoughts about justice and freedom, and never mentioning the
comprehensive Nader study of Quayle's record in the Bush Administration
(*98).
Now,
did Broder or did Woodward forget about the Nader study? Or did both of them
forget? Or did one, or the other, or both decide not to mention it? Did these
two celebrated, seasoned Post reporters ever discuss together their jointly
authored stories? Did they decide to publish such a barren set of articles
because it would enhance their reputations? How did management feel about the
use of precious news space for such frivolity? Is it possible that so many
pages were dedicated to this twaddle without people "acting or working
together toward the same result or goal"? (*99) Do crocodiles fly?
On
March 20, front-page headlines in the Wall Street Journal, the New York
Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post read respectively:
TSONGAS
DROPPED OUT OF THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE CLEARING CLINTON'S PATH
TSONGAS
ABANDONS CAMPAIGN LEAVING CLINTON CLEAR PATH TOWARD SHOWDOWN WITH BUSH
TSONGAS
CLEARS WAY FOR CLINTON
TSONGAS
EXIT CLEARS WAY FOR CLINTON
This
display of editorial independence should at least raise questions of whether
the news media collective mindset is really different from that of any other
cartel -- like oil, diamond, energy, (*100) or manufacturing cartels, a
cartel being "a combination of independent commercial enterprises
designed to limit competition" (*101).
The
Washington Post editorial page carries the heading:
AN
INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Is
it? Of course not. There probably is no such thing. Does the Post
"conspire" to keep its staff and its newspaper from wandering too
far from the safety of mediocrity? The Post would respond that the question
is absurd. In that I am not privy to the Post's telephone conversations, I
can only speculate on how closely the media elite must monitor the staff. But
we all know how few micro-seconds it takes a new reporter to learn what
subjects are taboo and what are "safe", and that experienced
reporters don't have to ask.
What
is more important, however, than speculating about how the Post communicates
within its own corporate structure and with other members of the cartel, is
to document and publicize what the Post does in public, namely, how it shapes
and censors the news.
Sincerely,
Julian
C. Holmes
Copies
to: Public-spirited citizens, both inside and outside the news media, And -
maybe a few others.
_______________________
Notes
to Letter of April 25, 1992:
1.
Mark Hosenball, "The Ultimate Conspiracy", Washington Post,
September 11, 1988, p.C1
2a.
Julian Holmes, Letter to Washington Post Ombudsman Richard Harwood, June
4,1991. Notes that the Post censored, from the Anderson/Van Atta column,
references to the Christic Institute and to Robert Gates.
2b.
Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta, "Iran-Contra Figure Dodges
Extradition", Washington Merry-Go-Round, United Feature Syndicate, May
26, 1991. This is the column submitted to the Post (see note 2a)..
2c.
Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta, "The Man Washington Doesn't Want to
Extradite", Washington Post, May 26, 1991. The column (see note 2b). as
it appeared in the Post (see note 2a)..
3a.
Case No. 86-1146-CIV-KING, Amended Complaint for RICO Conspiracy, etc.,
United States District Court, Southern District of Florida, Tony Avirgan and
Martha Honey v. John Hull et al., October 3, 1986.
3b.
Vince Bielski and Dennis Bernstein, "Reports: Contras Send Drugs to
U.S.", Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 16, 1986.
3c.
Neal Matthews, "I Ran Drugs for Uncle Sam" (based on interviews
with Robert Plumlee, contra resupply pilot)., San Diego Reader, April 5,
1990.
4.
Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987.
5a.
Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, University
ofCalifornia Press, 1991, p.179-181.
5b.
David S. Hilzenrath, "Hill Panel Finds No Evidence Linking Contras to
Drug Smuggling", Washington Post, July 22, 1987, p.A07.
5c.
Partial correction to the Washington Post of July 22, Washington Post, July
24,1987, p.A3.
5d.
The Washington Post declined to publish SubCommittee Chairman Rangel's
Letter- to-the-Editor of July 22, 1987. It was printed in the Congressional
Record on August 6, 1987, p.E3296-7.
