Operation Mockingbird

[Bob Goodman]

Thanks John. It just gone on my must-see-when-I-can-get-it-cheap list. Sounds more FBI'ish then CIA'ish in this article. Hoover paranoia. He never left the 1930's. Hated blacks obsessivly. Probably rooted in his denial of his extreme sexual attraction to them, his damnation never enough to quench the guilt from the lust he felt for them. Or, maybe not;

http://www.lethaldeath.com/Crimson/Archive...okSatByDoor.php

From the title alone, I wonder if the War Party sees any parallels in this years election cycle in the U.S. They might think we got ourselves one of them scary ones, with principles, God forbid, one that looks you in the eye when he talks? This today, God, they are frightening..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSe_Fzt1LKA

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

SIGNIFICANT SHIFT IN GATE! COCKBURN, CO-LEFT-GATEKEEPER IN CHIEF, SNEAKS IN A SIGNIFICANT SHIFT IN GATE-LOCATION

Read this article by Alexander Cockburn. Notice the paragraph on JFK and the Bay of Pigs.

Here we see something quite new that Alex hopes we dont notice. Up to this point he has had nothing but contempt for assassination 'buffs' Now for the first time he actually mentions the possibility of conspiracy without ridiculing the idea.

Who cares what Cockburn thinks?

I do. Not because I respect Cockburn as a journalist, althought he has written some great stuff. I see him as a role player. But it is a role that we cannot afford to overlook--even if you do not subscribe to his mushy foundation controlled leftism. Why? Because he and Chomsky have for years been very influencial in preventing millions and millions from investigating the Assassination in its context in terms of building an economy of permanent war.

How can that be possible when only 90,000 subscribe to The Nation with its proletarian-galvanizing columns such as "Diary of a Mad Law Professor" ? The magazine emits a haze that effects professors and the peace movements in such a way as they can ONLY describe Kennedy as a Cold Warrior. Hence millions of students are directed away from a core case study that could prove the military industrial complex and towards ever changing stories about distant McGenocides, that only four year college history majors will ever read about. I have read about these bird-like individuals.

This in some ways is in keeping with the new trend of blame the mob, initiated big time by the Big yellow Doorstopper. Harvard University seems to have endorsed this method with the Kaiser book. Anyway, the point is that even the gatekeepers are shifting their gates.

If we SHOW these gates being shifted, this could raise doubts in the targeted readers of the gatekeepers.

http://www.counterpunch.org/

Edited August 17, 2008 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer

[John Simkin]

In 1948 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 Central Intelligence Agency. 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 Operation Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic American media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham (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." (1)

Wisner was also interested in influencing Hollywood. As Hugh Wilford points out in The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (2008) “Fortunately for the CIA, two factors predisposed the major Hollywood studios that dominated the industry to take a "responsible" position in the cultural Cold War. One was a strong tendency toward self-censorship, the result of many years' experience avoiding the commercially disastrous effects of giving offense to either domestic pressure groups like the American Legion or foreign audiences. The other was the fact that the men who ran the studios were intensely patriotic and anticommunist - they saw it as their duty to help their government defeat the Soviet threat. (2)

Wisner was helped by the fact that the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), chaired by J. Parnell Thomas, was carrying out an investigation into the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry. The HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working in Hollywood. These people attended voluntarily and became known as "friendly witnesses". During their interviews they named nineteen people who they accused of holding left-wing views.

One of those named, Bertolt Brecht, a playwright, gave evidence and then left for East Germany. Ten others: Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, Samuel Ornitz,, Dalton Trumbo, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson and Alvah Bessie refused to answer any questions and were sent to prison and were blacklisted from the industry.

The CIA and FBI also provided right-wing television producer, Vincent Harnett, with information about left-wing figures in the industry. In June 1950 Harnett published Red Channels, a pamphlet listing the names of 151 writers, directors and performers who they claimed had been members of subversive organisations before the Second World War but had not so far been blacklisted.

Lee J. Cobb was one of those actors who was originally blacklisted but eventually cooperated with the HUAC: “When the facilities of the government of the United States are drawn on an individual it can be terrifying. The blacklist is just the opening gambit - being deprived of work. Your passport is confiscated. That's minor. But not being able to move without being tailed is something else. After a certain point it grows to implied as well as articulated threats, and people succumb. My wife did, and she was institutionalized. In 1953 the HCUA did a deal with me. I was pretty much worn down. I had no money. I couldn't borrow. I had the expenses of taking care of the children. Why am I subjecting my loved ones to this? If it's worth dying for, and I am just as idealistic as the next fellow. But I decided it wasn't worth dying for, and if this gesture was the way of getting out of the penitentiary I'd do it. I had to be employable again.”

According to Frances Stonor Saunders, the author of Who Paid the Piper (2000), Wisner recruited several important figures for Operation Mockingbird. This included former OSS filmmaker John Ford and studio bosses Cecil B. DeMille (Paramount Pictures) and Darryl Zanack (Twentieth Century-Fox). Saunders calls this group the “Hollywood consortium” (3).

Another important figure in this group was Howard Hughes, the boss of RKO Pictures. As Charles Higham points out in “Howard Hughes: The Secret Life” (2004), this was also good for business: “Hughes’s crusade against Communism” was “exacerbated by his desire to have Hughes Aircraft profit from the Korean and any future anti-Soviet wars”. For example, in June 1950, General Ira Eaker “signed an across-the-board agreement giving Hughes a monopoly in interceptors for the U.S. Air Force… despite the fact that it was in breach of the Sherman anti-monopolies act… By the end of 1950, the war had made Hughes even richer than before.” (4)

Another important figure in this conspiracy was Charles Douglas Jackson. He had joined the OSS in 1943 and the following year he was appointed as Deputy Chief at the Psychological Warfare Division, SHAEF. After the war, he became Managing Director of Time-Life International. When it became clear that Dwight Eisenhower stood a good chance of becoming president, the CIA arranged for Jackson to join his campaign. This involved Jackson writing speeches for Eisenhower. Jackson was rewarded in February 1953 by being appointed as Special Assistant to the President. This included the role of Eisenhower's liaison between the CIA and the Pentagon.

According to the Eisenhower Library files in Abilene, Kansas, Jackson's "area responsibility was loosely defined as international affairs, cold war planning, and psychological warfare. His main function was the coordination of activities aimed at interpreting world situations to the best advantage of the United States and her allies and exploiting incidents which reflected negatively on the Soviet Union, Communist China and other enemies in the Cold War." (5)

Jackson was also involved in Operation Mockingbird. This was revealed after the death of Jackson. On December 15, 1971, Mrs. C.D. Jackson gave her husband’s papers to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. This included details that Jackson was in contact with a CIA agent in Hollywood’s Paramount Studios. This agent was involved in trying to influence the content of the films the company was making. The agent is not named by Jackson but Frances Stoner Saunders believes it was Carleton Alsop, a CIA agent employed by Frank Wisner. (6) There is no doubt that Alsop was one of the CIA agents working at Paramount. However, Hugh Wilford argues that it was a senior executive at Paramount, Lugi G. Laraschi, was the most important CIA figure at the studio. (7) Laraschi was the head of foreign and domestic censorship at the studio, whose job was to “iron out any political, moral or religious problems”. Other studios, including MGM and RKO, had similar officers, and were probably CIA placements. In a private letter to Sherman Adams, Jackson claims the role of these CIA placements was “to insert in their scripts and in their action the right ideas with the proper subtlety”. (8)

Although the main objective of Operation Mockingbird was to influence the production of commercial films the CIA also occasionally initiated film projects. The best documented instance of this concerns an animated version of Animal Farm, a satirical allegory about Stalinism by George Orwell. The book was highly popular when it was published in 1945 and it was only natural that the studios should be interested in making a film of the book. The problem for the CIA was that Orwell was a socialist whose book attacked both communism and capitalism. Therefore, it was important to make a film that restricted it to a condemnation of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union.

In 1950 Wisner’s OPC arranged for Joe Bryan to recruit anti-communist documentary-maker Louis de Rochemont to produce a movie version of the tale. (9) It was decided to get the film made in Britain to disguise CIA involvement in the project. Rochemont employed the British animation studio of husband and wife John Halas and Joy Batchelor to make the film. Most of the funding came from a CIA shell corporation, Touchstone. E. Howard Hunt was one of those agents involved in the production of the film whose role was to remove the socialist elements in Orwell’s allegory. (10)

One unnamed member of the OPC sent a letter to John Halas called for the addition of scenes showing the other farms (that represented capitalist countries) in a more flattering light. The most important demand was to change the ending. The CIA did not like the scene where the pigs and dogs face a liberation-style uprising of the other animals. The letter included the following: “It is reasonable to expect that if Orwell were to write the book today, it would be considerably different and that the changes would tend to make it even more positively anti-Communist and possibly somewhat more favorable to the Western powers.” (11)

One of the main concerns of the CIA was the portrayal of race-relations in Hollywood movies. It was argued that the left was using this issue to undermine the idea that America was a democracy based on equal rights. Letters from Jackson sent to the producers of films called for scenes showing African Americans mixing on equal terms with whites. One of Jackson’s proposals involved “planting black spectators in a crowd watching a golf game in the Martin and Lewis comedy The Caddy”. (12)

In 1955 Graham Greene published "The Quiet American". The novel is set in Vietnam and involves the relationship between Thomas Fowler, the narrator and main character, is a veteran British journalist in his fifties, who has been covering the war in Vietnam for over two years and Alden Pyle, the “Quiet American” of the title. Although Pyle is officially an aid worker, he is really employed by the CIA. It is believed that the Pyle character is partly based on Edward Lansdale. (13)

Greene had worked for the British Secret Service during the Second World War. Although a fairly successful novelist at the time, Greene was also employed by The Times and Le Figaro as a journalist. Between 1951 to 1954 spent a long period of time in Saigon. In 1953 Lansdale became a CIA advisor on special counter-guerrilla operations to French forces against the Viet Minh.

When the book was published in the United States in 1956 it was condemned as anti-American. Pyle (Lansdale) is portrayed as someone whose belief in the justice of American foreign policy allows him to ignore the appalling consequences of his actions. It was criticized by The New Yorker for portraying Americans as murderers, largely based on one scene in which a bomb explodes in a crowd of people. It is suggested that Pyle is behind the planting of the bomb.

The director, producer and screenwriter, Joseph Mankewiecz was chosen to make the film of “The Quiet American”. He visited Saigon in 1956 and was introduced to Lansdale, whose cover was working at the International Rescue Committee’s office. The most controversial scene in the book is the bombing of a Saigon square in 1952 by a Vietnamese associate of Lansdale’s, General Trinh Minh. In the novel, Greene suggests that Pyle/Lansdale, was behind the bombing. Lansdale suggested to Mankewiecz that the film should show that the bombing was “actually having been a Communist action”.

When he returned home Mankewiecz wrote to Mike O’Daniel, the chairman of the American Friends of Vietnam (a CIA front) that he intended to completely change the anti-American attitude of Greene’s book. This included the casting of Second World War hero, Audie Murphy, as Alden Pyle. (14)

In a letter that Lansdale wrote to Ngo Dinh Diem he praised Mankiewicz’s treatment of the story as “an excellent change from Mr. Greene’s novel of despair” and “that it will help win more friends for you and Vietnam in many places in the world where it is shown.” (15) As Hugh Wilford pointed out: “It was a brilliantly devious maneuver of postmodern literary complexity: by helping to rewrite a story featuring a character reputedly based on himself, Lansdale had transformed an anti-American tract into a cinematic apology for U.S. policy - and his own actions-in Vietnam.” (16)

Greene was furious with Mankiewicz’s treatment of his novel. "Far was it from my mind, when I wrote The Quiet American that the book would become a source of spiritual profit to one of the most corrupt governments in Southeast Asia." (17)

Notes

(1) Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and the "Washington Post (1979) page 138

(2) Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (2008) page 117

(3) Frances Stonor Saunders Who Paid the Piper (2000) page 286

(4) Howard Hughes: The Secret Life” (2004) page 174

(5) Papers of C.D. Jackson at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. See also the following:

http://www.ibiblio.org/lia/president/Eisen..._CD_Papers.html

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=C.D._Jackson

(6) Frances Stonor Saunders Who Paid the Piper (2000) page 290

(7) Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (2008) page 121

(8) C.D. Jackson, letter to Sherman Adams (19th January 1954)

(9) David Caute & Hugh Wilford, CIA, British Left, and Cold War (2003) page 58

(10) E. Howard Hunt, Undercover: Memoirs of a Secret Agent (1974) page 70

(11) Daniel J. Leab, “The American Government and Animal Farm” (Media History 12: 2006)

(12) Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (2008) page 121

(13) Matthew Alford and Robbie Graham, An Offer They Could Not Refuse, The Guardian (14th November 2008)

(14) Jonathan Nashel, Edward Lansdale's Cold War (2004) page 290

(15) Edward Lansdale, letter to Ngo Dinh Diem (28th October 1957)

(16) Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (2008) pages 177-78

(17) Seth Jacobs, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam (2005) page 110

[John Simkin]

Just in case this document isn't on this thread.....now it is.

