DeepBlackLies
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Bringing in-depth reporting of crime and corruption in high places |
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By David Guyatt In discussing the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Dan
Rather, the well-loved anchorman for CBS Television, described the now
famous Zapruder film that captured footage of the shot which killed
President John F. Kennedy. The movie, taken by amateur cameraman,
Abraham Zapruder, was quickly snapped-up by Life magazine for
$250,000.00. Although Life published still
frames of the movie, the 18 second film was kept under lock and key –
not to be seen by Americans until 1975. But Rather’s remarks were
misleading. He told his viewers that the
film showed JFK falling forward – confirming the official view that
Kennedy had been shot from behind. However,
the film clearly showed Kennedy lurching violently backwards, evidence
of a frontal shot. To add to the
confusion, the Warren Commission report printed two frames of the film
in reverse – again implying a rear shot - an accident the FBI typified
as a “printing error.” Meanwhile, still pictures
lifted from the Zapruder film were also published by Life magazine. Remarkably, they too were published in reverse
order, thereby creating the impression that the President had been shot
from behind by lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald. Until
the film was shown to Americans in its entirity, no one was the wiser. Following the broadcast in 1975, a massive
controversy followed giving rise to ongoing allegations of conspiracy. The Zapruder film clearly
showed President Kennedy had also been shot from the front. The result immeasurably strengthened the charge - that had been bubbling in the background –
that the President had been assassinated as a result of a well
orchestrated conspiracy, and that this was covered-up to protect the
guilty, who many now believe involved senior figures in the CIA and US
military. Not least it was pointed out
that Henry Luce, the founder of Life magazine was a close personal
friend of Allen Dulles, the Director of the CIA. Moreover,
the individual who purchased the Zapruder film for Life magazine was
C.J. Jackson, formerly a “psychological warfare” consultant to the
President. Inevitably, these events
were to lead to accusations that the media were culpable of the worst
form of toadying and propaganda. This, in
turn raised serious questions about the role and integrity of the mass
media. Some years later, Washington Post
reporter, Carl Bernstein – who came to fame with his colleague Bob
Woodward, for their expose of the Nixon administration’s illegal
re-election campaign activities, known as “Watergate” – dropped a media
bombshell on an unsuspecting America. In an October 1977, article
published by Rolling Stone magazine, Bernstein reported that more than
400 American journalists worked for the CIA. Bernstein
went on to reveal that this cozy arrangement had covered the preceding
25 years. Sources told Bernstein that the
New York Times, America’s most respected newspaper at the time, was one
of the CIA’s closest media collaborators. Seeking
to spread the blame, the New York Times published an article in
December 1977, revealing that “more than eight hundred news and public
information organisations and individuals,” had participated in the
CIA’s covert subversion of the media. “One journalist is worth
twenty agents,” a high-level source told Bernstein.
Spies were trained as journalists and then later
infiltrated – often with the publishers consent - into the most
prestigious media outlets in America, including the New York Times and
Time Magazine. Likewise, numerous
reputable journalists underwent training in various aspects of
“spook-craft” by the CIA. This included
techniques as varied as secret writing, surveillance and other spy
crafts. The subversion operation
was orchestrated by Frank Wisner, an old CIA hand who’s clandestine
activities dated back to WW11. Wisner’s
media manipulation programme became known as the “Wisner Wurlitzer,”
and proved an effective technique for sending journalists overseas to
spy for the CIA. Of the fifty plus
overseas news proprietary’s owned by the CIA were The Rome Daily
American, The Manilla Times and the Bangkok Post. Yet, according to some
experts, there was another profound reason for the CIA’s close
relations with the media. In his book,
“Virtual Government,” author Alex Constantine goes to some lengths to
explore the birth and spread of Operation Mockingbird.
