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Operation Mockingbird


John Simkin

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John, while I do believe there was, and remains, a sort-of good ole boy network connecting the intelligence community with many prominent journalists, I think your assumption that the CIA calls the shots in this relationship is sort-sighted. They use each other. If Bradlee was working for the CIA, would he have exposed Howard Hunt's role in the Watergate break-in? If Bradlee had been as pro-CIA as you seem to believe, would he have written about Angleton's suspicious behavior after the death of Mary Meyer? Jeff Morley's piece is revealing in many ways. One is that by intermingling with the journalistic community, sophisticated men like Helms were able to convince the educated and primarily white journalistic world that the CIA was not a bunch of monsters, but the good guys, who could be trusted. Meanwhile, there have been pushy Jewish-types like Mark Lane and loose cannon media sponges like Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone representing the conspiracy community. The mainstream media naturally trust the people they assume to be more like themselves over these characters, and still do. This choosing of sides is due in part to self-interest. If you choose to pal around with Mark Lane over Richard Helms, how much access will that buy you in the years to come? This CYA attitude of the mainstream media, this protect-your-left-one attitude, prevents many an important story from ever seeing the light of day, and not just stories related to the CIA or the Kennedy assassination. It also affords many journalists the access necessary to break other stories. We have no idea how many important stories have come forth as a result of these trade-offs. (Maybe we should call Bob Woodward or Sy Hersh and ask.) As I said, the intelligence community and the journalistic community use each other. As the prominent journalists, by and large, make more money and have longer careers than the CIA officers they use as sources, perhaps what you believe to be the tail is just as often the dog. The Bush Administration's interest in Jack Anderson's papers is reflective that this is the case.

I find your conjecture that the CIA wanted the Pentagon Papers released as a way of getting at Nixon particularly off-target. The Pentagon Papers revealed the dishonesty of pre-Nixon administrations and dumped the bulk of the blame on the Johnson Administration. While Nixon was angered by their release, it was because it put the pressure on him to end the war, something he'd promised to do but was taking his sweet time about arranging. Nixon, never one to pass up the chance to make lemonade, nevertheless took advantage of the opportunity to blame it all on Johnson, and arranged for the official release of many documents relating to the war. It was in this period that he and Colson cooked up the idea of inserting documents into the record connecting Diem's death directly to Kennedy. They tasked Hunt with providing these fake documents. It was only because Hunt's fake docs didn't pass the smell test of an executive at Life--I don't remember which executive it was--that these documents failed to enter the public record. Was this executive under orders from the CIA to do this?

I suspect that if you told Neil Sheehan and Daniel Ellsberg that their release of the Pentagon Papers was part of a CIA plot to get Nixon, they would punch you in the nose. These men were AGAINST the war, and took great risks to expose the truth about the war. Such men do exist and are currently fighting President Bush from the journalistic trenches. Assuming that all the damaging news that's fit to print is approved by or even orchestrated by the CIA is an insult to these men and their legacy.

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John, while I do believe there was, and remains, a sort-of good ole boy network connecting the intelligence community with many prominent journalists, I think your assumption that the CIA calls the shots in this relationship is sort-sighted. They use each other. If Bradlee was working for the CIA, would he have exposed Howard Hunt's role in the Watergate break-in?

If CIA wished to topple the Nixon regime and engineered the breakin as a means to do it, the answer is "yes." Who better to control the flow of information reaching the public than one of their own. You do not dispute, I take it, that Bradlee represented CIA interests in Europe when he was dispatched to neutralize anti-US sentiment vis a vis the Rosenberg executions?

As for Hunt, his utlity to the Agency as an acknowledged operator had ceased some time before the event. By using the Mullen front as an arms-length buffer, CIA could deny, deny, deny. Recall that it was McCord who set that particular cat among the pigeons. Mullen's nominal owner, Robert Bennett, seems to have done well for himself in the interim.

As a sidebar, it is interesting to note that Hunt's use of CIA resources to process the photographic take from the breakins, and his use of CIA gait-altering devices and other disguise props, suggests that Hunt was still on the Agency payroll, even while in the employ of the White House. What Jim Hougan's "Secret Agenda" makes clear is that whatever happened to that photographic booty, it didn't make it to the White House, but seems to have been skimmed by Hunt's CIA processing facility. So, for whom was Hunt really working, Richard Nixon or Richard Helms?

If Bradlee had been as pro-CIA as you seem to believe, would he have written about Angleton's suspicious behavior after the death of Mary Meyer?

Can't say I recall any such revelations written by Bradlee, but would welcome a citation for the assertion. What I do recall is that both Bradlee and Angleton stole Mary's personal diary from her home after her death, the disposition of which remains shrouded in mystery. As her friends, it is entirely possible they wished to preserve her good name and prevent it from being somehow besmirched. However, it is not the only possibility, is it? Particularly given that both men had provided services to the Agency.

Jeff Morley's piece is revealing in many ways. One is that by intermingling with the journalistic community, sophisticated men like Helms were able to convince the educated and primarily white journalistic world that the CIA was not a bunch of monsters, but the good guys, who could be trusted.

And where that failed, more direct means of intimidation could be employed. If that still didn't turn the trick, merely having the journalist fired and blackballed from any future employment in the news game would also have neutralized them.

For those interested in more on Mockingbird, the site below gives some fairly detailed background. While I don't always accept the more radical interpretations of events offered by Alex Constantine, his contribution to the site is fairly moderate in tone.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/P...ockingbird.html

For those interested in other examples of journalistic malleability in furtherance of the political status quo, the same site offers this:

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/LIE/lie.html

It includes a section on JFK-related media lies and distortions that might prove illuminating.

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Writing on controversial topics surely has harmed my career. It limits the potential print-media market. My FBI file, obtained in 1978 under FOIA, consists of 17 volumes of 200 pages each. It reveals that the Bureau waged a relentless back-door campaign to dissuade publishers from books and articles, cut me off from electronic media interviews, blacklist me in the industry, and plant rebuttal articles with media collaborators.

