Nathaniel Heidenheimer

Nathaniel wrote:

We won the cold war because the U.S. gov is MUCH MUCH better at lying to its people than was the U.S.S.R.

Yipeeeee!

I am stunned--literally--that anyone can espouse such an opinion. Unbelievable!

The fact that you are a history teacher is downright scary.

I bet you have not read a single darn book about the evils and brutality of Communism. If I am wrong, please advise me.

Hi Tim: Thats right, I believe that we had and have a much more intelligently designed propaganda system

that does its job much more efficiently than that of the former U.S.S. R.

Now, what criteria would YOU USE to define "the mo worthst effective propaganda system" ?

Here is the criteria that I think is most looking at : To what extent does the state propaganda system prevent the development of a widespread alternative point of view.

In the U.S.S.R, there was one source of poitical narrative that was monistically forced on the population. Eventually the majority of the population was able to realize "this mass-murderer Stalin is lying to us!"

Hence, as a propaganda system,the Soviet monistic variety really sucked!

Here in the U.S. the political class has mastered the golden rule of propaganda; the best way to control

public opinion is with false opposites. False opposites like Bush (War) and Kerry ("I would have supported the War even had I known there were no WMD's" ) False opposites like the Dems and Republicans, 406 of whom voted to approve the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which, would you believe it. was based on a lie!!!

Effect,on TV viewer: Gee these dems and republicans who seem to disagree so much (like over gay mariage and other "issues" that will never be mentioned again the day after the election) AGREE that we should go attack Iraq, so it must be true, Sadam is linked with Bin Laden."

Using these two false opposites (positions that really have much more in common than they have points of diffence) an opposing point of reference can never form in the general population. For example, almost nowhere in the U.S. media around 1950 could you read a challenge to the preposterous argument that the Soviet Union "caused" the Chinese Revolution of 1949. Today, no employable historian in any American University, save perhaps Georgetown, would support this argument, but it was challenged by nobody in the McCarthyite atmosphere of 1950. The whole "loss of China " lie went virtually unchallenged. Result: the Democrats and Republicans competed to see who could get the taxpayer to buy most weapons from the Military Industrial Complex, with the winner called "stronger" by TV networks whose CEO either played tennis with Allen Dulles, or just happened to also own a defense contracter.

As for reading a book specifially on the evils of Communism, no I havent. I read History books. Any book called the evils of communism, or with any other similar title could only be a political tract. Have I read of the actions of governments that called themselves Communist? Sure.

Have you read histories of countries like Indonesia, Guatemala, and El Salvador, whose governments call their regimes allies of the U.S.?

Since you have pronounced me unqualified to teach, without having a single exchange , I'd like to invite you to come and take over my classes on Monday. Its best if you dress in loose clothing that lets you move around comfortably, sort of

Conveniently ignoring, of course, the ACTUAL terrorism of Fidel.

John, how many political dissidents has the Castro regime summarily executed? How many has it jailed?

Do you know? Have you read any of this documented material? See, for instance the book "Fidel, Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant".

Tim, regardless of ideology, just counting the corpses, who has a worse human rights policy, Fidel Castro, or the Governments we have installed in Guatemala of El Salvador?

In these countries there are few political prisoners. 250,OOO in Guatemala, a country of only 5,000,000 never made it to jail. They were cut up into little pieces with our taxes. Luckily the NYT decided to decote 7 Million Column Inches to the death of 1 Polish Priest at the time of this massacre!!!

We won the cold war because the U.S. gov is MUCH MUCH better at lying to its people than was the U.S.S.R.

Yipeeeee!

So, Robert, if American security is as illusionary as you say it is, I imagine you can provide me with the names of American victims of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil post 9-11-2001.

Don't we need a sample study in order to make a generalization about the effectiveness of Bush's protection of the U.S. from terrorism?

In other words, don't we need to compare terror attacks in the U.S. BEFORE 9-11 with those after?

Oh, I forgot about the Ku Klux Klan, and the FBI Military Intel's murder of MLK. O.K. I guess your right Tim, there is a bit less terror now!!

As we know all know, terror is one of the most Orwellian words going in todays's corporate press. If you include "state terror," then I would argue that the U.S. is definitely the biggest promoter of terrorism in the world.