This, Constantine explains, was a CIA project designed to
influence the major media for domestic propaganda purposes. One of the most important “assets” used by the
CIA’s Frank Wisner was Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington Post. A decade later both Wisner and Graham
committed suicide – leading some to question the exact nature of their
deaths. More recently doubts have been
cast on Wisner’s suicide verdict by some observers who believed him to
have been a Soviet agent. Meanwhile, however, Wisner
had “implemented his plan and owned respected members of the New York
Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communication vehicles, plus stringers…”
according to Deborah Davis in her biography of Katharine Graham – wife
of Philip Graham - and current publisher of the Washington Post. The operation was overseen by Allen Dulles,
Director of Central Intelligence. Operation
Mockingbird continued to flourish with CIA agents boasting at having
“important assets” inside every major news outlet in the country.” The list included such luminaries of the US
media as Henry Luce, publisher of Time Magazine, Arthur Hays
Sulzberger, of the New York Times and C.D. Jackson of Fortune Magazine,
according to Constantine. But there was another
aspect to Mockingbird, Constantine reveals in an Internet essay. Citing historian C. Vann Woodward’s New York
Times article of 1987, Ronald Reagan, later to become President of the
US, was a FBI snitch earlier in his life. This
dated back to the time when Reagan was President of the Actor’s Guild. Woodward says that Reagan “fed the names of
suspect people in his organisation to the FBI secretly and regularly
enough to be assigned an informer’s code number, T.10.”
The purpose was to purge the film industry of
“subversives.” As these stories hit the
news, Senate investigators began to probe the CIA sponsored
manipulation of the media – the “Fourth Estate” that supposedly was
dedicated to acting as a check and balance on the excesses of the
executive. This investigation was,
however, curtailed at the insistence of Central Intelligence Agency
Directors, William Colby and George Bush – who would later be elected
US President. The information gathered by
the Senate Select Intelligence Committee chaired by Senator Frank
Church, was “deliberately buried” Bernstein reported.
Despite this suppression of
evidence, information leaked out that revealed the willing role of
media executives to subvert their own industry. “Let’s
not pick on some reporters,” CIA Director William Colby stated during
an interview. “Let’s go to the managements. They were witting.” Bernstein
concluded that “America’s leading publishers allowed themselves and
their news services to become handmaidens to the intelligence services.” Of the household names that went along with
this arrangement were: Columbia Broadcasting System, Copley News
Service – which gave the CIA confidential information on antiwar and
black protestors – ABC TV, NBC, Associated Press, United Press
International, Reuters, Newsweek, Time, Scripps-Howard, Hearst
Newspapers and the Miami Herald. Bernstein
additionally stated that the two most bullish media outlets to
co-operate were the new York Times and CBS Television.
The New York Times even went so far as to submit stories
to Allen Dulles and his replacement, John McCone, to vet and approve
before publication. Slowly, the role of
Mockingbird in muzzling and manipulating the press began to be revealed. In 1974, two former CIA agents, Victor
Marchetti and John D. Marks, published a sensational book entitled “The
CIA and the Cult of Intelligence.” The
book caused uproar for the many revelations it contained.
Included amongst them was the fact that the, until then,
widely respected Encounter magazine was indirectly
funded by the CIA. The vehicle used to
covertly transfer funds to Encounter and many other publications, was
the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF)– a CIA front.
A decade earlier, in 1965, the CCF was renamed Forum World
Features (FWF) and purchased by Kern House Enterprises, under the
direction of John Hay Whitney, publisher of the International Herald
Tribune and former US Ambassador to the United Kingdom. The Chairman of Forum World
Features was Brian Crozier, who resigned his position shortly before the explosive book went on sale.