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Writing on controversial topics surely has harmed my career. It limits the potential print-media market. My FBI file, obtained in 1978 under FOIA, consists of 17 volumes of 200 pages each. It reveals that the Bureau waged a relentless back-door campaign to dissuade publishers from books and articles, cut me off from electronic media interviews, blacklist me in the industry, and plant rebuttal articles with media collaborators.

And that is to your eternal credit, William. As you know, you were one of the first, if not THE first, ex-agent to take on St. John of Hoover, and throw darts at his over-inflated and dangerously delusional self-image. I'm sure you caused more concern among the Hoovers, De Loaches and Felts than a whole army of outside agitators. They could easily be marginalized, called un-American. All they could do with you was call you disgruntled. Thus, the need to silence you and find the dirt necessary to force you into submission. You took them on and came out victorious. Congratulations, and thank you!

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John, while I do believe there was, and remains, a sort-of good ole boy network connecting the intelligence community with many prominent journalists, I think your assumption that the CIA calls the shots in this relationship is sort-sighted. They use each other. If Bradlee was working for the CIA, would he have exposed Howard Hunt's role in the Watergate break-in?

If CIA wished to topple the Nixon regime and engineered the breakin as a means to do it, the answer is "yes." Who better to control the flow of information reaching the public than one of their own. You do not dispute, I take it, that Bradlee represented CIA interests in Europe when he was dispatched to neutralize anti-US sentiment vis a vis the Rosenberg executions?

As for Hunt, his utlity to the Agency as an acknowledged operator had ceased some time before the event. By using the Mullen front as an arms-length buffer, CIA could deny, deny, deny. Recall that it was McCord who set that particular cat among the pigeons. Mullen's nominal owner, Robert Bennett, seems to have done well for himself in the interim.

As a sidebar, it is interesting to note that Hunt's use of CIA resources to process the photographic take from the breakins, and his use of CIA gait-altering devices and other disguise props, suggests that Hunt was still on the Agency payroll, even while in the employ of the White House. What Jim Hougan's "Secret Agenda" makes clear is that whatever happened to that photographic booty, it didn't make it to the White House, but seems to have been skimmed by Hunt's CIA processing facility. So, for whom was Hunt really working, Richard Nixon or Richard Helms?

If Bradlee had been as pro-CIA as you seem to believe, would he have written about Angleton's suspicious behavior after the death of Mary Meyer?

Can't say I recall any such revelations written by Bradlee, but would welcome a citation for the assertion. What I do recall is that both Bradlee and Angleton stole Mary's personal diary from her home after her death, the disposition of which remains shrouded in mystery. As her friends, it is entirely possible they wished to preserve her good name and prevent it from being somehow besmirched. However, it is not the only possibility, is it? Particularly given that both men had provided services to the Agency.

Jeff Morley's piece is revealing in many ways. One is that by intermingling with the journalistic community, sophisticated men like Helms were able to convince the educated and primarily white journalistic world that the CIA was not a bunch of monsters, but the good guys, who could be trusted.

And where that failed, more direct means of intimidation could be employed. If that still didn't turn the trick, merely having the journalist fired and blackballed from any future employment in the news game would also have neutralized them.

For those interested in more on Mockingbird, the site below gives some fairly detailed background. While I don't always accept the more radical interpretations of events offered by Alex Constantine, his contribution to the site is fairly moderate in tone.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/P...ockingbird.html

For those interested in other examples of journalistic malleability in furtherance of the political status quo, the same site offers this:

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/LIE/lie.html

It includes a section on JFK-related media lies and distortions that might prove illuminating.

Robert, while it may seem logical to conclude that the CIA was behind the Watergate break-in, and that they deliberately muffed it up to bring Nixon down, there were clearly much easier ways for them to have accomplished this task. Drop dime to Jack Anderson about the activities of the Plumbers, for starters... No, I'm afraid the screw-ups during the break-in were just that--screw-ups. What is it about McCord, Hunt, Liddy that leads you to believe they weren't capable of screwing things up? Where one should rightly be suspicious of CIA involvement is instead in the post-break-in period, where McCord admittedly told Sirica of the cover-up in part because he'd become aware that Nixon was seeking to blame the break-in on the CIA. Was McCord counseled by the agency before making his decision? While he said "no." Alfred Baldwin alluded in his appearances here that McCord still had some secrets. Perhaps this was one of them.

As far as Bradlee, in his memoirs he writes about the death of his sister-in-law, Mary Meyer. He says that he and his wife, Toni, were informed by one of her friends that Mary had a diary, and that they should find this before the authorities found it. He says they then went to her studio. And CAUGHT JAMES ANGLETON there trying to break-in. Angleton explained that his wife, one of Mary's good friends, had received a similar call, and that she'd asked him to go get the diary. Bradlee says that when they found the diary they gave it to Angleton to destroy. As such a story could only lead to suspicion of CIA involvement in Meyer's death, I don't see Bradlee including it in his memoirs if it weren't true, and if he weren't trying to set the record straight. While some might say "Oh, but the story had already leaked out in the tabloid press long before Bradlee wrote his memoirs." Well, that's exactly the point. The story had been written about in a number of places, but it had never been confirmed in a well-publicized and credible book, until Bradlee wrote about it. His account, which can only lead to suspicion about Angleton, will be the one studied by historians in the decades to come.

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John, while I do believe there was, and remains, a sort-of good ole boy network connecting the intelligence community with many prominent journalists, I think your assumption that the CIA calls the shots in this relationship is sort-sighted. They use each other. If Bradlee was working for the CIA, would he have exposed Howard Hunt's role in the Watergate break-in? If Bradlee had been as pro-CIA as you seem to believe, would he have written about Angleton's suspicious behavior after the death of Mary Meyer?

Ben Bradlee did suppress the story about James Angleton and Mary Pinchot Meyer in the Washington Post. (See Nina Burleigh’s book, A Very Private Woman). He also stopped Washington Post journalists from referring to the fact that Cord Meyer was a high-ranking official in the CIA (he was described as a government official in the Washington Post).

Bradlee’s account appeared in his autobiography published in 1995. This was his attempt to put his own spin on the story.

