Nathaniel Heidenheimer

As for the Chomper, I am convinced he just hasn't read much about the assasination. (Too much time reading everything else!) From what he's written I think that he is concerned that assasination research is not 'structuralist' enough: by this I mean that it focuses too much on individuals and not enough on "elite institutions' of power. The peril of assasination research-- in this structuralist view-- is that it could lead to the simplistic notion that "had Kennedy lived everything would have been totally different"

What pisses me off vis a vis the snooty structuralists--many of whom have a penchent for typing vis a vis as an outlet to their class anxiety-- is that they throw out much baby with bathwater. Peter Dale Scott's Deep Politics showed the academic types that they can get structural with assasination research.

Since when did God

divide the world into structuralist stuff vs. assasination research? Why do historians alow this twain to meet with other events like Caesar's mishap, but not Kennedy's?

I am beginning to wonder if its not a case of academics guarding their funded turf. Isn't it precisely things like the Kennedy assasination that could get masses of people thinking structurally about power? If leftists like chomsky claim to want people to understand how capita... er elite-driven society works isn't the Kennedy assasination a great ramp onto a freeway of knowledge that might otherwise only be accessed

by academic gurus in elite institutions. (Sure it is easy to disparage a lot of assasiniton research, but how much of this is due to democratic stupidity and how much is due to the disinformatio?)

Chomsky also creates a straw dog of assasination researchers by making them seem naive, as if Kennedy were some kind of angel-peacenik. Most good ones don't. Joan Mellen's does a particularly good job of avoiding this dichotomy.

Mellen's evocation of Kennedy's two track policy--at once negotiating a repoche(rest of that frenchword) with Castro AND planning Castro's assasination-- is for me a convincing rebuttal of the Chomsky- Cockburn

argument that "Kennedy was just as much a cold war hawk as the CIA anyway so why did they need to kill him" . The Special Group to kill Castro was almost a necessary fall back plan if the detente feelers were rebuffed . How else could a president try something daringly new in the context of uniformly rightist Joint Chiefs of Staff and Joint Chiefs of Media.?

I was interested to read Joan Mellen's footnotes about Max Holland's role in trying to poison the well of the Italian independent communist newpaper as soviet inkwell.

What stuck out for me was that Holland was on the editorial board of the nation.

Has anyone read the book The CIA and Culture by Francis Stoner Saunders? (New Press, 2000). She primarily focusses on a cold war left liberal magazine called Encounter. This was a CIA created mag, that was targetted to the social democratic, academic types in the U.S., with the goal of keeping this SMALL BUT STRATEGICALLY IMPORTANT part of the political spectrum sufficiently anti-soviet or anti-'neautralist' in their foreign policy.

She points out that the CIA was no oaf as far as propagandizing to this audience: the mag. avoided crude anti-communism by remembering who they were writing for. On most domestic policies, such as health care, they offered standard left-liberal fare. Five of six articles would be left-liberal sounding, but this was to get the fish to take the bait: the sixth article per month would be harshly anti- soviet or critical of 'neutralists' like Sukarno.

Since 9/11 I have notice that the Nation has hardly written anything about the intelligence failures other than Corny efforts that do little more than scoff.

Why is Holland writing in The Nation? Is it playing a similar firewall role (targetting those readers on the left who might most likely be suspicious of the cia) that Encounter played for a similar, small but strategically important audience between 1954 and 1963?

This is of course speculative. I don't have a shred of evidence proving that Holland is an asset. (Although Mellen writes that his writing has appeared on the CIA's websight) But Stoner's book shows that this left-liberal "gatekeeping" is far more than speculation.

The mainsteam media's complicity in disinformation around the Kennedy assasination should always be born in mind whenever that cowcatcher phrase "conspiracy theory" is bandied about. Isn't the mainstream media itself responsible for "conspiracy theory" when they have such a documented record as the narative engine of corporate power?

I don't think the intelligence of presidents has a lot to do with how they are perceived. The media could have utterly trashed almost anything that came out of Reagan's mouth. For Example the famous driving down the coast of California into the nurological twilight zone that ended one o his debates. Instead when the speech was over, the commentators would switch from an anayis of what actually had been said, to an analysis of HOW THIS MUST HAVE AFFECTED SOME IMAGINARY EVERYDAY AMERICAN.

