Kevin Ryan, The CIA’s Influence Over the Media: Use of the “Conspiracy Theorist” Slur
Kevin Ryan
“Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th.”—George W. Bush, November 10, 2001[Editor’s note: While Kevin Ryan and I have had profound differences in relation to 9/11 research (where he propounds the nanothermite theory that T. Mark Hightower and I dispatched in a series of
three articles in 2011, including “Is 9/11 Truth based upon a false theory?”, “Nanothermite: If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit”. and (more recently) “On C-SPAN, Richard Gage leaves 9/11 Truth in a time warp”, in this case, he’s right over the target. My own introduction regarding “conspiracy theories” may be found at “Thinking about ‘Conspiracy Theories’: 9/11 and JFK”.]
In April of 1967, a CIA official sent a memorandum dispatch to agency chiefs and stations. This memo described a strategy for discrediting critics of the Warren Report, the official account for the assassination of President Kennedy released in 1964. At the time of the memo, polls showed that 46% of Americans did not think that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, in contradiction to the official finding. To counter such criticisms, the memo proposed labeling critics as “conspiracy theorists” and proposed that the CIA’s “propaganda assets” in media begin to use the slur and other, related techniques to marginalize critics.
Classified
as Secret but finally released in 1998, the memo stated, “Conspiracy
theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for
example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The
aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and
discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit
circulation of such claims.”The memo instructed media assets to discredit those questioning government reports by saying the critics should be depicted as “wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, hasty or inaccurate in their research, or infatuated with their own theories.”
The approach laid out by the memo was adopted by many in the American media. That’s not a surprise given that Operation Mockingbird, a domestic propaganda campaign aimed at promoting the views of the CIA within the media, was in full swing at the time. And despite official claims that the CIA’s influence of American media was halted in 1976, after the Church Committee findings, the continued use of the terms “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorist” indicates that the practice has continued.
A few years ago, I tested this by checking how many times the phrase “conspiracy theory” had appeared in the Washington Post and the New York Times in the 45 years before and after the CIA memo.
Before the memo was issued, “conspiracy theory” was a phrase used 50 times, or about once per year, in the Times or the Post. In the 45 years after the CIA memo, these newspapers used the term 2,630 times, or about once per week.
Before the CIA memo came out, the Washington Post and New York Times had never used the phrase “conspiracy theorist.” After the CIA memo came out, they have used the phrase “conspiracy theorist” 1,118 times.
The continued use of terms such as “conspiracy theorist” suggests that the CIA still controls the mainstream media. With regard to the crimes of 9/11, The New York Times has led the way in terms of support for official propaganda. Moreover, many “alternative” media sources use these slurs as frequently, or more, than mainstream media do.
The use of “conspiracy theory” to deter citizens from investigating historic events is paradoxical, to be sure. It suggests that those who commit criminal conspiracies can only be relatively powerless people who happen to live on the most strategically important lands, and conspiracies among rich, powerful people are impossible or absurd. It’s just that kind of doublethink mindset that has led us to where we are today as a nation.
Of course, 9/11 was a conspiracy. The only question is was it a conspiracy of people who could not possibly pull it off and who would only suffer as a result or was it a conspiracy of the people who benefited and had the power to accomplish it? The first option presents many problems. Common sense suggests the latter.
These days, it seems that you can tell who is working for the CIA simply by the way they use “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorist” in attempts to belittle others. An example might be when a lawyer for gold mining companies was presented by the corporate media as a public servant/truth teller based on stolen documents that were never shared with the public. That lawyer and his colleagues at The Intercept use the conspiracy theorist slur as much as any other media source, and often when they are questioned about their dubious rise to fame.
In any case, our entire legal system is based on the idea of conspiracy. Yet despite this fact we have been conditioned by the government and the media to blindly accept official reports and to treat anyone questioning those reports as conspiracy theorists. That is, you are a conspiracy theorist if you don’t believe the government’s conspiracy theory.
This technique is easy to see. Next time you read an article that uses these slurs, look more closely at the author and where he or she is trying to lead you.
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