Why Have Their Been so Few DEBATES About the JFK Assassination broadcast in the US Media?

[Guest Tom Scully]

....Len in my view your comments about education level (not that I accept them at face value-- would have to look more closely) do not surprise me. Look at American Universites today. Chris Hedges recent article about them was dead on. They are technochratic monastaries. Most of the 9/11 dismissal is aimed at raising class anxiety at any middle class organism . It works. They are scared of beign called a conspiracy theorist, and this tendency is if anything more pronounced among Chomsky-Goodman-Cockburn left liberals.

The medieval monastaries could never produce a group as politically irrelevent as todays American Universities. You need to come back from Brazil to believe just how completely air brained and worse than Russia apolitical the university educated are here these days. Anyone from another country could never believe it.

Ohhhh??? What on earth, Nathaniel, could be the driving forces of these "influences" on our college campuses?

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title...ts_in_Education

Foundation for Individual Rights in Education or FIRE is a group which claims to "defend and sustain individual rights at America's increasingly repressive and partisan colleges and universities."....

....FIRE is a major proponent of the intellectual diversity movement which aims to dismantle the so-called liberal bias in higher academia.

FIRE produces many Guides for students on their issues, including one on first-year orientation and "Thought Reform on Campus."

FIRE also has a legal network which connects students who feel their rights have been violated by faculty or administrators with attorneys specializing in FIRE's major talking points. ...

Board of Advisors

...T. Kenneth Cribb...

I know it's hard to believe that such a small number of right wing zealots, influenced in the past by CIA "folks" like Kristol and Buckley, under the guidance originally of Frank Wisner, and heavily financed throughout the years by the usual "winger" trusts and foundations, could morph into a Council for National Policy controlled, national college campus propaganda "Op", but here they are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercollegia...itute#Criticism

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc., or (ISI), is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1953 as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists. Its members, over 50,000 college students and faculty across the United States, take advantage of programs designed to supplement a collegiate education and to provide access to resources that will help one achieve an education based primarily on the works of influential men and women in the European and Christian traditions. The group is known for having distinctly American Conservative views.[1]

ISI's flagship journal, The Intercollegiate Review, is sent to students and teachers free of charge. ISI also publish two other scholarly journals, the quarterly Modern Age, and the annual The Political Science Reviewer, as well as a web journal, First Principles....

Although ISI does not have any official partisan or religious affiliation, the Institute tends towards paleoconservative and traditionalist positions. The influence of several important twentieth-century Roman Catholic thinkers is also apparent at ISI. In fact, the very reason given for the existence of ISI is that education in the modern university is insufficiently liberal (in the traditional sense) to meet the needs of a classical education. Further, the organization fights what it perceives as political correctness and liberal (in the modern sense) bias among campus professors.

In a 1989 speech to the Heritage Foundation, the ISI President, T. Kenneth Cribb Jr., stated:

We must...provide resources and guidance to an elite which can take up anew the task of enculturation. Through its journals, lectures, seminars, books and fellowships, this is what ISI has done successfully for 36 years. The coming of age of such elites has provided the current leadership of the conservative revival. But we should add a major new component to our strategy: the conservative movement is now mature enough to sustain a counteroffensive on that last Leftist redoubt, the college campus...We are now strong enough to establish a contemporary presence for conservatism on campus, and contest the Left on its own turf. We plan to do this by greatly expanding the ISI field effort, its network of campus-based programming.[2]

[edit] History

In 1953, Frank Chodorov founded ISI as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists, with a young Yale University graduate William F. Buckley, Jr. as president. E. Victor Milione, ISI's next and longest-serving president, was the enterprising individual whose efforts realized Chodorov's plan through publications, a membership network, a lecture and conference program, and a graduate fellowship program.

Over the years, ISI has established itself as a leading conservative educational organisation. In its own words, it "is today the educational pillar of the conservative movement and the leading source of information about a free society for the many students and teachers who reject the post-modernist zeitgeist."[3] President Reagan has expressed himself in the same direction:.....

http://www.thefire.org/index.php/person/3452.html

T. Kenneth Cribb

T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr., is president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Cribb was Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs in the Reagan Administration, serving as President Reagan’s top advisor on domestic matters. Earlier in the administration he held the position of Counselor to the Attorney General. He also served as vice chairman of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board from 1989 to 1992. Today he also is president of the Collegiate Network, an association of independent college newspapers; vice president of the Council for National Policy; and counselor to the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy.

http://www.digitas.harvard.edu/~perspy/old...ar/madison.html

How Rich Foundations Fund Conservative College Newspapers

By Jeff Pooley

Curious readers of Harvard's student publications might wonder how the College's two conservative newspapers, The Salient and Peninsula, continue to operate with only one or two paid ads per issue. Many other publications, including Perspective, rely almost exclusively on advertising to cover their costs. In fact, although the former two papers often tout the unqualified virtue of free enterprise, both have managed to balance their books for years only with the aid of massive subsidies from conservative foundations....