6a.
Michael Kranish, "Kerry Says US Turned Blind Eye to Contra-Drug
Trail", Boston Globe, April 10, 1988.
6b.
Mary McGrory, "The Contra-Drug Stink", Washington Post, April 10,
1988, p.B1. 6c. Robert Parry with Rod Nordland, "Guns for Drugs? Senate
Probers Trace an Old Contra Connection to George Bush's Office",
Newsweek, May 23, 1988, p.22.
6d.
Dennis Bernstein, "Iran-Contra -- The Coverup Continues", The
Progressive, November 1988, p.24.
6e.
"Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy", A Report Prepared by
the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the
Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, December 1988.
7a.
Mark Hosenball, "If It's October ... Then It's Time for an Iranian
Conspiracy Theory", Washington Post, October 9, 1988, p.D1.
7b.
Mark Hosenball, "October Surprise! Redux! The Latest Version of the 1980
'Hostage- Deal' Story Is Still Full of Holes", Washington Post, April
21, 1991,p.B2.
8a.
Barbara Honegger, October Surprise, New York: Tudor, 1989.
8b.
Gary Sick, October Surprise, New York: Times Books, Random House, 1991.
9a.
Abbie Hoffman and Jonathan Silvers, "An Election Held Hostage",
Playboy, October 1988, p.73.
9b.
Robert Parry and Robert Ross, "The Election Held Hostage",
FRONTLINE, WGBH-TV,April 16, 1991.
10a.
Reuter, "Ex-Hostages Seek Probe By Congress", Washington Post, June
14,1991,p.A4.
10b.
"An Election Held Hostage?", Conference, Dirksen Senate Office
Building Auditorium, Washington DC, June 13, 1991; Sponsored by The Fund For
New Priorities in America, 171 Madison Avenue, New York, NY, 10016.
11a.
David Brown and Guy Gugliotta, "House Approves Inquiry Into
'OctoberSurprise'", Washington Post, February 6, 1992, p.A11.
11b.
Jack Colhoun, "Lawmakers Lose Nerve on October Surprise", The
Guardian, December 11, 1991, p.7.
11c.
Jack Colhoun, "October Surprise Probe Taps BCCI Lawyer", The
Guardian, February 26, 1992, p.3.
12.
See note 5a, p.180-1.
13a.
See note 4, p.229, 240-1.
13b.
Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair,
Senate Report No. 100-216, House Report No. 100-433, November 1987,
p.139-141.
14a.
Letter to His Excellency Oscar Arias Sanchez, President of the Republic of
Costa Rica; from Members of the U.S. Congress David Dreier, Lee Hamilton,
Dave McCurdy, Dan Burton, Mary Rose Oakar, Jim Bunning, Frank McCloskey, Cass
Ballenger, Peter Kostmayer, Jim Bates, Douglas Bosco, James Inhofe, Thomas
Foglietta, Rod Chandler, Ike Skelton, Howard Wolpe, Gary Ackerman, Robert
Lagomarsino, and Bob McEwen; January 26, 1989.
14b.
Peter Brennan, "Costa Rica Considers Seeking Contra Backer in U.S. --
Indiana Native Wanted on Murder Charge in 1984 Bomb Attack in
Nicaragua", WashingtonPost, February 1, 1990.
15.
Press Release from the Costa Rican Embassy, Washington DC, On the Case of the
Imprisonment of Costa Rican Citizen John Hull", February 6, 1989.
16.
Brian Glick, War at Home, Boston: South End Press, 1989.
17.
John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard-- The U.S. Role in the New World Order,
Boston: South End Press, 1991, p.121.
18.
Hearings Before the Committee on Patents, United States Senate, 77th Cong.,
2nd Session (1942)., part I, as cited in Joseph Borkin, The Crime and
Punishment of I.G. Farben, New York: The Free Press, Macmillan, 1978, p.93.
19.