The death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala (250,000 dead out of a population of 5 million) were created by the Green Berets and the CIA under Lyndon Johnson (see Michael McClintock's writings on these countires: he is currently the head of America's Watch.

Not to worry, however, the current head of U.S. anti-terrorism worked for King George 4 and the CIA with death squads in Honduras. At least he knows terror when he sees it-- red, on his hands.

This question stems from Joan Mellens description of a Special Group that was formed by the Kennedys as a potential assasination team against Castro in the New Orleans area. Mellen argues that this was part of dual strategy, and was undertaken at the same time as Kennedy attempted a new detente with Castro.

Mellen claims the Kennedys were determined to keep this Special Group independent of the CIA, who they had a long standing disagreement with for a number of different reasons (not just Vietnam, just Cuba, just the role of Special Ops, or just the timing and location of costly land wars, but combinations of these factors).

She then argues that this Special Group to kill Castro was "turned" by the CIA to kill Kennedy. Because the New Orleans ground level of the Special Group had such direct contact with Bobby Kennedy, the AG was turned into his brother's killers' keeper.

1.DO WE ACCEPT THIS CIA PENETRATION OF THE SPECIAL GROUP AS THE BEST FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING THE ASSASINATION?

2. HOW SHOULD WE DEFINE THIS SPECIAL GROUP MORE PRECISELY?

3. HOW AND WHO IN JM/WAVE WAS INVOLVED IN THIS"TURNING?" HOW WIDESPREAD WAS THE KNOWLEDGE OF THIS PLAN TO TURN THE SPECIAL GROUP?

The reason I did not put this on the Joan Mellen thread in the History Books section, is that I am trying to clarify this concept of the Special Group, as it relates to various other "Groups" like Opreration 40 and Suite 8F group that may or may not connect. I have read around a lot on the Index and still this ambiguity persists.

Opperation Gladio should hold a special interest for those intersted in 9-11 research. It was used by right -wing terrorists in conjunction with the Italian government of the 1975-78 era to stage acts of terrorism, that could later be blamed on the left. In this climate of fear, the Italian gov. used extra-legal measures for a crackdown on the left. I believe the rightist terror network known as P-2 was also involved.

Any more good sources on the relationship between P-2 and Opperation Gladio?

Citizens of the U.S. really need to know about Gladio and its real effects on Italian politics of the 1970s. It provides a concise model of how terror and fear can be manipulated for desired outcomes. Thanks for bringing up this timely topic.

Re: MK-ULTRA

I have read of connections between charity org. called World Vision, which specializes in refugees, and people involved in the MK-ULTRA program. As I recall, John Hinckley Sr. was named director of World Vision in 1965, after his oil company was bought by Zapata oil.

I have read of conncetions between World Vision and MK-ULTRA to such 'out there' topics as the John Lennon assasination, the "assasination attempt" on Reagan in 1981, and the Jonestown "false cool-aid fiasco," involving the periodically reverend Jim Jones.

This latter connection is especially ineresting. John Judge claimes that Jones was based in San Francisco, before moving to Guyana, and that he had financial relations with top SF pols of that city, including Harvey Milke and the Mayor. Both of these men were killed by a twinkie consumer, with glazed over eyes nine days after Jonestown. Mop-up of Jonestown loose ends?

The expression of the killer(, glazed over eyes, face showing no emotion whatsoever) matches descriptions of the killer of the SF democratic congressmen, whose' visit to the Jonestown themepark caused the whole

faux cool-aid incident. This congressmen was shot at the airport upon arrival.

(It also matches the description of Lennon's assasin, who had been a counsler at a World-Vision run refugee camp in 1977, according to John Judge. The NYPD detective who interviewed Chapman for two solid weeks after the killing was convinced that the killing involved brainwashing and hence a conspiracy)

Also, Judge claims that there were 500 Sprecial Forces stationed in Guyana for a possible clean-up opperation, should the MK-ULTRA program be discovered. Judge also claims that there was a top researcher of the MK-ULTRA program working in Guyana with Jones.

Admittedly this sounds both rude and murky. Had I not read previous histories of the MK-ULTRA program, I wouldn't have paid much attention to these allegations. But, the CIA's habbit of hooking up with right wing religious splinter groups is a matter of record.

