Letters to the Editor
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Whatever happened to the honor code?
Doesn't the military have strict honor codes that prohibit prevarication? Do these "media consultants" trade on a general assumption that a retired general officer will always tell the truth? And what of that general's reputation once the lie is revealed? Poor General Sheppard. Worked all his life to earn the honor and respect due a Major General, and he squandered it all to cover-up a torture policy.
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"A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran."
Tina Susman, from Baghdad, Thursday, May 8, 2008:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2008/05/iraq-the-elusiv.html
LOS ANGELES TIMES / Blogs
The elusive Iranian weapons
There was something interesting missing from Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner's introductory remarks to journalists at his regular news briefing in Baghdad on Wednesday: the word "Iran," or any form of it. It was especially striking as Bergner, the U.S. military spokesman here, announced the extraordinary list of weapons and munitions that have been uncovered in recent weeks since fighting erupted between Iraqi and U.S. security forces and Shiite militiamen.
[...] A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran. [...]
[...] Iran, meanwhile, continues to seethe after an Iraqi delegation went to Tehran last week to confront it with the accusations. It has denied the accusations, and it says as long as U.S. forces continue to take part in military action in Iraq's Shiite strongholds, it won't consider holding further talks with Washington on how to stabilize Iraq.
— — Tina Susman, in Baghdad
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Great article, Glenn
This whole thing sounded so familiar, I started Googling for similar activities in the Vietnam War. I ran across this interesting article discussing the CIA's infiltration and use of the media for propaganda purposes (and the OSS before that, and others doing it back to the Interwar Years):
http://www.namebase.org/news17.html
The first shoe was dropped by Jack Anderson in late August, 1973, when he revealed that Seymour Freidin, head of the Hearst bureau in London, was a CIA agent. Freidin, already in the news because the Republicans paid him $10,000 in 1972 to spy on the Democrats, confirmed Anderson's story. At that point William Colby, the new CIA director, was asked by the New York Times and the Washington Star-News if any of their staff were on the CIA payroll.
[...]The other shoe dropped with an article by Oswald Johnston on November 30: the Star-News learned from an "authoritative source" (Colby) that the CIA had some three dozen American journalists on its payroll. Johnston named only one -- Jeremiah O'Leary -- who was one of their own diplomatic correspondents.
That was the first and last time that Colby was helpful on this topic.[...]
Colby's stonewalling continued for the remainder of his tenure, even as a Senate committee led by Frank Church desperately tried to squeeze more names out of him. George [H.W.] Bush replaced Colby in January, 1976, and eventually agreed to a one-paragraph summary of each file of a CIA journalist, with names deleted. When the CIA said it was finished, the Church committee had over 400 summaries.
[...]
The House investigation of the CIA, under Otis Pike, had more problems than the Senate investigation. The full House voted to suppress its committee's final report under pressure from the executive branch, at which point Daniel Schorr of CBS leaked a copy to the Village Voice. This report contained just twelve paragraphs on the topic of the CIA and the media, including the tidbit about the CIA's "frequent manipulation of Reuters wire service dispatches."[6] Another paragraph gave some idea of the scope of the CIA's efforts in this area:
Some 29 percent of Forty Committee-approved covert actions were for media and propaganda projects. This number is probably not representative. Staff has determined the existence of a large number of CIA internally-approved operations of this type, apparently deemed not politically sensitive. It is believed that if the correct number of all media and propaganda projects could be determined, it would exceed Election Support as the largest single category of covert action projects undertaken by the CIA.[7]
One enterprising researcher took this 29 percent figure, and extrapolating from figures on CIA expenditures for covert operations, found that the cost of propaganda in 1978 was around $265 million and involved 2,000 personnel. Comparing this to figures for other news agencies, he concluded that the CIA "uses far more resources in its propaganda operations than any single news agency.... In fact, the CIA propaganda budget is as large as the combined budgets of Reuters, United Press International and the Associated Press."[8]
CBS took Daniel Schorr off the air after he leaked the Pike committee report. This was most likely a convenient opportunity for William Paley, chairman of CBS, who didn't approve of Schorr's interest in the network's own CIA connection.
I have no idea how legit this article's sourcing is; the footnotes seem varied and verifiable enough, however. It's simply chilling, in itself and in the parallels with the retired generals story. This propagandizing is nothing new, just a new way of doing the same thing that has been done throughout this country's history.
Another interesting data point in this article is the possible origin of the term "The Mighty Wurlitzer."
OSS veteran Frank Wisner ran most of the early peacetime covert operations as head of the Office of Policy Coordination. Although funded by the CIA, OPC wasn't integrated into the CIA's Directorate of Plans until 1952, under OSS veteran Allen Dulles. Both Wisner and Dulles were enthusiastic about covert operations. By mid-1953 the department was operating with 7,200 personnel and 74 percent of the CIA's total budget.
Wisner created the first "information superhighway." But this was the age of vacuum tubes, not computers, so he called it his "Mighty Wurlitzer."
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@djmagaro
a silly comment for a silly thread
Just tell me which candidate is associated with Rev. IVAN Stang, and that's the one I'll vote for...
-- djmagaro
Slack!
The Church of the Subgenius!
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lwm
You know I like you, so I'll toss you a bone.
>/blockquote>
You hate all free men, especially those that will not bow before your god; the government. No need to lie about it.
The Democrats have ruled the towns I have lived in for most every year of my life. They have been racists and biogots and that was not 30 years ago.
And the black man who is the head of the NAACP in Ron Paul's district takes up for him and calls anti-Paul white people like you bigots and liars. Odd that, ain't it?