R. Jeffrey Smith, "Study of A-Plant Neighbors' Health Urged",
Washington Post, July 13, 1990, p.A6.
20.
Tom Horton, "A Cost Higher Than the Peace Dividend -- Price Tag Mounts
to Clean Up Nuclear Weapons Sites", Baltimore Sun, February 23, 1992,
p.1K.
21.
"The Nuclear Industry's Secret PR Strategy", EXTRA!, March 1992,
p.15.
22a.
Samuel S. Epstein, MD et al, Losing the War Against Cancer: Need for
PublicPolicy Reform", Congressional Record, April 2, 1992, p.E947-9.
22b.
Samuel S. Epstein, "The Cancer Establishment", Washington Post,
March 10, 1992.
23a.
Hon. Henry B. Gonzalez, "Efforts to Thwart Investigation of the BNL
Scandal", Congressional Record, March 30, 1992, p.H2005-2014.
23b.
Hon. David E. Skaggs (CO)., White House Spin Control on Pre-War Iraq
Policy", Congressional Record, April 2, 1992, p.H2285.
23c.
Nicholas Rostow, Special Assistant to the President and Legal Adviser,
Memorandum to Jeanne S. Archibald et al, "Meeting on congressional
requests for information and documents", April 8, 1991; Congressional
Record, April 2, 1992,p.H2285.
24a.
Michio Kaku, "Operation Desert Lie: Pentagon Confesses", The
Guardian,
March11, 1992, p.4.
24b.
J. Max Robins, "NBC's Unaired Iraq Tapes Not a Black and White
Case", Variety Magazine, March 4, 1991, p.25.
25.
Emory R. Searcy Jr., Clergy and Laity Concerned, Spring 1991 Letter
to"Friends", p.1.
26.
Jean Dimeo, "Selling Hispanics on Columbus -- Luis Vasquez-Ajmac Is
Hired to Promote Smithsonian Project", Washington Post, November 18,
1991, p.Bus.8.
27.
Hans Koning, "Teach the Truth About Columbus", Washington Post,
September 3,1991, p.A19.
28a.
James Kilpatrick, "Software-Piracy Case Emitting Big Stench", St.
Louis Post/Dispatch, March 18, 1991, p.3B. Elliot L. Richardson, "A
High-Tech Watergate", New York Times, October 21,1991.
29.
"BCCI -- NBC Sunday Today", February 23, 1992, p.12; transcript
prepared by Burrelle's Information Services. The quote is from New York
District Attorney Robert Morgenthau who is running his own independent
investigation of BCCI.
30.
Norman Bailey, former Reagan White House intelligence analyst; from an
interview with Mark Rosenthal of NBC News. See note 29, p.5.
31.
Jack Colhoun, "BCCI Skeletons Haunting Bush's Closet", The
Guardian, September 18, 1991, p.9.
32.
Robert Morgenthau. See note 29, p.10.
33.
Russell Mokhiber, Corporate Crime and Violence, San Francisco: Sierra
ClubBooks, 1989 paperback edition, p.227.
34.
See note 33, p.136-7.
35.
Morton Mintz, At Any Cost: Corporate Greed, Women, and the Dalkon Shield,
NewYork: Pantheon, 1985. As cited in Mokhiber, see note 33, p.157.
36.
See note 33, p.164-171.
37.
See note 33, p.172-180.
38.
Michael Waldman, Who Robbed America?, New York: Random House, 1990. The quote
is from Ralph Nader's Introduction, p.iii.
44.
William Blum, The CIA -- A Forgotten History, London: Zed Books Ltd.,
1986,p.232-243.
45a.
John Stockwell, In Search of Enemies, New York: Norton, 1978.
45b.
See note 44, p.284-291.
46.
See note 17, p.18.
47a.
Letter to President George Bush from The Ad Hoc Committee for Panama (James
Abourezk et al)., January 10, 1990; published in The Nation, February 5,
1990, p.163.
47b.