CIA Document #1035-960, marked "PSYCH"

RE: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report

1. Our Concern. From the day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report, (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved. Presumably as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission's report, a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of those polled thought that the Commission had left some questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse results.

2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization. The members of the Warren Commission were naturally chosen for their integrity, experience and prominence. They represented both major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination. Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.

3. Action. We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active [business] addresses are requested:

a. To discuss the publicity problem with [?] and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.

b. To employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passing to assets. Our ploy should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (II) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Epstein's theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher [?] article and Spectator piece for background. (Although Mark Lane's book is much less convincing that Epstein's and comes off badly where confronted by knowledgeable critics, it is also much more difficult to answer as a whole, as one becomes lost in a morass of unrelated details.)

4. In private to media discussions not directed at any particular writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments should be useful:

a. No significant new evidence has emerged which the Commission did not consider. The assassination is sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten and Bertrand Russell) with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the attack on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits have been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics. (A better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire of 1933, which some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, AJ.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt) now believe was set by Vander Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for either Nazis or Communists; the Nazis tried to pin the blame on the Communists, but the latter have been more successful in convincing the world that the Nazis were to blame.)

b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others. They tend to place more emphasis on the recollections of individual witnesses (which are less reliable and more divergent--and hence offer more hand-holds for criticism) and less on ballistics, autopsy, and photographic evidence. A close examination of the Commission's records will usually show that the conflicting eyewitness accounts are quoted out of context, or were discarded by the Commission for good and sufficient reason.

c. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy, Attorney General at the time and John F. Kennedy's brother, would be the last man to overlook or conceal any conspiracy. And as one reviewer pointed out, Congressman Gerald R. Ford would hardly have held his tongue for the sake of the Democratic administration, and Senator Russell would have had every political interest in exposing any misdeeds on the part of Chief Justice Warren. A conspirator moreover would hardly choose a location for a shooting where so much depended on conditions beyond his control: the route, the speed of the cars, the moving target, the risk that the assassin would be discovered. A group of wealthy conspirators could have arranged much more secure conditions.

d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it; they also scoff at the Commission because it did not always answer every question with a flat decision one way or the other. Actually, the make-up of the Commission and its staff was an excellent safeguard against over-commitment to any one theory, or against the illicit transformation of probabilities into certainties.

e. Oswald would not have been any sensible person's choice for a co-conspirator. He was a "loner," mixed up, of questionable reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service. [Archivist's note: This claim is demonstrably untrue with the latest file releases. The CIA had an operational interest in Oswald less than a month before the assassination. Source: Oswald and the CIA, John Newman and newly released files from the National Archives.]

f. As to charges that the Commission's report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was largely due to the pressure of irresponsible speculation already appearing, in some cases coming from the same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting out new criticisms.

g. Such vague accusations as that "more than ten people have died mysteriously" can always be explained in some natural way e.g.: the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses (the FBI interviewed far more people, conduction 25,000 interviews and re interviews), and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected. (When Penn Jones, one of the originators of the "ten mysterious deaths" line, appeared on television, it emerged that two of the deaths on his list were from heart attacks, one from cancer, one was from a head-on collision on a bridge, and one occurred when a driver drifted into a bridge abutment.)

5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging reference to the Commission's Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should still be impressed by the care, thoroughness, objectivity and speed with which the Commission worked. Reviewers of other books might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with the report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics.

Have you a date for this document?

[William Plumlee]

Just in case this document isn't on this thread.....now it is.

CIA Document #1035-960, marked "PSYCH"

RE: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report

1. Our Concern. From the day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report, (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved. Presumably as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission's report, a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of those polled thought that the Commission had left some questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse results.

2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization. The members of the Warren Commission were naturally chosen for their integrity, experience and prominence. They represented both major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination. Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.

3. Action. We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active [business] addresses are requested:

a. To discuss the publicity problem with [?] and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.

b. To employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passing to assets. Our ploy should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (II) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Epstein's theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher [?] article and Spectator piece for background. (Although Mark Lane's book is much less convincing that Epstein's and comes off badly where confronted by knowledgeable critics, it is also much more difficult to answer as a whole, as one becomes lost in a morass of unrelated details.)

4. In private to media discussions not directed at any particular writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments should be useful:

a. No significant new evidence has emerged which the Commission did not consider. The assassination is sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten and Bertrand Russell) with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the attack on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits have been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics. (A better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire of 1933, which some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, AJ.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt) now believe was set by Vander Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for either Nazis or Communists; the Nazis tried to pin the blame on the Communists, but the latter have been more successful in convincing the world that the Nazis were to blame.)

b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others. They tend to place more emphasis on the recollections of individual witnesses (which are less reliable and more divergent--and hence offer more hand-holds for criticism) and less on ballistics, autopsy, and photographic evidence. A close examination of the Commission's records will usually show that the conflicting eyewitness accounts are quoted out of context, or were discarded by the Commission for good and sufficient reason.

c. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy, Attorney General at the time and John F. Kennedy's brother, would be the last man to overlook or conceal any conspiracy. And as one reviewer pointed out, Congressman Gerald R. Ford would hardly have held his tongue for the sake of the Democratic administration, and Senator Russell would have had every political interest in exposing any misdeeds on the part of Chief Justice Warren. A conspirator moreover would hardly choose a location for a shooting where so much depended on conditions beyond his control: the route, the speed of the cars, the moving target, the risk that the assassin would be discovered. A group of wealthy conspirators could have arranged much more secure conditions.

d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it; they also scoff at the Commission because it did not always answer every question with a flat decision one way or the other. Actually, the make-up of the Commission and its staff was an excellent safeguard against over-commitment to any one theory, or against the illicit transformation of probabilities into certainties.

e. Oswald would not have been any sensible person's choice for a co-conspirator. He was a "loner," mixed up, of questionable reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service. [Archivist's note: This claim is demonstrably untrue with the latest file releases. The CIA had an operational interest in Oswald less than a month before the assassination. Source: Oswald and the CIA, John Newman and newly released files from the National Archives.]

f. As to charges that the Commission's report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was largely due to the pressure of irresponsible speculation already appearing, in some cases coming from the same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting out new criticisms.

g. Such vague accusations as that "more than ten people have died mysteriously" can always be explained in some natural way e.g.: the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses (the FBI interviewed far more people, conduction 25,000 interviews and re interviews), and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected. (When Penn Jones, one of the originators of the "ten mysterious deaths" line, appeared on television, it emerged that two of the deaths on his list were from heart attacks, one from cancer, one was from a head-on collision on a bridge, and one occurred when a driver drifted into a bridge abutment.)

5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging reference to the Commission's Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should still be impressed by the care, thoroughness, objectivity and speed with which the Commission worked. Reviewers of other books might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with the report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics.

Have you a date for this document?

It was dated 4/1/67 and contained a 'Destroy when no longer needed' stamp. http://www.jfk-info.com/ZIP/Cia-wc.zip

(Peter in case you do not have this..., if so sorry.....additional background info on mockingbird. Its alive and well...Bold section noted by me)

Iran/Contra and Mockingbird

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CIA Disinformation in Action: Operation Mockingbird and the Washington Post

Mockingbird examples with introduction by H. Michael Sweeney, proparanoid.com

Document by Julian Holmes

No copyright - Public Domain

Permissions not required

The very lengthy (25 pages typwritten) document below is actually a letter to the Washington Post by Julian C. Holmes, in which he takes the Post to task for decades of disinformation - typically in the form of combating what the Post likes to describe as 'conspiracy theory' which, in the end, turns out to be conspiracy fact. This uncopyrighted document was borrowed with permission from Michael Rivero's excellent http://www.whatreallyhappened.com Web site. In an unusual format, Holmes carefully documents each accusation with footnotes, a valuable tool for the reader. This is no mere rant, no mere opinionated dissatisfaction, no angry response dashed off without thinking. No, it is an indictment. Nestled within the over 100 footnotes and the not quite as many individual examples of supression and distrotions of truth, and even fabrications of 'truth', is a root-most clue to the real problem - a problem which reader should take care not to miss grasping...

That is the covert role played by the Washington Post in CIA's Operation Mockingbird, which is the infiltration and control of American media to insure that you and I never quite hear the truth as it really is. You will learn how the owner/publisher of the Post, Phillip Graham and graduate of the Army Intelligence School was literally the founding director of Operation Mockingbird on behalf of CIA. The significance is amplified when it is understood that Mockingbird was not simply the sell out of a newspaper. It was the organized infiltration and in some cases the actual take over of the top 25 newpapers in the United States, major television networks, high-profile magazines, the wire services (Reuters was an outright CIA owned and operated front until 'sold' to 'private' interests) and even motion picture studios. Since then, of course, it has expanded further. For more information, visit Rivero's site and read the excellent piece found there by author Alex Constantine, Tales From They Crypt.

We might expect a fascist dictatorship to use the motto-policy of "Do what we tell you or else!" We would prefer to believe that our own democratic and free nation's motto-policy would be "Do what you think best." However, thanks to a secret government and CIA, it is actually "Do what we tell you to think best." That may have been what Eisenhower was warning us about when he coined the the phrase "military industrial complex" in his farewell address. In my own writing I have followed his lead and updated the phrase to that of simply: MIIM, the Military Industrial Intelligence Media complex. Subscribe to the Washington Post, dear sheep, and welcome to the New World Order. Or, listen to Holmes and decide for yourself. It is still your choice to make, despite what they would have you believe...

April 25, 1992

Richard Harwood, Ombudsman

The Washington Post

1150 15th Street NW

Washington, DC 20071

Dear Mr. Harwood,

Though the Washington Post does not over-extend itself in the pursuit of hard news, just let drop the faintest rumor of a government "conspiracy", and a klaxon horn goes off in the news room. Aroused from apathy in the daily routine of reporting assignations and various other political and social sports events, editors and reporters scramble to the phones. The klaxon screams its warning: the greatest single threat to herd-journalism, corporate profits, and government stability the dreaded "CONSPIRACY THEORY"!!

It is not known whether anyone has actually been hassled or accosted by any of these frightful spectres, but their presence is announced to Post readers with a salvo of warnings to avoid the tricky, sticky webs spun by the wacko "CONSPIRACY THEORISTS".

Recall how the Post saved us from the truth about Iran-Contra.

Professional conspiracy exorcist Mark Hosenball was hired to ridicule the idea that Oliver North and his CIA-associated gangsters had conspired to do wrong (*1). And when, in their syndicated column, Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta discussed some of the conspirators, the Post sprang to protect its readers, and the conspirators, by censoring the Anderson column before printing it (*2).

But for some time the lid had been coming off the Iran-Contra conspiracy. In 1986, the Christic Institute, an interfaith center for law and public policy, had filed a lawsuit alleging a U.S. arms-for-drugs trade that helped keep weapons flowing to the CIA-Contra army in Nicaragua, and cocaine flowing to U.S. markets (*3).

In 1988 Leslie Cockburn published Out of Control, a seminal work on our bizarre, illegal war against Nicaragua (*4). The Post contributed to this discovery process by disparaging the charges of conspiracy and by publishing false information about the drug-smuggling evidence presented to the House Subcommittee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. When accused by Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY). of misleading reporting, the Post printed only a partial correction and declined to print a letter of complaint from Rangel

(*5).

Sworn testimony before Senator John Kerry's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations confirmed U.S. Government complicity in the drug trade (*6). With its coverup of the arms/drug conspiracy evaporating, the ever-accommodating Post shifted gears and retained Hosenball to exorcise from our minds a newly emerging threat to domestic tranquility, the "October Surprise" conspiracy (*7). But close on the heels of Hosenball and the Post came Barbara Honegger and then Gary Sick who authored independently, two years apart, books with the same title, "October Surprise" (*8). Honegger was a member of the Reagan/Bush campaign and transition teams in 1980. Gary Sick, professor of Middle East Politics at Columbia University, was on the staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. In 1989 and 1991 respectively, Honegger and Sick published their evidence of how the Republicans made a deal to supply arms to Iran if Iran would delay release of the 52 United States hostages until after the November 1980 election. The purpose of this deal was to quash the possibility of a pre-election release(an October surprise). which would have bolstered the reelection prospects for President Carter.

Others published details of this alleged Reagan-Bush conspiracy. In October 1988, Playboy Magazine ran an expose "An Election Held Hostage"; FRONTLINE did another in April 1991 (*9). In June, 1991 a conference of distinguished journalists, joined by 8 of the former hostages, challenged the Congress to "make a full, impartial investigation" of the election/hostage allegations. The Post reported the statement of the hostages, but not a word of the conference itself which was held in the Dirksen Senate Office Building Auditorium (*10). On February 5, 1992 a gun-shy, uninspired House of Representatives begrudgingly authorized an "October Surprise" investigation by a task force of 13 congressmen headed by Lee Hamilton (D-IN). who had chaired the House of Representatives Iran-Contra Committee. Hamilton has named as chief team counsel Larry Barcella, a lawyer who represented BCCI when the Bank was indicted in 1988 (*11).