The networks were a friend to Ronnie because Ronnie was a friend to Corporate America.

Clinton was perceived as smart in proportion as he moved the Democrats further to the right on almost any issue of a billion dollars or more.

How are things going in Dallas? I hope you are keeping your mind out of

the majority of gutters.

My old view of kennedy (before reading Deep Politics, Man who knew too much, and new Mellen book: I thought he was just as cold war as any other president if not more so (Missile gap, 1960) so I rejected as naive the "Oliver Stone type" argument that Kennedy would have ended Vietnma war.

I mention the above only because I THINK IT IS TYPICAL OF U.S. 'STRUCTURALIST' LEFT of today e.g. Chomsky.

By the way John, I think this might tie in somewhat with an earlier thread you started on the question WHY HAVE ACADEMIC HISTORIANS NEGLECTED THE ASSASINATION SO RELIGIOUSLY. In other words, Chomsky, Cockburn, et al. can simply say "those naive conspiracy theorists think that a change of just one man can change history, dont they know about classes etc. etc."

Hence leftists reject what they see as a false dichotomy between the Dr. StrangeLeMays in the Joint Chiefs

of Staff on the one hand and Kennedy the peace option on the other.

Perhaps the Left rejects this dichotomy all the more, as I did until recently, because of the way history has cast Kennedy as the "father of special forces" approach, (as opposed to a purely militrary ground war strategy). Where were the first two test cases of the speical forces--by which I mean political-military approach, as opposed to just military)? El Salvadore, and Guatemala. Many who traced the roots

of the Death Squads in central america, traced them back to Kennedy's creation of the Special Forces. (See David McMichael Zed books on this topic) THINKING OF KENNEDY AS THE SOWER OF DEATH SQUAD SEEDS MAY BE UNFAIR AND MAY HAVE LEAD MANY IN THE ACADEMIC LEFT TO THEIR OWN FALSE DICHOTOMY:

Kennedy as the opposite of detante.

MY NEW VIEW: Based on new reading about Vietnam, I think that possible mini-detantes with Vietnam and Cuba were quite a possibility. The very essence of Kennedys Special Forces was seeing a confilict as at least as much political as military. Already By 1963, Kennedy could see that politically the U.S. was losing popular support very rapidly in the South. Kennedy the cold war political pragmatist could well have judged

'these groundwars wont work becaseu even a tank cant maneuver in political quicksand. ' Hence the very

special-forces orientation that so alienated todays left may have made peace in Vietnam an Cuba seem an utterly pragmatic choice in 1963.

Now throw in Bobby Kennedys New Orleans Scheming with the Special Group. How easy it is for the left to

reject the idea that Kennedy may have been persuing detante by screaming"SEE HIS OWN BROTHER WAS scheming to kill Castro"

But think about it. I963. The whole world had recently faced the ultimate fear. The political spectrum a recently as 1960 allowed for right and further right in foreign policy. Given this context, IF YOU WERE A PRESIDENT ATTEMPTING A MAJOR TURN IN FOREIGN POLICY, or for that one even a smaller turn on pragmatic grounds, wouldn't you want to protect your right flank, given how powerfull the right was in the military and the media. I think Joan Mellen describes this two track policy toward Cuba quite sucintly and plausibly.

Sorry if a bit wordy here. I was really trying to answer two questions: my own view-- YES HE WAS HEADED FOR SOME SORT OF DETANTE-- and also why so many think that he was not. I think that in some ways this is related to ways in which the assasination is framed as 'conspiracy theory--low-status-knowledge'.

This- anti-ground war -thats- already- politically- too late- approach of Kennedys may have SEEMED IN 1963 to be communism itself to the Lemays school of birthing wars.

1950, 1962, 2002. Years in which the U.S media had created such an intense climate of fear that there was almost no discernable difference in foreign policy rhetoric emanating between the two "(false)opposite" parties. Effect: If your going to try something new youd better cover your arse.

A good source on this guy is Douglas Valentines book The Stregnth of The Wolf (Verso, 2004)

I vote Deep Politics by Peter Dale Scott as my favorite.

It is estimated that 1,250,000 died in the 1965 coup d'etat arranged by the CIA. Yet so little has been written about it that The Council on Foreign Relations Newsweek hack writer has whittled it down to 300,000.

