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This article specifically links Allen Dulles with Life magazines censorsorship of Operation Paperclip

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6/6/06

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AP

Papers: CIA knew of Eichmann whereabouts

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 29 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Determined to win the Cold War, the

CIA kept quiet about the whereabouts of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in the 1950s for fear he might expose undercover anticommunist efforts in West Germany, according to documents released Tuesday.

ADVERTISEMENT

The 27,000 pages released by the National Archives are among the largest post-World War II declassifications by the CIA. They offer a window into the shadowy world of U.S. intelligence — and the efforts to use former Nazi war criminals as spies, sometimes to detrimental effect.

The war criminals "peddled hearsay and gossip, whether to escape retribution for past crimes, or for mercenary gain, or for political agendas not necessarily compatible with American national interests," Robert Wolfe, an expert on German history and former archivist at the National Archives, said at a news briefing announcing the document release.

In a March 19, 1958, memo to the CIA, West German intelligence officials wrote that they knew where Eichmann was hiding. Eichmann played a key role in transporting Jews to death camps during World War II. "He is reported to have lived in Argentina under the alias 'Clemens' since 1952," authorities wrote.

But neither side acted on that information because they worried what he might say about Hans Globke, a highly placed former Nazi and a chief adviser in West Germany helping the U.S. coordinate anticommunist initiatives in that country.

Two years later, when Jewish authorities captured Eichmann, the CIA pressured journalists to delete references to Globke.

"Entire material has been read. One obscure mention of Globke which Life omitting at our request," CIA Director Allen Dulles wrote in a Sept. 20, 1960, internal memorandum, after Life magazine purchased Eichmann's memoir.

Among the other findings:

_Former Nazi officers such as Heinz Felfe, who served in the "Gehlen organization" — the West German intelligence service which in its early years was sponsored by the U.S. Army and then the CIA — were typically hired by the Soviet Union to be double agents.

_The CIA routinely misled U.S. immigration officials in the mid-1970s about the role of CIA agent Tscherim Soobzokov and his connection to Nazi war crimes.

The documents were among the latest released under a 1999 law — resisted by the CIA — that called for disclosure of government records related to war crimes committed by the Nazi and Japanese governments.

"CIA has been struggling with the nettlesome problem of how to balance the public's interest in the historical record of CIA's connections to Nazis, and an intelligence agency's need ... to protect the identities of sources," said Stanley Moskowitz, a former CIA official who is now a consultant to the agency.

"The passage of time has shifted the balance," he said.

Material relating to Japanese war crimes were scheduled to be released later this summer.

___

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One of the most important figures in Operation Mockingbird was Victor Lasky. He joined the U.S. Army in 1942 and wrote for Stars & Stripes during the war.

After the war Lasky joined The New York World-Telegram and assisted Frederick Woltman in writing a series of articles on communist infiltration of American institutions. Lasky also reported on the Alger Hiss case. He co-wrote Seeds of Treason: The Strange Case of Alger Hiss (1950) with Ralph DeToledano.

Lasky was a public relations executive for Radio Liberty (1956-1960), one of the CIA's largest propaganda operations. He was also co-founder and first vice president of The Council Against Communist Aggression and the writer of the 1952 MGM documentary, The Hoaxters.

Lasky wrote a syndicated column for the North American Newspaper Alliance (1962-1980) and lectured for Accuracy in Media. Lasky also wrote several books including JFK, the Man and the Myth (1963), Robert F. Kennedy: The Myth & the Man (1971), It Didn't Start With Watergate (1977) and Jimmy Carter the Man and the Myth (1979).

It was revealed during the Watergate scandal that Lasky was paid $20,000 by Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP). Lasky was also a close associate of CIA director, William Casey.

Victor Lasky died of cancer on 22nd February, 1990, at Georgetown University Hospital.

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One of the most important figures in Operation Mockingbird was Victor Lasky.

