Google, Bing and Operation Mockingbird

[John Simkin]

In January 2005, I wrote an article entitled Operation Mockingbird. At that time very little was known about this highly secret Central Intelligence Agency media operation that dated back to 1948 when Frank Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects. Soon afterwards it was renamed the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the CIA. Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."

Later that year Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic American media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, to run the project within the industry. Graham himself recruited others who had worked for military intelligence during the war. This included James Truitt, Russell Wiggins, Phil Geyelin, John Hayes and Alan Barth. Others like Stewart Alsop, Joseph Alsop and James Reston, were recruited from within the Georgetown Set. According to Deborah Davis (Katharine the Great): "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."

One of the most important journalists under the control of Operation Mockingbird was Joseph Alsop, whose articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers. Other journalists willing to promote the views of the CIA included Stewart Alsop (New York Herald Tribune), Ben Bradlee (Newsweek), James Reston (New York Times), C. D. Jackson (Time Magazine), Walter Pincus (Washington Post), Walter Winchell (New York Daily Mirror), Drew Pearson, Walter Lippmann, William Allen White, Edgar Ansel Mowrer (Chicago Daily News), Hal Hendrix (Miami News), Whitelaw Reid (New York Herald Tribune), Jerry O'Leary (Washington Star), William C. Baggs (Miami News), Herb Gold (Miami News) and Charles L. Bartlett (Chattanooga Times). According to Nina Burleigh, the author of A Very Private Woman, (1998) these journalists sometimes wrote articles that were commissioned by Frank Wisner. The CIA also provided them with classified information to help them with their work.

Evidence for Operation Mockingbird first came from many different sources. Thomas Braden, head of the of the CIA's International Organizations Division (IOD), played an important role in Operation Mockingbird. In June, 1975, Braden gave an interview to the Granada Television program, World in Action: The Rise and Fall of the CIA. "If the director of CIA wanted to extend a present, say, to someone in Europe - a Labour leader - suppose he just thought, This man can use fifty thousand dollars, he's working well and doing a good job - he could hand it to him and never have to account to anybody... There was simply no limit to the money it could spend and no limit to the people it could hire and no limit to the activities it could decide were necessary to conduct the war - the secret war.... It was a multinational. Maybe it was one of the first. Journalists were a target, labor unions a particular target - that was one of the activities in which the communists spent the most money." In another interview Braden confessed that the activities of the CIA had to be kept secret from Congress. As he pointed out in the article: "In the early 1950s, when the cold war was really hot, the idea that Congress would have approved many of our projects was about as likely as the John Birch Society's approving Medicare."

Further details of Operation Mockingbird was revealed as a result of the Frank Church investigations (Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities). According to the Congress report published in 1976: "The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets." Church argued that the cost of misinforming the world cost American taxpayers an estimated $265 million a year.

Church showed that it was CIA policy to use clandestine handling of journalists and authors to get information published initially in the foreign media in order to get it disseminated in the United States. Church quotes from one document written by the Chief of the Covert Action Staff on how this process worked (page 193). For example, he writes: “Get books published or distributed abroad without revealing any U.S. influence, by covertly subsidizing foreign publicans or booksellers.” Later in the document he writes: “Get books published for operational reasons, regardless of commercial viability”. Church goes onto report that “over a thousand books were produced, subsidized or sponsored by the CIA before the end of 1967”. All these books eventually found their way into the American market-place. Either in their original form (Church gives the example of the Penkovskiy Papers) or repackaged as articles for American newspapers and magazines.

In another document published in 1961 the Chief of the Agency’s propaganda unit wrote: “The advantage of our direct contact with the author is that we can acquaint him in great detail with our intentions; that we can provide him with whatever material we want him to include and that we can check the manuscript at every stage… (the Agency) must make sure the actual manuscript will correspond with our operational and propagandistic intention.” Church quotes Thomas H. Karamessines as saying: “If you plant an article in some paper overseas, and it is a hard-hitting article, or a revelation, there is no way of guaranteeing that it is not going to be picked up and published by the Associated Press in this country” (page 198).

By analyzing CIA documents Church was able to identify over 50 U.S. journalists who were employed directly by the Agency. He was aware that there were a lot more who enjoyed a very close relationship with the CIA who were “being paid regularly for their services, to those who receive only occasional gifts and reimbursements from the CIA” (page 195).

Church pointed out that this was probably only the tip of the iceberg because the CIA refused to “provide the names of its media agents or the names of media organizations with which they are connected” (page 195). Church was also aware that most of these payments were not documented. This was the main point of the Otis Pike Report. If these payments were not documented and accounted for, there must be a strong possibility of financial corruption taking place. This includes the large commercial contracts that the CIA was responsible for distributing. Pike’s report actually highlighted in 1976 what eventually emerged in the 1980s via the activities of CIA operatives such as Edwin Wilson, Thomas Clines, Ted Shackley, Raphael Quintero, Richard Secord and Felix Rodriguez.