Philip E. Wheaton, Panama, Trenton NJ: Red Sea Press, 1992, p.145-7.
48a.
Morton Mintz and Jerry S. Cohen, Power, Inc., New York: Bantam Books,
1977,p.521.
48b.
"The International Oil Cartel", Federal Trade Commission, December
2, 1949. Cited in 48a, p.521.
49a.
See note 44, p.67-76.
49b.
See note 48a, p.530-1.
50.
Ralph W. McGehee, Deadly Deceits, New York: Sheridan Square Publications,
1983,p.60.
51.
HR-3385, "An Act to Provide Assistance for Free and Fair Elections in
Nicaragua". Passed the U.S. House of Representatives on October 4, 1989
by avote of 263 to 136, and the Senate on October 17 by a vote of 64 to 35.
52.
Jack Colhoun, "Gates Oozing Trail of Lies, Gets Top CIA Post", The
Guardian,November 20, 1991, p.6.
53.
Carl Bernstein, Time, February 24, 1992, Cover Story p.28-35.
54.
"The U.S. and the Vatican on Birth Control", Time, February 24,
1992, p.35.
55.
"Time's Missing Link: Poland to Latin America", National Catholic
Reporter,February 28, 1992, p.24.
56a.
Jim Lynn, "School of Americas Commander Hopes to Expand Mission",
Benning Patriot, February 21, 1992, p.12.
56b.
Vicky Imerman, "U.S. Army School of the Americas Plans Expansion",
News Release from S.O.A. Watch, P.O. Bo 3330, Columbus, Georgia 31903.
57.
60 MINUTES, CBS, March 8, 1992.
58.
Jack Colhoun, "Tricky Dick's Quick Election Fix", The Guardian,
January 29,1992, p.18.
59a.
Sean P. Murphy, "Several Probes May Have Ignored Evidence Against
Police", Boston Globe, July 28, 1991, p.1.
59b.
Christopher B. Daly, "Pattern of Police Abuses Reported in Boston
Case", Washington Post, July 12, 1991, p.A3.
59c.
Associated Press, "Dayton Police Probing Erasure of Arrest Video",
WashingtonPost, May 26, 1991, p.A20.
59d.
Gabriel Escobar, "Deaf Man's Death In Police Scuffle Called
Homicide", Washington Post, May 18, 1991, p.B1.
59e.
Jay Mathews, "L.A. Police Laughed at Beating", Washington Post,
March 19, 1991, p.A1.
59f.
David Maraniss, "One Cop's View of Police Violence", Washington
Post, April 12,1991, p.A1.
59g.
From News Services, "Police Abuse Detailed", Washington Post,
February 8, 1992,p.A8.
60.
Michael Dobbs, "Panhandling the Kremlin: How Gus Hall Got Millions",
Washington Post, March 1, 1992, p.A1.
61.
David Streitfeld, "Secret Consortium To Publish Rushdie In
Paperback", Washington Post, March 14, 1992, p.D1.
62a.
See notes 48 and 49.
62b.
See note 47b, p.63-76.
62c.
"Fairness In Broadcasting Act of 1987", U.S. Senate Bill S742.
62d.
"Now Let That 'Fairness' Bill Die", Editorial, Washington Post,
June
24, 1987. The Post opposed the Fairness in Broadcasting Act.
63.
David E. Scheim, Contract on America -- The Mafia Murder of President John
F.Kennedy, New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1988, p.viii.
64.
See note 63, p.28.
65a.
Chuck Conconi, "Out and About", Washington Post, February 26, 1991,
p.B3.
65b.
George Lardner Jr., "On the Set: Dallas in Wonderland", Washington
Post, May19, 1991, p.D1.
65c.
George Lardner, "...Or Just a Sloppy Mess", Washington Post, June
2, 1991,p.D3.
65d.
Charles Krauthammer, "A Rash of Conspiracy Theories -- When Do We Dig Up
BillCasey?", Washington Post, July 5, 1991, p.A19.
65e.