Why do we hear so little about this blood letting.

Here in the U.S. it is often passed off as an example of ethnic hostilities vs. the ethnic-chinese. But this was

stirred up by the CIA in an effort to get rid of Sukarno.

Mellens Book is the most thoroughly documented examples of disinformation about any single figure that I have ever read.

It includes direct quotes from the disinformers themselves, and documents the connections between intelligence agencies and journalists within Newsweek, NBC, The Miami Herald, The Washington Post, and many other publications.

As such is should be read as much as a study of disinformation as of Garrison himself.

RE: the Pike report and the Media

Historian Kathy Olmsted wrote an interesting book in 1995 about the role of the NYT and Washington Post in

changing public perceptions regarding Pike and Church.

She says that in 1975 the public was gung ho for more sunshine on the CIA

By the end of 1976, however, the public had changed in favor of less disclosure about the CIAs covert opperations.

She attributes this to articles and editorials written in these two influencial newspapers.

Yes Seymour Hersh could appear on the front page of NYT in 1975. Yet, Prof. Olmsted suggests that these newspapers did more to protect the cia than to reaveal its messy secrets.

With this role of NYT in mind, its interesting to recall how the movie Three Days of the Condor (1975) ends.

Robert Redford is outside of the Times, and the other character asks something to the effect of "yes, but will they print it"

RE: Helms relationship with Ted Shackley

I was highly sceptical of Joseph Trento's reliance on Angleton in his Secret History. Nevertheless, I found his latest book Prelude to Terror fascinating, and would urge sceptics to give it a try. One of the more intersting aspects is its depiction of the Helms- Shackley end run around attempted reforms of Turner and the Pike Commision c1976.

Trento says that essentially Shackley worked from Langley with Helms in Iran and Saudi Arabia to create a second hub for the cia in the middle east, so that things could get done around the back of Turner.

How close were these two in 1963? I know that Shackley was head of JM-WAVE in Miami. As such what type of contact did he have with Helms?

Also are there other names that have been long-time associates with this duo?

For those interested in the media aspects of the coverup, I strongly recommend Joan Mellen's new book. Rarely have i seen so many journalists named as expllicit cia assets.

Joan: just finished your book. Am heavily promoting it here in NYC. Bought ten copies for my 11th grade U.S. History Honors class. Forgot we were doing Andrew Jackson and the spoils system oops.

My question: do you see any parallels between the Kennedys end-run around the CIA with the Special Group and Bush's similar? end-run in 2003, when the neo-cons ran the Iraq intelligence out of the Pentegon?

Hi Mr. Turner. Look forward to reading your book Rear Window. I saw in Mellons annotated Bib. that Gerald Posner was offered CIA 'help' in writing case closed. Can you expand on this? How did you come accross this story of the CIA and Random House.?

Why do you think the KGB/Castro was involved in the assassination of JFK? Is James Angleton a reliable source?

I think Jim Angleton's view that the Soviet's played a role in the assassination makes sense because of the internal power struggles going on during the time period. As to the notion the CIA was capable of killing the President - I just don't believe it. They were not competent enough to kill Castro. But I do think the events outlined in Secret History - especially those things done behind Kennedy's back in Viet Nam in the 1963 overthrow of Diem and Nhu raise real questions about who was running the CIA. The Soviet's could not have gotten a better result than those murders. We know that Kennedy's orders to remove the brothers and take them to Taiwan were ignored. I think this bolster's Angleton's view that this was all tied to a bigger Soviet plot.

It seems that all those authors who believe that the Soviets were behind the assassination of JFK rely heavily on information provided by James Angleton. Yet Cleveland C. Cram in his CIA investigation, Moles and Molehunters: A Review of Counterintelligence Literature (declassified in 2003) completely discredits Angleton. He shows how some researchers like Edward Epstein (Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald & Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA) was totally taken in by Angleton’s disinformation campaign. I am afraid Cram is also very unkind about your book Windows: Four American Spies, the Wives They Left Behind, and the KGB'S Crippling of American Intelligence (1989).

In this document Cram is very complimentary about the books written by David C. Martin (Wilderness of Mirrors), David Wise (Molehunt) and Tom Mangold (Cold Warrior). Cram points out that these authors managed to persuade former CIA officers to tell the truth about their activities. In some cases, they were even given classified documents. Although they talked to Angleton they realised that he was an unreliable source.