What do we think of all this? Above all, do you have other sources on these allegations?

Also, has anyone read the book In Search of the Manchurian Candidate by John Marks? What do you think of it?

As I understand it, Shackley's specialty was covert funding (Trento and Cockburn both describe Laos in 1966 as the first CIA opperation entirely funded covertly). If covert funding was the specialty of Shackley, I am wondering if there are any documented connections that we know about between Bush and Shackley during the Zapata Oil Period of roughly 1958-65.

Trento mentions that Bush's Zapata oil was one of the forerunners of off-shore drilling. These riggs (oil riggs that is) were usefull for anti-castro opperations from 1960 on, according to Trento. Given Shackleys Miami postition at this time, and his covert funding, shell company specialty, a close relationship between these two seems quite possible.

Re: FISA requests and 9-11

Last Week, when Thom Hartmman was hosting on Air America, I called him with a follow up to a remark he had just made reguarding the history of FISA requests.

What I told him came from a New York Times Article of August 20002. It was exactly in the middle of a very long article about the entire 9-11 investigation, and dealt with various FBI warnings, and their bureaucratic smotherings.

The article claimed that there had been more than 7,300 FISA requests (it gave the exact number) between 1996--just after the process had been modified under Clinton-- and September 11, 2001.

Of these requests a total of one had ever been turned down. The Colleen Rowley (Minn, FBI agent) request to go into the laptop of a known Al Queda Agent.

Though I was able to tell Hartmann of this intesting example of Coincidence Theory, he cut me off on tape delay, so the comment was never heard on the national radio program. Great ground control, Major Thom!

This censorship was difficult to comprehend, as Hartmann himself had raised the topic of the FISA process.

Since then I have heard the FISA record mentioned several times but always in terms of "five requests out of SOMEOTHERNUMBER turned down" . This I find curious.

This fits with what I know of Shackley, as the figure who took covert financing to the next level. My understanding is that his Laos opperation c.1966 was the first totally self-sufficient CIA program; by this I mean it was paid for by drug-running involving Laos and other countries, so that the CIA didn't have to ask the Senate for any money, or tell it much. Is this overstating the case?

If Ted Shackley was so good at covert funding, would it be safe to assume that he was directing the Nugan Hand machinations?

Fianally, I was wondering if there are any connections with Nugan Hand and later financing adventures such as Iran Contra, and especially BCCI. I mean connections beyond Shackley and Clines involvement in both.

Are there any other lines of continuity?

Does anyone know if Bissel had any direct contact w/David Atlee Phillips? Also, re: each, what precisely did they do on their jobs, after eating breakfast. I know Phillips was involved in media/communications work. Does anyone suspect he did some of the actual planning for the "turning" of the special group?

David Corn Function, the

I'm not sure it relates precisely to this thread, but its about the same concept. The CIA didn't only deal in volume (Time Magazine) but could use strategically placed niche marketing like the Washington Posts' post- war makeover, and a magazine, Encounter, that played a key left middlebrow function. I call this the David Corn function, just to give it name.

O.K. Nate so what the hell is it?: Weekly colunist for a targetted magazine aimed at U.S. mildly hairy, still primarily litterate left, who has been made by the rest of the corporate media to have the goal "Lets not sound dour'. In other words The Nation Magazine.

This guy job is to mediate between the mag, and the more general political narative going on in mass corporate media (Times, Newsweek-Post, NBC). While the other four weekely columnyists are writing in a conceptual framework-- media, legal, financial, etc-- this guy determines the specific spin that a magazine will take at key defining moments of the corporate construction of the political spectrum, that will get called the news. (e.g. Hillery visits Rochester Flag Factory, while Faluja is quietly bombed on CNN.)

Heres one of five mid-level editors at small but strategically will-0-whisp left magazines who are going to determine what a lot of other journalsists are going to read. Or not read.

If I were the CIA, these are the type of people I'd be currious about.

What I found refreshing about Joan Mellen's book was that it named names: reporters and their employers.

What Im wondering about in this roundabout post, is ...

Does anyone know anything more about communications theory, and just where on the flow of information, the CIA would most logically place itself?