The story about Angleton and Bradlee searching for the diary first appeared in the National Enquirer in March, 1976. The article was based on an interview with James Truitt, a former senior member of staff at the Washington Post. Truitt also told the newspaper that Meyer was having an affair with JFK when he was assassinated. He also claimed that Mary had told his wife, Ann Truitt, that she was keeping an account of this relationship in her diary. Meyer asked Truitt to take possession of a private diary "if anything ever happened to me". The Truitts were in Japan when Mary was killed. Therefore Ann phoned Mary’s sister about the diary. Unfortunately, she told her husband who was Ben Bradlee. As a result he went out searching for the diary and when it was found handed it to Angleton. I suspect Bradlee was guilty of a crime by taking this action (tampering with evidence in a murder inquiry).

This story also appeared in Deborah Davis’ book, Katharine the Great in 1979. Ben Bradlee did everything he could to stop the book from being published. Bradlee and the CIA managed to persuade the publishers William Jovanovich, to pulp 20,000 copies of the book. Davis filed a breach-of- contract and damage-to-reputation suit against Jovanovich, who settled out of court with her in 1983. So much for Bradlee being a defender of freedom of speech.

I happen to have a copy of one of the books that escaped being pulped. It is a great book full of insights about the activities of the Washington Post. Davis claims that Deep Throat was Richard Ober of the CIA. It was also the first book to disclose the most secret of all of CIA covert activities, Operation Mockingbird.

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Robert, while it may seem logical to conclude that the CIA was behind the Watergate break-in, and that they deliberately muffed it up to bring Nixon down, there were clearly much easier ways for them to have accomplished this task. Drop dime to Jack Anderson about the activities of the Plumbers, for starters... No, I'm afraid the screw-ups during the break-in were just that--screw-ups. What is it about McCord, Hunt, Liddy that leads you to believe they weren't capable of screwing things up?

If we assume the foregoing to be true, Nixon would have received the photo take from the breakins. But he didn't. That seems to have been skimmed or syphoned off somewhere else. [i presume it was CIA, simply because [i]they[/i] provided Hunt with the photo developing facilities, though that might not prove true. It's merely the most logical hypothesis.] If these chaps were being loyal to Nixon, rather than some other sponsor, why didn't Nixon get what he was paying for, and where did it go instead? I fear this isn't quite so cut and dried as you are prepared to accept.

Where one should rightly be suspicious of CIA involvement is instead in the post-break-in period, where McCord admittedly told Sirica of the cover-up in part because he'd become aware that Nixon was seeking to blame the break-in on the CIA. Was McCord counseled by the agency before making his decision? While he said "no." Alfred Baldwin alluded in his appearances here that McCord still had some secrets. Perhaps this was one of them.

Baldwin was no doubt right. What was it that McCord and his Agency-provided counsel Lee Pennington burned in McCord's fireplace? And why did the Agency exhibit such solicitude toward McCord, providing him with counsel after he'd already embroiled the Agency in this mess? Loyalty to an old hand? Perhaps, but it strikes your humble resident cynic as doubtful.

As far as Bradlee, in his memoirs he writes about the death of his sister-in-law, Mary Meyer. He says that he and his wife, Toni, were informed by one of her friends that Mary had a diary, and that they should find this before the authorities found it. He says they then went to her studio. And CAUGHT JAMES ANGLETON there trying to break-in. Angleton explained that his wife, one of Mary's good friends, had received a similar call, and that she'd asked him to go get the diary.

Ah, yes, "coincidence theory."

Neither man received that synchronous phone call, but both went to retrieve the diary, at precisely the same time? And that when Bradlee and his wife arrived, the Meyer house was locked, but once they broke in, Angleton was already there searching for the same thing? In a universe of infinite possibilities, it is possible. Likely? Well, there, we may diverge.

Bradlee also asserted that there was nothing in her diary relevant to the tryst with JFK; that it contained only sketches and ephemera. Then one wonders why Mary insisted to her friend Anne Truitt that it should be retrieved in the event that anything "happened" to her, and why she suspected that some might "happen" to her.

Let us also recall that it was Phil Graham, alleged Mockingbird mainman, who made the veiled revelation in early '63 that Meyer had been sleeping with JFK. A warning shot across Kennedy's bow, perhaps? If so, fired on whose behalf?

Bradlee says that when they found the diary they gave it to Angleton to destroy. As such a story could only lead to suspicion of CIA involvement in Meyer's death, I don't see Bradlee including it in his memoirs if it weren't true, and if he weren't trying to set the record straight.

And what happened to the diary? Angleton disputed Bradlee's version of events, as I recall. And Bradlee's book discloses what about the diary's eventual disposition? Oh yes, his wife secured the return of the diary from Angleton and destroyed it herself? Amazing, isn't it, the trouble that Toni Bradlee went to in order to destroy a diary that her husband maintains they knew contained nothing but skethes and ephemera?

Oddly enough, the tipoff phone call came from former Navy man and journalist James Truitt [via his wife, Anne - what is it with these wives?] while he and Anne were in Japan. He was there working for the Post-owned Newsweek, and had served as Phil Graham's personal assistant prior to the Tokyo posting. Soon after the Meyer episode, he became the Post's Vice President. Presumably, you see nothing in this that may smack of intrigue and payoff.

Well, perhaps other facts will encourage you to reconsider.

After Bradlee squeezed Truitt off the Post payroll in '69 [in return for a lump sum payment and his signature on a non-disclosure form], Truitt remarried and relocated to Mexico. In '76, when all of this again became germane with various congressional investigations, Truitt disclosed the incident in which Bradlee and Angleton burgled Meyer's home and removed the diary. Both men initially denied this, before being exposed as liars by other of Mary Meyer's friends. [sidebar: Mexico City CIA station chief Win Scott had his diary purloined by Angleton, too, from Mexico immediately after Scott's death. Whose wife arranged for that theft?]

When Truitt allegedly committed suicide in 1981 in Mexico, his second wife claimed that his private papers - including copies of Mary Meyer's diary - had been stolen by a CIA man named Herbert Burrows. [Whose wife arranged that theft, one wonders?] Ben Bradlee's book say anything about that? Why would CIA care so much about a diary that contained nothing but sketches and ephemera?