....Both The Salient and Peninsula are members of the Collegiate Network, an association of over 70 right-wing college newspapers from Dartmouth to Stanford which provides its members with substantial subsidies, start-up grants, coordination, and training. The Network also provides editorial input, at least according to former editor-in-chief of The Stanford Review, Lisa Covan: "They help us form our opinions and plan conferences." The Network, administered until last year by the Madison Center for Educational Affairs (MCEA), recently merged into the larger Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), a group known for its dedication to purging "the pervasive forces of multiculturalism."

Corporate donations and foundation grants enable the MCEA to subsidize its members generously. The Madison Center was founded in 1978 by former Treasury Secretary William Simons and prominent neo-conservative Irving Kristol. By 1991, its budget exceeded $1 million, $633,900 of which was provided by conservative foundations, most prominently the Olin, Coors, Richardson, Bradley, and Scaife Foundations, according to the Cambridge-based Center for Campus Organizing (CCO). The rest came from the Center's own endowment, individual contributions, and corporate donors like Bechtel, Dow Chemical, General Electric, and Mobil. The money was apparently well-spent: William Buckley's National Review boasts that "without [MCEA] there would not be a conservative-student-newspaper movement to speak of."....

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.htm...789D85F4C8685F9

Irving Kristol, in his apologia for his presumably unwitting stint as a C.I.A. agent, has carefully missed the point ("Memoirs of a 'Cold Warrior,'" Feb. 11). The criticism currently directed at him and the other "anti-Communist liberals" does not attack their anti-Communism so much as their liberalism, contending that the former thoroughly corrupted the latter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encounter_(magazine)

Encounter was a literary magazine, founded in 1953 by poet Stephen Spender and early neoconservative author, Irving Kristol. The magazine ceased publication in 1990. Published in the United Kingdom, it was a largely Anglo-American intellectual and cultural journal.

Spender served as literary editor until 1967, when he resigned[1] due to the revelation that year of the covert CIA funding of the magazine, of which he had heard rumors, but had not been able to confirm. Thomas W. Braden, who headed CIA IOD's operations between 1951 to 1954, said that the money for the magazine "came from CIA, and few outside the CIA knew about it. We had placed one agent in a Europe-based organization of intellectuals called the Congress for Cultural Freedom."[1][2]

http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cutt..._20may1967.html

Speaking Out

I'm glad the CIA is 'immoral'

Thomas W. Braden, The Saturday Evening Post, 20 May 1967, page 10 - 14

By Thomas W. Braden

Former President of California's Board of Education, trustee of California State Colleges and candidate for lieutenant governor, the author is editor and publisher of BLADE-TRIBUNE at Oceanside, Calif. During World War II, he served with both the British infantry and with the OSS as a parachutist.

...And so it came about that I had a chat with Allen Dulles. It was late in the day and his secretary had gone. I told him I thought the CIA ought to take on the Russians by penetrating a battery of international fronts. I told him I thought it should be a worldwide operation with a single headquarters.

"You know," he said, leaning back in his chair and lighting his pipe, "I think you may have something there. There's no doubt in my mind that we're losing the cold war. Why don't you take it up down below?"

It was nearly three months later that I came to his office again-this time to resign. On the morning of that day there had been a meeting for which my assistants and I had prepared ourselves carefully. We had been studying Russian front movements, and working out a counteroffensive. We knew that the men who ran CIA's area divisions were jealous of their power. But we thought we had logic on our side. And surely logic would appeal to Frank Wisner.

Frank Wisner, in my view, was an authentic American hero. A war hero. A cold-war hero. He died by his own hand in 1965. But he had been crushed long before by the dangerous detail connected with cold-war operations. At this point in my story, however, he was still gay, almost boyishly charming, cool yet coiled, a low hurdler from Mississippi constrained by a vest.

He had one of those purposefully obscure CIA titles: Director of Policy Co-ordination. But everyone knew that he had run CIA since the death of the war-time OSS, run it through a succession of rabbit warrens hidden in the bureaucracy of the State Department, run it when nobody but Frank Wisner cared whether the country had an intelligence service. Now that it was clear that Bedell Smith and Allen Dulles were really going to take over, Frank Wisner still ran it while they tried to learn what it was they were supposed to run.