Crozier, a former “Economist” journalist, was a “contact”
of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). His
employment to head up the CIA financed Forum World Features in 1965,
caused a row with MI6 who felt the CIA had breached the secret
agreement between the UK and USA by recruiting one of their own assets. Crozier’s media style was
more discrete than Mockingbird. He
preferred, when possible, to insert his pre-spun propaganda stories to
unwitting members of the media, who would reprint them unaware of the
bias they contained. In time,
Crozier would go on to head up a shadowy anti subversive and dirty
tricks group called the “61,” that sought to counter communist
propaganda. Another group of which he was
a member was the Pinay Cercle – a right wing Atlanticist group funded
by the CIA - that claimed credit for getting Margaret Thatcher elected
as British Prime Minister. Another propaganda
operation, run from Lisburn barracks in Northern Ireland, and under
nominal British Army control, participated in extensive media
manipulation around the same time. Known
as “Clockwork Orange” this involved the construction of propaganda
material designed to discredit prominent members of the then Labour
government as well as some in the Conservative shadow cabinet. Especially targeted was then Prime Minister
Harold Wilson. Clockwork Orange relied
heavily on forged documents that would be given to selected journalists
for publication. Many of these forgeries
sought to demonstrate secret communist ties – or east bloc intelligence
affiliations – amongst high profile politicians. The aim was to destabilise
Wilson and the Labour government by falsely showing them to be soft on
communism or even pro communist. This
operation clearly favoured a right wing Conservative administration
under the leadership of Mrs. Thatcher. In
the event, Wilson resigned, said to have been sickened by the numerous
personal snipe attacks against him. During
the time he was under siege, Wilson experienced numerous break ins at
his office, as well as having his phone lines tapped -courtesy of
unnamed officials in the security service, it is believed.
By 1979 the Conservative party was returned to power. Yet, with the demise of the
cold war the motive for media propaganda has collapsed.
Or has it? James Lilly,
former Director of Operations at the CIA later became Director of Asian
studies at the American Enterprise Institute – a think tank heavily
staffed by former intelligence types. Lilly,
in giving testimony to a Senate committee during 1996 observed:
“Journalists, I think, you don’t recruit them. We
can’t do that. They’ve told us not to do
that. But you certainly sit down with your journalists, and I’ve done this and the Station
Chief has done it, others have done it…” But even as the cold war
rationale for subverting the media recedes into the distance, press
manipulation continues anon. A classified
CIA report surfaced in 1992, that revealed the Agency’s public affairs
office “… has relationships with reporters from every major wire
service, newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation.” The report added that the benefits of these
continued contacts had been fruitful to the CIA by turning
“Intelligence failure stories into intelligence success stories…” Basking in a glow of self satisfaction, the
report continued “In many cases, we have persuaded reporters to
postpone, change, hold or even scrap stories that could have adversely
affected national security interests.” But the last word goes to
Noam Chomsky. A Professor of Linguistics
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chomsky has extensively
investigated the role of today’s media. His
analysis is un-nerving. The democratic
postulate, Chomsky says, “is that the media are independent and
committed to discovering and reporting the truth…”
Despite this axiom, Chomsky finds that the media supports
“established power” and is “responsive to the needs of government and
major power groups.” He additionally
argues that the media is a mechanism for pervasive “thought control” of
elite interests and that ordinary citizens need to “undertake a course
of intellectual self-defence to protect themselves from manipulation
and control…” The covert role of the media
has now apparently shifted its focus. One
time expediter of the “cold war,” it now clamours for the extension of
“corporate power.” Was
the CIA behind Thatcher’s election? Brian Crozier’s protege was
Robert Moss – a speech writer for Margaret Thatcher.
It was Moss who wrote Thatcher’s now famous speech “The
Sovietization of Britain” that resulted in her being nick-named the
“Iron Lady.” It was Thatcher’s strident
anti-communism and laissez faire free market economic policies that
made her so attractive to powerful right wingers in the Conservative
party, and ensured her election as Conservative leader.