Still others speculate that CIA heavyweight Cord Meyer was behind the retrieval of the diary, although I'm unsure about the validity of that conjecture.

While some might say "Oh, but the story had already leaked out in the tabloid press long before Bradlee wrote his memoirs." Well, that's exactly the point. The story had been written about in a number of places, but it had never been confirmed in a well-publicized and credible book, until Bradlee wrote about it.

Actually, both men had lied about the episode when it was first raised, but relented only after numerous of Meyer's friends had asserted otherwise to Time Magazine, the New York Times and Washington Post and others. [That's not the "tabloid press" in my worldview....] Hence, it's a tad disingenuous to say we owe Bradlee for the confirmation; he did his level best to prevent us ever knowing about it, and only confirmed it well after it had already been established elsewhere.

His account, which can only lead to suspicion about Angleton, will be the one studied by historians in the decades to come.

If it's left to historians, it's only because newsman Bradlee ensured we never heard the news when it was relevant, and denied it when it was first raised, over his objections. This is the exemplar of journalistic integrity we should trust?

By the time of Bradlee's memoirs, Angleton had already been retired from CIA for two decades, and been dead for the better part of a decade. Doesn't take much bravery to make such disclosures forty years after the event, when all the principals have shuffled off the mortal coil. Where were those shocking disclosures in the Washington Post when they happened? Thought better of it at the time, did he? Rather counter-intuitive for a man constantly on the prowl for the next big story, is it not?

Edited by Robert Charles-Dunne
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On page 130 you point out after your stories on Oliver North were published by AP you were recruited by Evan Thomas to join the staff of Newsweek (February, 1987). However, soon after you arrived Evan Thomas seemed to lose interest in your research into North. For example, Newsweek did not send a member of staff to report on North’s trial in 1989. By 1990 Thomas made clear that you were no longer wanted at Newsweek and you agreed to leave the organization.

Is it possible that Evan Thomas recruited you in order to keep you off the case? I say this because it has been claimed that Newsweek was a very important part of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird. See for example, Carl Bernstein’s CIA and the Media in Rolling Stone Magazine (20th October, 1977).

In her book, Katharine The Great (1979), Deborah Davis points out that Newsweek was owned by the Astor Foundation. The most dominant figure of the organization was Gates White McGarrah. His grandson was Richard McGarrah Helms, a leading figure in the CIA’s Directorate of Plans that ran Mockingbird. Helms was a childhood friend of Ben Bradlee (page 141). In the early 1950s Bradlee worked for the Office of U.S. Information and Educational Exchange (USIE). This was an organization under the control of the CIA. In 1953 Bradlee went to work for Newsweek. Recently released documents concerning the Rosenberg case show that while employed by Newsweek, Bradlee was also working for the CIA.

In 1961 it was Ben Bradlee who told Phil Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, that Newsweek was up for sale. Bradlee told Graham that he had heard this from his good friend, Richard Helms (page 142). Phil Graham had been recruited to Operation Mockingbird by Frank Wisner soon after the CIA was created in 1947. Wisner and Graham had both been members of the OSS during the Second World War.

I suppose there are always things you don't know. As for my hiring at Newsweek, I think it resulted from how poorly the magazine had done on the scandal to that point. That said, Newsweek never liked the story and wanted it put to rest as soon as possible. Editor Maynard Parker was very sympathetic to the neoconservatives and became my nemesis. Evan felt that my presence so angered Parker that I had become an obstacle for Evan's plans for the Washington bureau. Newsweek did see itself as a centrist Establishment publication, but it was not necessarily in line with the CIA, especially when the analysts described a weakening Soviet Union. Newsweek favored a much harder line and even considered the CIA soft of the Soviets. Even in the late 1980s, Parker and other top editors pushed for an article about Soviet tanks threatening the Fulda Gap in Germany. Despite objections from Washington correspondents, I think that story was eventually done.

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Robert, while it may seem logical to conclude that the CIA was behind the Watergate break-in, and that they deliberately muffed it up to bring Nixon down, there were clearly much easier ways for them to have accomplished this task. Drop dime to Jack Anderson about the activities of the Plumbers, for starters... No, I'm afraid the screw-ups during the break-in were just that--screw-ups. What is it about McCord, Hunt, Liddy that leads you to believe they weren't capable of screwing things up?

If we assume the foregoing to be true, Nixon would have received the photo take from the breakins. But he didn't. That seems to have been skimmed or syphoned off somewhere else. [i presume it was CIA, simply because [i]they[/i] provided Hunt with the photo developing facilities, though that might not prove true. It's merely the most logical hypothesis.] If these chaps were being loyal to Nixon, rather than some other sponsor, why didn't Nixon get what he was paying for, and where did it go instead? I fear this isn't quite so cut and dried as you are prepared to accept.

Where one should rightly be suspicious of CIA involvement is instead in the post-break-in period, where McCord admittedly told Sirica of the cover-up in part because he'd become aware that Nixon was seeking to blame the break-in on the CIA. Was McCord counseled by the agency before making his decision? While he said "no." Alfred Baldwin alluded in his appearances here that McCord still had some secrets. Perhaps this was one of them.

Baldwin was no doubt right. What was it that McCord and his Agency-provided counsel Lee Pennington burned in McCord's fireplace? And why did the Agency exhibit such solicitude toward McCord, providing him with counsel after he'd already embroiled the Agency in this mess? Loyalty to an old hand? Perhaps, but it strikes your humble resident cynic as doubtful.

As far as Bradlee, in his memoirs he writes about the death of his sister-in-law, Mary Meyer. He says that he and his wife, Toni, were informed by one of her friends that Mary had a diary, and that they should find this before the authorities found it. He says they then went to her studio. And CAUGHT JAMES ANGLETON there trying to break-in. Angleton explained that his wife, one of Mary's good friends, had received a similar call, and that she'd asked him to go get the diary.

Ah, yes, "coincidence theory."

Neither man received that synchronous phone call, but both went to retrieve the diary, at precisely the same time? And that when Bradlee and his wife arrived, the Meyer house was locked, but once they broke in, Angleton was already there searching for the same thing? In a universe of infinite possibilities, it is possible. Likely? Well, there, we may diverge.

