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by Alex Constantine
June 2001
from
Totse Website
recovered through
WayBackMachine Website
Who Controls the
Media?
Soulless corporations do, of course.
Corporations with grinning,
double-breasted executives, interlocking directorates, labor
squabbles and flying capital.
Newspapers should have mastheads that mirror the world:
It is beginning to dawn on a growing
number of armchair ombudsmen that the public print reports news from
a parallel universe - one that has never heard of
politically-motivated assassinations, CIA-Mafia banking thefts, mind
control, death squads or even federal agencies with secret budgets
fattened by cocaine sales - a place overrun by lone gunmen, where
the CIA and Mafia are usually on their best behavior.
In this idyllic land, the most serious infraction an official can
commit - is a the employment of a domestic servant with (shudder)
no residency status.
This unlikely land of enchantment is the creation of MOCKINGBIRD.
It was conceived in the late 1940s, the most frigid period of the
cold war, when the CIA began a systematic infiltration of the
corporate media, a process that often included direct takeover of
major news outlets.
In this period, the American intelligence services competed with
communist activists abroad to influence European labor unions.
With
or without the cooperation of local governments, Frank Wisner,
an undercover State Department official assigned to the Foreign
Service, rounded up students abroad to enter the cold war
underground of covert operations on behalf of his Office of
Policy Coordination.
Philip Graham, a graduate of the
Army Intelligence School in Harrisburg, PA, then publisher of the
Washington Post., was taken under Wisner's wing to direct the
program code-named Operation MOCKINGBIRD.
"By the early 1950s," writes former
Village Voice reporter Deborah Davis in
Katharine the Great, "Wisner 'owned' respected members of
the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications
vehicles, plus stringers, four to six hundred in all, according
to a former CIA analyst."
The network was overseen by Allen
Dulles, a templar for German and American corporations who
wanted their points of view represented in the public print. Early
MOCKINGBIRD influenced 25 newspapers and wire agencies consenting to
act as organs of CIA propaganda.
Many of these were already run by men
with reactionary views, among them,
Activists curious about the workings of
MOCKINGBIRD have since been appalled to find in FOIA documents that
agents boasting in CIA office memos of their pride in having placed
"important assets" inside every major news publication in the
country.
It was not until 1982 that the Agency openly admitted that
reporters on the CIA payroll have acted as case officers to agents
in the field.
"World War III has begun," Henry's Luce's Life declared in March,
1947. "It is in the opening skirmish stage
already."
The issue featured an excerpt of a book
by James Burnham, who called for the creation of an,
"American Empire," "world-dominating
in political power, set up at least in part through coercion
(probably including war, but certainly the threat of war) and in
which one group of people ... would hold more than its equal
share of power."
George Seldes, the famed
anti-fascist media critic, drew down on Luce in 1947, explaining
that,
"although avoiding typical Hitlerian
phrases, the same doctrine of a superior people taking over the
world and ruling it, began to appear in the press, whereas the
organs of Wall Street were much more honest in favoring a
doctrine inevitably leading to war if it brought greater
commercial markets under the American flag."
On the domestic front, an abiding
relationship was struck between the CIA and William Paley, a
wartime colonel and the founder of CBS.
A firm believer in "all
forms of propaganda" to foster loyalty to the Pentagon, Paley hired
CIA agents to work undercover at the behest of his close friend, the
busy grey eminence of the nation's media, Allen Dulles.
Paley's designated go-between in his dealings with the CIA was
Sig Mickelson, president of CBS News from 1954 to 1961.
The CIA's assimilation of old guard fascists was overseen by the
Operations Coordination Board, directed by C.D. Jackson,
formerly an executive of Time magazine and Eisenhower's Special
Assistant for Cold War Strategy.
In 1954 he was succeeded by Nelson
Rockefeller, who quit a year later, disgusted at the
administration's political infighting.
Vice President Nixon succeeded
Rockefeller as the key cold war strategist.
"Nixon," writes John Loftus, a
former attorney for the Justice Department's Office of Special
Investigations, took "a small boy's delight in the arcane tools
of the intelligence craft - the hidden microphones, the 'black'
propaganda."
Nixon especially enjoyed his visit to a
Virginia training camp to observe Nazis in the "special forces"
drilling at covert operations.
One of the fugitives recruited by the American intelligence
underground was heroin smuggler Hubert von Bleucher, the son
of A German ambassador. Hubert often bragged that that he was
trained by the Abwehr, the German military intelligence division,
while still a civilian in his twenties.
