The Onion Skin approch to Disinformation

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

I just clicked on the Huffington Post and saw about 77 articles on the scandal of the week, Alberto G.

This ranks as bout the 503rd biggest scandal (in terms of budget and world impact) of this bipartisan Bush regime -- Bush plus the highly professional Bush enablers known as the Democratic party.

The Huffington Post never has anything about 9-11 anymore. They almost never, or very sporadically have anything about the lies that started the war anymore, even though new stuff is constantly coming out.

Just what is the result of this "left" sites scandal of the week approach, that is sold to them almost straight from the corporate democratic leaderships mouth?

The result is to waste a tremendous amount of time reading about scandals that will NEVER EVER EVER EVER go anywere, unless they stop a million miles short

of the MIC or fundemental issues of money, war, and class structure.

Im not saying one can't learn some usefull things on the Huffington post and related big money glossy-left sites. You can sometimes. But as the CIA's sponsorship of Encounter magazines in the 1950s showed, the agency media people understand the need to feed a few legitimate left morsells to keep suspiciouns down, and enhance the credibility of the publication on the intended audience.

Think of how much time so called left sites have wasted on the Plame Scandal. I am beginning to strongly suspect that that whole thing may have been a Mockingbird-like diversionary media op. to occupay the left and have them follow liberal foundation wonks while the nation fell deeper asleep. This scandal, compared to all the other evil--yes I use the E-word--things Bush had done has the nutritional substance of Bubbleyum. Yet on they chewed: on thier bloggs and Huffington Posts. The CIA was made out to seem an INNOCENT VICTIM OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION! Who baked that dichotomy?

One of the leading "attackers" of Bush from the CIA over the Plame McScandal was Larry C. Johnson. Check out what Peter Lance writes concerning Johnson

in Tripple Cross:

As late as May 2002, eight months after 9/11, that same soryy was repeated by Larry C. Johnson, the former State Dept.

counterrerrorism offical( under bush 41 and clinton) infamous for his July 2001 New York Times quote minimizing the

imortance of Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda:To listen to some of the news reports a year or two ago, you would think

Bin Laden was running a top Fortune 500 multinational company," said Johnson, "people everywhere, links everywhere"

He then compounded that mistaken assessment five weeks later with a Times Op-Ed piece entitled "The Declining

Terrorist Threat," describing al Qaeda as a loose amalgm of people with a shared ideology, but a very limited direction"

Johnson's piece ran on July 10, 2001, the day the Phoenix Memo arrived (p. 384)

This Johnson is the same guy who later defended the CIA's intelligence VS. Bush in the Wilson-Wind-Bag mcScandal? Interesting guy to defend

the CIA's intelliegence, while simaltaneously changing the channel onto a much smaller question of the Plame-outing.

Oh, well it has all come to nothing.

Or was that the point?

Remember Communications theorists have been working hard since 1945-- see Christopher Simpson's excellent book, THE SCIENCE OF COERCION: COMMUNICATION RESEARCH AND PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH, 1945-1960. Yummy!

http://www.amazon.com/Science-Coercion-Com...0160&sr=1-4

[Myra Bronstein]

...

Remember Communications theorists have been working hard since 1945-- see Christopher Simpson's excellent book, THE SCIENCE OF COERCION: COMMUNICATION RESEARCH AND PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH, 1945-1960. Yummy!

http://www.amazon.com/Science-Coercion-Com...0160&sr=1-4

Thanks for the book recommendation Nathaniel.

Always lookin' for good ones, esp about propaganda.

[Sid Walker]

I just clicked on the Huffington Post and saw about 77 articles on the scandal of the week, Alberto G.

This ranks as bout the 503rd biggest scandal (in terms of budget and world impact) of this bipartisan Bush regime -- Bush plus the highly professional Bush enablers known as the Democratic party.

The Huffington Post never has anything about 9-11 anymore. They almost never, or very sporadically have anything about the lies that started the war anymore, even though new stuff is constantly coming out.

Just what is the result of this "left" sites scandal of the week approach, that is sold to them almost straight from the corporate democratic leaderships mouth?