Like the Washington Post, Hamilton had not shown interest in pursuing the U.S. arms-for-drugs operation (*12). He had accepted Oliver North's lies,and as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee he derailed House Resolution 485 which had asked President Reagan to answer questions about Contra support activities of government officials and others (*13). After CIA operative John

Hull (from Hamilton's home state). was charged in Costa Rica with "international drug trafficking and hostile acts against the nation's security", Hamilton and 18 fellow members of Congress tried to intimidate Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez into handling Hull's case "in a manner that will not complicate U.S.-Costa Rican relations" (*14). The Post did not report the Hamilton letter or the Costa Rican response that declared Hull's case to be "in as good hands as our 100 year old uninterrupted democracy can provide to all citizens" (*15).

Though the Post does its best to guide our thinking away from conspiracy theories, it is difficult to avoid the fact that so much wrongdoing involves government or corporate conspiracies:

In its COINTELPRO operation, the FBI used disinformation, forgery, surveillance, false arrests, and violence to illegally harass U.S.citizens in the 60's (*16).

The CIA's Operation MONGOOSE illegally sabotaged Cuba by "destroying crops, brutalizing citizens, destabilizing the society, and conspiring with the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro and other leaders" (*17).

"Standard Oil of New Jersey was found by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice to be conspiring with I.G.Farben...of Germany. ...By its cartel agreements with Standard Oil, the United States was effectively prevented from developing or producing [fo rWorld War-II] any substantial amount of synthetic rubber," said Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin (*18).

U.S. Government agencies knowingly withheld information about dosages of radiation "almost certain to produce thyroid abnormalities or cancer" that contaminated people residing near the nuclear weapons factory at Hanford, Washington (*19).

Various branches of Government deliberately drag their feet in getting around to cleaning up the Nation's dangerous nuclear weapons sites (*20). State and local governments back the nuclear industry's secret public relations strategy (*21).

"The National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society and some twenty comprehensive cancer centers, have misled and confused the public and Congress by repeated claims that we are winning the war against cancer. In fact, the cancer establishment has continually minimized the evidence for increasing cancer rates which it has largely attributed to smoking and dietary fat, while discounting or ignoring the causal role of avoidable eposures to industrial carcinogens in the air, food, water, and the workplace." (*22).

The Bush Administration coverup of its pre-Gulf-War support of Iraq "is yet another example of the President's people conspiring to keep both Congress and the American people in the dark" (*23).

If you think about it, conspiracy is a fundamental aspect of doing business in this country.

Take the systematic and cooperative censorship of the Persian Gulf War by the Pentagon and much of the news media (*24).

Or the widespread plans of business and government groups to spend $100 million in taxes to promote a distorted and truncated history of Columbus in America (*25). along the lines of the Smithsonian Institution's "fusion of the two worlds", (*26). rather than examining more realistic aspects of the Spanish invasion, like "anger, cruelty, gold, terror, and death" (*27).

Or circumstances surrounding the U.S. Justice Department theft from the INSLAW company of sophisticated, law-enforcement computer software which "now point to a widespread conspiracy implicating lesser Government officials in the theft of INSLAW's technology", says former U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson (*28).

Or Watergate.

Or the "largest bank fraud in world financial history" (*29), where the White House knew of the criminal activities at "the Bank of Crooks and Criminals International" (BCCI) (*30), where U.S. intelligence agencies did their secret banking (*31), and where bribery of prominent American public officials "was a way of doing business" (*32).

Or the 1949 conviction of "GM [General Motors], Standard Oil of California, Firestone, and E. Roy Fitzgerald, among others, for criminally conspiring to replace electric transportation with gas- and diesel-powered buses and to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to transportation companies throughout the country" [in, among others, the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, Oakland, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles] (*33).

Or the collusion in 1973 between Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-CT). and the U.S. Department of Transportation to overlook safety defects in the 1.2 million Corvair automobiles manufactured by General Motors in the early 60's (*34).

Or the A. H. Robins Company, which manufactured the Dalkon Shield intrauterine contraceptive, and which ignored repeated warnings of the Shield's hazards and which "stonewalled, deceived, covered up, and

covered up the coverups...[thus inflicting] on women a worldwide epidemic of pelvic infections." (*35).

Or that cooperation between McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Company and the FAA resulted in failure to enforce regulations regarding the unsafe DC-10 cargo door which failed in flight killing all 364 passengers on Turkish Airlines Flight 981 on March 3, 1974 (*36).

Or the now-banned, cancer-producing pregnancy drug Diethylstilbestrol (DES). that was sold by manufacturers who ignored tests which showed DES to be carcinogenic; and who acted "in concert with each other in the testing and marketing of DES for miscarriage purposes" (*37).

Or the conspiracies among bankers and speculators, with the cooperation of a corrupted Congress, to relieve depositors of their savings. This "arrogant disregard from the White House, Congress and corporate world for the interests and rights of the American people" will cost U.S. tapayers many hundreds of billions of dollars (*38).

Or the Westinghouse, Allis Chalmers,Federal Pacific, and General Electric executives who met surreptitiously in hotel rooms to fix prices and eliminate competition on heavy industrial equipment (*39).

Or the convictions of Industrial Biotest Laboratories (IBT). officers for fabricating safety tests on prescription drugs (*40).

Or the conspiracy by the asbestos industry to suppress knowledge of medical problemsrelating to asbestos (*41).

Or the 1928 Achnacarry Agreement through which oil companies "agreed not to engage in any effective price competition" (*42).

Or the conspiracy among U.S. Government agencies and the Congress to cover up the nature of our decades-old war against the people of Nicaragua

a covert war that continues in 1992 with the U.S. Government applying pressure for the Nicaraguan police to reorganize into a more repressive force (*43).

Or the conspiracy by the CIA and the U.S. Government to interfere in the Chilean election process with military aid, covert actions, and an economic boycott which culminated in the overthrow of the legitimately elected government and the assassination of President Salvador Allende in 1973 (*44).

Or the conspiracy among U.S. officials including Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and CIA Director William Colby to finance terrorism in Angola for the purpose of disrupting Angola's plans for peaceful elections in October 1975, and to lie about these actions to the Congress and the news media (*45). And CIA Director George Bush's subsequent cover up of this U.S.-sponsored terrorism (*46).

Or President George Bush's consorting with the Pentagon to invade Panama in 1989 and thereby violate the Constitution of the United States, the U.N. Charter, the O.A.S. Charter, and the Panama Canal Treaties (*47).

Or the "gross antitrust violations" (*48) and the conspiracy of American oil companies and the British and U.S. governments to strangle Iran economically after Iran nationalized the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. And the subsequent overthrow by the CIA in 1953 of Iranian Prime Minister Muhammed Mossadegh (*49).

Or the CIA-planned assassination of Congo head-of-state Patrice Lumumba (*50).

Or the deliberate and wilful efforts of President George Bush, Senator Robert Dole, Senator George Mitchell, various U.S. Government agencies, and members of both Houses of the Congress to buy the 1990 Nicaraguan national elections for the presidential candidate supported by President Bush (*51).

Or the collective approval by 64 U.S. Senators of Robert Gates to head the CIA, in the face of "unmistakable evidence that Gates lied about his role in the Iran-Contra scandal" (*52).

Or "How Reagan and the Pope Conspired to Assist Poland's Solidarity Movement and Hasten the Demise of Communism" (*53).

Or how the Reagan Administration connived with the Vatican to ban the use of USAID funds by any country "for the promotion of birth control or abortion" (*54).

Or "the way the Vatican and Washington colluded to achieve common purpose in Central America" (*55).

Or the collaboration of Guatemalan strong-man and mass murderer Hector Gramajo with the U.S. Army to design "programs to build civilian-military cooperation" at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Georgia; five of the nine soldiers accused in the 1989 Jesuit massacre in El Salvador are graduates of SOA which trains Latin/American military personnel (*56).

Or the conspiracy of the Comanche Peak Nuclear Plant administration to harass and cause bodily harm to whistleblower Linda Porter who uncovered dangerous working conditions at the facility (*57).

Or the conspiracy of President Richard Nxion and the Government of South Vietnam to delay the Paris Peace Talks until after the 1968 U.S. presidential election (*58).

Or the pandemic coverups of police violence (*59).

Or the always safe-to-cite worldwide communist conspiracy (*60).

Or maybe the socially responsible, secret consortium to publish The Satanic Verses in paperback (*61).

Conspiracies are obviously a way to get things done, and the Washington Post offers little comment unless conspiracy theorizing threatens to expose a really important conspiracy that, let's say, benefits big business or big government.

Such a conspiracy would be like our benevolent CIA's 1953 overthrow of the Iranian government to help out U.S. oil companies; or like our illegal war against Panama to tighten U.S. control over Panama and the Canal; or like monopoly control of broadcasting that facilitates corporate censorship on issues of public importance (*62). When the camouflage of such conspiracies is stripped away, public confidence in the conspiring officials can erode depending on how seriously the citizenry perceives the conspiracy to have violated the public trust. Erosion of public trust in the status quo is what the Post seems to see as a real threat to its corporate security.

Currently, the Post has mounted vituperative, frenzied attacks on Oliver Stone's movie "JFK", which reexamines the U.S. Government's official (Warren Commission. finding that a single gunman, acting alone, killed President John F. Kennedy. The movie also is the story of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's unsuccessful prosecution of Clay Shaw, the only person ever tried in connection with the assassination. And the movie proposes that the Kennedy assassination was the work of conspirators whose interests would not be served by a president who, had he lived, might have disengaged us from our war against Vietnam.

The Post ridicules a reexamination of the Kennedy assassination along lines suggested by "JFK". Senior Post journalists like Charles Krauthammer, Ken Ringle, George Will, Phil McCombs, and Michael Isikoff, have been called up to man the bulwarks against public sentiment which has never supported the government's non-conspiratorial assassination thesis. In spite of the facts that the Senate Intelligence Committee of 1975 and 1976 found that "both the FBI and CIA had repeatedly lied to the Warren Commission" (*63) and that the 1979 Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations found that President Kennedy was probably killed "as a result of a conspiracy" (*64), a truly astounding number of Post stories have been used as vehicles to discredit "JFK" as just another conspiracy (*65).

Some of the more vicious attacks on the movie are by editor Stephen Rosenfeld, and journalists Richard Cohen, George Will, and George Lardner Jr (*66). They ridicule the idea that Kennedy could have had second thoughts about escalating the Vietnam War and declaim that there is no historical justification for this idea. Seasoned journalist Peter Dale Scott, former Pentagon/CIA liaison chief L. Fletcher Prouty, and investigators David Scheim and John Newman have each authored defense of the "JFK" thesis that Kennedy was not enthusiastic about staying in Vietnam (*67). But the Post team just continues ranting against the possibility of a high-level assassination conspiracy while offering little justification for its arguments.

An example of particularly shabby scholarship and unacceptable behavior is George Lardner Jr's contribution to the Post's campaign against the movie. Lardner wrote three articles, two before the movie was completed, and the third upon its release. In May, six months before the movie came out, Lardner obtained a copy of the first draft of the script and, contrary to accepted standards, revealed in the Post the contents of this copyrighted movie (*68). Also in this article, (*69). Lardner discredits Jim Garrison with hostile statements from a former Garrison associate Pershing Gervais. Lardner does not tell the reader that subsequent to the Clay Shaw trial, in a U.S. Government criminal action brought against Garrison, Government witness Gervais, who helped set up Garrison for prosecution, admitted under oath that in a May 1972 interview with a New Orleans television reporter, he, Gervais, had said that the U.S. Government's case against Garrison was a fraud (*70). The Post's 1973 account of the Garrison acquittal mentions this controversy, but when I recently asked Lardner about this, he was not clear as to whether he remembered it (*71).

Two weeks after his first "JFK" article, Lardner blustered his way through a justification for his unauthorized possession of the early draft ofthe movie (*72). He also defended his reference to Pershing Gervais by lashing out at Garrison as a writer "of gothic fiction".

When the movie was released in December, Lardner "reviewed" it (*73). He again ridiculed the film's thesis that following the Kennedy assassination, President Johnson reversed Kennedy's plans to de-escalate the Vietnam War. Lardner cited a memorandum issued by Johnson four days after Kennedy died. Lardner says this memorandum was written before the assassination, and that it "was a continuation of Kennedy's policy". In fact, the memorandum was drafted the day before the assassination by McGeorge Bundy (Kennedy's Assistant for National Security Affairs) Kennedy was in Texas, and may never have seen it. Following the assassination, it was rewritten; and the final version provided for escalating the war against Vietnam (*74) facts that Lardner avoided.

The Post's crusade against exposing conspiracies is blatantly dishonest:

The Warren Commission inquiry into the Kennedy Assassination was for the most part conducted in secret. This fact is buried in the Post (*75). Nor do current readers of this newspaper find meaningful discussion of the Warren Commission's secret doubts about both the FBI and the CIA (*76). Or of a dispatch from CIA headquarters instructing co-conspirators at field stations to counteract the "new wave of books and articles criticizing the [Warren] Commission's findings...[and] conspiracy theories ...[that] have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization" and to "discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts, especially politicians and editors "and to "employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. ...Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. ...The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists..." (*77).