He served in a recon unit of the German
Army until forced out for medical reasons in 1944, according to his
wartime records.
He worked briefly as an assistant director for
Berlin-Film on a movie entitled One Day..., and finished out the
war flying with the Luftwaffe, but not to engage the enemy - his
mission was the smuggling of Nazi loot out of the country.
His
exploits were, in part, the subject of Sayer and Botting's Nazi
Gold, an account of the knockover of the Reichsbank at the end of
the war.
In 1948 he flew the coop to Argentina. Posing as a photographer
named Huberto von Bleucher Corell, he immediately paid court
to Eva Peron, presenting her with an invaluable Gobelin tapestry (a
selection from the wealth of artifacts confiscated by the SS from
Europe's Jews?).
Hubert then met with Martin Bormann at
the Hotel Plaza to deliver German marks worth $80 million. The loot
financed the birth of the National Socialist Party in Argentina,
among other forms of Nazi revival.
In 1951, Hubert migrated northward and took a job at the Color
Corporation of America in Hollywood. He eked out a living writing
scripts for the booming movie industry. His voice can be heard on a
film set in the Amazon, produced by Walt Disney.
Nine years later he
returned to Buenos Aires, then Dusseldorf, West Germany, and
established a firm that developed not movie scripts, but
anti-chemical warfare agents for the government.
At the Industrie Club in
Dusseldorf in 1982, von Bleucher boasted to journalists,
"I am chief shareholder of Pan
American Airways. I am the best friend of Howard Hughes.
The
Beach Hotel in Las Vegas is 45 percent financed by me. I am thus
the biggest financier ever to appear in the Arabian Nights tales
dreamed up by these people over their second bottle of brandy."
Not really.
Two the biggest financiers
to stumble from the drunken dreams of world-moving affluence were,
in their time, Moses Annenberg, publisher of The Philadelphia
Inquirer, and his son Walter , the CIA/mob-anchored publisher of the
TV Guide.
Like most American high-rollers, Annenberg lived a double
life. Moses, his father, was a scion of the Capone mob.
Both Moses and Walter were indicted in
1939 for tax evasions totaling many millions of dollars - the
biggest case in the history of the Justice Department.
Moses pled
guilty and agreed to pay the government $8 million and settle $9
million in assorted tax claims, penalties and interest debts. Moses
received a three-year sentence.
He died in Lewisburg Penitentiary.
Walter Annenbeg, the TV Guide magnate, was a lofty Republican.
On
the campaign trail in April, 1988, George Bush flew into Los Angeles
to woo Reagan's kitchen cabinet.
"This is the topping on the cake,"
Bush's regional campaign director told the Los Angeles Times.
The Bush team met at Annenberg's plush
Rancho Mirage estate at Sunnylands, California.
It was at the
Annenberg mansion that Nixon's cabinet was chosen, and the state's
social and contributor registers built over a quarter-century of
state political dominance by Ronald Reagan, whose acting career was
launched by Operation MOCKINGBIRD.
The commercialization of television, coinciding with Reagan's
recruitment by the Crusade for Freedom, a CIA front, presented the
intelligence world with unprecedented potential for sowing
propaganda and even prying in
the age of Big Brother.
George Orwell
glimpsed the possibilities when he installed omniscient video
surveillance technology in 1948, a novel rechristened
1984 for the
first edition published in the U.S. by Harcourt, Brace.
Operation
Octopus, according to federal files, was in full swing by 1948, a
surveillance program that turned any television set with tubes into
a broadcast transmitter.
Agents of Octopus could pick up audio and
visual images with the equipment as far as 25 miles away.
Hale Boggs was investigating Operation Octopus at the time of his
disappearance in the midst of the Watergate probe.
In 1952, at MCA, Actors' Guild president Ronald Reagan - a screen
idol recruited by MOCKINGBIRD's Crusade for Freedom to raise funds
for the resettlement of Nazis in the U.S., according to Loftus -
signed a secret waiver of the conflict-of-interest rule with the
mob-controlled studio, in effect granting it a labor monopoly on
early television programming.
In exchange, MCA made Reagan a part
owner.
Furthermore, historian C. Vann
Woodward, writing in the
New
York Times, in 1987, reported that Reagan had,
"fed the names of suspect people in
his organization to the FBI secretly and regularly enough to be
assigned 'an informer's code number, T-10.'
His FBI file
indicates intense collaboration with producers to 'purge' the
industry of subversives."