The result is to waste a tremendous amount of time reading about scandals that will NEVER EVER EVER EVER go anywere, unless they stop a million miles short

of the MIC or fundemental issues of money, war, and class structure.

Im not saying one can't learn some usefull things on the Huffington post and related big money glossy-left sites. You can sometimes. But as the CIA's sponsorship of Encounter magazines in the 1950s showed, the agency media people understand the need to feed a few legitimate left morsells to keep suspiciouns down, and enhance the credibility of the publication on the intended audience.

Think of how much time so called left sites have wasted on the Plame Scandal. I am beginning to strongly suspect that that whole thing may have been a Mockingbird-like diversionary media op. to occupay the left and have them follow liberal foundation wonks while the nation fell deeper asleep. This scandal, compared to all the other evil--yes I use the E-word--things Bush had done has the nutritional substance of Bubbleyum. Yet on they chewed: on thier bloggs and Huffington Posts. The CIA was made out to seem an INNOCENT VICTIM OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION! Who baked that dichotomy?

One of the leading "attackers" of Bush from the CIA over the Plame McScandal was Larry C. Johnson. Check out what Peter Lance writes concerning Johnson

in Tripple Cross:

As late as May 2002, eight months after 9/11, that same soryy was repeated by Larry C. Johnson, the former State Dept.

counterrerrorism offical( under bush 41 and clinton) infamous for his July 2001 New York Times quote minimizing the

imortance of Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda:To listen to some of the news reports a year or two ago, you would think

Bin Laden was running a top Fortune 500 multinational company," said Johnson, "people everywhere, links everywhere"

He then compounded that mistaken assessment five weeks later with a Times Op-Ed piece entitled "The Declining

Terrorist Threat," describing al Qaeda as a loose amalgm of people with a shared ideology, but a very limited direction"

Johnson's piece ran on July 10, 2001, the day the Phoenix Memo arrived (p. 384)

This Johnson is the same guy who later defended the CIA's intelligence VS. Bush in the Wilson-Wind-Bag mcScandal? Interesting guy to defend

the CIA's intelliegence, while simaltaneously changing the channel onto a much smaller question of the Plame-outing.

Oh, well it has all come to nothing.

Or was that the point?

Remember Communications theorists have been working hard since 1945-- see Christopher Simpson's excellent book, THE SCIENCE OF COERCION: COMMUNICATION RESEARCH AND PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH, 1945-1960. Yummy!

http://www.amazon.com/Science-Coercion-Com...0160&sr=1-4

An axcellent post, Nathaniel. I think you have it right.

It's "The Technique of Infamy", as a famous author once said.

I noticed soon after the 2003 Iraq invasion how the story that Iraqi WMDs didn't actually exist originated in 'progressive' establishment sources within the USA. Not from the Arab media. Not from the independent left... but from the likes of Seymour Hersh.

This quickly led to the development of an "acceptable" position that some social democratic leaders and commentators could safely adopt. The Western anti-war movement was given potential scapegoats, principally Bush and Blair. The war was was blamed on their lies. No mention of the mass media's role in grossly overselling fabricated evidence of WMDs prior to the invasion. No mention, of course, of the role of the Israel lobby. And little mention of the "intelligence agencies", except to note their role as honest brokers, who sometimes got it wrong, but whose greatest difficulty was 'politicization' of their work by politicians.

Hence the ironically-titled "Intelligence Services" (aka "Security Services" - God help us all!) came out of the saga smelling like roses.

The 2003 Iraq war was rationalized, at the time, as a war to counter Iraq's WMDs.

When no WMDs were found, there were three possible outcomes for Anglo-American spookdom:

1/ The spooks could have looked silly, because they were seen to have been wrong about Iraqi WMDs.

2/ The spooks could have looked like liars, because they had provided the seedbed of disinformation about Iraqi WMDs to the media and politicians

3/ The spooks could have looked like thwarted heroes, because they tried to get the truth out but were overridden by their political masters.

Not surprising they chose option no 3.

Interesting they had the power to get away with it.

Edited March 25, 2007 by Sid Walker