Eric Brace, "Personalities", Washington Post, October 31, 1991,
p.C3.
65f.
Associated Press, "'JFK' Director Condemned -- Warren Commission
Attorney Calls Stone Film 'A Big Lie'", Washington Post, December 16,
1991, p.D14.
65g.
Gerald R. Ford and David W. Belin, "Kennedy Assassination: How About the
Truth?", Washington Post, December 17, 1991, p.A21.
65h.
Rita Kemply, "'JFK': History Through A Prism", Washington Post,
December 20,1991, p.D1.
65i.
George Lardner Jr., "The Way it Wasn't -- In 'JFK', Stone Assassinates
the Truth", Washington Post, December 20, 1991, p.D2.
65j.
Desson Howe, "Dallas Mystery: Who Shot JFK?", Washington Post,
December 20,1991, p.55.
65k.
Phil McCombs, "Oliver Stone, Returning the Fire -- In Defending His
'JFK' Conspiracy Film, the Director Reveals His Rage and Reasoning",
Washington Post, December 21, 1991, p.F1.
65l.
George F. Will, "'JFK': Paranoid History", Washington Post,
December 26, 1991,p.A23.
65m.
"On Screen", 'JFK' movie review, Washington Post, Weekend, December
27, 1991.
65n.
Stephen S. Rosenfeld, "Shadow Play", Washington Post, December 27,
1991, p.A21.
65o.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "The Paranoid Style", Washington Post,
December 29,1991, p.C7.
65p.
Michael Isikoff, "H-e-e-e-e-r-e's Conspiracy! -- Why Did Oliver Stone
Omit (Or Suppress!). the Role of Johnny Carson?", Washington Post,
December 29, 1991,p.C2.
65q.
Robert O'Harrow Jr., "Conspiracy Theory Wins Converts -- Moviegoers Say
'JFK' Nourishes Doubts That Oswald Acted Alone", Washington Post,
January 2, 1992, p.B1.
65r.
Michael R. Beschloss, "Assassination and Obsession", Washington
Post, January 5, 1992, p.C1.
65s.
Charles Krauthammer, "'JFK': A Lie, But Harmless", Washington Post,
January 10,1992, p.A19.
65t.
Art Buchwald, "Bugged: The Flu Conspiracy", Washington Post,
January 14, 1992,p.E1.
65u.
Ken Ringle, "The Fallacy of Conspiracy Theories -- Good on Film, But the
Motivation Is All Wrong", Washington Post, January 19, 1992, p.G1.
65v.
Charles Paul Freund, "If History Is a Lie -- America's Resort to
Conspiracy Thinking", Washington Post, January 19, 1992, p.C1.
65w.
Richard Cohen, "Oliver's Twist", Washington Post Magazine, January
19, 1992, p.5.
65.
Michael Isikoff, "Seeking JFK's Missing Brain", Washington Post,
January 21,1992, p.A17.
65y.
Don Oldenburg, "The Plots Thicken -- Conspiracy Theorists Are
Everywhere", Washington Post, January 28, 1992, p.E5.
65z.
Joel Achenbach, "JFK Conspiracy: Myth vs. the Facts", Washington
Post, February 28, 1992, p.C5.
65A.
List of books on the best-seller list: On the Trail of the Assassins is
characterized as "conspiracy plot theories", Washington Post, March
8, 1992,Bookworld, p.12
66.
See notes 65n, 65w, 65l, 65b, 65c, and 65i.
67a.
Peter Dale Scott, "Vietnamization and the Drama of the Pentagon
Papers". Published in The Senator Gravel Edition of The Pentagon Papers,
Volume V,p.211-247.
67b.
Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy -- The Secret Road to the Second
Indochina War, Indianapolis/New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972, p. 215-224.
67c.
L. Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team, Copyright 1973. New printing, Costa Mesa
CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1990, p.402-416.
67d.
See note 63, p.58, 183, 187, 194, 273-4.
67e.
John M. Newman, JFK and Vietnam, New York: Warner Books, 1992.
