Flashback: Cronkite Warned In Lead-Up To Iraq War — ‘We Are Going To Be In Such A Fix’
Flashback: Cronkite Warned In Lead-Up To Iraq War — ‘We Are Going To Be In Such A Fix’
Americans of all ages and the journalist community are remembering the life and career of Walter Cronkite, famously revered as “the most trusted man in America.”
Salon’s Glenn Greenwald notes that the media is largely glossing over Cronkite’s “most celebrated and significant moment” — “when he stood up and announced that Americans shouldn’t trust the statements being made about the war by the U.S. Government and military, and that the specific claims they were making were almost certainly false.” Indeed, few journalists have noted Cronkite’s criticism of the Iraq war just as the invasion took place in March 2003:
At a Drew University forum, Cronkite said he feared the war would not go smoothly, ripped the “arrogance” of Bush and his administration and wondered whether the new U.S. doctrine of “pre-emptive war” might lead to unintended, dire consequences.
“Every little country in the world that has a border conflict with another little country … they now have a great example from the United States,” Cronkite, 86, said in response to a question from Drew’s president, former Gov. Thomas Kean. [...]
While many are confident the United States would easily oust Saddam Hussein, Cronkite said he isn’t so sure. “The military is always more confident than circumstances show they should be,” he said.
Cronkite speculated that the refusal of many traditional allies, such as France, to join the war effort signaled something deeper, and more ominous, than a mere foreign policy disagreement.
“The arrogance of our spokespeople, even the president himself, has been exceptional, and it seems to me they have taken great umbrage at that,” Cronkite said. “We have told them what they must do. It is a pretty dark doctrine.”
Cronkite chided Congress for not looking closely enough at the war and attempting to ascertain a viable estimate of its eventual cost, particularly in light of Bush’s commitment to tax cuts.
“We are going to be in such a fix when this war is over, or before this war is over … our grandchildren’s grandchildren are going to be paying for this war,” Cronkite said.
“I look at our future as, I’m sorry, being very, very dark. Let’s see our cards as we rise to meet the difficulties that lie ahead,” he added, in a play on Bush’s dismissive remarks about France.
But Cronkite, who spent many days and nights on battlefields and in campgrounds with U.S. forces, also spoke of supporting the troops.
“The time has come to put all of our, perhaps distaste, aside, and give our full support to the troops involved. That is the duty we owe our soldiers who had no role in deciding this course of action,” Cronkite said.
“Walter was always more than just an anchor,” President Obama said in a statement released Friday night. “He was someone we could trust to guide us through the most important issues of the day; a voice of certainty in an uncertain world. He was family. He invited us to believe in him, and he never let us down.”
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog Roll
We’ve gone from Walter Cronkite to FoxNews.
Sad…
July 19th, 2009 at 1:23 pmWow. I never knew he’d said this — and he was more than 100% right.
The sad thing is that if he’d still been a newsman when he said this, he’d have been smeared as anti-American by the right and then fired.
July 19th, 2009 at 1:28 pm“I look at our future as, I’m sorry, being very, very dark. Let’s see our cards as we rise to meet the difficulties that lie ahead,” he added, in a play on Bush’s dismissive remarks about France.
With these words he was rather pessimistic of our countrys future. I’m glad he was able to see Obama elected and hope it created a little peace for him before he passed.
July 19th, 2009 at 1:28 pmIt is certainly unfortunate that “Uncle” Walter’s view was not more widely publicized at the time.
That points up a need for the White House and Congress to continually reevaluate our current and projected commitments and to attend to both the reasoned and not-so-reasoned criticisms of our allies and opponents. Stomping our allies toes when they don’t agree seems to have not worked so well, and if you don’t pay some attention to what your enemy is saying and thinking, you don’t know your enemy.
July 19th, 2009 at 1:28 pmA person of Cronkite’s intellect and thoughtfulness would not make it on today’s “news” channels.
A pretty non-thinking robot with good teeth who can read right-wing teleprompted crap is the major requirement these days for “television journalism.”