One vote for satanic. But also another example of "your deluding yourself it you think this is just about Bush." Why did leading democrats like Mrs. San Francisco Real (2nd) Estate--Nanci Pelosi sit on information about the NSA satelites for at least a year, never saying anything, until the year old Times story was finally deemed "long enough after the election to print"?

It has long been observed that abstract liberties are much more difficult to defend on the hustings than abject lies that provoke fear. Difficult, maybe, but far from impossible where there is an opposition party, with the political will to decry despotic measures from a national pulpit. The national pulpit is essential, if the argument agains the Patriot Act is to gell. Otherwise it will be a bunch of separate regional arguments that never merge into a soundbite that can be heard in the middle of Missouri.

All of which is to say: hit the Democrats first; they're not sleeping, just counting their checks from American Express. THEY are the reason Missouri never hears "the other side of the story" unless it is straw-dogged on the O'Reily Factor.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF 2005, THE YEAR OF BIGGER BROTHER ON STEROIDS

Lost in the tumult of the transit strike in NYC last week, there appeared a holiday miracle: a story in the New York Times that might actually be an example of muckraking.

In a very long front page story, the Times documented how the NYPD has been infiltrating protest groups and acting as agents provocateurs. They even had pictures of undercover cops faking thier own arrest IN ORDER TO PROVOKE THE REAL PROTESTERS INTO DISORDERLY CONDUCT.

This behavior isn't surprising to anyone familiar with the history of red squads. That it should be so openly exposed on the front page of NYT: wow! I think we, as concerned citizens, should photocoppy the bejesus out of this article. It can be used to great effect with many liberals who are sceptical of news stories that are "not mainstream."

The article appeared in the 12-22-05 Times.

Guess who was the highest ranking Democrat in the House investigations of The October Surprise and Iran-Contra, and also the leading democrat on the 9-11 commision. Lee Hamilton. With such an exhonerating track record he is up there with Prescot Bush c. 1955 in the running for the Mr. Vigilance award for congressional oversight of the CIA. It also goes to show the importance of politicians with small "d"s next to their name in addition to politicans with small "r"s next to their name as far as legislative vigilance, which, if I remember from somewhere, is the eternal cost of libraries.

Although I am not entirely christian, let me just say Merry Christmas to avoid falling into THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS wedge issue so sensitively detected by our president and his satelites of love.

Hartmann is guest-hosting Air America in the 7-10pm Eastern Time slot this week. This is a national radio

show that goes to 84 stations nation-wide.

Carefully crafted questions could convey information to a relatively large audience. Given that there are a lot of liberals on this network who scoff on que whenever the media types the words 'conspiracy theory,' some pointed questions--for example concerning the C.I.A. and the media-- could prove "gate opening".

I didn't listen to the whole show last night, but did catch one disturbing comment by Hartmann. He suggested that Thursday night he would pretty much devote to JFK stuff. Then in response to a caller's comment about Arlen Specter and the Warren Commission, he said something to the effect of the Warren Commission serving a noble purpose that he would talk more about Thursday.

The words he used -- again I could be wrong, because he didn't go into detail-- suggest that he might be buying the line about the WC going along with the lone nut in order to flush the far right "communists did it " argument from public perception, thereby preventing a possible nuclear war. I personnaly see this argument-- which was also offered by Michael Bechloss, the acceptable liberal historian on PBS-- to be a planned patch in the cover up quilt: the conspirators knew that by playing up the threat of nuclear war they could get many different parts of the political spectrum involved in the cover up. Most of these, of course were not involved in the assasination itself.

I see this argument as a kind of liberal firewall, or last ditch effort to defend the Warren Commision. I find it absolutely disgusting. In its elitism, it is every bit as cynical as the neocons. It is just the kind of elitism that was pushed like a drug among cold war liberals like Hoffsteder and Hartz, and we see it today in the Nation magazine's unciritical defense of Plame and Wilson, who worked for April Galispie in the machinations around Sadam Husseins Iraq invasion of 1990.

Professor McNight, are you doing anything Thursday night?

P.S. How great is was to wake up this morning and see posts from Peter Dale Scott and Prof Alfred McCoy.

These are clean-up hitters!! I think they will be able to help us synthesize a lot of disparate threads.

