Famed War Reporter Calls Pentagon/Media 'Propaganda' Program Illegal

[deminks]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003804298&&imw=Y

By Joseph L. Galloway

(May 15, 2008) -- Once upon a time, it was widely believed that one of the greatest sins the U.S. government or its temporary political masters could commit was to turn a propaganda machine loose on the American people.

Congress viewed this so seriously that every appropriations bill passed since 1951 has contained language that says no public money "shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States" without the lawmakers' prior approval.

The Bush administration has been caught violating the propaganda ban before, notably in 2005 in the case of radio host Armstrong Williams, who was paid to endorse President Bush's No Child Left Behind law.

(snip)

There's little doubt that this program violated the laws against covert propaganda operations mounted against the American public by their own government. But in this administration, there's no one left to enforce that law or any of the other laws the Bush operatives have been busy violating.

The real crime is that the scheme worked. The television network bosses swallowed the bait, the hook, the line and the sinker, and they have yet to answer for it.

[G_j]

1. no one left to enforce that law or any of the other laws n/t

[Bandit]

4. Has there been anyone to enforce the laws since Bush* first took Office?

It seems to me and I could be wrong but Bush* has run roughshod over America since Jan 20, 2001 and has never even had his hand slapped. When called to testify he either refused to do so or only did so while in the company of Cheney and not in public or on the record or under oath..Congress and the Democrats let him get away with it..No normal American could ever get away with telling authority they would not meet with them or answer their subpoenas. Bush* and his Cabal have broken Laws pretty much non stop for going on eight years now and have set the standard for future Republican rule..Democrats especially those in leadership such as Peloisi and Hoyer should be very much ashamed of themselves.

[IsItJustMe]

2. And I have a feeling that we just know the tip of the ice burg of how deep it runs.

[blm]

3. Kerry and Levin have called for hearings -

we just may find out how much more there is. After all, it was unheralded committee hearings that brought out testimony that led to discovery on CIA drugrunning operations.

[Segami]

5. The shadow players intent and plan was always to deceive and duped it's citizens into believing

controlled distortions, disinformation & lies to further promote their control-agenda of the masses through a selective shredding of citizen liberties, rights and the Constitution. In fact, its becomes nothing more than a " War on Consciouness........OURS!


" The United States Government itself has become a “front” for the underlying military-industrial-financial crime syndicate that animates it. This is not to say that there aren’t many good, well-meaning people in our government – they are simply prohibited by the very nature of the corrupt system they are in from reforming it. Our system of government is rigged in such a way so that there is no way to transform the system within the system itself.

The underlying core of our government has become rotten such that the entire operation simply feeds into and is an expression of the same underlying corruption. All of the scandals continually coming out are like the superficial skin rash of a much deeper systemic disease, like a cancer that is infecting the greater body politic. Citizens who are not aware of our government’s insidious intrusions into our lives are unwittingly feeding the corruption they are looking away from in their very act of looking away.

The “powers” that have taken over our government have become concentrated and centralized in just a few elite hands, proving how easy it is for the few to control the many. They almost control all the levers of power: financial, political and judicial. In this war on consciousness, these powers-that-be are using the most advanced mind-control technology that our world has ever known to make its takeover complete. The essence of mind-control is information control, which is one thing our overly secretive current administration is very good at.

In addition to information, our government is adept at putting out dis-information, whose intention is to create distractions and confusion so as to cover its tracks and hide its true intentions. It will purposely leak stories that are not true simply to cover-up what it is really doing. By putting out misleading information, the government hides behind its self-generated smokescreen like an octopus squirting ink.

In a diabolical ploy, the administration will even feed stories to a compliant press, and then reference these stories as justification for enacting its pre-planned agenda. One glaring example is when the administration fed Judith Miller of the New York Times stories about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Once this propaganda appeared on the front page of the Times, the administration was only too happy to use it as evidence for why we should go to war.........

cont'


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17865.htm

[HCE SuiGeneris]

6. Recommended

[Torn_Scorned_Ignored]

7. Rumsfeld's Roadmap to Propaganda

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB177/index.htm

Washington, D.C., January 26, 2006 - A secret Pentagon "roadmap" on war propaganda, personally approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for "boundaries" between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but provides for no such limits and claims that as long as the American public is not "targeted," any leakage of PSYOP to the American public does not matter.

Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive at George Washington University and posted on the Web today, the 74-page "Information Operations Roadmap" admits that "information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa," but argues that "the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of USG intent rather than information dissemination practices."

The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, amended in 1972 and 1998, prohibits the U.S. government from propagandizing the American public with information and psychological operations directed at foreign audiences; and several presidential directives, including Reagan's NSD-77 in 1983, Clinton's PDD-68 in 1999, and Bush's NSPD-16 in July 2002 (the latter two still classified), have set up specific structures to carry out public diplomacy and information operations. These and other documents relating to U.S. PSYOP programs were posted today as part of a new Archive Electronic Breifing Book.