Lasky wrote a syndicated column for the North American Newspaper Alliance (1962-1980) and lectured for Accuracy in Media. Lasky also wrote several books including JFK, the Man and the Myth (1963),

VICTOR LASKY. J.F.K: The Man & The Myth (New York: Dell, 1977), p. 2: "Actually, this work is no bitter castigation, as some critics have averred. The writer did not ‘hate’ the late President, as others have claimed. In fact, the writer had liked the President" (from Lasky's self-penned Preface, dated March 1966)...

JAMES CRITCHLOW. Radio Hole-In-The-Head. Radio Liberty: An Insider's Story Of Cold War Broadcasting (Washington D.C.: American University Press, 1995), pp. 79-80: "Unknown to us in Munich, the New York office had hired a rotund, cigar-chomping journalist named Victor Lasky to do publicity for the radio…Lasky came from the same left-wing background as Boris Shub (he had once been editor of the New Leader) but had veered sharply to the right…Although on the RL payroll, he also worked for other public relations clients, one of them the unsavoury Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo…(p. 80) After a brief stay at RL, Lasky left and wrote the best-selling JFK: The Man & The Myth. His hatred of the Kennedys was almost pathological…"

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This article specifically links Allen Dulles with Life magazines censorsorship of Operation Paperclip

AP

Papers: CIA knew of Eichmann whereabouts

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 29 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Determined to win the Cold War, the

CIA kept quiet about the whereabouts of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in the 1950s for fear he might expose undercover anticommunist efforts in West Germany, according to documents released Tuesday.

ADVERTISEMENT

The 27,000 pages released by the National Archives are among the largest post-World War II declassifications by the CIA. They offer a window into the shadowy world of U.S. intelligence — and the efforts to use former Nazi war criminals as spies, sometimes to detrimental effect.

The war criminals "peddled hearsay and gossip, whether to escape retribution for past crimes, or for mercenary gain, or for political agendas not necessarily compatible with American national interests," Robert Wolfe, an expert on German history and former archivist at the National Archives, said at a news briefing announcing the document release.

In a March 19, 1958, memo to the CIA, West German intelligence officials wrote that they knew where Eichmann was hiding. Eichmann played a key role in transporting Jews to death camps during World War II. "He is reported to have lived in Argentina under the alias 'Clemens' since 1952," authorities wrote.

But neither side acted on that information because they worried what he might say about Hans Globke, a highly placed former Nazi and a chief adviser in West Germany helping the U.S. coordinate anticommunist initiatives in that country.

Two years later, when Jewish authorities captured Eichmann, the CIA pressured journalists to delete references to Globke.

"Entire material has been read. One obscure mention of Globke which Life omitting at our request," CIA Director Allen Dulles wrote in a Sept. 20, 1960, internal memorandum, after Life magazine purchased Eichmann's memoir.

Among the other findings:

_Former Nazi officers such as Heinz Felfe, who served in the "Gehlen organization" — the West German intelligence service which in its early years was sponsored by the U.S. Army and then the CIA — were typically hired by the Soviet Union to be double agents.

_The CIA routinely misled U.S. immigration officials in the mid-1970s about the role of CIA agent Tscherim Soobzokov and his connection to Nazi war crimes.

The documents were among the latest released under a 1999 law — resisted by the CIA — that called for disclosure of government records related to war crimes committed by the Nazi and Japanese governments.

"CIA has been struggling with the nettlesome problem of how to balance the public's interest in the historical record of CIA's connections to Nazis, and an intelligence agency's need ... to protect the identities of sources," said Stanley Moskowitz, a former CIA official who is now a consultant to the agency.

"The passage of time has shifted the balance," he said.

Material relating to Japanese war crimes were scheduled to be released later this summer.

___

Good to see this matter aired - better still, in a thread of its own, bringing together as many instances of the CIA-Time/Life relationship as possible!

