Carl Bernstein: The CIA & the Media

[Truth2Tell]

FLASHBACK:

Amazing article reprinted from the October 1977 Rolling Stone by the REAL watergate reporter Carl Bernstein about the relationship between the U.S media and the CIA. Read it and weep. Literally. And if you think this has stopped I've got a war to sell you, cheap.

THE CIA AND THE MEDIA

How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up

BY CARL BERNSTEIN

In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.

Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.

The history of the CIA’s involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception for the following principal reasons:

The use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence‑gathering employed by the CIA. Although the Agency has cut back sharply on the use of reporters since 1973 primarily as a result of pressure from the media), some journalist‑operatives are still posted abroad.

Much, much, much more here:

http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php

[islandmkl]

1. oh by the way.....

Where, pray tell, was George Daddy Bush during this period??

[bleever]

2. Bob Woodward:

Naval Intelligence.

I don't know if Carl was aware, back in the day.

[Truth2Tell]

3. Ya gotta wonder.

And Woodward has acted like he's in *someone's* pocket ever since.

[MinM]

9. Deep Throat: Shallow story hides deeper history

http://www.blackopradio.com/black303b.ram">Lisa Pease feels that Carl Bernstein's revelation was a kind of mea culpa for the naiveté he demonstrated during his Watergate reporting:

Real History Blog: The Real History of Gerald Ford, Watergate, and the CIA

Enter Bob Woodward. A former ONI operative, a staunch conservative, and a former intelligence briefer, Woodward was the perfect person for Washington Post chief and CIA-asset Ben Bradlee to assign to Watergate. Woodward would eventually report data directly from Robert Bennett of the Mullen Company (Hughes’ PR firm, E. Howard Hunt’s ostensible employer, and a CIA front), and Bennett reported back to his CIA handler that Woodward was “suitably grateful” for the information and ran the information without exposing Bennett as the source. If Mark Felt was Deep Throat, he was not Woodward’s only source.

Carl Bernstein was added to the team because Woodward was not, at that time, deemed a compelling writer. Bernstein later went on to write the single best exposé that has ever been done of the CIA’s control of the media (Rolling Stone, October, 1977). I’m guessing Bernstein figured out how he and Woodward had been manipulated, and that his article was, to some degree, an apology to us for having been so gullible during the Watergate reporting..

Lisa also theorizes in there that 'Deep Throat' was actually more than one source. Sen Robert Bennett (R-UT) included.

Larry Chin had a good take on this:

Deep Throat: Shallow story hides deeper history
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor

June 3, 2005—The "Mark Felt is Deep Throat" story is not much of a revelation, despite the ridiculous and off-target tempest in the national teapot that has ensued. Felt has been at the top of the short list for a long time, suspected by many historians.

What's not being discussed amidst the ridiculous Republican-Democrat arguments, and raging battles between new Felt cult worshippers ("he's a hero!") and Felt attackers ("he's a traitor!") are the darker historical realities that remain dangerously misunderstood.

Who was Mark Felt? Felt may have leaked on Nixon, but was he at all heroic over the course of the rest of his career?

Described as the FBI's "Fair Haired Boy," he was a J. Edgar Hoover right hand man, immensely loyal to Hoover, and was involved in all of the FBI's dirtiest COINTELPRO operations. In other words, Felt was a lieutenant to one of the great political criminals in modern history. Curt Gentry's J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and His Secrets is one book that exhaustively documents that history.

Two days after Hoover's death, Felt personally took control of the notorious Official/Confidential file (the one used by Hoover to blackmail and control his political enemies, and secure supreme status for himself), after which the file was spirited around the FBI, excised, hidden or destroyed. Needless to say, Felt did not go running to Bob Woodward or any other reporter with information that could have saved American democracy.

After Felt and fellow FBI agent Edward Miller were eventually convicted for FBI COINTELPRO break-ins, outgoing President Ronald Reagan pardoned them. (A Hoover loyalist, and pardoned by Reagan. Think about that.)

Watergate was not, as the stereotypical myth and breathless legends go, a great moment for democracy in which a corrupt president was brought down, and a great "investigation" reformed Washington. It was an inside coup d'état, and a limited hangout, that saved Nixon and his cabal from true exposure and jail time, and helped preserve—not reform—the system that made his crimes possible. Felt must be judged against this context.

Watergate gave the naïve public a false sense of security—the fallacy that "they" (Washington) were "cleaning up"—and ushered in a new era of corruption. Gerald Ford, J. Edgar Hoover's right hand man on the Warren Commission, became president. Ford pardoned Nixon, and selected Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president. The CIA learned how to do a better job covering up their activities and controlling information. America's corporate media, long infiltrated and controlled by government operatives, would be increasingly corrupted and corporatized, and made into the voices of the White House. The Washington Post, never a paragon of investigative reporting, became even worse with time. Bob Woodward became a buddy stenographer for the Bush presidents, and the author of stomach-turning George W. Bush 9/11 myths.