Bradlee also asserted that there was nothing in her diary relevant to the tryst with JFK; that it contained only sketches and ephemera. Then one wonders why Mary insisted to her friend Anne Truitt that it should be retrieved in the event that anything "happened" to her, and why she suspected that some might "happen" to her.

Let us also recall that it was Phil Graham, alleged Mockingbird mainman, who made the veiled revelation in early '63 that Meyer had been sleeping with JFK. A warning shot across Kennedy's bow, perhaps? If so, fired on whose behalf?

Bradlee says that when they found the diary they gave it to Angleton to destroy. As such a story could only lead to suspicion of CIA involvement in Meyer's death, I don't see Bradlee including it in his memoirs if it weren't true, and if he weren't trying to set the record straight.

And what happened to the diary? Angleton disputed Bradlee's version of events, as I recall. And Bradlee's book discloses what about the diary's eventual disposition? Oh yes, his wife secured the return of the diary from Angleton and destroyed it herself? Amazing, isn't it, the trouble that Toni Bradlee went to in order to destroy a diary that her husband maintains they knew contained nothing but skethes and ephemera?

Oddly enough, the tipoff phone call came from former Navy man and journalist James Truitt [via his wife, Anne - what is it with these wives?] while he and Anne were in Japan. He was there working for the Post-owned Newsweek, and had served as Phil Graham's personal assistant prior to the Tokyo posting. Soon after the Meyer episode, he became the Post's Vice President. Presumably, you see nothing in this that may smack of intrigue and payoff.

Well, perhaps other facts will encourage you to reconsider.

After Bradlee squeezed Truitt off the Post payroll in '69 [in return for a lump sum payment and his signature on a non-disclosure form], Truitt remarried and relocated to Mexico. In '76, when all of this again became germane with various congressional investigations, Truitt disclosed the incident in which Bradlee and Angleton burgled Meyer's home and removed the diary. Both men initially denied this, before being exposed as liars by other of Mary Meyer's friends. [sidebar: Mexico City CIA station chief Win Scott had his diary purloined by Angleton, too, from Mexico immediately after Scott's death. Whose wife arranged for that theft?]

When Truitt allegedly committed suicide in 1981 in Mexico, his second wife claimed that his private papers - including copies of Mary Meyer's diary - had been stolen by a CIA man named Herbert Burrows. [Whose wife arranged that theft, one wonders?] Ben Bradlee's book say anything about that? Why would CIA care so much about a diary that contained nothing but sketches and ephemera?

Still others speculate that CIA heavyweight Cord Meyer was behind the retrieval of the diary, although I'm unsure about the validity of that conjecture.

While some might say "Oh, but the story had already leaked out in the tabloid press long before Bradlee wrote his memoirs." Well, that's exactly the point. The story had been written about in a number of places, but it had never been confirmed in a well-publicized and credible book, until Bradlee wrote about it.

Actually, both men had lied about the episode when it was first raised, but relented only after numerous of Meyer's friends had asserted otherwise to Time Magazine, the New York Times and Washington Post and others. [That's not the "tabloid press" in my worldview....] Hence, it's a tad disingenuous to say we owe Bradlee for the confirmation; he did his level best to prevent us ever knowing about it, and only confirmed it well after it had already been established elsewhere.

His account, which can only lead to suspicion about Angleton, will be the one studied by historians in the decades to come.

If it's left to historians, it's only because newsman Bradlee ensured we never heard the news when it was relevant, and denied it when it was first raised, over his objections. This is the exemplar of journalistic integrity we should trust?

By the time of Bradlee's memoirs, Angleton had already been retired from CIA for two decades, and been dead for the better part of a decade. Doesn't take much bravery to make such disclosures forty years after the event, when all the principals have shuffled off the mortal coil. Where were those shocking disclosures in the Washington Post when they happened? Thought better of it at the time, did he? Rather counter-intuitive for a man constantly on the prowl for the next big story, is it not?

Robert, if I remember correctly--I'm not in the company of my books just now--the photos taken by the burglars were given to the CIA to develop, and would never have made their way to Nixon under any circumstances, as Nixon did not even know there'd been a break-in. He'd told Colson to get some dirt...Colson told Magruder and Hunt, etc.--yet there's no evidence Nixon knew of the break-in. Which, I believe, is one of the reasons he held onto the tapes. He thought that as long as he hadn't ordered the actual break-in, he would be in the clear. Anyhow, the photos got left at the CIA when Hunt went into hiding... If I'm not mistaken, the CIA turned them over to the Justice Department. I assume they are still in the Archives somehwere. Anyhow, there's no evidence the CIA had any interest in the photos, outside of trying to figure out what Hunt was up to, which was a legitimate concern.

As far as Bradlee and the Meyer case, when I first read about it a few years ago, I immediately dug out Bradlee's memoirs and confirmed the story. I told a few friends. All of them EXTREMELY well-informed on politics and current affairs. None of them had ever heard of the story, and ONLY belived it because it was in Bradlee's memoirs. I assure you that NO ONE in America takes the National Enquirer seriously and that most Americans and historians placed Truitt's story in the same category as the moon being made of cheese. If I remember correctly, when the Truitt story broke, Bradlee was asked about it by some journalists at his paper, and that he decided to give them an interview--a scoop on the story--at that point, long before 1995. And that he largely confirmed Truitt's story. As I remember Bradlee said the diary made mention of a man, but did not name names. I don't believe he ever said there was nothing in the diary but sketches. As you said, if that's all there was, then what was the point of all the intrigue? As far as Bradlee's motivation in keeping the story secret for so many years, let's get real: it was a story about a possible relationship between his murdered sister-in-law and a man he considered a good friend, the murdered president of the United States. I don't think one in a thousand journalists would break such a story and bring more pain to the people they know and love.