67f.
Peter Dale Scott, Letter to the Editor, The Nation, March 9, 1992, p.290.
68a.
See note 65b.
68b.
Oliver Stone, "The Post, George Lardner, and My Version of the JFK
Assassination", Washington Post, June 2, 1991, p.D3.
69.
See note 65b.
70.
Jim Garrison, On the Trail of The Assassins, New York: Warner Books, 1988,
315/318.
71.
Associated Press, "Garrison, 2 Others, Found Not Guilty Of Bribery
Charge", Washington Post, September 28, 1973, p.A3.
72.
See note 65c.
73.
See note 65i.
74.
See note 67e, p.438-450.
75.
John G. Leyden, "Historians, Buffs, and Crackpots", Washington
Post, Bookworld, January 26, 1992, p.8.
76a.
Tad Szulc, "New Doubts, Fears in JFK Assassination Probe",
Washington Star,September 19, 1975, p.A1.
76b.
Tad Szulc, "Warren Commission's Self-Doubts Grew Day by Day -- 'This
Bullet Business Leaves Me Confused'", Washington Star, September
20,
1975, p.A1.
76c.
Tad Szulc, "Urgent and Secret Meeting of the Warren Commission -- Dulles
Proposed that the Minutes be Destroyed", Washington Star, September 21,
1975,p.A1.
77.
"Cable Sought to Discredit Critics of Warren Report", New York
Times, December 26, 1977, p.A37.
78.
Deborah Davis, Katharine The Great, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1979,p.141-2.
79a.
Eve Pell, "Private Censorship -- Killing 'Katharine The Great'",
The Nation, November 12, 1983.
79b.
Deborah Davis, Katharine The Great, Bethesda MD: National Press, 1987. Davis
says, "...corporate documents that became available during my subsequent
lawsuit against him [Harcourt Brace Jovanovich chairman, William Jovanovich]
showed that 20,000 copies [of Katharine the Great] had been "processed
and converted into waste paper"".
79c.
Daniel Brandt, "All the Publisher's Men -- A Suppressed Book About
Washington Post Publisher Katharine Graham Is On Sale Again" National
Reporter, Fall 1987, p.60.
79d.
Deborah Davis, Katharine The Great, New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991.
"...publishers who don't give a shit", p.iv-v; bullying HBJ into
recalling the book, p.iv-vi; lawsuit and settlement, p..
80.
Benjamin C. Bradlee, Letter to Deborah Davis, April 1, 1987. See note 79d,
p.304.
81.
See note 79d, p.119-132.
82.
Carl Bernstein, "The CIA and the Media -- How America's Most Powerful
News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why
the Church Committee Covered It Up", Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977,
p.63.
83a.
Daniel Brandt, Letter to Richard L. Harwood of The Washington Post, September
15, 1988. The letter asks for the Post's rationale for its policy of
protecting government covert actions, and whether this policy is still in
effect.
83b.
Daniel Brandt, "Little Magazines May Come and Go", The National
Reporter, Fall 1988, p.4. Notes the Post's protection of the identity of CIA
agent Joseph F.Fernandez. Brandt says, "America needs to confront its
own recent history as well as protect the interests of its citizens, and both
can be accomplished by outlawing peacetime covert activity. This would
contribute more to thesecurity of Americans than all the counterterrorist
proposals and elite strike forces that ever found their way onto Pentagon
wish-lists."
83c.
Richard L. Harwood, Letter to Daniel Brandt, September 28, 1988. Harwood's
two- sentence letter reads, "We have a long-standing policy of not
naming covert agents of the C.I.A., except in unusual circumstances. We
applied that policy to Fernandez."
84.
See note 79d, p.131.
85.
Katharine Graham, "Safeguarding Our Freedoms As We Cover Terrorist
Acts", Washington Post, April 20, 1986, p.C1.
86.
"conspire", 4Random House Dictionary of the English Language,
Second Edition Unabridged, 1987.
87.