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Last night, Sunday, July 30, Dr. Steven Greer appeared on Art Bell’s international radio show, coasttocoastam. While his talk was devoted primarily to the SETI project, he did relate that his Disclosure Project had obtained an important 1991 CIA document. The document on its page 6 states that the CIA’s Public Affairs Office, "PAO now has relationships with reporters from every major wire service, newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation. This has helped us turn some intelligence failure stories into intelligence success stories, and it has contributed to the accuracy of countless others. In many instances, we have persuaded reporters to postpone, change, hold, or even scrap stories that could have adversely affected national security interests or jeopardized sources and methods."

The CIA paper is dated 20 December 1991, during the administration of President George H. W. Bush (who was a former CIA Director), and was prepared for the then Director of Central Intelligence. To read the full document, go to the link below:

http://www.disclosureproject.org/

Also noteworthy are the remarks on the PBS’ Lehrer News Hour last Thursday, July 27, by Lawrence Pintak, director of the TV journalism program at the American University in Cairo. He's a former Middle East correspondent for CBS. His recent book is "Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam and the War of Ideas."

Mr. Pintak pointed out how the American public is denied access to major news broadcasts that are available in other parts of the world, including the Middle East, which raises the question of the role of the CIA in controlling what Americans see and hear.

Mr. Pintak stated, “ You cannot overemphasize the impact that images have. American television is sanitized. We don't see the real blood and gore of war.

“Now, it's a cultural thing, sure, but you turn on the television in the Arab world, you are seeing the disemboweled babies, you are seeing the burned children, you are seeing the pieces of flesh in the streets. And that has a visceral impact.

“Americans, we talk about this plethora of prisms now in the Arab world with this media revolution, but Americans in many ways still live in an information ghetto, because we are not seeing the images coming out of the Arab world.

“Arabs, if I stood at home in Cairo, I have 300-odd stations. I can watch Al-Jazeera. I can watch Al-Arabiya. I can watch Al-Manar. I can watch CNN, and the BBC, and FOX News, and MSNBC. So an Arab can surf across the spectrum. Americans can't.

“Jamal's [Dajani’s LinkTV, also a particpant on the News Hour program] wonderful project is a drop in the budget, as I'm sure he'll agree, 100,000 people seeing it on the Web a month, something like that. It's a step in the right direction. But in general, Americans don't see what Arabs see. And so we say, ‘Why do they hate us? Why don't they like what we're doing?’

Because we're not seeing the impact of what we're doing.”

To read Mr. Pintak’s remarks in full, go to:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/july-...isms_07-27.html

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This new book published by University of Kansas might be of interest re Mockingbird.

http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/newbysubject.html

Osgood, Kenneth. Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad. 2006. 512 pages, illus. Cloth ISBN 0-7006-1445-1 $45.00

When President Dwight Eisenhower spoke of waging “total cold war,” he was proposing nothing less than a global, all-embracing battle for hearts and minds. His wide-ranging propaganda campaign challenged world communism at every turn and left a lasting mark on the American psyche.

Kenneth Osgood now chronicles the secret psychological warfare programs America developed at the height of the Cold War. These programs—which were often indistinguishable from CIA covert operations—went well beyond campaigns to foment unrest behind the Iron Curtain. The effort was global: U.S. propaganda campaigns targeted virtually every country in the free world.

Total Cold War also shows that Eisenhower waged his propaganda war not just abroad, but also at home. U.S. psychological warfare programs blurred the lines between foreign and domestic propaganda with campaigns that both targeted the American people and enlisted them as active participants in global contest for public opinion.

Osgood focuses on major campaigns such as Atoms for Peace, People-to-People, and cultural exchange programs. Drawing on recently declassified documents that record U.S. psychological operations in some three dozen countries, he tells how U.S. propaganda agencies presented everyday life in America to the world: its citizens living full, happy lives in a classless society where economic bounty was shared by all. Osgood further investigates the ways in which superpower disarmament negotiations were used as propaganda maneuvers in the battle for international public opinion. He also reexamines the early years of the space race, focusing especially on the challenge to American propagandists posed by the Soviet launch of Sputnik.