In 1979, Washington journalist Deborah Davis published Katharine The Great, the story of Post publisher Katharine Graham and her newspaper's close ties with Washington's powerful elite, a number of whom were with the CIA.

Particularly irksome to Post editor Benjamin Bradlee was a Davis claim that Bradlee had "produced CIA material" (*78). Understandably sensitive about this kind of publicity, Bradlee told Davis' publisher Harcourt Brace Jovanovich ,"Miss Davis is lying ...I never produced CIA material ...what I can do is to brand Miss Davis as a fool and to put your company in that special little group of publishers who don't give a xxxx for the truth". The Post bullied HBJ into recalling the book; HBJ shredded 20,000 copies; Davis sued HBJ for breach of contract and damage to reputation; HBJ settled out of court; and Davis published her book elsewhere with an appendix that demonstrated Bradlee to have been deeply involved with producing cold-war/CIA propaganda (*79). Bradlee still says the allegations about his association with people in the CIA are false, but he has apparently taken no action to contest the xetensive documentation presented by Deborah Davis in the second and third editions of her book (*80).

And it's not as if the Post were new to conspiracy work.

* Former Washington Post publisher Philip Graham "believing that the function of the press was more often than not to mobilize consent for the policies of the government, was one of the architects of what became a widespread practice:the use and manipulation of journalists by the CIA" (*81). This scandal was known by its code name Operation MOCKINGBIRD. Former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein cites a former CIA deputy director as saying, "It was widely known that Phil Graham was someone you could get help from" (*82). More recently the Post provided cover for CIA personality Joseph Fernandez by "refusing to print his name for over a year up until the day his indictmen twas announced ...for crimes committed in his official capacity as CIA station chief in Costa Rica" (*83).

Of the meetings between Graham and his CIA acquaintances at which the availability and prices of journalists were discussed, a former CIA man recalls, "You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month" (*84). One may wish to consider Philip Graham's philosophy along with a more recent statement from his wife Katharine Graham, current Chairman of the Board of the Washington Post. In a lecture on terrorism and the news media, Mrs. Graham said: "A second challenge facing the media is how to prevent terrorists from using the media as a platform fortheir views. ... The point is that we generally know when we are being manipulated, and we've learned better how and where to draw the line, though the decisions are often difficult" (*85).

Today, the Post and its world of big business are apparently terrified that our elite and our high-level public officials may be exposed as conspirators behind Contra drug-smuggling, October Surprise, or the assassination of President Kennedy. This fear is truly remarkable in that, like most of us and like most institutions, the Post runs its business as a conspiracy of like-minded entrepreneurs a conspiracy "to act or work together toward the same result or goal" (*86). But where the Post really parts company from just plain people is when it pretends that conspiracies associated with big business or government are "coincidence". Post reporter Lardner vents the frustration inherent in having to maintain this dichotomy. He lashes out at Oliver Stone and suggests that Stone may actually believe that the Post's opposition to Stone's movie is a "conspiracy". Lardner assures us that Stone's complaints are "groundless and paranoid and smack of McCarthyism" (*87).

So how does the Post justify devoting so much energy to ridiculing those who investigate conspiracies?

The Post has answers: people revert to conspiracy theories because they need something "neat and tidy" (*88) that "plugs a gap no other generally accepted theory fills', (*89. and "coincidence ...is always the safest and most likely explanation for any conjunction of curious circumstances ..." (*90).

And what does this response mean? It means that "coincidence theory" is what the Post espouses when it would prefer not to admit to a conspiracy. In other words, some things just "happen". And, besides, conspiracy to do certain things would be a crime; "coincidence" is a safer bet.

Post Ombudsman Richard Harwood, who, it is rumored, serves as Executive Director of the Benevolent Protective Order of Coincidence Theorists, (*91) recently issued a warning about presidential candidates "who have begun to mutter about a press conspiracy". Ordinarily, Harwood would simply dismiss these charges as "symptoms of the media paranoia that quadrennially engulfs members of the American political class" (*92). But a fatal mistake was made by the mutterers; they used the "C" word against the PRESS! And Harwood exploded his off-the-cuff comment into an entire column ending it with:"We are the new journalists, immersed too long, perhaps, in the cleansing waters of political conformity. But conspirators we ain't".

Distinguished investigative journalist Morton Mintz, a 29-year veteran of the Washington Post, now chairs the Fund for Investigative Journalism. In the December issue of The Progressive, Mintz wrote "A Reporter Looks Back in Anger Why the Media Cover Up Corporate Crime". Therein he discussed the difficulties in convincing editors to accept important news stories. He illustrated the article with his own experiences at the Post, where he says he was known as "the biggest pain in the ass in the office" (*93).

Would Harwood argue that grief endured by journalists at the hands of editors is a matter of random coincidence?

And that such policy as Mintz described is made independently by editors without influence from fellow editors or from management? Would Harwood have us believe that at the countless office "meetings" in which news people are ever in attendance, there is no discussion of which stories will run and which ones will find inadequate space? That there is no advanced planning for stories or that there are no cooperative efforts among the staff? Or that in the face of our news-media "grayout" of presidential candidate Larry Agran, (*94) a Post journalist would be free to give news space to candidate Agran equal to that the Post lavishes on candidate Clinton? Let's face it: these possibilities are about as likely as Barbara Bush entertaining guests at a soup kitchen.

Would Harwood have us believe that media critic and former Post Ombudsman Ben Bagdikian is telling less than the truth in his account of wire-service control over news: "The largely anonymous men who control the syndicate and wire service copy desks and the central wire photo machines determine at a single decision what millions will see and hear. ...there seems to be little doubt that these gatekeepers preside over an operation in which an appalling amount of press agentry sneaks in the back door of American journalism and marches untouched out the front door as 'news'" (*95).

When he sat on the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington, Judge Clarence Thomas violated U.S. law when he failed to remove himself from a case in which he then proceeded to reverse a $10 million judgment against the Ralston Purina Company (*96). Ralston Purina, the animal feed empire, is the family fortune of Thomas' mentor, Senator John Danforth. The Post limited its coverage of the Thomas malfeasance to 56 words buried in the middle of a 1200-word article (*97). Would Harwood have us believe that the almost complete blackout on this matter by the major news media and the U.S. Senate was a matter of coincidence? Could a Post reporter have written a story about Ralston Purina if she had wanted to? Can a brick swim?

Or take the fine report produced last September by Ralph Nader's Public Citizen. Titled All the Vice President's Men, it documents "How the Quayle Council on Competitiveness Secretly Undermines Health, Safety, and Environmental Programs". Three months later, Post journalists David Broder and Bob Woodward published "The President's Understudy", a seven-part series on Vice President Quayle. Although this series does address Quayle's role with the Competitiveness Council, its handling of the Council's disastrous impact on America is inadequate. It is 40,000 words of mostly aimless chatter about Quayle memorabilia: youth, family, college record, Christianity, political aspirations, intellectual aspirations, wealthy friends, government associates, golf, travels, wife Marilyn, and net worth revealing little about Quayle's abilities, his understanding of society's problems, or his thoughts about justice and freedom, and never mentioning the comprehensive Nader study of Quayle's record in the Bush Administration (*98).

Now, did Broder or did Woodward forget about the Nader study? Or did both of them forget? Or did one, or the other, or both decide not to mention it? Did these two celebrated, seasoned Post reporters ever discuss together their jointly authored stories? Did they decide to publish such a barren set of articles because it would enhance their reputations? How did management feel about the use of precious news space for such frivolity? Is it possible that so many pages were dedicated to this twaddle without people "acting or working together toward the same result or goal"? (*99) Do crocodiles fly?

On March 20, front-page headlines in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post read respectively:

TSONGAS DROPPED OUT OF THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE CLEARING CLINTON'S PATH

TSONGAS ABANDONS CAMPAIGN LEAVING CLINTON CLEAR PATH TOWARD SHOWDOWN WITH BUSH

TSONGAS CLEARS WAY FOR CLINTON

TSONGAS EXIT CLEARS WAY FOR CLINTON

This display of editorial independence should at least raise questions of whether the news media collective mindset is really different from that of any other cartel like oil, diamond, energy, (*100) or manufacturing cartels, a cartel being "a combination of independent commercial enterprises designed to limit competition" (*101).

The Washington Post editorial page carries the heading:

AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER

Is it? Of course not. There probably is no such thing. Does the Post "conspire" to keep its staff and its newspaper from wandering too far from the safety of mediocrity? The Post would respond that the question is absurd. In that I am not privy to the Post's telephone conversations, I can only speculate on how closely the media elite must monitor the staff. But we all know how few micro-seconds it takes a new reporter to learn what subjects are taboo and what are "safe", and that experienced reporters don't have to ask.

What is more important, however, than speculating about how the Post communicates within its own corporate structure and with other members of the cartel, is to document and publicize what the Post does in public, namely, how it shapes and censors the news.

Sincerely,

Julian C. Holmes

Copies to: Public-spirited citizens, both inside and outside the news media, And - maybe a few others. _

Notes to Letter of April 25, 1992:

1. Mark Hosenball, "The Ultimate Conspiracy", Washington Post, September 11, 1988, p.C1

2a. Julian Holmes, Letter to Washington Post Ombudsman Richard Harwood, June 4,1991. Notes that the Post censored, from the Anderson/Van Atta column, references to the Christic Institute and to Robert Gates.

2b. Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta, "Iran-Contra Figure Dodges Extradition", Washington Merry-Go-Round, United Feature Syndicate, May 26, 1991. This is the column submitted to the Post (see note 2a)..

2c. Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta, "The Man Washington Doesn't Want to Extradite", Washington Post, May 26, 1991. The column (see note 2b). as it appeared in the Post (see note 2a)..

3a. Case No. 86-1146-CIV-KING, Amended Complaint for RICO Conspiracy, etc., United States District Court, Southern District of Florida, Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey v. John Hull et al., October 3, 1986.

3b. Vince Bielski and Dennis Bernstein, "Reports: Contras Send Drugs to U.S.", Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 16, 1986.

3c. Neal Matthews, "I Ran Drugs for Uncle Sam" (based on interviews with Robert (Tosh) Plumlee, contra resupply pilot)., San Diego Reader, April 5, 1990.

4. Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987. (references to pilot Tosh Plumlee and the secret airbase at Santa Elena, aks "Point West", as found in the Ollie North notebook

5a. Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, University ofCalifornia Press, 1991, p.179-181.

5b. David S. Hilzenrath, "Hill Panel Finds No Evidence Linking Contras to Drug Smuggling", Washington Post, July 22, 1987, p.A07.

5c. Partial correction to the Washington Post of July 22, Washington Post, July 24,1987, p.A3.

5d. The Washington Post declined to publish SubCommittee Chairman Rangel's Letter- to-the-Editor of July 22, 1987. It was printed in the Congressional Record on August 6, 1987, p.E3296-7.

6a. Michael Kranish, "Kerry Says US Turned Blind Eye to Contra-Drug Trail", Boston Globe, April 10, 1988.

6b. Mary McGrory, "The Contra-Drug Stink", Washington Post, April 10, 1988, p.B1. 6c. Robert Parry with Rod Nordland, "Guns for Drugs? Senate Probers Trace an Old Contra Connection to George Bush's Office", Newsweek, May 23, 1988, p.22.

6d. Dennis Bernstein, "Iran-Contra The Coverup Continues", The Progressive, November 1988, p.24.

6e. "Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy", A Report Prepared by the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, December 1988.

7a. Mark Hosenball, "If It's October ... Then It's Time for an Iranian Conspiracy Theory", Washington Post, October 9, 1988, p.D1.

7b. Mark Hosenball, "October Surprise! Redux! The Latest Version of the 1980 'Hostage- Deal' Story Is Still Full of Holes", Washington Post, April 21, 1991,p.B2.

8a. Barbara Honegger, October Surprise, New York: Tudor, 1989.

8b. Gary Sick, October Surprise, New York: Times Books, Random House, 1991.

9a. Abbie Hoffman and Jonathan Silvers, "An Election Held Hostage", Playboy, October 1988, p.73.

9b. Robert Parry and Robert Ross, "The Election Held Hostage", FRONTLINE, WGBH-TV,April 16, 1991.

10a. Reuter, "Ex-Hostages Seek Probe By Congress", Washington Post, June 14,1991,p.A4.

10b. "An Election Held Hostage?", Conference, Dirksen Senate Office Building Auditorium, Washington DC, June 13, 1991; Sponsored by The Fund For New Priorities in America, 171 Madison Avenue, New York, NY, 10016.

11a. David Brown and Guy Gugliotta, "House Approves Inquiry Into 'OctoberSurprise'", Washington Post, February 6, 1992, p.A11.

11b. Jack Colhoun, "Lawmakers Lose Nerve on October Surprise", The Guardian, December 11, 1991, p.7.

11c. Jack Colhoun, "October Surprise Probe Taps BCCI Lawyer", The Guardian, February 26, 1992, p.3.

12. See note 5a, p.180-1.

13a. See note 4, p.229, 240-1.