And so, as we prepared for the meeting, it was decided that I should pitch my argument to Wisner. He knew more than the others. He could overrule them.

The others sat in front of me in straight-backed chairs, wearing the troubled looks of responsibility. I began by assuring them that I proposed to do nothing in any area without the approval of the chief of that area. I thought, when I finished, that I had made a good case. Wisner gestured at the Chief, Western Europe. "Frank," came the response, "this is just another one of those goddamned proposals for getting into everybody's hair."

One by one the others agreed. Only Richard G. Stilwell, the Chief, Far East, a hard-driving soldier in civilian clothes who now commands U.S. forces in Thailand, said he had no objection. We all waited to hear what Wisner would say.

Incredibly, he put his hands out, palms down. "Well," he said, looking at me, "you heard the verdict."

Just as incredibly, he smiled.

Sadly I walked down the long hall, and sadly reported to my staff that the day was lost. Then I went to Mr. Dulles's office and resigned. "Oh," said Mr. Dulles, blandly, "Frank and I had talked about his decision. I overruled him." He looked up at me from over his papers. "He asked me to."

Thus was the International Organization Division of CIA born, and thus began the first centralized effort to combat Communist fronts.

Perhaps "combat" does not describe the relative strengths brought to battle. For we started with nothing but the truth. Yet within three years we had made solid accomplishments. Few of them would have been possible without undercover methods.

I remember the enormous joy I got when the Boston Symphony Orchestra won more acclaim for the U.S. in Paris than John Foster Dulles or Dwight D. Eisenhower could have bought with a hundred speeches. And then there was Encounter, the magazine published in England and dedicated to the proposition that cultural achievement and political freedom were interdependent. Money for both the orchestra's tour and the magazine's publication came from the CIA, and few outside the CIA knew about it. We had placed one agent in a Europe-based organization of intellectuals called the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Another agent became an editor of Encounter. The agents could not only propose anti-Communist programs to the official leaders of the organizations but they could also suggest ways and means to solve the inevitable budgetary problems. Why not see if the needed money could be obtained from "American foundations"? As the agents knew, the CIA-financed foundations were quite generous when it came to the national interest....

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.htm...78ED85F438685F9

STEPHEN SPENDER QUITS ENCOUNTER; British Poet Says Finding of C.I.A. Financing Led to His Leaving Magazine Encounter Editor Quits His Post Over Disclosure of C.I.A.'s Role

By SYLVAN FOX

May 8, 1967, Monday

Stephen Spender, the British poet and author, said yesterday he had resigned as contributing editor of Encounter magazine because Central Intelligence Agency money had helped to fiance it for more than 10 years.

http://www.thefire.org/index.php/founders/

FIRE's Founders

Alan Charles Kors

Co-founder and Chairman Emeritus

Alan Charles Kors (Ph.D., Harvard University) teaches European intellectual history at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is professor of history and holds the George H. Walker Endowed Term Chair.

Kors has fought for academic freedom since his arrival at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1993, he defended Eden Jacobowitz in the infamous “water buffalo case,” which led to the writing of The Shadow University (1998) and to the founding of FIRE, both with Harvey Silverglate. Kors has been elected four times to the University and School Committees on Academic Freedom and Responsibility by his colleagues. He has received two awards for distinguished college teaching and numerous awards for his defense of academic freedom. He has also written and lectured widely on the assault upon liberty and freedom of conscience on America’s campuses. In 2005, he was awarded a National Humanities Medal.

http://www.policycounsel.org/18856/32101.html

a Publication of The Council for National Policy

Alan Charles Kors - professor and undergraduate chair of history, University of Pennsylvania; director of general honors program, University of Pennsylvania; chair, SAS Committee on Undergraduate Education; fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies; editor-in-chief, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment; president and co-founder, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education; coauthor, with Harvey Silverglate, The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses;

....Delivered October, 1999 San Antonio, Texas

PROFESSOR KORS: I am singularly privileged to be in your company. It is rare in academic life that one finds oneself surrounded by warriors for human liberty, human responsibility and human dignity. It is truly a privilege to be here.

I should like to talk about the assault upon liberty and dignity in American higher education today....

http://www.publiceye.org/ifas/fw/0009/bush.html

....On October 9, 1999, the secretive Council for National Policy (CNP) held its fall meeting in San Antonio, Texas. Governor Bush was invited to address this influential group. This time precautions were taken to see that no information leaked to the press.....

http://www.evangelicalsformitt.org/dfrench.php

David French

Co-founder

David, a graduate of Harvard Law School and David Lipscomb University, works for a non-profit legal organization and is a First Lieutenant in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the United States Army Reserve. The former president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education,...