July 19th, 2009 at 1:30 pmIndeed, few journalists have noted Cronkite’s criticism of the Iraq war in October 2002, months before the invasion took place
– - Edward R. Murrow finally has a spinning partner.
July 19th, 2009 at 1:33 pmWatching many of this country’s missteps for the last 50 years, many of them reported and commented on by this man, it is a sad week indeed. He knew war and its’ true cost. He understood the i.o.u.’s created by tax cuts and the “false populism” of Republicans always breaks the backs of the middle class. He told us and we didn’t heed the message of his experience and wisdom. Our leaders can be charlatans and crooks, even worse, and in our collective future we will have less of the things wich make life worth living because of it. So long Walter. Happy trails and Vaya con Dios.
July 19th, 2009 at 1:45 pm“A pretty non-thinking robot with good teeth…”
I think that the only thing that the media is serious about is investing in Crest White-Strips.
July 19th, 2009 at 1:46 pmAnd with regard to the Update: Analysis? Background? Why the media would miss out on the three week 24/7 coverage of “Michael Jackson is still dead” and similar very important events; can’t have that.
July 19th, 2009 at 1:55 pmI miss Walter Cronkite. I remember when I was a kid that the CBS Evening News was the ONLY network news we ever watched in my house. It is so sad to see the depths to which our news media has fallen. Into a very deep and dark abyss.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:01 pm“We are going to be in such a fix when this war is over, or before this war is over … our grandchildren’s grandchildren are going to be paying for this war,” Cronkite said.
This speach should have been broadcasted nationwide to all teabaggers and Bushies! R.I.P. Mr. Cronkite – the last of the real journalists.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:05 pmCronkite was not only a true journalist, but also the conscience of a nation. I mourn his passing. Rest in peace, Mr. Cronkite.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:07 pmI am aghast at the hate that conservative ideologues are slinging at Cronkite’s memory on Lucianne Goldberg’s atrocious web site.
And to think that Bill O’Reilly boasts about being a journalist and having an expensive journalism degree! OH PLEASE!
July 19th, 2009 at 2:11 pmDr Matt,
Such filth. And they claim to be Christians…
July 19th, 2009 at 2:17 pmHe was sharp and very active until the end. I enjoyed reading his letters during the Bush years—they were truly the voice of reason.
Embedded “journalism” is an enabler of war—the predator’s way out of the effects of the likes of Cronkite and the daily reporting on the Viet Nam war. I would surely love to see broadcast journalism step up to the plate and defend their first amendment right to be the fourth estate and cover military action as objectively as possible. They fail to do this at their own peril.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:19 pmPennsylvanianne and Dr. Hussien Matt say,
Yeah I just looked at those. Feel like I need a shower to get the mud and shit off of me. What a bunch of self-hating people.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:22 pmJebus! One of the freeper comments: “He is personally responsible for the death by drowning of at least 1/2 million Vietnamese people.” WTF?
July 19th, 2009 at 2:22 pmMatt @ #13: I just feel dirty after seeing that.
How do you even begin to respond to ignorance so profound?
July 19th, 2009 at 2:30 pmAnd how about this one:
I regret that I did not write to him and tell him how MUCH I resent his LYING when reporting on the Vietnam War. He impacted my thinking as a very young teenager and I regret that we did not have Fox News then to balance out the SHIT that he said….I NEVER ONCE KNEW that we won EVERY SINGLE BATTLE THERE. I only knew about failure and body bags.
“I NOW know that WE the people CAUSED the deaths of millions in South Vietnam and Cambodia because of the FRIGGIN LIBERAL PRESS LYING to US about the WAR.
We could have won the war and brought FREEDOM to a wonderful people.”
11 posted on Friday, July 17, 2009 8:18:03 PM by Republic (Uhbama has sleezed and schmoozed his way through life-he is a silly little boy with inmmature dreams)
The part that I italicized seems to be part of this “Republic” freeper’s online persona. Nice. :(
Oh, and they’re advertising a Teabaggers’ convention at the Sheraton in Arlington, VA, in September. Now they’ve got a big smiley-face thing up saying “IMAGINE no liberals” – yeesh!