What Op Mock devotees miss when it comes to Bradlee is that the Washington Post under his and Katherine Graham's tutelage was for many years one of only two or three papers in the entire nation that would regularly take on the U.S. Government and win. The other papers were the New York Times, and for awhile, The Los Angeles Times. The Washington Post and its ability to expose Governmental corruption and deception so intimidated the Reagan Regime (a regime which saw the CIA back to its old tricks, by the way) that Reagan boosters sought to de-stablilize The Post by propping up a conservative paper. This paper lost money, year-in and year-out, until eventually gaining favor with the neo-cons. This paper is The Washington Times, and is owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, and is used by Moon and his neocon flunkeys to push a hard right, neocon agenda. It is the Fox News of journalism.

So, to an American who remembers the seventies and eighties, an era of "what is The Post exposing now?" implying or stating that Ben Bradlee is a CIA schill makes about as much sense as saying that Michael Moore is a CIA schill. William Turner talked about his enormous FBI file. I'd venture to say that Bradlee's file is almost as large.

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Pat Speer wrote:

So, to an American who remembers the seventies and eighties, an era of "what is The Post exposing now?" implying or stating that Ben Bradlee is a CIA schill makes about as much sense as saying that Michael Moore is a CIA schill. William Turner talked about his enormous FBI file. I'd venture to say that Bradlee's file is almost as large.

(quote off)

Pat,

I remember a different 70's and 80's, with all due respect.

At least Rolling Stone was still hip in those days, sorta.

http://tinyurl.com/r3yon

Some of us cut our teeth on this:

http://www.namebase.org/sources/BX.html

So it didn't come as a surprise when Katherine Graham personally whitewashed Reagan/Bush era CIA-connected drug smuggling by her 11th hour blocking of the publication of the following...

http://www.serendipity.li/cia/c_o_mena.html

Here's a story from 1989 that the Washington Post relegated to page 23 with a few short paragraphs:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1499

Think about it...Former Reagan National Security Advisor John Poindexter et al were barred from entering Costa Rica because they'd set up a drug smuggling network on Costa Rican soil.

I have to give the Washington Post credit -- they were the ONLY paper to carry the story. On page 23.

Pat, if the South Koreans, say, announced that former Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger was barred from entering South Korea because he'd helped set up a drug smuggling network -- on what page would the Washington Post carry THAT story?

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Pat I lived in Washington during the 1980s, and you and I have very different recolections of the Post. I was a religious devotee of all articles on Central America. The reporting on the Contras--given thier record of deliberately targetting civilians-- was very biased towards the Reagan Administration. For example they labled the situation a "civil war": this belied the minimal support that the Contras had in Nicargua itself: recall that their

bases were in neighboring Honduras under the suppervision of Necroponte. Their cross border attacks on civilians were thus under the purview of our current leader of the war on terror. The Post was On Bended Knee" when it came to echoing Reagans platitudes about the "freedom fighters"

The coverage of El Salvador was worse. I wrote a study in which I found that over a two year period 93% of all sources in Post articles about the only country named after Jesus Christ came from U.S. Military, U.S. State Department, Salvadoran Gov. or Salvarodan military personnel. It was so bad that one morning me and several other premature soldiers in the War on Terror got up at 5am to cover the Post with a mock front page we had written called the Washington Parrot. The Post echoed the government line that the death squads

(b. 1964 with Green Beret midwives) were somehow independent of the U.S. supported gov. In one instance they could not manage to find a single body from the now infamous (if rarely referred to) El Mozoete masacre of 1982.

The El Mozote massacre came one week before the U.S. Legislature was going to vote on continued aid to the gov of El Salvador. (El Salvador was noteworthy during the 1980s as being the only country to have recieved a greater percentage of its budget from the U.S. than had our regime in "South Vietnam".) Six hundred people were killed by a U.S. trained battalion while crossing a river. Reagan said it dident happen.

Reporters --perhaps remembering the recent removal of NYT reporter Raymond Bonner-- parroted the Great Communicator.

In 1992 more than six hundred bodies were disovered. How might REAL JOURNALISM have effected the 1982 vote? This was just one of hundreds of massacres.

Regarding the Post and the 1970s I read an interesting book by the UC Davis historian Kathy Olmstead:

Selected Publications

* "Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley" (North Carolina, 2002)

* "Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI" (North Carolina, 1996)

* "Reclaiming Executive Power: The Ford Administration's Response to the Intelligence Investigations." Presidential Studies Quarterly, Summer 1996, 26:3, 725-37.

* "'An American Conspiracy': The Post-Watergate Press and the CIA." Journalism History, Summer 1993, 19:2, 51-58.

She points out the familiar "rare open window" (to what end? how open?) on the CIA in the Times and Post in 1975. She strongly argues, however that IT WAS THE TIMES AND POST NEWS ANALYSIS ARTICLES AND EDITORIALS THEMSELVES THAT HELPED TO TURN PUBLIC OPINION AGAINST THIS OPEN WINDOW DURING THE YEAR OF 1976. By the end of that year, public opinion had shifted from wanting "mores sunshine" toward a the view that the press was damaging "National Security" by telling too much about the CIA.

I strongly recommend her book "Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI" They focus on the agenda setting role of the NYT and the Washington Post.

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Pat:

I trust that by continuing this dialogue, you won't think I'm hard-charging you. All your points are valid, as always, and I think you know that I have nothing but respect for your output/input here. We may marginally disagree over a few details [but that's usually where the devil is, n'est ce pas?], and what can be inferred or interpolated from those details.

Robert, if I remember correctly--I'm not in the company of my books just now--the photos taken by the burglars were given to the CIA to develop, and would never have made their way to Nixon under any circumstances, as Nixon did not even know there'd been a break-in. He'd told Colson to get some dirt...Colson told Magruder and Hunt, etc.--yet there's no evidence Nixon knew of the break-in. Which, I believe, is one of the reasons he held onto the tapes. He thought that as long as he hadn't ordered the actual break-in, he would be in the clear. Anyhow, the photos got left at the CIA when Hunt went into hiding... If I'm not mistaken, the CIA turned them over to the Justice Department. I assume they are still in the Archives somehwere. Anyhow, there's no evidence the CIA had any interest in the photos, outside of trying to figure out what Hunt was up to, which was a legitimate concern.