Perhaps most telling, Osgood takes a new look at President Eisenhower’s leader-ship. Believing that psychological warfare was a potent weapon in America’s arsenal, Ike appears in these pages not as a disinterested figurehead, as he’s often been portrayed, but as an activist president who left a profound mark on national security affairs.

Osgood’s distinctive interpretation places Cold War propaganda campaigns in the context of an international arena drastically changed by the communications revolution and the age of mass politics and total war. It provides a new perspective on the conduct of public diplomacy, even as Americans today continue to grapple with the challenges of winning other hearts and minds in another global struggle.

“An invaluable study of the Eisenhower administration’s efforts to win the hearts and minds of humankind during the turbulent decade of the 1950s.”--Melvyn P. Leffler, author of A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War

“Sheds new light on Eisenhower’s efforts to shape opinions at home as well as abroad, in the free as well as the communist worlds.”--Michael J. Hogan, author of A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954

“A highly informative, suavely argued, conscientiously researched, and articulate book.”--Stephen J. Whitfield, author of The Culture of the Cold War

“A superb and convincing book.”--Mark Kramer, Director, Cold War Studies Center, Harvard University

The following should also be interesting. I believe Kurtz has now changed his mind about the role of Cuba in the assassination.

Kurtz, Michael L. The JFK Assassination Debates: Lone Gunman versus Conspiracy. 2006. 300 pages. Cloth ISBN 0-7006-1474-5 $29.95

Who killed JFK? Ever since that fateful day in Dallas, theories about President Kennedy’s murder have proliferated, running the gamut from the official “lone gunman” verdict to both serious and utterly screwball conspiracy theories. Michael Kurtz, a distinguished historian who has plumbed every crevice of this controversial case for more than thirty years, now sums up and critiques four decades of debate, while also offering provocative new perspectives.

Kurtz presents an objective accounting of what we actually know and don’t know about the assassination, underlining both the logic and the limitations of the major theories about the case. He then offers unique interpretations of the physical and forensic evidence and of existing areas of controversy, leading him to new conclusions that readers will find hard to dismiss.

Kurtz shows how the official investigation’s egregious mishandling of the crime-scene evidence—related to virtually every aspect of the case—is largely responsible for the lone gunman/conspiracy schism that confronts us today. Those responsible for that investigation (including the Dallas police, the FBI, and the Warren Commission) failed so miserably in their efforts that they would have been laughed off the air if they had been portrayed on any of TV’s popular CSI series.

One of the few experts writing on the subject who actually met Oswald, Kurtz also provides new information about the accused assassin’s activities around the time of the assassination and about his double life, analyzing Oswald’s ties to the intelligence community, to organized crime, and to both anti- and pro-Castro Cuban activists. Mustering extraordinary documentation—including exclusive interviews with key figures and extensive materials declassified by the Assassination Records Review Board—he both confirms and alters much previous speculation about Oswald and other aspects of the case.

Who really killed JFK? Forty years later, most Americans still feel they don’t know the truth and that their own government isn’t telling them the whole story. This book offers a corrective to even the most recent “final verdicts” and establishes a sound baseline for future research.

“A smart, engaging history of the stormy debate surrounding the death of President John F. Kennedy. This is a book you can trust on a topic fraught with controversy.”--Douglas Brinkley, Director of the Theodore Roosevelt Center for American Civilization at Tulane University

“Provides a skillfully balanced and up-to-date summary of the views supporting the lone assassin and conspiracy sides of the JFK assassination controversy, as well as new evidence that revises our understanding of Oswald’s associations and actions. If I were teaching a course on the JFK assassination, this book would definitely be near the top of my reading list.”--Gerald D. McKnight, author of Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why

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I believe that Walter Raymond played an important role in Operation Mockingbird. After 30 years in the CIA George Bush and William Casey recruited Raymond to the National Security Council staff in April, 1982. Raymond later told an Iran-Contra committee that he resigned from the CIA so “there would be no question of any contamination of this.”

The following year President Reagan established its own propaganda campaign within the United States called "Project Truth." It later merged with a broader program that combined domestic and international propaganda under the umbrella of "Project Democracy." Raymond was placed in charge of this project.