Moss, received much of his inspiration from Cord Meyer,
Jr., the London CIA Station Chief -and long time expert in covert
operations. Additional input to Moss came
from the CIA’s Miles Copeland, formerly the head of the CIA’s “Gaming
Room” in Langley, Virginia. The Gaming
Room was used to simulate covert actions prior to them being acted out
for real. Professor of Linguistics at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Noam Chomsky is an
internationally acclaimed, scholar, writer and political activist who
has extensively scrutinised the thorny subject of media manipulation by
elite and corporate interests. His books
“Necessary Illusions – Thought Control in Democratic Societies,” and
“Manufacturing Consent,” co-authored with Edward Herman, are considered
classics on the subject. Chomsky argues
that the role of money and elite interests continue to undermine a
meaningful society. Professor Chomsky’s
views will be expounded more fully in an exclusive interview to be
published in a forthcoming issue of The X Factor. The CIA use of the media to undermine Chile In his expose of the CIA’s
subversion of the media, reporter Carl Bernstein outlined how Chile’s
socialist Prime Minister, Salvador Allende, was brought to ruin by a
CIA sponsored media campaign. According to
Bernstein, one of the Agency’s most valuable media “assets” was Hal
Hendrix, the Miami News Latin American correspondent during the 1960’s. Hendrix, who was known as “The Spook” by his
colleagues, was at the forefront of a CIA sponsoered anti Allende media
campaign. Other reporters sympathetic to
the CIA’s strategy, funnelled Agency funds to Allende’s political foes,
as well as writing anti Allende propaganda for CIA controlled
newspapers. The entire “get Allende”
campaign was orchestrated by the Nixon White House which was under
pressure from major US corporations like Coca Cola and IT&T to
“keep Allende from taking power.” Journalists and
corporate suppression of the news Professor Noam Chomsky, and his
co-author Edward Herman, in their book “Manufacturing Consent,” have
gone to extraordinary lengths to demonstrate how media censorship
operates. Self censorship, the authors
maintain, largely results from a set of “filters” inculcated into the
very heart of journalism, that Chomsky and Herman call the “Propaganda
model.” The first of these “filters” the
authors maintain, arises from corporate ownership primarily resulting
in the mass media being beholden to “profit orientation.”
The argument is that the largest media enterprises are now
owned not just by one or two corporate entities, but by dozens of them
– via cross-ownership. Consequently, a
given media outlet is less likely to bite the hand that owns it. The authors go on to cite a
number of additional filters that operate behind the scenes. These range from the power of advertisers
through to the role played by powerful pressure groups – for example
the military – who work hard to “shape” information in a favourable
light. This is a clear example and one
that defence correspondents are all too aware of. The
Pentagon can be a great aid to a defence journalist providing inside
information and other access. But this
sort of co-operation and access is dependent on the angle or “spin”
that will appear in the resulting story. In
other words the article must meet with their approval.
If, on the other hand, the story attacks the military,
co-operation is quickly pulled. Other
powerful pressure groups operate in a similar fashion.
These include, for example, the arms, oil, pharmaceutical,
farmers and brewing industries. Today, barely any story
reaches the media that hasn’t been artfully packaged by Public
Relations guru’s - retained for their ability to slant stories in
favour of their clients interests. Television
news regularly air news items that use pre-shot footage supplied by
corporate film wizards. In the past, the
fag-smoking, booze-guzzling archetypal reporter trudged the streets
tracking down a front-page story. Today,
however, the media hound merely cuts and pastes the contents of a
freebie, pre-spun “Press Pack” – directly to his computer Desk Top
Publishing programme. In short,
investigative journalism has been replaced by a clubby merry go round
of money spinning splutter that regales the reader with carefully
wrought stories fronting as news items. Rarely do the media cover
seriously controversial subjects. During
the heady days of the Scott enquiry, few stories appeared that looked
at the financing of weapons to Iraq and Iran. A
few journalists knew this was a major aspect of the arms to Iraq
affair, but how many newspapers revealed which British banks had been
up to their neck in weapons financing? Corporate
money has massive clout and if you want to stay in business, as a
journalist, you don’t rock the boat. By
any measure this is self censorship. Ask most journalists and they
will chuckle and say it is not. Sure, some
stories are “spiked” – that is the nature of journalism. Spiked stories
generally result from legal reasons and constraints, media
professionals will tell you, but rarely result from direct action to
suppress stories that the public should learn about.
Occasionally, a newspaper proprietor may step in a kill a
story for their own reasons. These just as
often end-up in the pages of Private Eye, so little advantage
ultimately accrues. At least that is the
rationale. |
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