Carl Bernstein, who had worked with Bob Woodward in the investigation of Watergate, provided further information about Operation Mockingbird in an article in The Rolling Stone in October, 1977. Bernstein claimed that over a 25 year period over 400 American journalists secretly carried out assignments for the CIA: "Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested it the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles, and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad."

I published my article on Operation Mockingbird on the Spartacus Educational website in January 2005. I also posted my discoveries on the Education Forum. I then carried out a search for "Operation Mockingbird" at Google. First in the ranking was the Wikipedia entry. On 6th April, 2005, it said: “Operation Mockingbird is the name of a CIA project that may or may not have existed. It has been mentioned in several books and web sites, but its existence has not yet been determined. Some believe the operation is merely an urban legend or a conspiracy theory.” Clearly, the person who wrote this entry knew nothing about CIA operations. I therefore decided to edit the page. I therefore decided to write the entry for Operation Mockingbird on Wikipedia. However, as soon as I did this, it was deleted and the original entry was put back.

My own page on Operation Mockingbird appeared in search-engines such as AltaVista, Yahoo and AlltheWeb. However, Google did not appear to have it in its database. This was surprising as at the time I was doing very well at Google from my other pages. In the past I have worked for national newspapers and I used my contacts to make inquiries about Google's relationship with the CIA.

I posted information on the Education Forum and had letters published in the national press about the failings of Wikipedia. Eventually I was contacted by a representative of Wikipedia and I was told that if I gave full page references for my history of this CIA operation they would allow it to stand.

On 14th June, 2005, I was able to announce that my page on Operation Mockingbird had been restored to the Google database. (It now appeared at 3rd place in the ranking). So also was my page on Frank Wisner, the man who established Mockingbird. Another person blocked, Mary Pinchot Meyer, was also back in.

Recently, I had reason to do a search for "Operation Mockingbird". At Bing it came 2nd to Wikipedia. This was to be expected as it is the most detailed page on the web on the subject. In 7th place was the original debate we had about it on the Education Forum. However, I got quite a surprise, when I did the same thing at Google. It was on the third page in 22nd place. (The Education Forum was in 23rd place). Why has Google downgraded this page? I recently had an email from Bing stating: "For the second year, in blind tests, using the UK's most popular web searches, more people prefer Bing results than Google!" I am not surprised, it will be my default search-engine in future.

The current Wikipedia entry is also disturbing. Although it still contains some of the material that I produced, it has removed all reference to my website. No one knows the name and academic credentials of the person who did the final edit. Google gives Wikipedia a domain authority of 100 (that is why it always appears at the top of the rankings). However, that is not true of teachers in schools and universities who refuse to accept references from Wikipedia as we have no idea who has written the material.

http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKmockingbird.htm

[John Simkin]

At is interesting to look at what the Wikipedia editor removed from my original article. It included the removal of most of the journalists I named who were working for America’s leading media organisations. This includes the important role that Phil Graham, publisher of The Washington Post, played in the operation. Ben Bradlee’s name has also been removed. It was of course Bradlee who got Deborah Davis’s book, Katharine the Great (1979), pulped. It was Davis who first revealed Graham and Bradlee’s involvement with the CIA. It would seem that Operation Mockingbird is still in existence and is having an impact on online information.

[Pat Speer]

Some months back, I was contacted by a scientist who wanted to build upon my research regarding the NAA tests on the paraffin casts. A few months later, he sent me a link to a Wikipedia discussion regarding a page he'd submitted on the paraffin casts. It was mind-boggling. He'd gone to the trouble of writing a page on the NAA tests, only to have it picked apart by anonymous Wikipedia gatekeepers who knew NOTHING about what he was talking about.

As I recall, one gatekeeper kept repeating that the page was unworthy because the only published sources were Harold Weisberg and Gerry McKnight, known conspiracy theorists. Another gatekeeper kept saying that EVERYTHING in the article was proved false by Vincent Bugliosi in his book Reclaiming History, and that Wikipedia shouldn't post articles on long-debunked conspiracy theories. I posted a comment saying that I saw some problems with the article, and would be willing to help edit it to make it as fair and accurate as possible, if they allowed the page to be published. I then received three or four comments and emails from these gatekeepers telling me that as I was one of the few people to have ever researched this area of inquiry, I was obviously BIASED and therefore PROHIBITED from commenting or editing the article.

So, yes, the world is UPSIDE down on this matter.