I believe that Raymond was an important figure in Operation Mockingbird and would have been closely involved in the cover-up of the JFK assassination. It is highly significant that Raymond was chosen by Bush to do the same job for Reagan's illegal activities.

Here is a passage from John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton excellent Toxic Sludge is Good for You (2004)

The most pressing concern of all for the Reagan administration was the need to win the support of the US people for its policies in Central America. "I think the most critical special operations mission we have today is to persuade the American people that the communists are out to get us. If we can win this war of ideas, we can win everywhere else," explained Michael Kelly, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Air Force. "Psychological operations, ranging from public affairs on the one end, through black propaganda on the other end is the advertising and marketing of our product."

Public affairs" is the government's term for "public relations"- a rather pointless change in terminology adopted to get around a law which specifically enjoins federal government agencies against engaging in public relations activities. The law also forbids the White House from using ads telegrams, letters, printed matter or other media outside "official channels" to influence members of Congress regarding legislation. Rules against CIA involvement in domestic US politics are even more severe. It is against the law for the CIA to operate domestically, except in narrowly-defined circumstances such as cooperating with an FBI investigation. In 1982 however, reports of the secret CIA war in Nicaragua led Congress to pass the Boland Amendment, ending military aid to the contras and barring the Reagan administration from any further attempts to overthrow the Sandinistas.

In response, Reagan dispatched CLA Director William Casey in January 1983 to set up a "public diplomacy' machine that journalists Robert Parry and Peter Kornbluh describe as "America's first peace time propaganda ministry . . . a set of domestic political operations comparable to what the CIA conducts against hostile forces abroad. Only this time they were turned against the three key institutions of American democracy: Congress, the press, and an informed electorate.... Employing the scientific methods of modern public relations and the war-tested techniques of psychological operations, the administration built an unprecedented bureaucracy in the [National Security Council] and the State Department designed to keep the news media in line and to restrict conflicting information from reaching the American public."

As head of the operation, Casey appointed Walter Raymond, Jr. a 20-year veteran of the CIA's clandestine overseas media operations-described by one US government source as the CIA's leading propaganda expert. According to Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, Raymond's involvement in the campaign symbolized "the wholesale integration of intelligence and PR at the National Security Council." During the Iran/Contra scandal, Congress investigated the Reagan administration's domestic propaganda operations and found that Raymond's name appeared on Oliver North's calendar more than that of any other White House staff member or government employee. A chapter detailing these domestic activities was drafted for the investigating committee's Iran/Contra report, but House and Senate Republicans successfully blocked even a paragraph of the draft from being included in the committee's final report. As a result the CIA's domestic propaganda activities in violation of its charter have received almost no public scrutiny.

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Does anyone know of any connections that may have existed between C.D. Jackson and David Atlee Phillips?

Also, is there anything good to read on what C.D. was doing between 1956 and when he got control of the Z-film. I know he was working for Life, among other things, but DOING WHAT?

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Does anyone know of any connections that may have existed between C.D. Jackson and David Atlee Phillips?

Also, is there anything good to read on what C.D. was doing between 1956 and when he got control of the Z-film. I know he was working for Life, among other things, but DOING WHAT?

As for your second question, George Michael Evica's "A Certain Arrogance - U.S. Intelligence Manipulation of Religious Groups and Individuals in Two World Wars and the Cold War - and the Sacrificing of Lee Harvey Oswald," (ZXlibris, 2006), has over a dozen references to C.D. Jackson.

Just got it in the mail, haven't read it yet, but GME seems hot and heavy on CD Jack.

BK

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To see this story with its related links on the MediaGuardian.co.uk site, go to http://www.mediaguardian.co.uk

Miami Herald chief quits over Cuba revelations

Jason Deans and agencies

Tuesday October 03 2006

The Guardian

The publisher of the Miami Herald resigned today, citing revelations that journalists in the group had been paid by the US government to help undermine Fidel Castro's Cuban regime.