Martin, Wise and Mangold basically tell the same story. Angleton became convinced that the CIA had been penetrated by a "mole" working for the KGB. He ordered his assistant, Clare Edward Petty, of the ultra-secret Special Investigation Group (SIG), to carry out a study into the possibility that a Soviet spy existed in the higher levels of the CIA. Angleton suggested that David Murphy, a former chief of the Soviet Division, was a spy. Petty eventually produced a 25 page report on Murphy that concluded that he was "probably innocent". Angleton disagreed and insisted he was a Soviet mole.

Petty also investigated Pete Bagley, another former chief of the Soviet Division. His report on Bagley ran to over 250 pages and concluded that he was a "good candidate for the mole". Angleton disagreed and insisted that his friend was a loyal CIA officer.

Petty now became suspicious of Angleton and decided to carry out a private investigation into his past. As he later pointed out: "I reviewed Angleton's entire career, going back through his relationships with Philby, his adherence to all of Golitsyn's wild theories, his false accusations against foreign services and the resulting damage to the liaison relationships, and finally his accusation against innocent Soviet Division officers."

As a result of his investigation, Petty concluded that there was an "80-85 percent probability" that Angleton was a Soviet mole. Petty showed his report to several senior CIA officials including William Colby, William Nelson and David Blee. Colby instructed Bronson Tweedy, another senior CIA officer to review Petty's findings. After several months of study, Tweedy argued that there was no justification whatsoever for assuming Angleton to be a Soviet agent.

In February, 1973, James Schlesinger replaced Richard Helms as Director of the CIA. Angleton immediately went to see Schlesinger and gave him a list of more than 30 people that he considered to be Soviet agents. This list included top politicians, foreign intelligence officials and senior CIA officials. Those named included Harold Wilson, the British prime minister, Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister, Willy Brandt, chairman of the West German Social Democratic Party, Averell Harriman, the former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Lester Pearson, the Canadian prime minister and Henry Kissinger, the National Security Adviser and Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon. Schlesinger listened to Angleton for seven hours. After consulting with other senior figures in the CIA he concluded that he was suffering from paranoia. However, he liked Angleton and decided against forcing him into retirement.

In July 1973, James Schlesinger became President Nixon's Secretary of Defence and William Colby became the new Director of the CIA. Angleton now presented his list of suspected agents to Colby. He reacted by carrying out an investigation into Angleton. He later recalled that he could not find any evidence "that we ever caught a spy under Jim". He added: "That really bothered me... Now I don't care what Jim's political views were as long as he did his job properly, and I'm afraid, in that respect, he was not a good CI chief."

Colby was also concerned about Angleton's mental health. However, he found it difficult to sack him. On 20th December, 1973, Seymour Hersh contacted William Colby and told him that he had evidence that Angleton had organized a massive spying campaign against thousands of American citizens. This action had violated the CIA charter. Hersh informed Colby that he planned to publish the story a few days later. Colby immediately called Angleton to his office and was ordered to resign.

In March, 1976, James Truitt gave an interview to the National Enquirer. Truitt told the newspaper that Mary Pinchot Meyer, who had been murdered on 12th October, 1964, was having an affair with John F. Kennedy. He also claimed that Meyer 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".

Ann Truitt was living in Tokyo at the time of the murder. She phoned Ben Bradlee at his home and asked him if he had found the diary. Bradlee, who claimed he was unaware of his sister-in-law's affair with Kennedy, knew nothing about the diary. He later recalled what he did after Truitt's phone-call: "We didn't start looking until the next morning, when Tony and I walked around the corner a few blocks to Mary's house. It was locked, as we had expected, but when we got inside, we found Jim Angleton, and to our complete surprise he told us he, too, was looking for Mary's diary."

Angleton admitted that he knew of Mary's relationship with JFK and was searching her home looking for her diary and any letters that would reveal details of the affair. According to Ben Bradlee, it was Mary's sister, Antoinette Bradlee, who found the diary and letters a few days later. It was claimed that the diary was in a metal box in Mary's studio. The contents of the box were given to Angleton who claimed he burnt the diary. Angleton later admitted that Mary recorded in her diary that she had taken LSD with Kennedy before "they made love".