Another good source is the Alex Cockburn, Jeffrey St. Claire book Whiteout. There is also an excellent account of how the national corporate media engaged in a coordinated full- court press to discredit Webb,

who had earlier won a Pulitzer at the Cleveland Plane Dealer. Readers of this account are left with the queation of whether Opperation Mockingbird was used, or whether the key national media opperatives had simply internalized the values of the CIA to such an extent that it wasn't necessary-- i.e. parroting the mockingbird?

On the question of "targeting the black population" I recommend Douglas Valentine's book The Stregnth of the Wolf (2004, Verso). He points out that in NYC, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics had extensive contacts with the NYPD. If an investigation targetted someone that the FBN was trying to protect (often because they were cooperatiing with the CIA) they would help make sure that the suspect was left alone. Valentine quotes people in the NYPD and FBN to the effect that it was no coincidence that the drugs happened to end up in black neighborhoods.

It is not a bad thing to be sceptical about activist verbs like "targeting". Valentines book helps us see that although this word might seem far-fetched from the vantagepoint of just one agency, it may seem more valid when we look at the coordination of activity (or inactivity) BETWEEN agencies.

By the way, Valentine has also written the definitve work on The Pheonix Program.

Hearst was not a journalist he was the owner of a media corporation, who sometimes dabbled. McCLoy plaid a huge role, but not because he was a columnist.

You mention Lipman. Didn't he become significant because he showed corporate illites how to create public opinion through mass communications whithout leaving corporate fingerprints?

Hearst, Luce and sometimes a Lipman are players and their actions can alter history; this is to the extent that they represent critically important corporations, not type for a newspaper.

I don't mind the term "control". You have to ask would these journalists have attained their high position had they defied the interests of the agency. The CIA was both an actor and a source of information on many of these events. I dont see how it is possible for a journalist to see themselves as 'controling' the CIA in such a situation.

Can you think of a journalist that ever rose to a high stature while defying the CIA? Maybe Seymour Hersh, but he had his uses in weakening Nixon. Anyway the years 1973-75 are certainly an aberation from the U.S. press' traditional role of docile subservience to the agency.

Just finished listening to today's (12/13/05) edition of the radio program Taking Aim with

Max Schoenman and Mia Schone (SP?) It will be of intense interest for all those interested in

media aspects of the CIA. It also rebuttes a lot of the criticism of Mellon's book by pointing out

that these criticisms follow a patern outlined in a CIA document written for media assets on how to

discredit authors in book reviews.

You can listen to the show by googling Taking Aim. The shows are very easy to download even for

a non-technical citizen like me. If its not up yet it will be soon.

John-- Great work in summing up a lot of information about a key figure.

Like Pat I have some reservations about the way Sheehan frames the Shakley group as a"secret team," as

distinct from Langley an sich.

Joseph Trento's latest book suggests that in 1976 Shakley worked with the fired Helms in the Middle East

to create a kind of Langley in Exile based in Saudi Arabia, until they could shed Carter and Turner. He makes it seem as if this axis had the real power, and the agency as a whole was using this axis as an end-run around Turner.

I have serious doubts about Trento's reliance on Angleton in his Secret Hitory of the CIA. But his new book seemed on firmer ground.

Sheehan may have felt it was politically safer to attack a "secret team" rather than the CIA as a whole. Was it more accurate?

I haven't made up my mind yet on whether or not the murder was a conspiracy. But I think its worth briefly outlinging the argument. This may be old hat to some.

First there is the issue of motive. Lennon had what might be called "the page one effect". He was not just another dissident, but one who could get on page one of major papers, tv etc. and potentially widen the gateway through which millions of others might pass into opposition. Think for a moment about the Nicaragua policy which essentially involved a CIA created army (hence "civil war", as it was described in the U.S. press, was a propaganda win for the Reaganistas) that targetted civilians, because it was never large engough to directly confront the Nicaraguan Army. There's a word for this, and it starts with T.

Today we associate the 1980s with widespread political apathy. Yet, in my opinion it was a managed appathy: the corporate media sculpted the political spectrum and messages that poeple heard much more than in the 1970's. Yet in 1980, this was not yet a fait accompli. (Although it is true that the corporate right had been preparing its "counterforce in Wasington since 1977)

John Lennon could speak to a broad range of people coast to coast, accross class lines. The FBI's COINTELPRO program showes that the state might be tollerent of some dissent, so long as it is scattered and cannot provide an opposition with a national spokesperson, or rhetorical common ground. A 1964 COINTELPRO memo, belived to have been written by Hoover implies that it is when the opposition hears the same words coast to coast that it becomes truely threatening to the state.