July 19th, 2009 at 2:31 pmOops, Moderate Squad, ya beat me to it!
July 19th, 2009 at 2:32 pmNo biggie Jane. Kinda hard not to notice something so vile, isn’t it?
July 19th, 2009 at 2:33 pmI was reading an article about why people vote for Republicans and was struck by this paragraph. It certainly seems to fit.
http://gawker.com/5052329/scientists-explain-why-people-vote-for-republicans
July 19th, 2009 at 2:34 pmBetween Matt and Pete’s links, I just feel really depressed right now. I used to think the best defense against lies was the truth …
July 19th, 2009 at 2:39 pmThe Moderate Squad says:
Between Matt and Pete’s links, I just feel really depressed right now. I used to think the best defense against lies was the truth …
There’s still hope, Mod, and the truth is still the best weapon. We may not be able to change the minds of the true zealots but we can hold a mirror in front of their faces.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:44 pmWith his comment, was Cronkite “with us” or “with the terrorists?” If we really do have a “liberal media” why are so many people needlessly dead in Iraq?
July 19th, 2009 at 2:48 pmthank you, faiz, for posting this…
July 19th, 2009 at 2:58 pmIn my opinion there seems to be a consorted effort by the republicans and the right wing media to distract us or make us forget about the Iraq war.
They conveniently overlook the fact that this costly, poorly planned, unnecessary war has had a direct effect on our economy with it’s ever growing price tag and our national and foreign debt.
It seems to me the goal here is to brush over reality of the Bush years as quickly as possible, sweep the many failures under the proverbial rug.
Why? Because I truly believe that with the economy in such awful shape, unemployment, the bailouts, all of these seemingly insurmountable problems facing Obama and the democratic majority, the republicans are relying on the American public to forget about the Bush years and the republican majority because with their presidential hopefuls dropping like flies, this will pave the way for Jeb Bush to continue the legacy of the Bush Crime family.
Some may laugh and think I’m crazy to think Americans would ever vote in another Bush. But those that do seem to forget the power of the right wing propaganda machine. They have three years to build up Jeb Bush the presidential candidate and we all know there are lots of STUPID right wing voters who will believe every word they hear.
July 19th, 2009 at 3:10 pmjeezuz… no way was i gonna click on a freeper link – and you went and brought them here. wtf???!
i don’t want to read that crap, or i’d click on the link…
now the Cronkite thread it polluted………
July 19th, 2009 at 3:10 pmNow that Walter Cronkite is dead the only thing remaing to do for FOX news and the MSM is to set their calendars ahead to 1984 and report on pig iron surplus.
July 19th, 2009 at 3:12 pmAbove the Clouds says:
With his comment, was Cronkite “with us” or “with the terrorists?” If we really do have a “liberal media” why are so many people needlessly dead in Iraq?
““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““
Because money trumps peace? Because war is a racket? Because God told our decider in chief to invade Iraq? Because Halliburton and KBR needed more business? Because spreading democracy means killing innocent people?
You got me…I don’t have an answer.
July 19th, 2009 at 3:12 pmThe unelected Washington consensus thinks itself an exceptional empire…
July 19th, 2009 at 3:31 pmSmart man. No room on the fascist websites for a man who spent generations tearing away the lies and laying out the facts.
July 19th, 2009 at 3:35 pmGoing into national debt (in other words making our children pay the bill) for a worthy cause, such as building infrastructure, vertical farms, green energy, electric cars, etc. is one thing…
But going into national debt to fund a war that served no purpose whatsoever but to line the already bulging pockets of the rich in this country is absolutely unforgivable.
With Bastille Day just celebrated last week in France, I wish the American public had the courage of the French Revolutionaries to stand up to these greedy pigs and say “Not this time, and not ever again.”