Jesus Diaz Jr, who had been Herald publisher and president of the Miami Herald Media Company since July 2005, said in a letter to readers that he had "ambiguously communicated" the group's policy on journalists receiving payments from outside organisations.

Today's resignation follows the news last month that several Florida-based journalists had been paid to work for the US government-funded Radio and TV Marti, which broadcast programmes aiming to promote democracy in the communist country.

The Miami Herald itself reported that two staff journalists and a freelance contributor from its sister Spanish-language title, El Nuevo Herald, were among those who received the payments to work for Radio and TV Marti, which is funded by the US Office of Cuba Broadcasting.

All three journalists were fired after the story broke.

"I realise and regret that the events of the past three weeks have created an environment that no longer allows me to lead our newspapers in a manner most beneficial for our newspapers, our readers and our community," Mr Diaz wrote in the letter to readers.

He added that he believed the journalists' acceptance of payments "was a breach of widely accepted principles of journalistic ethics".

"Our policies prohibiting such behaviour may have been ambiguously communicated, inconsistently applied and widely misunderstood over many years in the El Nuevo Herald newsroom," Mr Diaz said.

He said that in future no journalist working for the group would be allowed to accept money from the US government-run broadcasters and that conflict-of-interest policies would be strengthened.

The MHMC general manager, David Landsberg, has been appointed as Mr Diaz's replacement.

The Miami Herald Group is owned by McClatchy, which acquired the firm when it bought the parent company from Knight-Ridder in June.

· To contact the MediaGuardian newsdesk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 7239 9857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 7278 2332.

· If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

Thank you for that Tosh.

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It is important to recognize our achievements. A year ago the Wikipedia entry for “Operation Mockingbird” said that it was an urban myth. I rewrote the entry and it was immediately taken down. I raised the issue on this forum and told some of my media contacts what had happened. Now, if you type in “Operation Mockingbird” at Google my Wikipedia entry comes first. Second comes my own page on Operation Mockingbird with its links to this thread.

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Walter Pincus is one of the most important journalists in Operation Mockingbird.

Pincus graduated from Yale University in 1954 and after briefly working for the New York Times he joined the United States Army. He joined the Counter Intelligence Corps and served in Washington (1955-1957). Pincus was recruited by the CIA when he was at university in order to spy on student groups at several international youth conferences in the 1950s.

In 1957 Pincus joined the Wall Street Journal. He also worked as the Washington correspondent for three North Carolina newspapers. In 1963, Pincus was recruited by the Washington Star before moving to the Washington Post in 1969. He also spent three years as executive editor of The New Republic (1972-75) where he wrote about the Watergate Scandal. Pincus also worked as a part time consultant to NBC News and CBS News. This involved developing, writing or producing television documentaries and news segments.

Pincus returned to the Washington Post in 1975 where specialized in writing about the CIA and the intelligence community. Pincus always defended the activities of the CIA and criticized Seymour Hersh for his "advocacy journalism" when he tried to expose the illegal activities of the agency. He also condemned the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) and in February 1977, described it as "perhaps the worst example of Congressional inquiry run amok."

In 1979 Deborah Davis published Katharine the Great. Katharine Graham persuaded the publishers William Jovanovich, to pulp the book. As well as looking at the life of this newspaper proprietor, Davis explored the relationship between the CIA and the Washington Post. Davis also became the first journalist to expose Operation Mockingbird. She also named Walter Pincus as being one of the journalists willing to promote the views of the CIA.

Nina Burleigh (A Very Private Woman) has argued that Pincus had a close relationship with Cord Meyer, who served under Frank Wisner on Operation Mockingbird. She argues that Meyer " seconded the nomination of Washington Post writer Walter Pincus for membership in the Waltz Group, a Washington social organization. Pincus went on to become the Post's premier intelligence reporter." It was during this period Pincus became friends with George Tenet.