I think it is possible that the rightward rushing new regime percieved Lennon as a precisely this kind of a communications nightmare.

Although Lennon's assasin was portrayed as a loner, he actually was't if we are to believe John Judge. Chapman worked as a camp counselor in a camp for poltical refugees run by the CIA front WORLD VISION.

If we are to believe Judge and other writers, Chapman was at the same Arkansas World Vision refugee camp that also employed former members of the CIA'S MK-ULTRA program. Judge quotes a british expert on MK-ULTRA to the effect that Chapman's standing over the body reading from The Catcher in The Rye, sounded to him like a classic trigger mechanism used in assasination training.

Also. the lead NYPD detective that interviewed Chapman apparently swore that Chapman bore signs of some type of hynosis, and the detective was convinced that the killing involved a conspiracy.

I realize that I should have names and more precise references here, but these are easily available by googeling MK-ULTRA Lennon and MK-ULTRA World Vision (an organization that was apparently run by John Hinckley Sr.) Sorry that I am not a terribly adept internet organism.

As I said, I am not taking all this as the rosseta stone, but rather am trying to sum up the argument in order to open it up for discussion. Probably others know more.

I think the CIA percieves threats from a communications angle. They think about the potential audience for oppositon figures, not simply thier agendas.

i vote for Mark E. Smith of the Fall to join Dylan and Lennon for more-recent singers.

Smiths lyrics are the funniest going.

Bill-

This stuff about the Catherwood foundation is very interesting. Right now i know someone who is doing as PhD on the Rock. Foundation grants to Journalism Schools during the Cold War. This is a subject that fascinates me to no end, but I am hungry to learn more about it. Does anyone know of any good texts to read about this.

The discipline of journalism, I think, would have been of intense interest to elite cold war planners. Key historians of the 1950s, such as Hoffsteder and Louis Hartz emphasized a highly elitist form of liberalism that was based on expertise. This expertise tended to match a stegnthening of the boundaries between the academic disciplines of the Cold War university. To some extent Journalism needed to be isolated by some (artificially created?) professional criteria, so that it could meet the demand for concensus of the cold war state while still maintaining the illusion of objectivity.

There is a great writer on Communications theory at American University, named Chrostopher Simpson. He was written some great stuff on the origin of the Communications discipline in American Universities. It was essentially born from the strategic bombing surveys vs. Japan at the end of WWII. So much for the objective nature of the Universities!

Does anyone else know of any good research on the CIA and U.S. Journalism Schools? After all, the trained parrots who covered the Warren Commision and who continue to defend its corpse have to have been trained somewhere.

I teach U.S. history to high school students in NYC.

The terms and concepts we peddle as 'social studies teachers'-- terms like checks and balances, impeachment, federalism--are terms that do very little to explain visible power relations in 2005.

Is part of "power' the ablility to keep the language and concepts that might explain it 200 years behind the

times?

I find that kids are most interested in discussing the media and beurocratic coverup aspects of the case.

From these angles the case becomes about the present; dicisions of corporations and beaucracies to withold information from the public raise issues of corporate power over collective narrative. These questions are inseperable from the muddle in Iraq and everything else about todays false politics, with

our blatently false opposition party.

When the assaination is approached as a core sampeling of power relations it can really hold the youngsters attention.

Conversely if one assumes that Kennedy himself poses some intrinsic interest, it will probobly seem dull to the youngsters.

Recently I have been doing a bit of promotional work for books that I feel need to be read by more citizens.

I have written reviews and severeral brief comments about Joan Mellens book, Breach of Trust, and Act of State on the current events forum of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper (the original paper of Joe Pulitzer)

Some of these forums of the major daily newspapers get quite a lot of traffic.

This could be a way of promoting this forum. Of course the comments will have to be whittled down to a particular point, hopefully with some connection to current events (not too difficult with the wealth of solid research at this forum)

In paticular I recommend drawing newcomer's attention to the index of subjects. These solid backgrounders let the newcommers know that the forum is based on solid research rather than rumor mongering.