13b. Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, Senate Report No. 100-216, House Report No. 100-433, November 1987, p.139-141.

14a. Letter to His Excellency Oscar Arias Sanchez, President of the Republic of Costa Rica; from Members of the U.S. Congress David Dreier, Lee Hamilton, Dave McCurdy, Dan Burton, Mary Rose Oakar, Jim Bunning, Frank McCloskey, Cass Ballenger, Peter Kostmayer, Jim Bates, Douglas Bosco, James Inhofe, Thomas Foglietta, Rod Chandler, Ike Skelton, Howard Wolpe, Gary Ackerman, Robert Lagomarsino, and Bob McEwen; January 26, 1989.

14b. Peter Brennan, "Costa Rica Considers Seeking Contra Backer in U.S. Indiana Native Wanted on Murder Charge in 1984 Bomb Attack in Nicaragua", WashingtonPost, February 1, 1990.

14c. "Costa Rica Seeks Extradition of Indiana Farmer", Scripps-Howard News Service,April 25, 1991.

15. Press Release from the Costa Rican Embassy, Washington DC, On the Case of the Imprisonment of Costa Rican Citizen John Hull", February 6, 1989.

16. Brian Glick, War at Home, Boston: South End Press, 1989.

17. John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard The U.S. Role in the New World Order, Boston: South End Press, 1991, p.121.

18. Hearings Before the Committee on Patents, United States Senate, 77th Cong., 2nd Session (1942)., part I, as cited in Joseph Borkin, The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben, New York: The Free Press, Macmillan, 1978, p.93.

19. R. Jeffrey Smith, "Study of A-Plant Neighbors' Health Urged", Washington Post, July 13, 1990, p.A6.

20. Tom Horton, "A Cost Higher Than the Peace Dividend Price Tag Mounts to Clean Up Nuclear Weapons Sites", Baltimore Sun, February 23, 1992, p.1K.

21. "The Nuclear Industry's Secret PR Strategy", EXTRA!, March 1992, p.15.

22a. Samuel S. Epstein, MD et al, Losing the War Against Cancer: Need for PublicPolicy Reform", Congressional Record, April 2, 1992, p.E947-9.

22b. Samuel S. Epstein, "The Cancer Establishment", Washington Post, March 10, 1992.

23a. Hon. Henry B. Gonzalez, "Efforts to Thwart Investigation of the BNL Scandal", Congressional Record, March 30, 1992, p.H2005-2014.

23b. Hon. David E. Skaggs (CO)., White House Spin Control on Pre-War Iraq Policy", Congressional Record, April 2, 1992, p.H2285.

23c. Nicholas Rostow, Special Assistant to the President and Legal Adviser, Memorandum to Jeanne S. Archibald et al, "Meeting on congressional requests for information and documents", April 8, 1991; Congressional Record, April 2, 1992,p.H2285.

24a. Michio Kaku, "Operation Desert Lie: Pentagon Confesses", The

Guardian, March11, 1992, p.4.

24b. J. Max Robins, "NBC's Unaired Iraq Tapes Not a Black and White Case", Variety Magazine, March 4, 1991, p.25.

25. Emory R. Searcy Jr., Clergy and Laity Concerned, Spring 1991 Letter to"Friends", p.1.

26. Jean Dimeo, "Selling Hispanics on Columbus Luis Vasquez-Ajmac Is Hired to Promote Smithsonian Project", Washington Post, November 18, 1991, p.Bus.8.

27. Hans Koning, "Teach the Truth About Columbus", Washington Post, September 3,1991, p.A19.

28a. James Kilpatrick, "Software-Piracy Case Emitting Big Stench", St. Louis Post/Dispatch, March 18, 1991, p.3B. Elliot L. Richardson, "A High-Tech Watergate", New York Times, October 21,1991.

29. "BCCI NBC Sunday Today", February 23, 1992, p.12; transcript prepared by Burrelle's Information Services. The quote is from New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau who is running his own independent investigation of BCCI.

30. Norman Bailey, former Reagan White House intelligence analyst; from an interview with Mark Rosenthal of NBC News. See note 29, p.5.

31. Jack Colhoun, "BCCI Skeletons Haunting Bush's Closet", The Guardian, September 18, 1991, p.9.

32. Robert Morgenthau. See note 29, p.10.

33. Russell Mokhiber, Corporate Crime and Violence, San Francisco: Sierra ClubBooks, 1989 paperback edition, p.227.

34. See note 33, p.136-7.

35. Morton Mintz, At Any Cost: Corporate Greed, Women, and the Dalkon Shield, NewYork: Pantheon, 1985. As cited in Mokhiber, see note 33, p.157.

36. See note 33, p.164-171.

37. See note 33, p.172-180.

38. Michael Waldman, Who Robbed America?, New York: Random House, 1990. The quote is from Ralph Nader's Introduction, p.iii.

39. See note 33, p.217.

40. See note 33, p.235.

41. See note 33, p.277-288.

42. See note 33, p.323.

43. Katherine Hoyt Gonzalez, Nicaragua Network Education Fund Newsletter, March1992, p.1.

44. William Blum, The CIA A Forgotten History, London: Zed Books Ltd., 1986,p.232-243.

45a. John Stockwell, In Search of Enemies, New York: Norton, 1978.

45b. See note 44, p.284-291.

46. See note 17, p.18.

47a. Letter to President George Bush from The Ad Hoc Committee for Panama (James Abourezk et al)., January 10, 1990; published in The Nation, February 5, 1990, p.163.

47b. Philip E. Wheaton, Panama, Trenton NJ: Red Sea Press, 1992, p.145-7.

48a. Morton Mintz and Jerry S. Cohen, Power, Inc., New York: Bantam Books, 1977,p.521.

48b. "The International Oil Cartel", Federal Trade Commission, December 2, 1949. Cited in 48a, p.521.

49a. See note 44, p.67-76.

49b. See note 48a, p.530-1.

50. Ralph W. McGehee, Deadly Deceits, New York: Sheridan Square Publications, 1983,p.60.

51. HR-3385, "An Act to Provide Assistance for Free and Fair Elections in Nicaragua". Passed the U.S. House of Representatives on October 4, 1989 by avote of 263 to 136, and the Senate on October 17 by a vote of 64 to 35.

52. Jack Colhoun, "Gates Oozing Trail of Lies, Gets Top CIA Post", The Guardian,November 20, 1991, p.6.

53. Carl Bernstein, Time, February 24, 1992, Cover Story p.28-35.

54. "The U.S. and the Vatican on Birth Control", Time, February 24, 1992, p.35.

55. "Time's Missing Link: Poland to Latin America", National Catholic Reporter,February 28, 1992, p.24.

56a. Jim Lynn, "School of Americas Commander Hopes to Expand Mission", Benning Patriot, February 21, 1992, p.12.

56b. Vicky Imerman, "U.S. Army School of the Americas Plans Expansion", News Release from S.O.A. Watch, P.O. Bo 3330, Columbus, Georgia 31903.

57. 60 MINUTES, CBS, March 8, 1992.

58. Jack Colhoun, "Tricky Dick's Quick Election Fix", The Guardian, January 29,1992, p.18.

59a. Sean P. Murphy, "Several Probes May Have Ignored Evidence Against Police", Boston Globe, July 28, 1991, p.1.

59b. Christopher B. Daly, "Pattern of Police Abuses Reported in Boston Case", Washington Post, July 12, 1991, p.A3.

59c. Associated Press, "Dayton Police Probing Erasure of Arrest Video", WashingtonPost, May 26, 1991, p.A20.

59d. Gabriel Escobar, "Deaf Man's Death In Police Scuffle Called Homicide", Washington Post, May 18, 1991, p.B1.

59e. Jay Mathews, "L.A. Police Laughed at Beating", Washington Post, March 19, 1991, p.A1.

59f. David Maraniss, "One Cop's View of Police Violence", Washington Post, April 12,1991, p.A1.

59g. From News Services, "Police Abuse Detailed", Washington Post, February 8, 1992,p.A8.

60. Michael Dobbs, "Panhandling the Kremlin: How Gus Hall Got Millions", Washington Post, March 1, 1992, p.A1.

61. David Streitfeld, "Secret Consortium To Publish Rushdie In Paperback", Washington Post, March 14, 1992, p.D1.

62a. See notes 48 and 49.

62b. See note 47b, p.63-76.

62c. "Fairness In Broadcasting Act of 1987", U.S. Senate Bill S742.

62d. "Now Let That 'Fairness' Bill Die", Editorial, Washington Post,

June 24, 1987. The Post opposed the Fairness in Broadcasting Act.

63. David E. Scheim, Contract on America The Mafia Murder of President John F.Kennedy, New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1988, p.viii.

64. See note 63, p.28.

65a. Chuck Conconi, "Out and About", Washington Post, February 26, 1991, p.B3.

65b. George Lardner Jr., "On the Set: Dallas in Wonderland", Washington Post, May19, 1991, p.D1.

65c. George Lardner, "...Or Just a Sloppy Mess", Washington Post, June 2, 1991,p.D3.

65d. Charles Krauthammer, "A Rash of Conspiracy Theories When Do We Dig Up BillCasey?", Washington Post, July 5, 1991, p.A19.

65e. Eric Brace, "Personalities", Washington Post, October 31, 1991, p.C3.

65f. Associated Press, "'JFK' Director Condemned Warren Commission Attorney Calls Stone Film 'A Big Lie'", Washington Post, December 16, 1991, p.D14.

65g. Gerald R. Ford and David W. Belin, "Kennedy Assassination: How About the Truth?", Washington Post, December 17, 1991, p.A21.

65h. Rita Kemply, "'JFK': History Through A Prism", Washington Post, December 20,1991, p.D1.

65i. George Lardner Jr., "The Way it Wasn't In 'JFK', Stone Assassinates the Truth", Washington Post, December 20, 1991, p.D2.

65j. Desson Howe, "Dallas Mystery: Who Shot JFK?", Washington Post, December 20,1991, p.55.

65k. Phil McCombs, "Oliver Stone, Returning the Fire In Defending His 'JFK' Conspiracy Film, the Director Reveals His Rage and Reasoning", Washington Post, December 21, 1991, p.F1.

65l. George F. Will, "'JFK': Paranoid History", Washington Post, December 26, 1991,p.A23.

65m. "On Screen", 'JFK' movie review, Washington Post, Weekend, December 27, 1991.

65n. Stephen S. Rosenfeld, "Shadow Play", Washington Post, December 27, 1991, p.A21.

65o. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "The Paranoid Style", Washington Post, December 29,1991, p.C7.

65p. Michael Isikoff, "H-e-e-e-e-r-e's Conspiracy! Why Did Oliver Stone Omit (Or Suppress!). the Role of Johnny Carson?", Washington Post, December 29, 1991,p.C2.

65q. Robert O'Harrow Jr., "Conspiracy Theory Wins Converts Moviegoers Say 'JFK' Nourishes Doubts That Oswald Acted Alone", Washington Post, January 2, 1992, p.B1.

65r. Michael R. Beschloss, "Assassination and Obsession", Washington Post, January 5, 1992, p.C1.

65s. Charles Krauthammer, "'JFK': A Lie, But Harmless", Washington Post, January 10,1992, p.A19.

65t. Art Buchwald, "Bugged: The Flu Conspiracy", Washington Post, January 14, 1992,p.E1.

65u. Ken Ringle, "The Fallacy of Conspiracy Theories Good on Film, But the Motivation Is All Wrong", Washington Post, January 19, 1992, p.G1.

65v. Charles Paul Freund, "If History Is a Lie America's Resort to Conspiracy Thinking", Washington Post, January 19, 1992, p.C1.

65w. Richard Cohen, "Oliver's Twist", Washington Post Magazine, January 19, 1992, p.5.

65. Michael Isikoff, "Seeking JFK's Missing Brain", Washington Post, January 21,1992, p.A17.

65y. Don Oldenburg, "The Plots Thicken Conspiracy Theorists Are Everywhere", Washington Post, January 28, 1992, p.E5.

65z. Joel Achenbach, "JFK Conspiracy: Myth vs. the Facts", Washington Post, February 28, 1992, p.C5.

65A. List of books on the best-seller list: On the Trail of the Assassins is characterized as "conspiracy plot theories", Washington Post, March 8, 1992,Bookworld, p.12

66. See notes 65n, 65w, 65l, 65b, 65c, and 65i.

67a. Peter Dale Scott, "Vietnamization and the Drama of the Pentagon Papers". Published in The Senator Gravel Edition of The Pentagon Papers, Volume V,p.211-247.

67b. Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy The Secret Road to the Second Indochina War, Indianapolis/New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972, p. 215-224.

67c. L. Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team, Copyright 1973. New printing, Costa Mesa CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1990, p.402-416.

67d. See note 63, p.58, 183, 187, 194, 273-4.

67e. John M. Newman, JFK and Vietnam, New York: Warner Books, 1992.

67f. Peter Dale Scott, Letter to the Editor, The Nation, March 9, 1992, p.290.

68a. See note 65b.

68b. Oliver Stone, "The Post, George Lardner, and My Version of the JFK Assassination", Washington Post, June 2, 1991, p.D3.