Pincus also helped George H. W. Bush and Robert Gates during the Iran-Contra investigation. In an article published in July, 1991, Pincus called for the Senate to approve Bush's nomination of Gates as director of the CIA. In 1992, Pincus falsely claimed that "special prosecutors have told former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger that he might face indictment on felony charges in the Iran-Contra scandal, unless he provided them with evidence they believe he has against former President Reagan... The dramatic attempt to get a former cabinet officer to turn on his commander-in-chief occurred a few days ago as Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh tried to conclude his five and one-half year investigation of the affair."

A few days later Pincus wrote that Lawrence E. Walsh was considering indicting Ronald Reagan. This was again untrue and Walsh argues in his book, Firewall, that Bush was using Pincus to spread disinformation on the investigation. As Walsh pointed out: "Of all the sideswipes that we suffered during this period, the false report that we were considering indicting the nation's still-admired former president hurt us the most."

Walsh was attacked by the right-wing media of carrying out the "biggest witch hunt in America since Salem". The leader of the Republican Party in the Senate, Bob Dole, made a speech where he called on Walsh to close down the investigation. He criticized Walsh's "inability to understand the simple fact that it is time to leave Iran-Contra to the history books".

Walter Pincus also led the attack on Gary Webb when he published his series of articles on CIA involvement with the Contras and the drug industry. After Dark Alliance was published Pincus wrote: "A Washington Post investigation into Ross, Blandon, Meneses, and the U.S. cocaine market in the 1980s found the available information does not support the conclusion that the CIA-backed contras - or Nicaraguans in general - played a major role in the emergence of crack as a narcotic in widespread use across the United States."

The Washington Post refused to publish Webb's letters when he attempted to defend his views on the CIA. Later, Geneva Overholser, the Washington Post ombudsman, criticized Pincus and other reporters working for the newspaper: "A principal responsibility of the press is to protect the people from government excesses. The Washington Post (among others) showed more energy for protecting the CIA from someone else's journalistic excesses."

When Gary Webb committed suicide, French journalist, Paul Moreira, made a television documentary for France's Canal Plus. He interviewed Pincus and asked him why in October, 1998, he had not reported on the CIA's inspector general report admitting the agency worked with drug dealers throughout the 1980s. Pincus was unable to explain why he and other mainstream journalists completely ignored this report that helped to support Webb's case against the CIA.

Marc Cooper of LA Weekly argued that CIA controlled journalists destroyed Webb's career: "What I can say is that the media killed his career. That's obvious and it's really a nauseating and very discouraging story, because as a journalist, the only thing you have is your credibility. When that is shredded, there's no way to rebuild it... This is an outstanding case where three of the major newspapers in the country decided to take out somebody, a competitor whose mistakes seem by any measure to be very minor."

Pincus eventually admitted that he had carried out covert operations for the CIA in the 1950s and 1960s. However, he denied being a CIA asset later in his career. On 31st July, 1996, The Washington Post claimed that "some in the agency refer to (Pincus) as the CIA's house reporter." In 2002 Pincus won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.

According to an interview Pincus gave to Nick Schou (Kill The Messenger), the most important legacy of Gary Webb's book Dark Alliance was that it "encouraged the CIA to be less aggressive in its efforts against Islamic terrorism, which helped enable Osama bin Laden's 9/11 terrorist attacks."

Pincus also became involved in the Valerie Plame case. In October, 2003 he wrote an article where he claimed Plame worked for the CIA and had been responsible for sending her husband, Joe Wilson, to investigate reports that Iraq's government had tried to buy uranium in Niger.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald issued a grand jury subpoena to Pincus on August 9, 2004, in an attempt to discover the identity of the government official who told him about Plame and Wilson. Pincus gave a deposition to Fitzgerald on 15th September. Afterwards he issued a public statement that claimed that Fitzgerald had dropped his demand that he should reveal his source. However, it is generally believed that his source was Richard L. Armitage. Of course, Armitage worked very closely with Bush and the CIA in trying to cover-up the Iran-Contra scandal.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/MDpincus.htm

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