MOCKINGBIRD
The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA
by Alex Constantine http://www.freedomofthepress.net/mockingbird.htm
"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)
How the Washington Post Censors the News [Note: Look for the paragraph indicated by asterisks]
April 25, 1992 Richard Harwood,
Ombudsman The Washington Post
1150 15th Street NW Washington, DC 20071
The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA
by Alex Constantine http://www.freedomofthepress.net/mockingbird.htm
"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.
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 Blücher, 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 Düsseldorf, West Germany, and established a firm that
developed not movie scripts, but anti-chemical warfare agents for the
government. At the Industrie Club in Düsseldorf in 1982, von Blücher
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]
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.
14c.
"Costa Rica Seeks Extradition of Indiana Farmer", Scripps-Howard
News Service,April 25, 1991.
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.
39.
See note 33, p.217.
40.
See note 33, p.235.
41.
See note 33, p.277-288.
42.
See note 33, p.323.
43.
Katherine Hoyt Gonzalez, Nicaragua Network Education Fund Newsletter,
March1992, p.1.
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", ß4ßRandom 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.
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