69. See note 65b.

70. Jim Garrison, On the Trail of The Assassins, New York: Warner Books, 1988, 315/318.

71. Associated Press, "Garrison, 2 Others, Found Not Guilty Of Bribery Charge", Washington Post, September 28, 1973, p.A3.

72. See note 65c.

73. See note 65i.

74. See note 67e, p.438-450.

75. John G. Leyden, "Historians, Buffs, and Crackpots", Washington Post, Bookworld, January 26, 1992, p.8.

76a. Tad Szulc, "New Doubts, Fears in JFK Assassination Probe", Washington Star,September 19, 1975, p.A1.

76b. Tad Szulc, "Warren Commission's Self-Doubts Grew Day by Day 'This Bullet Business Leaves Me Confused'", Washington Star, September

20, 1975, p.A1.

76c. Tad Szulc, "Urgent and Secret Meeting of the Warren Commission Dulles Proposed that the Minutes be Destroyed", Washington Star, September 21, 1975,p.A1.

77. "Cable Sought to Discredit Critics of Warren Report", New York Times, December 26, 1977, p.A37.

78. Deborah Davis, Katharine The Great, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979,p.141-2.

79a. Eve Pell, "Private Censorship Killing 'Katharine The Great'", The Nation, November 12, 1983.

79b. Deborah Davis, Katharine The Great, Bethesda MD: National Press, 1987. Davis says, "...corporate documents that became available during my subsequent lawsuit against him [Harcourt Brace Jovanovich chairman, William Jovanovich] showed that 20,000 copies [of Katharine the Great] had been "processed and converted into waste paper"".

79c. Daniel Brandt, "All the Publisher's Men A Suppressed Book About Washington Post Publisher Katharine Graham Is On Sale Again" National Reporter, Fall 1987, p.60.

79d. Deborah Davis, Katharine The Great, New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991. "...publishers who don't give a xxxx", p.iv-v; bullying HBJ into recalling the book, p.iv-vi; lawsuit and settlement, p..

80. Benjamin C. Bradlee, Letter to Deborah Davis, April 1, 1987. See note 79d, p.304.

81. See note 79d, p.119-132.

82. Carl Bernstein, "The CIA and the Media How America's Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up", Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977, p.63.

83a. Daniel Brandt, Letter to Richard L. Harwood of The Washington Post, September 15, 1988. The letter asks for the Post's rationale for its policy of protecting government covert actions, and whether this policy is still in effect.

83b. Daniel Brandt, "Little Magazines May Come and Go", The National Reporter, Fall 1988, p.4. Notes the Post's protection of the identity of CIA agent Joseph F.Fernandez. Brandt says, "America needs to confront its own recent history as well as protect the interests of its citizens, and both can be accomplished by outlawing peacetime covert activity. This would contribute more to thesecurity of Americans than all the counterterrorist proposals and elite strike forces that ever found their way onto Pentagon wish-lists."

83c. Richard L. Harwood, Letter to Daniel Brandt, September 28, 1988. Harwood's two- sentence letter reads, "We have a long-standing policy of not naming covert agents of the C.I.A., except in unusual circumstances. We applied that policy to Fernandez."

84. See note 79d, p.131.

85. Katharine Graham, "Safeguarding Our Freedoms As We Cover Terrorist Acts", Washington Post, April 20, 1986, p.C1.

86. "conspire", ß4ßRandom House Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition Unabridged, 1987.

87. Howard Kurtz, "Media Notes", Washington Post, June 18, 1991, p.D1.

88. See note 65y.

89. See note 65n.

90. See note 65d.

91. William Casey, Private Communications with JCH, March 1992.

Richard Harwood, "What Conspiracy?", Washington Post, March 1, 1992, p.C6.

93. p. 29-32.

94a. Washington Post Electronic Data Base, Dialog Information Services Inc., April 25, 1992. In 1991 and 1992, the name Bill Clinton appeared in 878 Washington Post stories, columns, letters, or editorials; "Jerry" Brown in 485, Pat Buchanan in 303, and Larry Agran in 28. In those 28, Agran's name appeared 76 times, Clinton's 151, and Brown 105. In only 1 of those 28 did Agran's name appear in a headline.

94b. Colman McCarthy, "What's 'Minor' About This Candidate?", Washington Post, February 1, 1992. Washington Post columnist McCarthy tells how television and party officials have kept presidential candidate Larry Agran out of sight. The Post's own daily news-blackout of Agran is not discussed.

94c. Scot Lehigh, "Larry Agran: 'Winner' in Debate With Little Chance For the Big Prize", Boston Globe, February 25, 1992.

94d. Joshua Meyrowitz, "The Press Rejects a Candidate", Columbia Journalism Review,March/April, 1992.

95. Ben H. Bagdikian, The Effete Conspiracy And Other Crimes By The Press, NewYork: Harper and Row, 1972, p.36-7.

96a. 28 USC Section 455. "Any justice, judge, or magistrate of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned." [emphasis added]

96b. Alpo Petfoods, Inc. v. Ralston Purina Co., 913 F2d 958 (CA DC 1990)..

96c. Monroe Freedman, "Thomas' Ethics and the Court Nominee 'Unfit to Sit' For Failing to Recuse In Ralston Purina Case", Legal Times, August 26, 1991.

96d. Paul D. Wilcher, "Opposition to the Confirmation of Judge Clarence Thomas to become a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds of his JUDICIAL MISCONDUCT", Letter to U.S. Senator Joseph R. Biden, October 15, 1991.

97. Al Kamen and Michael Isikoff, "'A Distressing Turn', Activists

Decry What Process Has Become", Washington Post, October 12, 1991, p.A1.

98. January 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 1992, p.A1 each day.

99. See note 86.

100. Thomas W. Lippman, "Energy Lobby Fights Unseen 'Killers'", Washington Post,April 1, 1992, p.A21. This article explains that "representatives of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the coal, oil, natural gas, offshore drilling and nuclear power industries, whose interests often conflict, pledged to work together to oppose amendments limiting offshore oil drilling, nuclear power and carbon dioxide emissions soon to be offered by key House members".

101. "cartel", Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1977.

Edited December 3, 2008 by William Plumlee

[John Simkin]

In 1979, Washington journalist Deborah Davis published Katharine The Great, the story of Post publisher Katharine Graham and her newspaper's close ties with Washington's powerful elite, a number of whom were with the CIA.

Particularly irksome to Post editor Benjamin Bradlee was a Davis claim that Bradlee had "produced CIA material" (*78). Understandably sensitive about this kind of publicity, Bradlee told Davis' publisher Harcourt Brace Jovanovich ,"Miss Davis is lying ...I never produced CIA material ...what I can do is to brand Miss Davis as a fool and to put your company in that special little group of publishers who don't give a xxxx for the truth". The Post bullied HBJ into recalling the book; HBJ shredded 20,000 copies; Davis sued HBJ for breach of contract and damage to reputation; HBJ settled out of court; and Davis published her book elsewhere with an appendix that demonstrated Bradlee to have been deeply involved with producing cold-war/CIA propaganda (*79). Bradlee still says the allegations about his association with people in the CIA are false, but he has apparently taken no action to contest the xetensive documentation presented by Deborah Davis in the second and third editions of her book (*80).

And it's not as if the Post were new to conspiracy work.

* Former Washington Post publisher Philip Graham "believing that the function of the press was more often than not to mobilize consent for the policies of the government, was one of the architects of what became a widespread practice:the use and manipulation of journalists by the CIA" (*81). This scandal was known by its code name Operation MOCKINGBIRD. Former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein cites a former CIA deputy director as saying, "It was widely known that Phil Graham was someone you could get help from" (*82). More recently the Post provided cover for CIA personality Joseph Fernandez by "refusing to print his name for over a year up until the day his indictmen twas announced ...for crimes committed in his official capacity as CIA station chief in Costa Rica" (*83).

I cannot stress enough just how important Deborah Davis' book is. It also provides information about the link between the assassination of JFK and Watergate.

One of the great ironies of history is that Ben Bradlee and the Washington Post is seen as a good example of investigative journalism when it fact part of a CIA disinformation programme.

It should also be noted that Phil Graham was recruited by the intelligence agencies before he took control of the Washington Post. Once in place he used CIA funds to expand the Washington Post media empire.

[Charles Drago]

George Michael Evica, in A Certain Arrogance, explores in depth the following topics:

The American Psychological Warfare Master

C.D. Jackson and SHAEF

C.D. Jackson in North Africa

General Robert Alexis McClure: American Military Psyops and C. D. Jackson

C.D. Jackson: America's Psyops Chief

C.D. Jackson Spreads His Psyops Wings Across America

Jackson and McClure in Psyops Control

C.D. Jackson, Dulles, and the CIA

C.D. Jackson, Eisenhower, and the Control of Psyops in America

C.D. Jackson and the Korean Brainwashing Problem

C.D. Jackson and the Cold War Psyops Fronts

C.D. Jackson and the Control of Nuclear War

C.D. Jackson and the Elite Establishment's Psyops Programs

C.D. Jackson's Waning Power

C.D. Jackson and the Student Exchanges and Programs

C.D. Jackson Fades

C.D. Jackson and Lee Harvey Oswald: Degrees of Separation

C.D. Jackson and Dallas

Who Manipulated Lee Harvey Oswald

Thanks to Professor Evica, Jackson no longer is a mystery man.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Today I received an educational packet on RFK, as a licensed social studies teacher in the NYC school system. The packaging was very nice. The cardboard was quality and the printing was expensive. It came with a poster that informed the students who might look at it that RFK "died" in 1968.

Much of the funding came from the Rockefeller Foundation.

The purpose of the ecucational packet was to teach the importance of "speaking out" as exemplified by the life of RFK.

There was no mention of RFK's opposition to the Vietnam War. Nowhere was it mentioned that RFK was assassinated.

The printing was very professional, and it also smelled good.

Edited December 11, 2008 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

From Consortium News:

How the CIA Handles the WPost

By Melvin A. Goodman

January 9, 2009

On Jan. 7, the Washington Post published a front-page lead article and an op-ed on the nomination of Leon Panetta as CIA director; both articles exaggerated the extent of opposition to the Panetta appointment and they demonstrated the weakness of mainstream media coverage of the intelligence community, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency.

The front-page article by Karen DeYoung, a seasoned reporter, and Joby Warrick, a newcomer to the intelligence beat, presented a one-sided and inaccurate account of the opposition to the naming of Panetta.

The op-ed by David Ignatius, who has relied heavily on unnamed CIA clandestine operatives as sources for the past 25 years, argues that the CIA “has demonstrated an ability to sabotage bosses it doesn’t like.” Such balderdash!

It is particularly ironic that such senior writers as DeYoung and Ignatius would rely on the views of clandestine officers who are particularly adept at manipulating people and opinion. Indeed, that is part of their job description. The reliance on anonymous CIA sources from the clandestine community does not make for good reporting or good journalism.

It must be understood that many CIA officials, particularly in the National Clandestine Service, have never welcomed the idea of reporting to a CIA director who has a reputation for liberal or progressive policies.

When President Jimmy Carter was considering the nomination of Ted Sorensen as CIA director in 1977, CIA operatives were active on Capitol Hill and in the press community making a case against Sorensen. And when President Bill Clinton nominated Tony Lake as director in 1997, CIA officials successfully engaged in clandestine efforts to undermine Lake’s candidacy.

It would not be surprising for clandestine operatives to lobby against Panetta, particularly in view of his opposition to torture, detainee abuse and secret CIA prisons. It should also be noted, however, that there are also many CIA officers who share Panetta’s views and would welcome his leadership.

It should be mentioned, moreover, that CIA clandestine officers typically have rallied around CIA directors who broke the law as long as they were zealous supporters of covert action.

When CIA Director Richard Helms falsely testified in 1973 that the CIA had not passed money to the opposition movement in Chile, he was fined $2,000 and given a two-year suspended prison sentence. Helms went from the courthouse to the CIA where he was given a hero’s welcome by clandestine officers who presented Helms with a gift of $2,000 to cover the fine.

CIA Director William Casey’s violations of the Boland Amendment to outlaw funding for the overthrow of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua were supported by the directorate of operations.

Conversely, CIA Director William Colby, who cooperated with the Church Commission’s investigations of CIA violations of U.S. law during the Vietnam War, was maligned by senior cadre of the clandestine service.

DeYoung and Warrick disingenuously repeated the assertion of one senior CIA officer that the “agency was neither consulted nor informed” about the Panetta nomination. More balderdash!

The CIA has never been consulted about the nomination of a CIA director nor should it be. It is unlikely that Foreign Service Officers were asked to vet the selection of Sen. Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State or that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were asked if they would support the nomination of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense in 2001.

Civil servants have no role to play in the selection of senior officials of the government, and their professionalism requires support for their leadership, regardless of political beliefs. We certainly expect U.S. military officers, who are overwhelmingly members of the Republican Party, to support the national security policies of Democratic administrations. We should assume that CIA officers will do the same.