In 1976 Cleveland Cram, the former Chief of Station in the Western Hemisphere, met George T. Kalaris and Ted Shackley at a cocktail party in Washington. Kalaris, who had replaced Angleton as Chief of Counterintelligence, asked Cram if he would like to come back to work. Cram was told that the CIA wanted a study done of Angleton's reign from 1954 to 1974. "Find out what in hell happened. What were these guys doing."

Cram took the assignment and was given access to all CIA documents on covert operations. The study entitled History of the Counterintelligence Staff 1954-1974, took six years to complete. As David Wise points out in his book Molehunt (1992): "When Cram finally finished it in 1981... he had produced twelve legal-sized volumes, each three hundred to four hundred pages. Cram's approximately four-thousand-page study has never been declassified. It remains locked in the CIA's vaults."

My own view is that Angleton was not a Soviet spy. However, he had been cleverly manipulated by the KGB so that he would create havoc in the CIA. He had a similar impact on the British Intelligence Service as he convinced people like Peter Wright that senior figures like Roger Hollis and Graham Mitchell were spies. Wright also convinced others that Harold Wilson and several other leading figures in the Labour Party were working for the Soviets. In 1968 Peter Wright was involved with Cecil King, the publisher of the Daily Mirror and a MI5 agent, in a plot to bring down Wilson's government and replace it with a coalition led by Lord Mountbatten. Had Angleton five years earlier, been involved in removing another dangerous "left-wing" politician in the United States?

Good question. Mr. Trento I really enjoyed your latest book Prelude to Terror. Especially found info to The Safari Club fascinating. But your reliance on Angleton in your Secret History is still extremely problemeatic. Look forward to your reposnse to John Simkin's question.

When I see it happen then I will believe it.

Bush keeps covering up all of his wrongful doings. So, when? His fathers has all of his records covered up and that was a long time ago.

Sad, they both get away with so much.

So, for me, it is don't count your chickens before they hatch. Like to see this one hatched, should have been a long time ago. NEver even to get to the point of 9/11 ever. Should never have happened and yet it did. Smiles on Bush's face are always at the wrong times, everyone in America should have picked up on that also a long time ago.

I think there is now a serious possibility of impeachment.

signs

1) the neveda sphinx Harry read finally spoke out the day the Fitzgerald indictment came out.

2) The dems seem to be working in tandem with cia against the noecons.

3)f or the cia this represents a chance to 'get back at bush'--admittedly this sounds strange but we have to remember there is a serious division between high mid-level cia (even if they are kalled ex-cia liek Helms was called from Tehran in 74 ) and the neocon pro likud position.

4) for the DLC CORPORATE Dem leadership the Plame angel represents two important ingredients

a) a way of tapping into anger at the war, and legitimizing themselves with the base of their party, as they continue to move away from it on all real economic issues.

a conservative "Plame Frame" for this serious, poetentially much more volatile issue of "Bush lied about the war--(AND WE DEMOCRATS WENT ALONG WITH IT PERHAPS KNOWING JUST HOW TENUOUS MOST OF THE EVIDENCE REALLY WAS)

5) Since about ten days ago-ive noticed a remarkable change in the U>S> press. Their racking up big stories agains Bush--such as long term investigations about fake iraq-al quada pre 2003 links. theyre also giving major air time to moderate republicans of the type so important in the Nixon ouster.

6) CIA researcher Douglas Valentine has suggested a possible collaboration between 'liberal journalsits' and right wing intelligence (Such as Deap Throat) in an effort to get Nixon. We could be seeing similar collaboration with current dems and CIA.

7) Finally a question: Does anyone see any similaritis between the Kennedy's end-run (unsuccessfull) around the CIA with Special Group of '63 and Bush-Cheyney's end run around the CIA in 2003? Could be way off here just putting it out there.

Don't insult Gregory peck.

Sheesh...

Terry M. was merely stating fact, not insulting Gregory Peck.

Gregory Peck would have been around 74-75 years old when JFK filmed. As great as Gregory Peck was, it would be a stretch to see him playing a late 40-ish Jim Garrison...

*************************************************************************8

"Terry M. was merely stating fact, not insulting Gregory Peck."