No one ever turned a suspicious eye on
Walter Cronkite, a former intelligence officer and in the immediate
postwar period UPI's Moscow correspondent.
Cronkite was lured to CBS
by Operation MOCKINGBIRD's Phil Graham, according to Deborah Davis.
Another television conglomerate, Cap Cities, rose like a horror-film
simian from CIA and Mafia heroin operations. Among other
organized-crime Republicans, Thomas Dewey and his neighbor Lowell
Thomas threw in to launch the infamous Resorts International, the
corporate front for Lansky's branch of the federally-sponsored mob
family and the corporate precursor to Cap Cities.
Another of the investors was James
Crosby, a Cap Cities executive who donated $100,000 to Nixon's 1968
presidential campaign. This was the year that Resorts bought into
Atlantic City casino interests. Police in New jersey attempted, with
no success, to spike the issuance of a gambling license to the
company, citing Mafia ties.
In 1954, this same circle of investors, all Catholics, founded the
broadcasting company notorious for overt propagandizing and general
spookiness.
The company's chief counsel was OSS veteran William
Casey, who clung to his shares by concealing them in a blind trust
even after he was appointed CIA director by Ronald Reagan in 1981.
"Black radio" was the phrase CIA critic David Wise coined in
The Invisible Government to describe the agency's
intertwining interests in the emergence of the transistor radio with
the entrepreneurs who took to the airwaves.
"Daily, East and West beam hundreds
of propaganda broadcasts at each other in an unrelenting babble
of competition for the minds of their listeners.
The low-price
transistor has given the hidden war a new importance," enthused
one foreign correspondent.
A Hydra of private foundations sprang up
to finance the propaganda push.
One of them, Operations and
Policy Research, Inc. (OPR), received hundreds of
thousands of dollars from the CIA through private foundations and
trusts. OPR research was the basis of a television series that aired
in New York and Washington, D.C. in 1964, Of People and Politics, a
"study" of the American political system in 21 weekly installments.
In Hollywood, the visual cortex of The Beast, the same CIA/Mafia
combination that formed Cap Cities sank its claws into the film
studios and labor unions. Johnny Rosselli was pulled out of
the Army during the war by a criminal investigation of Chicago
mobsters in the film industry.
Rosselli, a CIA asset probably
assassinated by the CIA, played sidekick to Harry Cohn, the Columbia
Pictures mogul who visited Italy's Benito Mussolini in 1933, and
upon his return to Hollywood remodeled his office after the
dictator's.
The only honest job Rosselli ever had was assistant
purchasing agent (and a secret investor) at Eagle Lion productions,
run by Bryan Foy, a former producer for 20th Century Fox.
Rosselli, Capone's representative on the
West Coast, passed a small fortune in mafia investments to Cohn.
Bugsy Seigel pooled gambling investments with Billy Wilkerson,
publisher of the Hollywood Reporter.
In the 1950s, outlays for global propaganda climbed to a full third
of the CIA's covert operations budget. Some 3, 000 salaried and
contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda
efforts.
The cost of disinforming the world cost American taxpayers
an estimated $265 million a year by 1978, a budget larger than the
combined expenditures of Reuters, UPI and the AP news syndicates.
In 1977, the Copely News Service admitted that it worked
closely with the intelligence services - in fact, 23 employees were
full-time employees of the Agency.
Most consumers of the corporate media were - and are - unaware of
the effect that the salting of public opinion has on their own
beliefs.
A network anchorman in time of national crisis is an
instrument of psychological warfare in the MOCKINGBIRD media. He is
a creature from the national security sector's chamber of horrors.
For this reason consumers of the
corporate press have reason to examine their basic beliefs about
government and life in the parallel universe of these United States.
How The Washington Post...
Censors The News
- A Letter to The Washington Post -
by Julian C. Holmes
from
Whale Website
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
cover-up 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 [for World 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 exposures to industrial carcinogens in the air,
food, water, and the workplace." (*22).
The Bush Administration cover-up 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 cover-ups...[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. taxpayers 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 problems relating 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 willful 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 Nixon and the Government
of South Vietnam to delay the Paris Peace Talks until after the
1968 U.S. presidential election (*58).
Or the pandemic cover-ups 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 shit 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 indictment was 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 Plumlee, contra resupply pilot)., San
Diego Reader, April 5, 1990.
4. Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control. New York: Atlantic
Monthly Press, 1987.
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 shit",
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.
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