It is particularly interesting that DeYoung and Warrick reported that President-elect Obama’s first choice for CIA director, John Brennan, withdrew his name from consideration because of opposition to his association with CIA policies of interrogation and rendition.

Brennan, in fact, withdrew his name from consideration because he was involved in and supported those policies and because he has been part of the culture of cover-up at the CIA during the Bush years. His confirmation process would have been confrontational and tendentious, and probably unsuccessful.

Nevertheless, Ignatius’s candidate for CIA director is none other than the current deputy director of the CIA, Steve Kappes, the darling of the clandestine community and a supporter of and participant in the very policies of interrogation and rendition that reportedly sank the chances of Brennan.

The Washington Post and the mainstream media for the most part have never understood that the CIA, like other large government entities, are complex organizations and rarely governed by one set of ideas on any issue, particularly the capabilities of their leaders.

There are numerous CIA officials who support the nomination of Panetta, just as there are opponents to his candidacy.

Reporters need to make sure they canvas the entire community before placing front-page articles in front of the American public. They must know that the overwhelming majority of CIA officers would not talk to the press; therefore, they should be skeptical of those who do.

And when they want to deny the fact that there is a serious morale problem at the CIA because of recent intelligence failures, reporters such as DeYoung and Warrick should not consult a CIA spokesman such as Mark Mansfield, a well-known agency flack, to deny such facts.

You would never ask a barber if you need a haircut, and you certainly wouldn’t ask a CIA spokesman about internal problems at the CIA.

[John Dolva]

Could you put in an end quote please? Interesting in may ways either way.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Once more a left-liberal publicaton plays the role of gatekeeper and ends up doing the work of the right. Sorry William I know you dont like the use of words left and right re assassination. I agree when it comes to not dismissing sources of information on the basis of their political beliefts. I disagree in the in how I see these expectations of left and right being used to move ever rightward, objectively.

FROM THE GUARDIAN UK PUBLISHED IN COMMON DREAMS A HEAVILY FREQUENTED LEFT LIBERAL SITE IN US.

BEWARE THE JFK ANALOGY it would be great if there could be some iinformed responses to this on the Common Dreams site. I plan on dismembering it over the weekend but I am very busy this weekend. LOTS WILL SEE THIS!

Beware the JFK Analogy

by Jonathan Steele

As we approach Barack Obama's inauguration next Tuesday, and the first 100 days that follow, the comparisons between him and John (Jack) Kennedy that are already being made will multiply. In Europe, particularly, the Kennedy analogy is powerful. Many Europeans old enough to have experienced his brutally curtailed time in the White House are still in position as politicians or "opinion-formers", (myself included). For later generations in Europe a beguiling myth of the Kennedy era endures even as its survivors diminish.

The phrase "Camelot", which we will no doubt hear a lot of again as the media combs the names on next week's inaugural guestlists, was cheapened into celebrity shorthand long ago. But the reality which it seemed to represent was of a president who enjoyed the arts and respected intellectuals, and was even - like Obama - an intellectual himself. The similarities go well beyond that. Both men came to power in their mid-forties, tall, handsome, and vigorous, and offering dynamic change from their predecessors (in Eisenhower's case the perception of a fumbling laisser-faire fatigue, in Bush's a disastrous rightwing simplicity that played havoc with civil liberties).

Above all, both presidents looked like natural leaders with the charisma to carry millions with them. And heaven knows, there was then, and is now, a hunger for leadership both in the US and even more so in Europe. Kennedy won a slim election victory but gained swaths of enthusiastic new supporters among his compatriots with his inaugural speech. Obama easily defeated McCain, but during the campaign he found a bigger audience in Berlin than anywhere in the US. Had he chosen London, Paris, Rome, or Warsaw, the throng would have been just as huge.

Yet beware the Kennedy analogy. It is wrong in fact, as well as being a snare and a delusion. The differences between Kennedy and Obama are far more striking than the parallels. Kennedy was the arrogant and spoilt brat of a politically ambitious male chauvinist multi-millionaire father, who gave his four sons a patrician sense that they had a right to rule, and screw around when they felt like it. Admittedly, Jack Kennedy had to struggle against poor health throughout his life, but his personal battle cannot be compared to Obama's ability through merit and determination to surmount a peripatetic upbringing in an impoverished single-parent household for much of the time. Kennedy may have broken a glass ceiling as the first practising Roman Catholic to become president, but he did not see himself as a standard bearer for other Catholics. His breakthrough is as nothing compared to Obama's triumph in winning the White House as a black man, and a proud representative of all of America's non-Anglo minorities. In depth and scope his life experience far exceeds Kennedy's pampered youth.

It is true that Obama has made his first appointments largely from Harvard and other elite schools' "best and brightest", just as Kennedy did. In some ways Obama's are more traditional, since he has mainly picked people with a record of government service whereas Kennedy took unknowns such as Ted Sorensen and McGeorge Bundy. But the books the two men have written show that the only genuine intellectual, as well a writer of great sensitivity, is Obama. Kennedy was intelligent but in spite of all the Camelot trimmings he did not have the curiosity about ideas or the ability to view issues critically which define an intellectual.

Kennedy's most important aspect of Kennedy, of course, is his record in office. Here was a man who came to power with the complacent 1950's illusion that America's social and economic problems were largely solved. The only challenges lay abroad, with the threat of Soviet Communism and the danger that countries moving away from European colonial control would fail to "take off", as Kennedy's appalling academic guru Walt Rostow warned him. Kennedy won election largely on the basis of a fraud - the false charge of a "missile gap" which Eisenhower had allegedly permitted, leaving the USSR ahead of the US. Kennedy's inaugural was all about foreign affairs, and the only domestic reference (which was added at the last minute) was to say that America was committed to human rights "at home and around the world".

The black struggle for civil rights was already underway and the first Freedom Rides were to start four months after Kennedy became President, yet he seems to have been unaware of them. Later, when the movement became impossible to ignore, neither he nor his attorney-general brother Robert brought in significant reforms or legislation. They had the opportunity to appoint liberal federal judges, but failed. No wonder that the civil rights movement sang a sarcastic verse that went: There's a town in Mississippi called Liberty, there's a department in Washington called Justice.

Nevertheless, there is a danger that Obama himself may fall for the Kennedy myth. With power come flattery and self-regard. Will Obama realise that the world is very different from 1961? The belligerent missionary ideology which led Kennedy to invade Cuba and start military intervention in Vietnam has its counterpart in Bush's invasion of Iraq and the war on terror. Can Obama go beyond closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and give the whole place back to Cuba? Can he abandon the "war on terror", deal with security problems pragmatically and without dangerous rhetoric, and scale down, not up, in Afghanistan?

Obama, we are told, has been re-reading books on Lincoln. I would recommend he goes through a forgotten book called The Kennedy Promise, by the British commentator (and one-time Observer reporter) Henry Fairlie. Published in 1973 with the sub-title "The politics of expectation", it is a brilliant demolition of the frenetic Kennedy governing mystique of crisis management and group-think. It points out that the constant talk of "challenges" and the need for US leadership tend to encourage confrontation and war.

That warning is apposite today. In his acceptance speech in Chicago Obama already told us "a new dawn of American leadership is at hand". Let us hope phrases of this kind do not appear in his inaugural address. Yes, there are one or two foreign policy issues where the US has a unique ability to exert influence. Its relationship with Israel is the main one. There are other issues on which the US by virtue of its consumption patterns carries massive weight and can set a powerful example, such as global warming and energy policy.

On virtually every other issue the world has become multi-polar or even non-polar. Most disputes are best handled regionally by countries that are neighbours and have the main interest in avoiding conflicts which may lead to war. Outsiders should only intervene when clearly invited. A few issues, often the most pressing, are global, such as nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, climate change, fulfilling the UN millennium development goals, and the need to reduced economic imbalances between and within countries which result from unfair corporate practices and unregulated capital flows and are already leading to mass migrations not seen in the world until now. On these problems we don't need US leadership but a US that is willing to be a partner, and sometimes lets itself be led.

© 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited

Jonathan Steele is a Guardian columnist, roving foreign correspondent and author. He was the Guardian's bureau chief in Washington (1975 to 1979) and Moscow (1988 to 1994). In the 80s he reported from southern Africa, central America, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe. In the 90s he covered Kosovo and the Balkans. Since 9/11 he has reported from Afghanistan and Iraq as well as on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

[William Kelly]

Once more a left-liberal publicaton plays the role of gatekeeper and ends up doing the work of the right. Sorry William I know you dont like the use of words left and right re assassination. I agree when it comes to not dismissing sources of information on the basis of their political beliefts. I disagree in the in how I see these expectations of left and right being used to move ever rightward, objectively.

Hey Nate,

I don't say don't use them to try to clarify things, if they can be so easily clairfied, I say neither the left nor the right, neither democrat nor republican or liberals or consertives can or have tried to learn the truth about the assassination of JFK, and the assassination, like all deep political events, cannot be adaquetely discussed on the basis of those three dicotomies.

As for Jonathan Steele's Lincoln/Kenney/Obama analogy, he mentions many of the key similarities, yet he fails to carry the analogy to its logical extent, and consider the fact that Obama could end up like Lincoln and Kennedy, assassinated.

Why not? Why not continue the analogy, and consider that nobody still wants to discuss or inquire into what James Douglas calls "The Unspeakable."

But are they controlled by Mockingbird?

BK

FROM THE GUARDIAN UK PUBLISHED IN COMMON DREAMS A HEAVILY FREQUENTED LEFT LIBERAL SITE IN US.

BEWARE THE JFK ANALOGY it would be great if there could be some iinformed responses to this on the Common Dreams site. I plan on dismembering it over the weekend but I am very busy this weekend. LOTS WILL SEE THIS!

Beware the JFK Analogy

by Jonathan Steele

As we approach Barack Obama's inauguration next Tuesday, and the first 100 days that follow, the comparisons between him and John (Jack) Kennedy that are already being made will multiply. In Europe, particularly, the Kennedy analogy is powerful. Many Europeans old enough to have experienced his brutally curtailed time in the White House are still in position as politicians or "opinion-formers", (myself included). For later generations in Europe a beguiling myth of the Kennedy era endures even as its survivors diminish.

The phrase "Camelot", which we will no doubt hear a lot of again as the media combs the names on next week's inaugural guestlists, was cheapened into celebrity shorthand long ago. But the reality which it seemed to represent was of a president who enjoyed the arts and respected intellectuals, and was even - like Obama - an intellectual himself. The similarities go well beyond that. Both men came to power in their mid-forties, tall, handsome, and vigorous, and offering dynamic change from their predecessors (in Eisenhower's case the perception of a fumbling laisser-faire fatigue, in Bush's a disastrous rightwing simplicity that played havoc with civil liberties).

Above all, both presidents looked like natural leaders with the charisma to carry millions with them. And heaven knows, there was then, and is now, a hunger for leadership both in the US and even more so in Europe. Kennedy won a slim election victory but gained swaths of enthusiastic new supporters among his compatriots with his inaugural speech. Obama easily defeated McCain, but during the campaign he found a bigger audience in Berlin than anywhere in the US. Had he chosen London, Paris, Rome, or Warsaw, the throng would have been just as huge.

Yet beware the Kennedy analogy. It is wrong in fact, as well as being a snare and a delusion. The differences between Kennedy and Obama are far more striking than the parallels. Kennedy was the arrogant and spoilt brat of a politically ambitious male chauvinist multi-millionaire father, who gave his four sons a patrician sense that they had a right to rule, and screw around when they felt like it. Admittedly, Jack Kennedy had to struggle against poor health throughout his life, but his personal battle cannot be compared to Obama's ability through merit and determination to surmount a peripatetic upbringing in an impoverished single-parent household for much of the time. Kennedy may have broken a glass ceiling as the first practising Roman Catholic to become president, but he did not see himself as a standard bearer for other Catholics. His breakthrough is as nothing compared to Obama's triumph in winning the White House as a black man, and a proud representative of all of America's non-Anglo minorities. In depth and scope his life experience far exceeds Kennedy's pampered youth.

It is true that Obama has made his first appointments largely from Harvard and other elite schools' "best and brightest", just as Kennedy did. In some ways Obama's are more traditional, since he has mainly picked people with a record of government service whereas Kennedy took unknowns such as Ted Sorensen and McGeorge Bundy. But the books the two men have written show that the only genuine intellectual, as well a writer of great sensitivity, is Obama. Kennedy was intelligent but in spite of all the Camelot trimmings he did not have the curiosity about ideas or the ability to view issues critically which define an intellectual.

Kennedy's most important aspect of Kennedy, of course, is his record in office. Here was a man who came to power with the complacent 1950's illusion that America's social and economic problems were largely solved. The only challenges lay abroad, with the threat of Soviet Communism and the danger that countries moving away from European colonial control would fail to "take off", as Kennedy's appalling academic guru Walt Rostow warned him. Kennedy won election largely on the basis of a fraud - the false charge of a "missile gap" which Eisenhower had allegedly permitted, leaving the USSR ahead of the US. Kennedy's inaugural was all about foreign affairs, and the only domestic reference (which was added at the last minute) was to say that America was committed to human rights "at home and around the world".