Peter Dale Scott in Deep Politics and the Death of JFK concisely summarized it:

"But the in-house coalition of conservatives who opposed the Nixon-Kissinger moves toward detente in 1972 was similar to the one which opposed the Kennedy-Harriman detente initiatives in 1963. It still includes James Angleton in the CIA, who in the 1960s had suspected Harriman of being a Soviet spy, and who in the 1970s "reportedly 'objectively' believed Kissinger to be a Soviet spy." Nixon, like Kennedy was having trouble with his Joint Chiefs of Staff, one of whom, Admiral Zumwalt, resigned over his differences with Kissinger. Those who believe that Nixon's betrayer 'Deep Throat' was a real official, and not a composite, advanced well-argued reasons that he must have been a senior FBI official, probably Mark Felt, John Mohr, or L. Patrick Gray.

"In all four cases, one sees the recurrence of CIA and other intelligence officials and assets, repeatedly those with more militant anti-Communist stances than the Presidents they have worked under. Another common denominator for such individuals had been an exposure to narcotics trafficking, from the China Lobby of the 1950s to the Contra support networks of the 1980s."

Felt was no more a saint than Bob Woodward is an epitome of heroic muckraking. In both cases, they are insiders with connections who have not always acted in the best interests of democracy, but who now have shining reputations built entirely on one (let's call it "interesting") episode.

Exemplified by successful and continuous Bush administration crimes and cover-up, Watergate was a valuable lesson to government criminals. The American public, meanwhile, has learned nothing.

http://www.onlinejournal.org/Commentary/060305Chin/060305chin.html

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." ~ William Colby

[MinM]

11. How CIA Became 'Praetorian Guard' to America's Fascist Right Wing

CIA Holocaust Claims Twenty Million Victims

Secrets of the CIA, Parts 1 - 7

The most extreme example of this, of course, is Fox News, best described as political porn. If the Fox outfit did not deflect attention from more insidious designs, it would be laughable, even indulge for the low-class, beer drinking' entertainment that it might bring to certain demographics. In practice, however, it might as well be a state run organization reduced to merely dramatizing officially sanctioned news.

Should you have doubts about press complicity with CIA/government lawlessness, I urge you to consider, as an example, revelations from Dan Rather about what CBS did to curry favor with the White House; or what can happen to a corporate, fully politicized, fourth estate: the Iraq war. Once called Yellow Journalism, it is now cleverly called "fair and balanced". In the worst cases, journalism become little more than a CIA 'front'.

After World War II, these psywar techniques continued. C.D. Jackson, a major figure in US psywar efforts before and after the war, was simultaneously a top executive at Time-Life. Psywar was also used with success during the 1950s by Edward Lansdale, first in the Philippines and then in South Vietnam. In Guatemala, the Dulles brothers worked with their friends at United Fruit, in particular the "father of public relations," Edward Bernays, who for years had been lobbying the press on behalf of United. When CIA puppets finally took over in 1954, only applause was heard from the media, commencing forty years of CIA-approved horrors in that unlucky country.<2> Bernays' achievement apparently impressed Allen Dulles, who immediately began using US public relations experts and front groups to promote the image of Ngo Dinh Diem as South Vietnam's savior.<3>

The combined forces of unaccountable covert operations and corporate public relations, each able to tap massive resources, are sufficient to make the concept of "democracy" obsolete. Fortunately for the rest of us, unchallenged power can lose perspective. With research and analysis -- the capacity to see and understand the world around them -- entrenched power must constantly anticipate and contain potential threats. But even as power seems more secure, this capacity can be blinded by hubris and isolation.

--Daniel Brandt, NameBase NewsLine, Journalism And The CIA

So it naturally follows that the robber barons and their fourth estate business partners should indeed benefit from the puppet they all worked so vigorously to enthrone..

http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/opedne_len_hart_080316_cia_holocaust_claims.htm

[malaise]

13. Did he suddenly drown on some lake after this? n/t

[lovuian]

4. judith Miller at the NY Times

was definitely CIA or Dark Ops

[bleever]

5. Specially embedded with the WMD hunters after we invaded.

Placed to trumpet the WMDs that were never successfully planted in Iraq?

[progressoid]

6. Adding that one to my favorites list.

[blm]

7. Why was BCCI so easy for Bill to deep-six in th the 90s? Because corpmedia MADE SURE of it.

BCCI matters and the lengthy BCCI report were the Global Fascist Agenda blueprint.

[JackBeck]

8. I've heard Malloy remark more than once

That when he worked at CNN, he was told that most of the newsroom were CIA.

[MinM]

10. Is the CIA’s “Mighty Wurlitzer” Playing Geraldo Rivera?

Is the CIA’s “Mighty Wurlitzer” Playing Geraldo Rivera? :shrug:

[MinM]

12. This is CNN

CNN Trivializes Iraq and Hits a New Low

On Wednesday, Wolf Blitzer and CNN 's "Best Political Team on Television" took their vapid approach to journalism to a new level when reporter Jeanne Moos satirized demonstrations against the war in Iraq.

Tongue and cheek reports are Moos's specialty, but the idea that CNN would sic her on a demonstration against a war that is so serious, and has claimed so many thousands of lives is further proof that journalism -- and integrity -- is all but dead on commercial television news..

CNN Is An ACTIVE Participant In Planning War With Iran!!

Why Were Government Propaganda Experts Working On News At CNN?

The Return of PSYOPS

[spanone]

14. s c r e w n