Except that Jim Hougan demonstrated the photos provided were not taken in the DNC offices, but elsewhere, yet passed off as being DNC docs photographed inside the DNC. This means that whatever bona fide photographic booty originated from the breakins at the DNC were sidelined elsewhere, hence my supposition that they were retained by CIA. Whatever is in the Archives is counterfeit, by Hougan's demonstration. So, if - as you suggest - "there's no evidence the CIA had any interest in the photos," where did the real photos go, and why did the Agency provide forgeries in their stead?

You might also be interested in Hougan's meticulously constructed scenario in which the Watergate imbroglio was just one means by which the Agency sought to topple the Nixon regime. You can read a few more tidbits here:

http://www.jimhougan.com/StrangeBedfellows.html

As for the CIA's purported disinterest in these events, per your statement above, I feel compelled to remind you that whatever the Nixonites might have directed the Plumbers to do, all of them, to a man save Liddy, were one-time Agency operatives. Perhaps those unique CV references were what made them attractive hirees to the White House, but only the terminally naive, I suggest, could hire such a motley crew of clandestine operators and not suspect they may have lingering allegiances to the prior sponsor who taught them everything they knew.

Moreover, by continuing to use Agency props and facilities, it should have been clear that these men still had some juice with Langley, a fact that would have caused me considerable disquiet, were I Nixon or one of his trusted loyalists. Even if you don't find Hougan's evidence sufficiently persuasive, I think this ongoing rapport with Langley speaks of an at least hypothetical arrangement between the Plumbers and CIA that you've not mentioned in your posts. If there is a concrete reason to disbelieve that Hunt, et al's, use of Agency resources suggests they were still of utility to the Agency in their "new" roles, I would welcome hearing it.

As far as Bradlee and the Meyer case, when I first read about it a few years ago, I immediately dug out Bradlee's memoirs and confirmed the story. I told a few friends. All of them EXTREMELY well-informed on politics and current affairs. None of them had ever heard of the story, and ONLY belived it because it was in Bradlee's memoirs. I assure you that NO ONE in America takes the National Enquirer seriously and that most Americans and historians placed Truitt's story in the same category as the moon being made of cheese.

And with good reason, though even a stopped watch is correct twice daily. Except the Truitt story was exceptional in that it was persuasively well-written and that Bradlee, by your own admission below, "largely confirmed Truitt's story." Hence, irrespective of where the piece first ran, it is unfair to claim it was inaccurate based solely upon its appearance in the Enquirer, when your own witness admitted it was true.

If I remember correctly, when the Truitt story broke, Bradlee was asked about it by some journalists at his paper, and that he decided to give them an interview--a scoop on the story--at that point, long before 1995. And that he largely confirmed Truitt's story. As I remember Bradlee said the diary made mention of a man, but did not name names. I don't believe he ever said there was nothing in the diary but sketches.

I have read this, but cannot recall where. I will seek a citation, since it's of some importance to learn precisely what the diary contained. I've also read the diary made reference to a tryst with an unnamed man, but again, cannot recall the source.

As you said, if that's all there was, then what was the point of all the intrigue? As far as Bradlee's motivation in keeping the story secret for so many years, let's get real: it was a story about a possible relationship between his murdered sister-in-law and a man he considered a good friend, the murdered president of the United States. I don't think one in a thousand journalists would break such a story and bring more pain to the people they know and love.

What Op Mock devotees miss when it comes to Bradlee is that the Washington Post under his and Katherine Graham's tutelage was for many years one of only two or three papers in the entire nation that would regularly take on the U.S. Government and win. The other papers were the New York Times, and for awhile, The Los Angeles Times. The Washington Post and its ability to expose Governmental corruption and deception so intimidated the Reagan Regime (a regime which saw the CIA back to its old tricks, by the way) that Reagan boosters sought to de-stablilize The Post by propping up a conservative paper. This paper lost money, year-in and year-out, until eventually gaining favor with the neo-cons. This paper is The Washington Times, and is owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, and is used by Moon and his neocon flunkeys to push a hard right, neocon agenda. It is the Fox News of journalism.

I am familiar with the peridocal, and your assessment of it is so spot-on as to be quotable. However, despite the Post's [distant] past laurels, a few points have escaped comment by you thus far.

First, I assume that you don't dispute Bradlee's service for the CIA front, USIE, that ran the Euro propaganda vehicle Voice of America, and prepared various cultural propaganda for CIA's use in Europe. Presumably, you also don't dispute that in this capacity, Bradlee worked closely with both E. Howard Hunt [stationed in Paris at the same time as Bradlee] and with Angleton, then tasked with liaison with all Allied intelligence agencies for CIA, as well as Bradlee's former Harvard classmate Richard Ober, Angleton's deputy there, who is still considered by many to be a prime candidate for Deep Throat honours.

Second, I presume that you likewise acknowledge Bob Woodward's past Naval intelligence duties, which saw him brief White House personnel in the Nixon years. After all, it was allegedly while there waiting for one such briefing session that Woodward first met Mark Felt, later "outed" as Deep Throat, despite a variety of discrepancies and anomalies which suggest the ID was a ruse. While in that role, Woodward was assigned as an assistant to Chief of Naval Operations Tom Moorer, whom Hougan asserts was part of yet another covert attempt to topple the Nixon regime. [see site URL above for more details.]

I would be far more sanguine about accepting your common-sensical assuasions about all of this had Bradlee and Woodward not been known intelligence operatives prior to their Post employment, had the Deep Throat of history been identified at the time in order to judge whatever hidden agendas he may have been pursuing, and had the entire cadre of Plumbers not also sported a checkered intelligence background. Given the heady mix of operatives of undetermined allegiance, I find it hard to willingly suspend disbelief and rely upon the "character" recommendations you provide.

So, to an American who remembers the seventies and eighties, an era of "what is The Post exposing now?" implying or stating that Ben Bradlee is a CIA schill makes about as much sense as saying that Michael Moore is a CIA schill. William Turner talked about his enormous FBI file. I'd venture to say that Bradlee's file is almost as large.

Turner obtained access to his FBI file. Were we able to similarly access the Agency's "Bradlee" file, we might be able to put many of these troubling questions to rest and just enjoy a beer together, someday. Then we could discuss important stuff, like all the music business weasels of our mutual acquaintance.