There is a grave, ongoing political struggle, and almost no Americans who should be active in the opposition majority, are

even aware who the opposing players are, or what the stake are, even after eight years of them having the upper hand:

http://www.slate.com/id/2215142/

And Then They Came for Koh ... If mainstream America can't stand up for Harold Koh, we will get precisely the government lawyers we deserve.

By Dahlia LithwickUpdated Friday, April 3, 2009, at 6:54 AM ET

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=harold+...;fp=DwUsqvqK_ig

MRC President, Other Prominent Conservatives: Say Just Say No to Harold Koh

By NB Staff (Bio | Archive)

May 6, 2009 - 17:36 ET

President Obama's nominee to be the State Department's top legal adviser, Harold Koh, "is a radical transnationalist who, based on his writings and statements, aims to use international and foreign law to deprive Americans of our rights as American citizens."

So argue a group of respected conservative leaders including former Attorney General Ed Meese, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, and Media Research Center President Brent Bozell in a May 5 press statement.

You can find the statement in full below the page break:

....Alfred Regnery, Publisher, American Spectator

Brent Bozell, President of the Media Research Center (the late William F. Buckley's nephew)

T. Kenneth Cribb, former Counselor to U.S. Attorney General...

President Obama's nomination of left-wing academic Harold Koh to be the top lawyer at the State Department represents a choice based on ideology instead of national interest. Koh is a terrible pick for this important position....

Edited May 18, 2009 by Tom Scully

[Terry Mauro]

Campus Watch

http://larouchepub.com/lym/2006/3341campus_watch.html

Since the end of 2002, there has been a Nazi-Gestapo operation on campuses across America, which has been run by neo-conservatives like Lynne Cheney, Dave Horowitz, Stanley Kurtz, Martin Kramer, David French, and others. They say they want to ensure that there are no "political idealists" turning campuses into a place for attacking the "War on Terror," and thereby destroying our security. The first major attempt to create legislation to ensure this was launched in early 2003, when Title VI of the 1965 Higher Education Act, which provides funding for area study centers and programs at universities in the United States, came up for renewal.

Edited May 18, 2009 by Terry Mauro

[Len Colby]

....Len in my view your comments about education level (not that I accept them at face value-- would have to look more closely) do not surprise me. Look at American Universites today. Chris Hedges recent article about them was dead on. They are technochratic monastaries. Most of the 9/11 dismissal is aimed at raising class anxiety at any middle class organism . It works. They are scared of beign called a conspiracy theorist, and this tendency is if anything more pronounced among Chomsky-Goodman-Cockburn left liberals.

The medieval monastaries could never produce a group as politically irrelevent as todays American Universities. You need to come back from Brazil to believe just how completely air brained and worse than Russia apolitical the university educated are here these days. Anyone from another country could never believe it.

Ohhhh??? What on earth, Nathaniel, could be the driving forces of these "influences" on our college campuses?

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title...ts_in_Education

Foundation for Individual Rights in Education or FIRE is a group which claims to "defend and sustain individual rights at America's increasingly repressive and partisan colleges and universities."....

These rationalizations of the result have yet to show that the actions of such groups: 1) have much effect on teaching at US coleges 2) affects the POV of the students who study them 3) would bias their replies to the Zogby polls.

They irrelevant because such groups are reletively new and the media age of those who said "offcial story" seems to be early 50's or perhaps late 40's. All respondants were over 18. There were 2 breakdowns of respondants ages. The median age of those who said official story in the 1st was towards the low end of 50 - 64 and in the 2nd towards the high end of 35 - 54. Thus about half graduated 30 years ago.

http://www.angus-reid.com/uppdf/911_Truth.pdf pg5

EDIT - Corrrected "20 years ago" to "30 years ago"

Edited May 21, 2009 by Len Colby

[Len Colby]

I'm still waiting for a rational explaination from truthers for the consistently inverse retationship between educational level and there beliefs. Campus Watch and similar groups only got started in 2002 thus the first graduating class that started studying that year would have graduated in 2006 when the 1st poll was taken and 1 year before the 2nd.

I made an error in my prevous pots more than half the backers of the "official theory" would have graduated about 30 (not 20) years earlier.

EDIT - Typos

Edited May 21, 2009 by Len Colby