In the eyes of Wikipedia, ANYTHING written in Bugliosi's under-researched prosecutor's brief can be quoted, no matter how cow-brained or ill-informed, but nothing written by myself, or anyone who's actually studied this area of inquiry, including published authors Weisberg and McKnight, is up to Wikipedia's "standards" (sic).

So, the sad fact is that Mockingbird no longer needs to exist, as the young protectors of "mainsteam-thought" are every bit as blind and zealous as the most loyal of BIG BROTHER'S little brothers.

Edited June 14, 2014 by John Simkin

[John Simkin]

Some months back, I was contacted by a scientist who wanted to build upon my research regarding the NAA tests on the paraffin casts. A few months later, he sent me a link to a Wikipedia discussion regarding a page he'd submitted on the paraffin casts. It was mind-boggling. He'd gone to the trouble of writing a page on the NAA tests, only to have it picked apart by anonymous Wikipedia gatekeepers who knew NOTHING about what he was talking about.

As I recall, one gatekeeper kept repeating that the page was unworthy because the only published sources were Harold Weisberg and Gerry McKnight, known conspiracy theorists. Another gatekeeper kept saying that EVERYTHING in the article was proved false by Vincent Bugliosi in his book Reclaiming History, and that Wikipedia shouldn't post articles on long-debunked conspiracy theories. I posted a comment saying that I saw some problems with the article, and would be willing to help edit it to make it as fair and accurate as possible, if they allowed the page to be published. I then received three or four comments and emails from these gatekeepers telling me that as I was one of the few people to have ever researched this area of inquiry, I was obviously BIASED and therefore PROHIBITED from commenting or editing the article.

So, yes, the world is UPSIDE down on this matter.

In the eyes of Wikipedia, ANYTHING written in Bugliosi's under-researched prosecutor's brief can be quoted, no matter how cow-brained or ill-informed, but nothing written by myself, or anyone who's actually studied this area of inquiry, including published authors Weisberg and McKnight, is up to Wikipedia's "standards" (sic).

So, the sad fact is that Mockingbird no longer needs to exist, as the young protectors of "mainsteam-thought" are every bit as blind and zealous as the most loyal of BIG BROTHER'S little brothers.

That is a very interesting account of how Wikipedia works. A friend has added a link to my Spartacus Educational article. It is interesting to see how long it is allowed to stay.

[Greg Burnham]

There is a Wikipedia page on Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty. However, they refuse to allow external links from that page to Colonel L Fletcher Prouty's own Official Website aka: The Collected Works of Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty!

To add insult to injury, they have allowed an external link on that Prouty Wikipedia page to the John McAdam's website! Of course, McAdams has a "hit piece" published there in which he suggests Colonel Prouty is a crackpot. They claim that the Official Prouty page is not his page. Yet, I was around back in the day when Len Osanic built that page for Prouty at Prouty's request. It is stock full of articles from Colonel Prouty, answers to email correspondence, video interviews with him, radio shows, etc. Indeed, www.Prouty.org pre-existed wikipedia by more than a few years!

I call it Mockingbirdpedia these days.

Edited June 12, 2014 by Greg Burnham

[John Simkin]

Some months back, I was contacted by a scientist who wanted to build upon my research regarding the NAA tests on the paraffin casts. A few months later, he sent me a link to a Wikipedia discussion regarding a page he'd submitted on the paraffin casts. It was mind-boggling. He'd gone to the trouble of writing a page on the NAA tests, only to have it picked apart by anonymous Wikipedia gatekeepers who knew NOTHING about what he was talking about.

As I recall, one gatekeeper kept repeating that the page was unworthy because the only published sources were Harold Weisberg and Gerry McKnight, known conspiracy theorists. Another gatekeeper kept saying that EVERYTHING in the article was proved false by Vincent Bugliosi in his book Reclaiming History, and that Wikipedia shouldn't post articles on long-debunked conspiracy theories. I posted a comment saying that I saw some problems with the article, and would be willing to help edit it to make it as fair and accurate as possible, if they allowed the page to be published. I then received three or four comments and emails from these gatekeepers telling me that as I was one of the few people to have ever researched this area of inquiry, I was obviously BIASED and therefore PROHIBITED from commenting or editing the article.

So, yes, the world is UPSIDE down on this matter.

In the eyes of Wikipedia, ANYTHING written in Bugliosi's under-researched prosecutor's brief can be quoted, no matter how cow-brained or ill-informed, but nothing written by myself, or anyone who's actually studied this area of inquiry, including published authors Weisberg and McKnight, is up to Wikipedia's "standards" (sic).

So, the sad fact is that Mockingbird no longer needs to exist, as the young protectors of "mainsteam-thought" are every bit as blind and zealous as the most loyal of BIG BROTHER'S little brothers.

That is a very interesting account of how Wikipedia works. A friend has added a link to my Spartacus Educational article. It is interesting to see how long it is allowed to stay.