Edited by Robert Charles-Dunne
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John, while I do believe there was, and remains, a sort-of good ole boy network connecting the intelligence community with many prominent journalists, I think your assumption that the CIA calls the shots in this relationship is sort-sighted. They use each other. If Bradlee was working for the CIA, would he have exposed Howard Hunt's role in the Watergate break-in? If Bradlee had been as pro-CIA as you seem to believe, would he have written about Angleton's suspicious behavior after the death of Mary Meyer? Jeff Morley's piece is revealing in many ways. One is that by intermingling with the journalistic community, sophisticated men like Helms were able to convince the educated and primarily white journalistic world that the CIA was not a bunch of monsters, but the good guys, who could be trusted. Meanwhile, there have been pushy Jewish-types like Mark Lane and loose cannon media sponges like Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone representing the conspiracy community. The mainstream media naturally trust the people they assume to be more like themselves over these characters, and still do. This choosing of sides is due in part to self-interest. If you choose to pal around with Mark Lane over Richard Helms, how much access will that buy you in the years to come? This CYA attitude of the mainstream media, this protect-your-left-one attitude, prevents many an important story from ever seeing the light of day, and not just stories related to the CIA or the Kennedy assassination. It also affords many journalists the access necessary to break other stories. We have no idea how many important stories have come forth as a result of these trade-offs. (Maybe we should call Bob Woodward or Sy Hersh and ask.) As I said, the intelligence community and the journalistic community use each other. As the prominent journalists, by and large, make more money and have longer careers than the CIA officers they use as sources, perhaps what you believe to be the tail is just as often the dog. The Bush Administration's interest in Jack Anderson's papers is reflective that this is the case.

I find your conjecture that the CIA wanted the Pentagon Papers released as a way of getting at Nixon particularly off-target. The Pentagon Papers revealed the dishonesty of pre-Nixon administrations and dumped the bulk of the blame on the Johnson Administration. While Nixon was angered by their release, it was because it put the pressure on him to end the war, something he'd promised to do but was taking his sweet time about arranging. Nixon, never one to pass up the chance to make lemonade, nevertheless took advantage of the opportunity to blame it all on Johnson, and arranged for the official release of many documents relating to the war. It was in this period that he and Colson cooked up the idea of inserting documents into the record connecting Diem's death directly to Kennedy. They tasked Hunt with providing these fake documents. It was only because Hunt's fake docs didn't pass the smell test of an executive at Life--I don't remember which executive it was--that these documents failed to enter the public record. Was this executive under orders from the CIA to do this?

I suspect that if you told Neil Sheehan and Daniel Ellsberg that their release of the Pentagon Papers was part of a CIA plot to get Nixon, they would punch you in the nose. These men were AGAINST the war, and took great risks to expose the truth about the war. Such men do exist and are currently fighting President Bush from the journalistic trenches. Assuming that all the damaging news that's fit to print is approved by or even orchestrated by the CIA is an insult to these men and their legacy.

Pat, as I interpret it, your argument above is that the CIA and agenda setting corporate media have a symbiotic relationship. You suggest that sometimes the media cause reactions from the CIA rather than simply appearing as passive conduits of agency information.

I dont disagree with this. I also don't think that it detracts diminishes the truth of the following simple statement: the corporate media is controlled by the intelligence agencies.

If they are in a symbiotic relationship with the CIA, are they in other symbiotic relationships with other sources of information that might counterbalance this potential source of bias? Clearly not. There are no other sources of information that are quoted as frequently or whose general narrative of world events is reified as prominantly as the U.S. governemtnt's and its intelligence agencies.

This thread has emphasized the VARIETIES OF DIFFERENT AVENUES OF MEDIA CONTROL by the CIA. Sometimes even a maverick reporter can be reigned in subtly, but with effects more far more profound than

a Pravda type, monistic propaganda system.

The Jefferson Morley article "What Jane Roman Saw" depicts how power works in a million subtle ways. Sideways glances of editors, chuckles around the wattercooler. God knows NO REPORTER WANTS TO THINK OF THEMSELVES AS CENSORED. Note how Morley suggests that a reporter might not want to raise the assassination because of personal relationships in the office. Or at least the reporter can tell himself that as he moves on to a more professionally agreeable story. Is the diffusion of State pressure into a thousand sideways glances by ones colleagues perhaps a way in which reporters can still maintain the illusion that they are really not under such pressure? I fear that this is what is called professionalism these days.

The CIA and U.S. government controlls the press. In my opinion this is a simple and accurate statement.

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The CIA and U.S. government controlls the press. In my opinion this is a simple and accurate statement.

I would disagree with the word "control," and replace it with "exerts an inordinate amount of influence on." Similarly, big business "exerts an inordinate amount of influence on" the CIA and U.S. government. Similarly, men with mountains of liquid cash--quite often criminals of one kind or another--"exert an inordinate amount of influence on" big business. It's an unjust world, for sure. Those who have the marbles call the shots.

The few rays of light that make it into the closet of American consciousness come most frequently from the alternative press and the internet. It's getting harder and harder for the powers that be to shut down a story completely. So they seek to "exert inordinate influence on" the major media, and the major TV networks, to prevent anything controversial from becoming "mainstream." This, in turn, forces those seeking more information to go to alternative sources. In the case of the current administration, their efforts are in the process of exploding in their face, as the "mainstream" media, disturbed by their own reduced ratings and emboldened by Bush's reduced ratings, are beginning to report news they would have deliberately overlooked two years ago. The Daily Show, on Comedy Central, owned by Viacom, who also owns CBS, has created a cartoon segment on President Bush called "The Decider," in which they portray Bush nuking Iran in order to show everyone how decisive he is. It would be called vicious satire if it weren't a possibility. Anyhow, I point this out to demonstrate that while the media plays ball with the government they are really whores who will stab the government in the back should the story appear juicy enough and the pay-offs...Pulitzer prizes, movie deals... be high enough. The number of anti-Bush books published by mainstream publishers in the last few years probably outnumbers the number of anti-LBJ and anti-Nixon books combined.

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