July 19th, 2009 at 3:37 pmWith all the praise to Cronkite it seems no one really listen to him during the Bush/Cheney Crime Wave. Now oh he was so right and as we see other anchor stations persons fellowed in step to the Bush Administrations orders. Now no one can be trusted with giving fair and balanced news to the public. Fox News is a Comedy Show and other stations have Executives on the GOP pay roll to continue the spread the Republicans lies. David Gregory is such a paid KKK suck up and it shows. Katie of CBS is more interested in her boy toy then her job. Charlie Gibson is on both sides of the fence with one side the KKK and the other the public. But he makes it’s clear he hates Barack Obama. Brian Williams is alone fair/balanced reporter who is doing his best to not get caught in the middle of the GOP/Dem War. Cronkite would have been fired if he gave the honest news today. Look even the Washington Post is firing honest Journalist for the KKK members.
July 19th, 2009 at 3:40 pmWether you agreed with Walter Cronkite or not im sure we all have some kind of memory of him. He left CBS news in 1981 i was still in high school at the time but i know my father watched him every weekday. If you are on this blog im willing to bet that you are into politics and current affairs. So we probably all have a favorite news team that we still remember growing up. I grew up in Port Jeff Station LI,NY. I remember Roger grimsby and Bill Beutel on channel 7. Anyone else out here remember them?
July 19th, 2009 at 3:41 pmCBS is doing a day long tribute to Walter Cronkite…they dedicated the Sunday morning show to him…they are going to run an hour long tribute to him tonight at 7 p.m. DST in place of the 60 Minutes time slot.
Everyone at the network gets worked up and talks glowingly of Mr Cronkite; as well they should.
However, here’s the challenge to CBS News. If you, CBS News, have so much respect for Mr Cronkite then why don’t you just show some simple respect to the American people and Walter too by telling the truth and just pretending to be a bona-fide news organization again. Just make an effort in Walters name for gawds sake!!
Just do it in honor of Walter Cronkite. If you actually care about his legacy that is.
Otherwise it’s just sh|t loads of bullsh|t from just another bullsh|t network propaganda channel that used to count for something in this country.
July 19th, 2009 at 3:45 pmI did not and will not go on the hate site’s to read what ignorant people have to say about Walter Cronkite…I’ve lived it and hung on his every broadcast during the 60’s to the 80’s….A good man, reporting with truth to us all, he was a national treasure….
Skipping over the evil reports from the other site’s, others can read them, I don’t have the heart or stamina these day’s…
Didn’t think I would live this long, if I make it to 2012 going to throw my support to Kucinich or the greens…..President Obama is turning out as I suspected, in trying to please every one, mostly on the reich, he is pleasing only the big bank’s, war builders and reich winger’s..Nothing of substance is changing, just more word’s..Blessings
July 19th, 2009 at 3:47 pmdixie,
Have you seen any reference to this particular story in their tribute?
July 19th, 2009 at 3:50 pmCronkite was right. And up to this day the lying war criminal idiot roams free!
July 19th, 2009 at 3:51 pmI remember the idiot saying how he would press on with this war no matter what, even if he lost the support of his wife Laura or his dog Barney. What an idiot! 8 years lost to his failed leadership, and a long costly failed war.
Thanks Mr. Burns for putting into simple words something that so many people are unable to comprehend.
July 19th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Divided We Fall, don’t worry, Jeb Bush will never be president. His daughter is a convicted meth addict. There ain’t enough spin in entire GOP to make that one fly.
July 19th, 2009 at 4:30 pm#40 – Zooey,
I have not.
I’m not surprised.
I’m sad for the death of truth.
July 19th, 2009 at 4:30 pmCrokite was honest, insightful, did his research, never lied. He was so respected. Now we have Fox – lies, dishonesty, screaming, whining, shrieking, swearing, “cut his mike!!”, propaganda, hate, racism, homophobia, woman-hating, immigrant-hating, smears, distortions,…. how far we have plummeted in the journalistic world. Bless you, Cronkite. You told the truth and gave us the news. So sad we have come so far from your integrity.