I have been involved in a campaign to get my Operation Mockingbird page put back into the first page at Google via Twitter and Facebook. A friend has also added a link from Wikipedia. It has been there for two days and I am already back on the front-page. The next stage is to add the content that has been removed (The role that Phil Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post played, the names of current journalists, etc.)

[Greg Burnham]

THE CIA AND THE MEDIA

How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency

and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up

by Carl Bernstein

[John Simkin]

THE CIA AND THE MEDIA

How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency

and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up

by Carl Bernstein

You will find this article on my page on Operation Mockingbird. It is interesting that Bernstein does not include the names of the many people from the Washington Post involved. This includes Phil Graham, the publisher of the newspaper, and Ben Bradlee, its editor, I wonder why?

[John Simkin]

On Tuesday 10^th June, I wrote about my Operation Mockingbird page being removed from Google's first page in the search-rankings on my Blog. (It remained 2nd to Wikipedia's page at Bing). This was taken-up by my followers on Twitter and Facebook and became the subject of a national newspaper investigation. It seems that the powers that be monitor these discussions because by the 13^th June, the page has returned to Google's database. The Wikipedia page on Operation Mockingbird has also reinstated the link to my website. (However, it still does not include details of the role played by Philip Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, and other journalists at the paper such as Ben Bradlee, in the project).

[John Dolva]

Part of Bernsteins article :

''When Newsweek was purchased by the Washington Post Company, publisher Philip L. Graham was informed by Agency officials that the CIA occasionally used the magazine for cover purposes, according to CIA sources. "It was widely known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from," said a former deputy director of the Agency. "Frank Wisner dealt with him." Wisner, deputy director of the CIA from 1950 until shortly before his suicide in 1965, was the Agency's premier orchestrator of "black" operations, including many in which journalists were involved. Wisner liked to boast of his "mighty Wurlitzer*," a wondrous propaganda instrument he built, and played, with help from the press.) Phil Graham was probably Wisner's closest friend. But Graharn, who committed suicide in 1963, apparently knew little of the specifics of any cover arrangements with Newsweek, CIA sources said.

In 1965‑66, an accredited Newsweek stringer in the Far East was in fact a CIA contract employee earning an annual salary of $10,000 from the Agency, according to Robert T. Wood, then a CIA officer in the Hong Kong station. Some, Newsweek correspondents and stringers continued to maintain covert ties with the Agency into the 1970s, CIA sources said.

Information about Agency dealings with the Washington Post newspaper is extremely sketchy. According to CIA officials, some Post stringers have been CIA employees, but these officials say they do not know if anyone in the Post management was aware of the arrangements.

All editors‑in‑chief and managing editors of the Post since 1950 say they knew of no formal Agency relationship with either stringers or members of the Post staff. “If anything was done it was done by Phil without our knowledge,” said one. Agency officials, meanwhile, make no claim that Post staff members have had covert affiliations with the Agency while working for the paper.6

Katharine Graham, Philip Graham’s widow and the current publisher of the Post, says she has never been informed of any CIA relationships with either Post or Newsweek personnel. In November of 1973, Mrs. Graham called William Colby and asked if any Post stringers or staff members were associated with the CIA. Colby assured her that no staff members were employed by the Agency but refused to discuss the question of stringers.''

* Wisner liked to boast of his "mighty Wurlitzer*," a wondrous propaganda instrument he built, and played, with help from the press.) Phil Graham was probably Wisner's closest friend.

*the ''mockingbird" ?

[Steven Gaal]

Golly the internet seem full of censorship & propaganda....but heck lets all relax and go to the movies .....

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Glories of America’s Wars: “Made in Hollywood” by the Pentagon’s Propaganda Machine

Joachim Hagopian

=======

A short time after the worst US war defeat in the nation’s history – the Vietnam War – a growing wave of films began emerging in attempts to grapple with America’s open war wounds. Some focused on allegorical cautionary tales such as “Apocalypse Now,” an epic masterpiece showing the war in Southeast Asia as a nightmare of misguided confusion and terror, and ultimately its senseless brutality. The caricatures depicted left an indelible imprint on viewers with Robert Duvall’s perverse character proclaiming that napalm in the morning “smells like victory.” Or the decorated war hero-West Pointer renegade colonel played by Marlon Brando who saw the evil Empire war for what it was worth and jumped ship to the other side to become a hero worshipped, warrior God to the indigenous deep jungle inhabitants. Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 tour-de-force of an anti-war film became both a box office smash as well as Oscar nominated Best Picture with Coppola himself nominated as Best Director.