Thanks, Frank. But, Ms. Dulles has her own skewed view on life.

role as a possible dissinformagent agent of the CIA. After reading Francis Stoner Saunders book THE CIA AND CULTURE--WHICH WAS ABOUT THE ROLE OF THE CIa created left -liberal magazine called ????(name escapes me)shoot!!-- ANYWAY the point she made is that the cia was more likely to be in left liberal magazines than in right wing ones. That way they could play a 'gatekeeping role' to dissuade left liberals from going further in oppostion to U>S> Cold War foriegn policies

Now comes Mellons insight into Max Holland.

If there was one place where there was a ganuine independent communist movement--ie. non-stalinist-- it was Italy. ( See Gabriel Kolko The politics of War 1943-45) Yet Holland seems to think just by typing the words Italian Communist newspaper he can automatically assume that it was an ink-well of societ disinformation.

What can be done to make people more aware of left-liberal ,possible cia disinformation?

[quote name='Lynne Foster' date='Nov 13 2005, 01:19 AM' post='45010']

Like you, Garrison trashed himself.

Lynne:

You're truly one sicko wacco. I am the one here who really tries to get along with everyone but

know what: let me get booted I don't care. Take a flying frikken leap into the nowherere you dropped into here from. Go back to the freaks in TO (I am former Canadian,and have relatives in TO, so I know of which I speak).

YOu have ZERO to add to this case. You're probably some fruitcake desperately in need of serious meds.

Like someone- (Steve?) -said "if you don't get help at Charter, get help somewhere....."

Do you actually have a THOUGHT in your head????

I seriously doubt it.

YOu, gerrry and purvert all crawled out from under the same friggen rock. Must be a full moon or something.

Close, but no "Cigar".

It was: "Captain Pervert", and in that regard, one must "earn" his nickname in SF, to be evenly closely respected by his Team Members.

Tom

P.S. My "ex"-wife never could get used to or accept being referred to as "Mrs. Captain Pervert" by "Pappy"; "Smitty"; "Roland/aka "The Animal"; "Indian Joe"; etc; etc; etc.

This did get somewhat out of hand when Rolands boys, one day in school in Key West, yelled out for all to hear: "Hi Mrs. Captain Pervert" to my wife who was a teacher at the Dependent School out on Trumbo Point Annex.

hi everyone I have a silly question. Which at this point do you think is the more accurate description,

a) the CIA killed Kennedy

the CIA and Mafia killed kenedy

Especially after reading Mellens new book (actually am on p.341) i am starting to favor choice a. The mafia may have had some role but this may have simply been a decoy to throw off scent should witnesses by forced to put hand on smudged bibles. Similar to the strategy of using homosexuals and ex-nazi financiers as agents so the agency 'has something against them' and can easily destroy their credibility in court

Name: Nathaniel Heidenheimer

DOB: 11/18/63, Gainesville Florida

BREIF BIO: I came out of the hospital in north Florida on 11/22/63. My mom said the guy who cleaned the windshield said "Did you hear the news" with a big grin on his face Possibly he was trying to mess with the blatant university types. That night cold war liberals gave me their meagre benediction: may he not grow up to be president.

My dad was a political scientist. Observing from around the age of two I could tell that this was a frightened cold war discipline. As I grew older I grew curious about the sociological structure of knowledge, especially around the cold war.

I went to Grinnell College, then, sadly Teachers College at Columbia university. Now I teach U.S. History in a Public High School in NYC. I have a growing interest in communications and the CIA.

My reading in the Kennedy Assassination took a great leap forward two years ago when I learned of Peter Dale Scott through another book by Roger Morris and Sally Denton. I then read Deep Politics and was bowled over. This book seemed to completely repudiate the dichotomy between "conspiracy theory" and "structural analysis”. Later I read The Man Who Knew too Much. Now I am reading the new book by Joan Mellon, and finding it fascinating.

I was a history major, and have read a ton of history. I think that’s real important when one approaches this stuff: it help approach questions of causality from a wide angle.

My other interests include baseball and writing poetry. I am actually writing poems about the Kennedy assassination. The goal here is not glibness, but to get people to unpack the baggage from this ubiquitous roadblock, this term "Conspiracy theory". I think it is largely a function of the media doing its job: preventing a mediated discussion.