July 19th, 2009 at 4:47 pmNobody is mentioning Iraq anymore. It almost seems like a dsitant memory doesn’t it? The worst decision in more than a decade, and it is on page 20 something in major newspapers. Even Cronkite’s criticism is no where to found. Oh, MSM will talk about the Moon Landing and Vietnam, but his critism of Bush and the war. I guess MSM thinks Americans will think it’s a downer. After all, isn’t there a celeb who is making a fool of themself?
July 19th, 2009 at 4:55 pmsscncturn64 says: “I remember Roger grimsby and Bill Beutel on channel 7. Anyone else out here remember them”
Of course…Wayne and I grew up in Brewster, NY, you’re a couple-three years younger than Wayne. Did you notice how, during Beutel’s later years on the air, his nose just got redder and redder, and he got more and more incoherent? We suspected that he was drunk on the air more than once! Sad.
July 19th, 2009 at 5:00 pmMaybe Mr. Cronkite’s ghost will *haunt* Billo the Clown or Boss Hogg until they run screaming into the night…
*sigh*
I wish. RIP, sir.
July 19th, 2009 at 5:04 pmWitch1, don’t give up. We haven’t sold out.
July 19th, 2009 at 5:05 pm#47 Jane E. Schneider,
Roger Grimsby seemed to be, near the end of his career, a lush also IMHO…just saying…
July 19th, 2009 at 5:07 pmI grew up as a kid sitting beside my dad on the couch watching Cronkite. I didn’t understand most of what they were reporting but I liked it.
July 19th, 2009 at 5:10 pmIt never ceases to amaze me that there are still people that actually believe that the Iraq war was designed to be quick and then sovereignty would just be restored after 2-4 years of reconstruction. That it was all for altruistic reasons, but it just went badly.
Perpetual occupation with a puppet government was the plan. The only place the plan really went south was when Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani made it very clear to the US, that the elections would be actual ‘open’ elections (so to speak) and not the controlled show elections that the US really wanted. But the government is still mostly powerless without the US military presence, so the US kinda gets what it wants there too.
Iraq (and Iran) are about the oil fields. Afghanistan is about pipelines. Both are about keeping the dollar as the world reserve currency.
O well, whatcha gonna do?
Cronkite was aight. He was good on a lot of issues. He was a tad misguided in his belief in the need for a single global government.
July 19th, 2009 at 5:10 pmFor all the young people here — we really did have newsmen in the past.
July 19th, 2009 at 5:42 pmNot only print journalists, but even the news anchors actually reported news with facts to support them.
News was provided by television and radio as a public service, for the benefit of the American people.
Cronkite was the last of that breed — I doubt we will see anything like that era again.
I’d never seen so much devious excitement right before the troops crossed the line of departure in March 2003. The networks and the administration whose filthy cretins cheered and maneuvered out of service in Vietnam just wanted their generational war story and monstrous piñata for the special interests. Those who knew better were violently pushed aside simply because they didn’t have power.
Just as with any good republican economic policy, their power bulge went from boom-to-bust in record time, yet the damage wrought keeps their legacy burning and the right minds somewhat hopelessly entrenched by the timetables of the public at large, ignorant of Bush only until they became personally affected by his policies.
July 19th, 2009 at 5:49 pmThat was back when the rules and the FCC required programming as a public service, as a right to hold the publically-owned broadcast license.
Once the Equal Protection clause was abolished the reich-wing money took over everything. The licenses were in the hands of the few and not the people anymore. Since then we have the MSM, corporate, facist, war-machine, so-called media, phucking this country over every day…
day after day!
July 19th, 2009 at 5:55 pmCronkite is the gold standard but let’s not compare him to cable “news”. The networks are a great deal better than cable and Jim Lehrer’s team at PBS is still pretty good. There are still a few who keep their own politics out of the news but it’s too bad the field has become so diluted.
July 19th, 2009 at 6:11 pmby the timetables of the public at large, ignorant of Bush only until they became personally affected by his policies.
That’s something I will never forget or forgive.