Just the year before in 1978 an Oscar winner for its stars was “Coming Home,” exploring the devastating impact of war on relationships. War’s collateral damage manifesting at home in the form of marital infidelity centered on stateside wife (Jane Fonda’s character), her wayward, war-fighting, PTSD-stricken husband (Bruce Dern) amidst the burgeoning intimacy of another war victim-paraplegic played by Jon Voight. The powerful reality drama in its raw emotional delivery depicted how different individuals participating in that debacle of a war each responded to their own pain, trauma and suffering. The film poignantly transcended its challenge as a potential soap opera-ish tearjerker to bring us as an audience closer home than we might comfortably want in understanding the war’s very real catastrophic consequences on vulnerable and frail human beings.

Also the year before “Apocalypse Now” came another Oscar winning portrait of the before- and aftereffects of Americans living through the Vietnam War in Michael Cimino’s 1978 “Deer Hunter.” Capturing the pro-war sentiment of a small steel mining town in Pennsylvania with a huge wedding celebration as a joyful tribute to three young men about to join the war effort, the second half of the film focuses on the costly toll that combat takes on the fragile human psyche and the deep sense of loyalty amongst war buddies. The mountainous treks in search of conquering the hunted act as a metaphorical backdrop to the complex nuance of male bonding juxtaposed by man’s inhumanity toward both all that is beautiful and natural as well as the brutality of man’s inhumanity to man. This film also offers deep human insight as another allegorically dark, cautionary tale of the heavy lessons of war.

Perhaps the most accurate Oscar winning depiction of what it must have been like as an American soldier trying to stay alive in the jungles of Southeast Asia was Vietnam veteran Oliver Stone’s 1986 Oscar winner “Platoon.” The graphic horror of war in all its senselessness including a glimpse into atrocities committed by the US military is brilliantly shown bringing out both war’s best and worst in human nature.
Oliver Stone once again won another Best Director Oscar for delving masterfully into the damaging effects of war in his 1989 “Born on the Fourth of July” based on the true life account written by war veteran and peace activist Ron Kovic. This story depicts so vividly with such powerfully raw emotion PTSD on both combat veterans and the rippling effects on their families. Again depicted is the patriotic small town fervor that never fails to accompany young men believing strongly in America’s righteous cause.

Whether succumbing to the old domino theory of stopping the Red Scare spread of nemesis Russia and China or the global terrorism of US-made al Qaeda, the US government has forever used in its propagandist arsenal movies from Hollywood. Prior to and even up to the Vietnam War with 1968’s “The Green Beret,” such mythic war hero acting legends as John Wayne have bedazzled and enticed many a young men into joining up and later dying for America’s chronic war cause.

Ron Kovic, like Pat Tillman and Bowe Bergdahl from the Afghan War, all fell victim to this same longtime jingoistic propaganda, faced the ugly truth about Empire wars, felt betrayed and suffered a crisis in conscience that compelled them to rebel against war. Whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden in their own ways bravely did too.

Still another powerful projection of the Vietnam War’s insanity was demonstrated in Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 anti-war homage “Full Metal Jacket.” set during the Tet Offensive. Though there have been a number of other cinematic efforts to historically portray the Vietnam War for what it was, several deserving honorable mention include “The Boys in Company C” (1977), “Go Tell the Spartans” (1979), “Casualties of War” (1989) and “We Were Soldiers” (2002). But the aforementioned half dozen highly acclaimed motion pictures realistically best represent and truthfully present the Vietnam War in all its complexity, horror and tragedy, at least from the American point of view. More films could be done focusing on the one to three million Asian lives lost at the hands of America’s imperialistic war and the millions more who survived America’s crimes against their humanity. Though there are some Vietnamese films about the war, few have been seen by Americans.

In stark contrast to that war period, no post-9/11 film has even come close to telling the truth about either the Iraq or Afghanistan War. Probably the most accurate rendition was 2009’s Oscar winning “The Hurt Locker.” It follows the life of an American GI whose specialty is dismantling bombs. Its gritty portrayal of the Iraq War through one soldier’s experience comes across as extremely realistic in its cinema verite style. But it stays clear of revealing the war and occupation’s political debauchery, immorality and corruption, and barrenly empty in presenting the tragic human side and cost of war. The main character seems almost inhuman, mechanically going through his day-to-day high wire act with abandoned precision. Devoid of any anti-war element, whatever transmitted war message is neutered by its detached, matter-of-fact presentation, choosing to neither take a stand for or against the war. However, after the combat veteran returns home, the mundane emptiness of his everyday family life becomes no match for the adrenalin rush of wartime deployment as the protagonist succumbs to his irresistibly alluring addiction and most salient PTSD symptom. It portrays motivation for multiple tours, exactly what today’s Empire both wants and needs from its soldiers.