Howard Kurtz, "Media Notes", Washington Post, June 18, 1991, p.D1.
88.
See note 65y.
89.
See note 65n.
90.
See note 65d.
91.
William Casey, Private Communications with JCH, March 1992.
Richard
Harwood, "What Conspiracy?", Washington Post, March 1, 1992, p.C6.
93.
p. 29-32.
94a.
Washington Post Electronic Data Base, Dialog Information Services Inc., April
25, 1992. In 1991 and 1992, the name Bill Clinton appeared in 878 Washington
Post stories, columns, letters, or editorials; "Jerry" Brown in 485,
Pat Buchanan in 303, and Larry Agran in 28. In those 28, Agran's name
appeared 76 times, Clinton's 151, and Brown 105. In only 1 of those 28 did
Agran's name appear in a headline.
94b.
Colman McCarthy, "What's 'Minor' About This Candidate?", Washington
Post, February 1, 1992. Washington Post columnist McCarthy tells how
television and party officials have kept presidential candidate Larry Agran
out of sight. The Post's own daily news-blackout of Agran is not discussed.
94c.
Scot Lehigh, "Larry Agran: 'Winner' in Debate With Little Chance For the
Big Prize", Boston Globe, February 25, 1992.
94d.
Joshua Meyrowitz, "The Press Rejects a Candidate", Columbia
Journalism Review,March/April, 1992.
95.
Ben H. Bagdikian, The Effete Conspiracy And Other Crimes By The Press,
NewYork: Harper and Row, 1972, p.36-7.
96a.
28 USC Section 455. "Any justice, judge, or magistrate of the United
States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality
might reasonably be questioned." [emphasis added]
96b.
Alpo Petfoods, Inc. v. Ralston Purina Co., 913 F2d 958 (CA DC 1990)..
96c.
Monroe Freedman, "Thomas' Ethics and the Court -- Nominee 'Unfit to Sit'
For Failing to Recuse In Ralston Purina Case", Legal Times, August 26,
1991.
96d.
Paul D. Wilcher, "Opposition to the Confirmation of Judge Clarence
Thomas to become a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds of his
JUDICIAL MISCONDUCT", Letter to U.S. Senator Joseph R. Biden, October
15, 1991.
97.
Al Kamen and Michael Isikoff, "'A Distressing Turn', Activists
Decry
What Process Has Become", Washington Post, October 12, 1991, p.A1.
98.
January 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 1992, p.A1 each day.
99.
See note 86.
100.
Thomas W. Lippman, "Energy Lobby Fights Unseen 'Killers'",
Washington Post,April 1, 1992, p.A21. This article explains that
"representatives of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National
Association of Manufacturers and the coal, oil, natural gas, offshore
drilling and nuclear power industries, whose interests often conflict,
pledged to work together to oppose amendments limiting offshore oil drilling,
nuclear power and carbon dioxide emissions soon to be offered by key House
members".
101.
"cartel", Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1977.
NOTES
A
good source on the Washington Post and Katharine Graham's attempt to suppress
the Davis book,"Katherine The Great,", which was largely
successful, is Carol Felsenthal's, "Power and Privilege at the Post, the
Katharine Graham Story."
For
more information on Johnny Rosselli and Moses and Walter Annenberg, an
excellent source is "All American Mafioso, the Johnny Rosselli
Story," by Ed Becker and Charles Rappelye.
An
additional good short reference is "The CIA's Greatest Hits" by
Mark Zepezauer. There you will find the reference to Carl Bernstein's classic
"The CIA and the Media" which appeared in Rolling Stone on Oct. 20,
1977.
Still
another recent example of the CIA's control of the media is the spiking of
Sally Denton's & Roger Morris' story,"THE CRIMES OF MENA" by
Washington Post managing editor Bob Kaiser even though the story had been
legally vetted and cleared for publication. Indeed the story, which details
the CIA's involvement in drug trafficing, was already typeset and ready to go
when it was killed withouty explanation.
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