July 19th, 2009 at 6:17 pmThis is headline news in Australia as well. They keep replaying LBJ saying ” if I’ve lost Cronkite, I”ve lost middle
July 19th, 2009 at 6:19 pmAmerica”. He was right about that.
Jane do you or Wayne remember Jimmy Breslin? He wrote for the NY Daily news. The son of sam wrote to him when he was commiting his murders. There were alot of great reporters out there and with cronkites passing its bringing back memorys.
July 19th, 2009 at 6:23 pmThe passing of Walter Cronkite really drives home how badly the performance of media and what passes for political discourse within the media has deteriorated over the last 30 years. It goes w/out saying that Cronkite always sought to provide “truth” in the practice of journalism and was willing to do the physical and intellectual “leg work” required of such a task. Just as important, however, Cronkite, as a journalist, did not question the personal motives of policymakers. He may have offered opinion regarding policy but he did so rarely and in a manner that did not demonize the policymaker. We will continue to remain a country divided and susceptible to media demagogues so long as the politics of personal destruction carries the day.
July 19th, 2009 at 6:31 pmThis comment has been voted down. Click to read.
There were voices speaking out against the war in Iraq. Phil Donahue, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and others… an actual dialog never happened on the news because the corporate media didn’t allow it.
July 19th, 2009 at 6:50 pmHundreds of Thousands of ordinary people marched in the Streets, in the run up to the Iraq War.
To say that their concerns turned out to be well founded ,is the understatement of the Decade.
They got their information from somewhere…the information was out there….in spite of the concerted propaganda effort of the Bush Administration, and their enablers in the News Media.
July 19th, 2009 at 7:03 pm…..”and that’s the way it is”.
July 19th, 2009 at 7:27 pmBeing the tenth person to voted down is an unparalleled kick in the butt. Looks great around here. Glad to see it.
July 19th, 2009 at 7:42 pmWalter Cronkite was a class act.
He came from and age when honesty, frankness and fairness were part of the American psychology.
I miss the days when the news was the news and commentary, even the opposition’s was intelligently articulated.
I am just thinking of “DeMint and Liddy” and I think Cronkite may be right, we are in for some dark days ahead of us.
We are saying goodbye to the last of a golden age.
July 19th, 2009 at 7:50 pmWe can call them the excetional generation.
Heck, wiley, Being any number is an honor when it comes to cleaning up the troll scat. Although it is interesting to see the Reichwniners citing “too opinionated” as a criticism of Cronkite. I suspect most of the negative remarks are coming from those too young to have watched him and anyone who did will realize what an utterly asinine charge that is. One could watch his entire career and never even guess who he voted for.
July 19th, 2009 at 7:56 pmIf Cronkite was an anchorman for CBS now, Fox would be attacking him as part of the liberal media. The people who watch Fox News would not know good journalism even if it hit them over the head. In the late 70’s and early 80’s, the news divisions of the major networks were revamped and news became part of the network entertainment. The old time new journalists and commentators died off and now we have GMA, Today, Fox, etc. The people who deliver the news are readers who use a teleprompter. There is no substantive news analysis that is delivered by NBC, CBS and ABC. They have ceded the news commentary to Fox without a fight.
July 19th, 2009 at 8:15 pmSpeaking of Faux News, Today a guest named Ralph Peter suggested that the Taliban ’save us the headache’ and execute Bowe Bergdahl because it ‘looks like he deserted his unit’. Although anchor Julie Banderas looked shocked, she said nothing. How do you guys think Cronkite would respond to that?
July 19th, 2009 at 8:23 pmI was at that lecture six years ago, and Cronkite’s words haunted me this weekend as I learned of his death and thought of his life.
July 19th, 2009 at 8:24 pmThe MSM is accused by the fascist wingnuts of being liberal. Unfortunately, it’s Rovian oppo-spin because the media is so corporate controlled, it’s pointless to watch it.
Blogs have begun to spring up all over the internet doing the hard news that has been abandoned by the right wing fascist media. I cannot trust most of the cable news programs, and the networks are not much better.
Real journalism is now back in the hands of the people, and I doubt newspapers or television will ever take it back.