Mark Wahlberg stars in the recent “Lone Survivor” based on the true story written by Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell of his harrowing combat experience in Afghanistan. Though it demonstrates the fraternal bonding love that soldiers in war experience together along with their remarkable courage, the film may as well be a recruitment add for Navy SEALs. Through one man’s story of survival, this film is designed to reflect the heroic passion and dedication America’s elite military possess in fighting American Empire wars. If anything, like mostly all war films nowadays, it glorifies the mission of America as the “exceptional” fighting force so that we at home can enjoy our ”freedom,” the same old cliche that has now become just another lie.

Capturing the immoral depravity and brutality of America’s longest wars in history have yet to even be attempted by Hollywood, despite the near decade and a half since their beginning. And this gaping hole in cinema history is all too evident in how the wars have been covered with so called embedded news journalism. Unlike the Vietnam War where cameras followed soldiers onto the battlefield and observed in black and white actual red blood flowing from real life dying Americans, twenty-first century wars are censored and hermetically sealed from exposing any real truth about the horrors of war. The in-our-face realism broadcast nightly into living rooms across America decades ago more than any other single factor caused the nation to virtually overnight turn 180 degrees against the Vietnam War. From America’s most popular song of the entire year in 1966 was Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler singing “Ballad of the Green Beret.” But just two short years later America went from overwhelmingly favoring the war to the war President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Oval Office abdication from even running again because the nation had so vehemently turned against that unpopular war. That is what real war shown on living room television screens can do.

Of course this never happened during these two even longer running wars in the Middle East. Despite the boldface lies perpetrated by the neocon Bush-Cheney regime behind the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the overt evidence that their diabolical plan was in place to wage war against Iraq long before their 9/11 false flag, the anti-war movement never quite got off the ground. By the war criminals’ grand design, the sanitized, artificially delivered coverage of these latest American wars neither showed any of the near million and a half humans dying in Iraq alone nor any GI body bags loaded up and coming home. Such is how this sterilized version of modern imperialistic wars are fought by America’s standing army of volunteers – out of sight, out of mind to the oblivious 99% of the US population not actually fighting and dying on foreign oil-rich battlefields half a world away. The widening disconnect between US military and the US civilian population is also by sinister design.

Instead of the remarkable, disturbingly realistic films chronicling the Vietnam War, all we get now from this latest batch of US wars are either recruitment stories or the sterile “Hurt Locker’s” numbing rendition of war insanity by the same Oscar winning filmmaker who three years later was behind the “true story” account of how Uncle Sam finally got his boogey man – “Zero Dark Thirty.” A full ten years after 9/11, only through such heroic, never-give-up persistence, an ace crack team of CIA-black ops superheroes finally were able to track down and nail their phantom ringleader in Osama bin Laden, who had been conveniently playing the same “lone gunman” role for 9/11 as Oswald-Sirhan-James Earl did for the Kennedy-MLK false flag operations. That this too was a fictional tale made for good rah-rah, God-bless-America just like “Flight 93’s “let’s roll” did prior to crashing into that mysterious Pennsylvania field where no wreckage or bodies were ever found.

Despite the saccharinely contrived twisting of history so American Empire residents can feel better about themselves and their nation’s inhumane wars, Hollywood no longer has neither the interest nor permission nor courage to portray war as it historically is, not when it has been hijacked by the likes of the Pentagon and the CIA. No more can the film industry honestly and accurately depict war or America as they really are, not when the plague that long ago muzzled and killed independent journalism in this country also descended upon to muzzle and kill Hollywood. Like the presstitute corps, Hollywood is just another false mouthpiece for manufacturing deceit that covers up government criminality. We will not be seeing any more anti-war films, not in this apocalyptic pro-war era of America’s tyranny, oppression and Empire decline.

The United States is owned and controlled by oligarchs who own and control the top transnational corporations who own and control virtually all the national governments. They send their CIA-Pentagon goons out to Hollywood to make sweetheart deals with the big studios ensuring that only action war hero propaganda spews forth onto the big screens. The total absence of films reflecting any attempt at showing real truth about the sins of war and violence is just another form of censorship among many that rules our lives today. After all, war is here to stay and fresh bodies of young patriotically misguided men and women are sorely needed on the many battlefronts to come. And anything remotely exposing the true horror and ugliness of war and violence is simply not conducive to the perpetual war making machine. So keep all those fake video games and fake movies going with all those fake superheroes spilling fake blood while killing all those evil-minded fake Moslem jihadists. That way real people will continue shedding real blood all over the world just like the oligarchy wants and demands.

Whatever you do Hollywood, don’t show war and violence for the unnatural ugliness of what they really are. Or how our tax dollars draining Americans have long been financing, arming and hiring al Qaeda mercenaries, the same ones that supposedly killed 3000 of us on 9/11 to fight all its proxy wars against Russia-China-Iran-Syria in places like Syria and Libya along with the Balkans in the 1990’s and Afghanistan in the 1980’s. Though our country keeps losing war after war after war, again it is all by grand oligarchic, New World Order design to destroy America. Everyone loses but that less than 1% that obscenely profits from war with its most obvious agenda to destabilize, impoverish and control every nation on earth.