The black struggle for civil rights was already underway and the first Freedom Rides were to start four months after Kennedy became President, yet he seems to have been unaware of them. Later, when the movement became impossible to ignore, neither he nor his attorney-general brother Robert brought in significant reforms or legislation. They had the opportunity to appoint liberal federal judges, but failed. No wonder that the civil rights movement sang a sarcastic verse that went: There's a town in Mississippi called Liberty, there's a department in Washington called Justice.

Nevertheless, there is a danger that Obama himself may fall for the Kennedy myth. With power come flattery and self-regard. Will Obama realise that the world is very different from 1961? The belligerent missionary ideology which led Kennedy to invade Cuba and start military intervention in Vietnam has its counterpart in Bush's invasion of Iraq and the war on terror. Can Obama go beyond closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and give the whole place back to Cuba? Can he abandon the "war on terror", deal with security problems pragmatically and without dangerous rhetoric, and scale down, not up, in Afghanistan?

Obama, we are told, has been re-reading books on Lincoln. I would recommend he goes through a forgotten book called The Kennedy Promise, by the British commentator (and one-time Observer reporter) Henry Fairlie. Published in 1973 with the sub-title "The politics of expectation", it is a brilliant demolition of the frenetic Kennedy governing mystique of crisis management and group-think. It points out that the constant talk of "challenges" and the need for US leadership tend to encourage confrontation and war.

That warning is apposite today. In his acceptance speech in Chicago Obama already told us "a new dawn of American leadership is at hand". Let us hope phrases of this kind do not appear in his inaugural address. Yes, there are one or two foreign policy issues where the US has a unique ability to exert influence. Its relationship with Israel is the main one. There are other issues on which the US by virtue of its consumption patterns carries massive weight and can set a powerful example, such as global warming and energy policy.

On virtually every other issue the world has become multi-polar or even non-polar. Most disputes are best handled regionally by countries that are neighbours and have the main interest in avoiding conflicts which may lead to war. Outsiders should only intervene when clearly invited. A few issues, often the most pressing, are global, such as nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, climate change, fulfilling the UN millennium development goals, and the need to reduced economic imbalances between and within countries which result from unfair corporate practices and unregulated capital flows and are already leading to mass migrations not seen in the world until now. On these problems we don't need US leadership but a US that is willing to be a partner, and sometimes lets itself be led.

© 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited

Jonathan Steele is a Guardian columnist, roving foreign correspondent and author. He was the Guardian's bureau chief in Washington (1975 to 1979) and Moscow (1988 to 1994). In the 80s he reported from southern Africa, central America, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe. In the 90s he covered Kosovo and the Balkans. Since 9/11 he has reported from Afghanistan and Iraq as well as on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Edited January 17, 2009 by William Kelly

[John Simkin]

Once more a left-liberal publicaton plays the role of gatekeeper and ends up doing the work of the right. Sorry William I know you dont like the use of words left and right re assassination. I agree when it comes to not dismissing sources of information on the basis of their political beliefts. I disagree in the in how I see these expectations of left and right being used to move ever rightward, objectively.

FROM THE GUARDIAN UK PUBLISHED IN COMMON DREAMS A HEAVILY FREQUENTED LEFT LIBERAL SITE IN US.

BEWARE THE JFK ANALOGY it would be great if there could be some iinformed responses to this on the Common Dreams site. I plan on dismembering it over the weekend but I am very busy this weekend. LOTS WILL SEE THIS!

Beware the JFK Analogy

by Jonathan Steele

As we approach Barack Obama's inauguration next Tuesday, and the first 100 days that follow, the comparisons between him and John (Jack) Kennedy that are already being made will multiply. In Europe, particularly, the Kennedy analogy is powerful. Many Europeans old enough to have experienced his brutally curtailed time in the White House are still in position as politicians or "opinion-formers", (myself included). For later generations in Europe a beguiling myth of the Kennedy era endures even as its survivors diminish.

The phrase "Camelot", which we will no doubt hear a lot of again as the media combs the names on next week's inaugural guestlists, was cheapened into celebrity shorthand long ago. But the reality which it seemed to represent was of a president who enjoyed the arts and respected intellectuals, and was even - like Obama - an intellectual himself. The similarities go well beyond that. Both men came to power in their mid-forties, tall, handsome, and vigorous, and offering dynamic change from their predecessors (in Eisenhower's case the perception of a fumbling laisser-faire fatigue, in Bush's a disastrous rightwing simplicity that played havoc with civil liberties).

Above all, both presidents looked like natural leaders with the charisma to carry millions with them. And heaven knows, there was then, and is now, a hunger for leadership both in the US and even more so in Europe. Kennedy won a slim election victory but gained swaths of enthusiastic new supporters among his compatriots with his inaugural speech. Obama easily defeated McCain, but during the campaign he found a bigger audience in Berlin than anywhere in the US. Had he chosen London, Paris, Rome, or Warsaw, the throng would have been just as huge.

Yet beware the Kennedy analogy. It is wrong in fact, as well as being a snare and a delusion. The differences between Kennedy and Obama are far more striking than the parallels. Kennedy was the arrogant and spoilt brat of a politically ambitious male chauvinist multi-millionaire father, who gave his four sons a patrician sense that they had a right to rule, and screw around when they felt like it. Admittedly, Jack Kennedy had to struggle against poor health throughout his life, but his personal battle cannot be compared to Obama's ability through merit and determination to surmount a peripatetic upbringing in an impoverished single-parent household for much of the time. Kennedy may have broken a glass ceiling as the first practising Roman Catholic to become president, but he did not see himself as a standard bearer for other Catholics. His breakthrough is as nothing compared to Obama's triumph in winning the White House as a black man, and a proud representative of all of America's non-Anglo minorities. In depth and scope his life experience far exceeds Kennedy's pampered youth.

It is true that Obama has made his first appointments largely from Harvard and other elite schools' "best and brightest", just as Kennedy did. In some ways Obama's are more traditional, since he has mainly picked people with a record of government service whereas Kennedy took unknowns such as Ted Sorensen and McGeorge Bundy. But the books the two men have written show that the only genuine intellectual, as well a writer of great sensitivity, is Obama. Kennedy was intelligent but in spite of all the Camelot trimmings he did not have the curiosity about ideas or the ability to view issues critically which define an intellectual.

Kennedy's most important aspect of Kennedy, of course, is his record in office. Here was a man who came to power with the complacent 1950's illusion that America's social and economic problems were largely solved. The only challenges lay abroad, with the threat of Soviet Communism and the danger that countries moving away from European colonial control would fail to "take off", as Kennedy's appalling academic guru Walt Rostow warned him. Kennedy won election largely on the basis of a fraud - the false charge of a "missile gap" which Eisenhower had allegedly permitted, leaving the USSR ahead of the US. Kennedy's inaugural was all about foreign affairs, and the only domestic reference (which was added at the last minute) was to say that America was committed to human rights "at home and around the world".

The black struggle for civil rights was already underway and the first Freedom Rides were to start four months after Kennedy became President, yet he seems to have been unaware of them. Later, when the movement became impossible to ignore, neither he nor his attorney-general brother Robert brought in significant reforms or legislation. They had the opportunity to appoint liberal federal judges, but failed. No wonder that the civil rights movement sang a sarcastic verse that went: There's a town in Mississippi called Liberty, there's a department in Washington called Justice.

Nevertheless, there is a danger that Obama himself may fall for the Kennedy myth. With power come flattery and self-regard. Will Obama realise that the world is very different from 1961? The belligerent missionary ideology which led Kennedy to invade Cuba and start military intervention in Vietnam has its counterpart in Bush's invasion of Iraq and the war on terror. Can Obama go beyond closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and give the whole place back to Cuba? Can he abandon the "war on terror", deal with security problems pragmatically and without dangerous rhetoric, and scale down, not up, in Afghanistan?

Obama, we are told, has been re-reading books on Lincoln. I would recommend he goes through a forgotten book called The Kennedy Promise, by the British commentator (and one-time Observer reporter) Henry Fairlie. Published in 1973 with the sub-title "The politics of expectation", it is a brilliant demolition of the frenetic Kennedy governing mystique of crisis management and group-think. It points out that the constant talk of "challenges" and the need for US leadership tend to encourage confrontation and war.

That warning is apposite today. In his acceptance speech in Chicago Obama already told us "a new dawn of American leadership is at hand". Let us hope phrases of this kind do not appear in his inaugural address. Yes, there are one or two foreign policy issues where the US has a unique ability to exert influence. Its relationship with Israel is the main one. There are other issues on which the US by virtue of its consumption patterns carries massive weight and can set a powerful example, such as global warming and energy policy.

On virtually every other issue the world has become multi-polar or even non-polar. Most disputes are best handled regionally by countries that are neighbours and have the main interest in avoiding conflicts which may lead to war. Outsiders should only intervene when clearly invited. A few issues, often the most pressing, are global, such as nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, climate change, fulfilling the UN millennium development goals, and the need to reduced economic imbalances between and within countries which result from unfair corporate practices and unregulated capital flows and are already leading to mass migrations not seen in the world until now. On these problems we don't need US leadership but a US that is willing to be a partner, and sometimes lets itself be led.

© 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited

Jonathan Steele is a Guardian columnist, roving foreign correspondent and author. He was the Guardian's bureau chief in Washington (1975 to 1979) and Moscow (1988 to 1994). In the 80s he reported from southern Africa, central America, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe. In the 90s he covered Kosovo and the Balkans. Since 9/11 he has reported from Afghanistan and Iraq as well as on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

I used to work for the Guardian. It is the most left-wing national newspaper in the UK. I am still in contact with some of the more radical journalists on the newspaper. However, I have never managed to persuade them to write about the JFK assassination. It is a subject that is never covered in the newspaper. Even books on the subject are ignored.

[John Simkin]

Interesting interview with Rod Serling in 1959 about censorship.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ8dTT2BRp4

Part II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05SlHecA1hk

[John Bevilaqua]

George Michael Evica, in A Certain Arrogance, explores in depth the following topics:

The American Psychological Warfare Master

C.D. Jackson and SHAEF

C.D. Jackson in North Africa

General Robert Alexis McClure: American Military Psyops and C. D. Jackson

C.D. Jackson: America's Psyops Chief

C.D. Jackson Spreads His Psyops Wings Across America

Jackson and McClure in Psyops Control

C.D. Jackson, Dulles, and the CIA

C.D. Jackson, Eisenhower, and the Control of Psyops in America

C.D. Jackson and the Korean Brainwashing Problem

C.D. Jackson and the Cold War Psyops Fronts

C.D. Jackson and the Control of Nuclear War

C.D. Jackson and the Elite Establishment's Psyops Programs

C.D. Jackson's Waning Power

C.D. Jackson and the Student Exchanges and Programs

C.D. Jackson Fades

C.D. Jackson and Lee Harvey Oswald: Degrees of Separation

C.D. Jackson and Dallas

Who Manipulated Lee Harvey Oswald

Thanks to Professor Evica, Jackson no longer is a mystery man.

And it should be noted that it was little old me who helped put the C. D. Jackson, Wickliffe Draper, Eugenics bug in Professor Evica's ear.

Even the fact of Wickliffe Draper's close connections to all the Unitarian linked into the entire JFK investigation was my original concept.

Where was the starting point for this C. D. Jackson to Wickliffe Draper linkage and their lifelong relationship? Charles Douglas Jackson

was the best man at Draper's sister's wedding in 1924. That is how far back these 2 families go. And more recently I discovered the fact

that Yale Skull and Bonesman, Morehead Patterson, the inventor of the "Patterson Cigarette Packer" was the best man at Henry Luce's wedding.

Morehead Patterson and his role in creating an automatic cartridge clip for the Manlicher Carcano has also been one of my more potent

discoveries. Patterson was very active with his group of American Tobacco clients since before 1900 mostly involving Yale Skull and Bonesmen.

And his company, AMF, was also a war and missile contractor who did business with Rockwell, the company that bailed out the Draper

Company in 1967 via a $100 million White Knight takeover, on the exact date that Gordon Novel referred to in his letter to "Mr. Weiss"

when Novel threatened to blow the cover on some upcoming event of vast importance. AMF could have stood for America's Military Fascists

instead of their more familiar bowling based fake motto of "American Manufacturers of Fun". Their Patterson Cigarette Packer rolled cigarettes

which resulted in the deaths of millions across the globe. And using the Manlicher Carcano 5-shot clip, in development since 1962 and available

in 1963 before release to the Navy in 1964, even I could have put 3 bullets into the JFK limousine in less than 4 seconds flat from the so-called

sniper's perch. You would be amazed how many time-honored misconceptions get blown out of the water when you are forced to confront

the likely usage of Mitchell Werbell's rifle silencers and the AMF Manlicher Carcano rifle clip in the JFK plot. Imagine all the wasted analysis

time which could have been totally avoided with just a little bit of due dilligence and research. How many theories rest their credentials on

that magical 3.6 second time slice when in fact it was realistically possible to accomplish 3 shots within that time frame especially when you

consider that you had up to 3 seconds more up front to aim and fire that first shot?