July 19th, 2009 at 8:28 pmP.D. says:
Speaking of Faux News, Today a guest named Ralph Peter suggested that the Taliban ’save us the headache’ and execute Bowe Bergdahl because it ‘looks like he deserted his unit’. Although anchor Julie Banderas looked shocked, she said nothing. How do you guys think Cronkite would respond to that?
July 19th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Holy shit! Who needs the Taliban, when we have sick f ucks like this?
July 19th, 2009 at 8:35 pmRalph Peter…I think your going to have a big headache.
July 19th, 2009 at 8:40 pmThat’s what totalitarian ideals always lead to, Zooey. They can’t function without enemies so they create them or turn into them. At this point the Reichwhiners don’t even care if we are afraid of them. As long as people are scared, whether there’s a valid reason or not, they make bad decisions. And bad decisions are the GOoPers only hope.
July 19th, 2009 at 8:42 pmsscncturn64 says:
Yeah, I remember Breslin, we always had the Daily News and the New York Times around. You’re right about the memories – then again, what NYer can forget Son of Sam and that heat wave?
July 19th, 2009 at 8:44 pmpete,
PD’s comment made me think of this for the wingnuts: Support the Troops, unless they step out of line for any reason. Then we will create a feeding frenzy around them.
They readily believe the fiction around Jessica Lynch, and then she is trashed for revealing the truth. Pat Tillman’s death was revealed as friendly fire (murder), and his family is vilified. Now they’ve decided that Bowe Bergdahl is a deserter — even though we can’t possibly know what happened, and they would love to see the Taliban execute him. I hope his parents aren’t Fox viewers.
July 19th, 2009 at 8:50 pmRalph Peter a proud member of the 101st chairborne i’m sure.
July 19th, 2009 at 8:52 pmWho the hell is Ralph Peter and where the hell does he get off?
July 19th, 2009 at 8:55 pmJane E. Schneider says:
Who the hell is Ralph Peter and where the hell does he get off?
July 19th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Hee hee.
July 19th, 2009 at 8:56 pmZooey@72, I’m at the point where nothing Faux News does shocks me anymore. With their right-wing hosts like O’lielly and Beck, you would think they couldn’t sink any lower, and low and behold they never disappoint.
July 19th, 2009 at 9:01 pmPD, I wonder how Faux does it’s hiring.
Only total f ucktards and blonds need apply?
July 19th, 2009 at 9:04 pmFor several days, posters here have been griping that TP hadn’t put up a thread regarding Walter. I thought the way they did it was topic appropriate. Kudos TP!
July 19th, 2009 at 9:04 pmIt’s hard to say what will trigger the frenzy anymore, Zooey. Like the article I linked earlier said:
They have grown so desperately afraid of losing power that they will condemn the testimony of their own senses, no slightest glimmer of reality can penetrate their delusions. And they’ve never given a rat’s rump about anyone but themselves and perhaps a small group of fellow fanatics.
“The troops” has never been more than a slogan to shout for these psychopaths. And the more time passes the more convinced I am that what they now call conservatism is a symptom of mental illness or deficiency. Here’s the link to the article I referenced and the second is one of the external links. Interesting if somewhat depressing stuff.
http://gawker.com/5052329/scientists-explain-why-people-vote-for-republicans
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/09/backfire-effect
July 19th, 2009 at 9:09 pmLevi the Dungbeetle says:
For several days, posters here have been griping that TP hadn’t put up a thread regarding Walter. I thought the way they did it was topic appropriate. Kudos TP!
July 19th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
I absolutely agree, Levi.
I should have said thank you sooner, since I was one of the gripers. *blush*
July 19th, 2009 at 9:11 pmFOX hires anyone that is willing to donate money and time to the C-Street family. You know how the Republican family operates.
When the family takes care of you, you have to take care of the family, no matter what.
July 19th, 2009 at 9:12 pmZooey says:
PD, I wonder how Faux does it’s hiring.