Remarking on how effective propaganda is in the US, former 1980’s CIA Director William Casey once uttered: “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

As the war drums beat louder all the time, to illustrate the utter cold blooded contempt that oligarch puppets like war criminal Henry Kissinger harbors toward Americans and our soldiers in particular, he brazenly stated: “Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.”

And even more brazenly arrogant when reflecting how effective his NWO plan is being executed with so little resistance, Kissinger boasts, “Illegal we do immediately… unconstitutional takes a little longer.”

It appears they already have accomplished their coup. The US Constitution is all but dead and buried, no longer upheld by all those traitors in government sworn to protect it.

Using mind control methods for decades to mesmerize, desensitize, brainwash and blind young Americans to the savagery of war and violence by glorifying it through Hollywood propaganda films, the US government has been effectively manipulating multiple generations to do its dirty bloody bidding as sacrificial lambs at the geopolitical Masonic altar where no one wins but the bloodthirsty 1% war profiteering vampires who have been getting away with bloody murder for centuries. 　
　
Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a masters degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now concentrates on his writing.

Edited June 23, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[Dawn Meredith]

Thanks for posting this important article. I just sent it to my best friend from college. He adored JFK and will not go near anything conspiracy. I have tried to educated him now over 40 years on these matters and his reply is always the same: "that is YOUR view". Of course good liberal that he is he totally trusts mainstream media and the notion that it is CIA- controlled is something he will not even allow me to talk about. (It's like he thinks I just sit around and make all this stuff up). He has never read one book critical of the WC, did not see JFK. So it will be interesting to see if he will read this article.

Dawn

[Steven Gaal]

Langley..yes GOOGLE reads you 5 X 5..what ?? Simkim ...oh yeah , we can take care of him ....

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Google Has Received 250,000 Article Removal Requests as Internet Censorship Takes Off in Europe While the internet is an amazing tool for communication and free speech, we must also be aware of how it can be abused.

by Michael Krieger | Liberty Blitzkrieg | July 4, 2014

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston’s arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.

- From George Orwell’s 1984

The reason Big Brother and his band of technocrat authoritarians spend so much time and effort erasing history in the classic novel 1984, is because they are a bunch of total criminals and they know it. Their grip on power is made so much easier if the proles are kept ignorant, confused and in the dark. This strategy is not just fiction, it is the philosophy of tyrants and authoritarians throughout history.

While the internet is an amazing tool for communication and free speech, we must also be aware of how it can be abused by those in power who wish to whitewash history. For more on this epic struggle, read the post, Networks vs. Hierarchies: Which Will Win? Niall Furguson Weighs In. In it, Mr. Furguson explains that the biggest threat to networks overcoming hierarchies is if government technocrats are able to gain a hold of the technological tools we now use to communicate with each other. He fears this is already happening with the NSA’s PRISM program and the complicity of all the major tech companies in the agency’s unconstitutional spying.

So it appears Orwell’s feared “memory hole” has begun to emerge in Europe. This shouldn’t be seen as a surprise considering the region’s devastating youth unemployment rate and angst throughout society. The way censorship is gaining a foothold in the region is through something known as a “right to be forgotten” ruling issued by the European Court of Justice. This ruling states that Google must essentially delete “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” data from its results when a member of the public requests it.

Of course this is incredibly vague, and who is to decide what it “no longer relevant” anyway? Seems quite subjective. This is clearly an attempt to take a tool designed to decentralize information flow (the internet) and centralize and censor it. As such, it must be resisted at all costs.

So far, we know of two major media organizations that have been informed of deleted or censored articles, the BBC and the Guardian. The BBC story is the one that has received the most attention because the content related to former ex-Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O’Neal, who received a $161.5 million golden parachute compensation package after running the Wall Street firm into the ground and playing a key role in destroying the U.S. economy. The BBC reports that:

A blog I wrote in 2007 will no longer be findable when searching on Google in Europe.

Which means that to all intents and purposes the article has been removed from the public record, given that Google is the route to information and stories for most people.

So why has Google killed this example of my journalism?

Well it has responded to someone exercising his or her new “right to be forgotten”, following a ruling in May by the European Court of Justice that Google must delete “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” data from its results when a member of the public requests it.

Now in my blog, only one individual is named. He is Stan O’Neal, the former boss of the investment bank Merrill Lynch.

My column describes how O’Neal was forced out of Merrill after the investment bank suffered colossal losses on reckless investments it had made.

Is the data in it “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant”?

Hmmm.

