The Covert News Network
Greg Bishop
....
In a 1977 Rolling Stone article, Watergate
muckraker Carl Bernstein uncovered a list of over 400 reporters
and a coterie of publishers and media moguls who had basically
been rubber-stamping CIA propaganda since the 1950s. The group
included Life and Time magazines’ Henry Luce (the same Life magazine
that published out-of-sequence stills from the Zapruder film),
CBS's William Paley, and the aforementioned Arthur Sulzberger,
as well as James Copley of Copley News Service, which owned and
supplied reportage to a coven of newspapers like the San Diego
Union and five major dailies in the Chicago metropolitan area.
Bernstein said "at least 23" reporters and editors with Copley
were certifiably on the CIA's payroll.
Bernstein interviewed one anonymous Agency
official who told him: "One journalist is worth 20 agents." At
least one instance of intentional "rubber-stamping" at the New
York Times was uncovered by Bernstein: Sulzberger's nephew, C.L.
Sulzberger, apparently put his byline on an Agency briefing document
and submitted it as one of his daily columns. In The CIA And The
Cult Of Intelligence, authors Victor Marchetti and John Marks
described the kowtowing of syndicated columnist Charles Bartlett.
In 1970, in the midst of the CIA's campaign to undermine the election
of Chilean leftist Carlos Allende, Bartlett received an internal
memo from the International Telephone & Telegraph corporation
(ITT) which described efforts "to move in the name of President
Nixon...[with] maximum authority to do all possible...to keep
Allende from taking power." The American military had pledged
its "material and financial assistance," and ITT, for its part,
had also promised to forward the funds needed to carry out the
operation, which would protect ITT's interests in the Chile. Bartlett,
instead of breaking the story and launching an investigation,
later admitted to basing his entire column of September 28, 1970,
on the ITT memo, "to the point of paraphrase." He apparently never
checked out the information with any other independent source
before blindly shoveling a heap of bullshit onto his readers.
The CIA debriefed foreign news correspondents
as they returned, gathering information on diverse ephemera such
as railroad and airport traffic, the number of smokestacks on
factories, and the personalities of dignitaries and heads of state.
In a silent war, every little bit counts. After Bernstein's article
was published, the CIA under its director, George Herbert Walker
Bush, moved quickly to counter the accusations of the congressionally-appointed
Church Committee, stonewalling investigators while promising not
to jack around with the media in the future. Bush also later said,
"Read my lips: No new taxes."
Once in a while, the hands of other intelligence
organizations are caught up Miss Liberty's dress, too. When George
Bush became president, he pushed the cover-up program into high
gear by drafting a set of press-relations rules for the Department
of Defense and its contractor-bitches. The National Industrial
Security Program Operating Manual contained a supplement especially
designed to handle nosy questions about "black" projects: operations
so secret that they don't even appear on any official government
budgets. The document, stamped "DRAFT," is dated May 29, 1992,
and states:
Cover stories may be established for unacknowledged programs
in order to protect the integrity of the program from individuals
who do not have a need to know. Cover stories must be believable
and cannot reveal any information regarding the true nature of
the contract. Cover stories for Special Access Programs must have
the approval of the PSO (Program Security Officer) prior to dissemination.
In an article entitled "Lying by the Book,"
reporter John Horgan quotes Pentagon spokesperson Sue Hansen's
reply to his question about this document: "Whoever sent it to
you was unauthorized," and the document was an unapproved draft
version that did not "represent the policy of the federal government."
Horgan was moved to ask if this reply itself represented a cover
story.
During the Kosovo conflict, the Cable News
Network (CNN) hired five staffers it referred to as "interns."
These interns were working for no pay to learn the intricacies
of the daily operations of CNN, presumably to be put to use in
their later career paths. The problem is that they had already
settled into another career: they were employees of US Army Intelligence.
Liberal bastion radio network National Public Radio (NPR) also
admitted to hiring interns from Army Intel during the same time
period.
this article copyright 2001 Greg Bishop
You Are Being Lied To copyright 2001
The Disinformation Company, Ltd.