Most people would argue that it is highly relevant for the track record, good or bad, of a business leader to remain on the public record – especially someone widely seen as having played an important role in the worst financial crisis in living memory (Merrill went to the brink of collapse the following year, and was rescued by Bank of America).

To be fair to Google, it opposed the European court ruling.

Maybe I am a victim of teething problems. It is only a few days since the ruling has been implemented – and Google tells me that since then it has received a staggering 50,000 requests for articles to be removed from European searches.

I asked Google if I can appeal against the casting of my article into the oblivion of unsearchable internet data.

Google is getting back to me.

Since the original post, the author has provided an update:

So there have been some interesting developments in my encounter with the EU’s “Right to be Forgotten” rules.

It is now almost certain that the request for oblivion has come from someone who left a comment about the story.

So only Google searches including his or her name are now impossible.

Which means you can still find the article if you put in the name of Merrill’s ousted boss, “Stan O’Neal”.

In other words, what Google has done is not quite the assault on public-interest journalism that it might have seemed.

I disagree with his conclusion, and here is why. As is noted on this Yahoo post:

We don’t know whether it was O’Neal who asked that the link be removed. In fact, O’Neal’s name may be being dragged through the mud unnecessarily here. Peston believes it may be someone mentioned by readers in the comments section under his story about the ruling.

He suggests that as a “Peter Dragomer” search triggers the same disclosure that a result may have been censored, that perhaps it was not O’Neal who requested the deletion. In an amazing coincidence, the person posting as “Peter Dragomer” claims to be an ex-Merrill employee.

Of course, it’s not an amazing coincidence. In fact, going forward someone else can just post a comment below an article on a high profile person to get the article removed so that the person in the article can pretend it wasn’t his doing. In any event, someone who voluntarily leaves a comment should have zero say under this law. They went ahead and made the comment in the first place. Now you want an article article removed because of a comment you made? Beyond absurd.

Now here’s the Guardian’s take:

When you Google someone from within the EU, you no longer see what the search giant thinks is the most important and relevant information about an individual. You see the most important information the target of your search is not trying to hide.

Stark evidence of this fact, the result of a European court ruling that individuals had the right to remove material about themselves from search engine results, arrived in the Guardian’s inbox this morning, in the form of an automated notification that six Guardian articles have been scrubbed from search results.

The first six articles down the memory hole – there will likely be many more as the rich and powerful look to scrub up their online images, doubtless with the help of a new wave of “reputation management” firms – are a strange bunch.

The Guardian has no form of appeal against parts of its journalism being made all but impossible for most of Europe’s 368 million to find. The strange aspect of the ruling is all the content is still there: if you click the links in this article, you can read all the “disappeared” stories on this site. No one has suggested the stories weren’t true, fair or accurate. But still they are made hard for anyone to find.

As for Google itself, it’s clearly a reluctant participant in what effectively amounts to censorship. Whether for commercial or free speech reasons (or both), it’s informing sites when their content is blocked – perhaps in the hope that they will write about it. It’s taking requests literally: only the exact pages requested for removal vanish and only when you search for them by the specified name.

But this isn’t enough. The Guardian, like the rest of the media, regularly writes about things people have done which might not be illegal but raise serious political, moral or ethical questions – tax avoidance, for example. These should not be allowed to disappear: to do so is a huge, if indirect, challenge to press freedom. The ruling has created a stopwatch on free expression – our journalism can be found only until someone asks for it to be hidden.

Publishers can and should do more to fight back. One route may be legal action. Others may be looking for search tools and engines outside the EU. Quicker than that is a direct innovation: how about any time a news outlet gets a notification, it tweets a link to the article that’s just been disappeared. Would you follow @GdnVanished?

This last idea is actually a great one. Every time an article gets censored it should be highlighted. If we could get one Twitter account to aggregate all the deleted stories (or perhaps just the high profile ones) it could make the whole censorship campaign backfire as the stories would get even more press than they would have through regular searches. Ah…the possibilities.

Interestingly, due to all the controversy, a European Commission spokesman has come forth to criticize Google for removing the BBC article. You can’t make this stuff up. From the BBC:

Google’s decision to remove a BBC article from some of its search results was “not a good judgement”, a European Commission spokesman has said.

A link to an article by Robert Peston was taken down under the European court’s “right to be forgotten” ruling.

But Ryan Heath, spokesman for the European Commission’s vice-president, said he could not see a “reasonable public interest” for the action.

He said the ruling should not allow people to “Photoshop their lives”.

The BBC understands that Google is sifting through more than 250,000 web links people wanted removed.

Perhaps it wasn’t in “good judgment ” to issue this idiotic ruling in the first place. Just another government xxxx-show. As usual.

Edited July 4, 2014 by Steven Gaal