They pre-screen with the Hooters application and then use the same canned interview supplied to Monica Goodling.
As long as they are shiny, don’t spit when they talk (although spitting while they yell is encouraged), and love Jebus more than life itself? They’re in.
July 19th, 2009 at 9:12 pmZooey@81, LOL! As a blonde I wonder if i should take offense. But no. As a SMART blonde I take in stride. When do you think they will hire Elizabeth Hasslebck? That girl is as dumb as a bag of hammers!
July 19th, 2009 at 9:19 pmI’m still a bit torn. Walter Cronkite certainly deserves our consideration but it’s interesting to see how various news blogs are dealing with his death and legacy. It’s especially odd to see how people discuss him in political terms when he was the best of the bunch at remaining apolitical.
That’s why I laugh at the trolls and creeps calling him a liberal or opinionated or any of the other fabricated charges they’ve been programmed with. My guess is that most of them are too young to have watched him and are just jumping on Rush’s lead to demonize anyone ever involved with the “librul media”.
July 19th, 2009 at 9:21 pmP.D. says:
Zooey@81, LOL! As a blonde I wonder if i should take offense. But no. As a SMART blonde I take in stride. When do you think they will hire Elizabeth Hasslebck? That girl is as dumb as a bag of hammers!
July 19th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
No offense meant, PD! Maybe I should have said lip-glossed fluffers. ;)
Elizabeth Hasselbeck needs to get her dumb ass poolside ASAP, ans stop bothering the rest of us.
July 19th, 2009 at 9:28 pmThe advent of the internet replacing the mainstream media as a primary news source means the future Walter Cronkites will be guys like Markos Moulitas or even maybe our own Faiz.
I think I just heard myself sucking up. I will stop now before I make myself sick.
July 19th, 2009 at 9:28 pmP.D. says:
——————————————————————————–
Speaking of Faux News, Today a guest named Ralph Peter suggested that the Taliban ’save us the headache’ and execute Bowe Bergdahl because it ‘looks like he deserted his unit’. Although anchor Julie Banderas looked shocked, she said nothing. How do you guys think Cronkite would respond to that.
{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{
P.D.
July 19th, 2009 at 9:36 pmI think Cronkite would be shocked. I know for sure I am!
It’s true the Internet gives more honest, conscientious people a voice, but it’s also a forum for misinformation the likes of which the world has not heretofore seen. If you don’t like what you’re reading/hearing/seeing, just surf on until you find someone who agrees with your preconceptions. I love the Internet, but it’s a sad truth that not everyone puts as much effort into finding credible info as they should…
July 19th, 2009 at 9:54 pmflight@91, I’m amazed that Ralph Peters Faux News comments haven’t made mainstream media. I googled it, and only Dailykos has a blurb. It made You-tube though. Thank God for small favors!
July 19th, 2009 at 10:04 pmPD, do you have a link to the Youtube video?
July 19th, 2009 at 10:33 pmI found it, PD. Thanks for the heads-up.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:36 pmZooey@95, This is just another example how the Repugs brain-washed the American people that they care more about the troops. The fact is, Bush and his cronies used our military like tissues, and when things went downhill? They blamed the troops. Remember the infamous remark Rumsfeld made? “Hey you go with the military you have, not the military you wish you had” I know I’m getting the direct quote wrong, but you get the gist of it. And of course Tillmans death AND the horrible conditions at Walter Reed. The list goes on and on.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:42 pmRather than THE fourth Estate, Cronkite had it right, we have about 1/4th of an Estate.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:50 pmWalter Cronkite: Most Trusted Asset of Operation Mockingbird
Published on 07-19-2009 Email To Friend Print Version
By Kurt Nimmo
“It is impossible to imagine CBS News, journalism or indeed America without Walter Cronkite,” said Sean McManus, president of CBS News, on the passing on Walter Cronkite. “More than just the best and most trusted anchor in history, he guided America through our crises, tragedies and also our victories and greatest moments.”
I wonder if Mr. McManus knew the real Cronkite — Cronkite the a former intelligence officer who was lured away from his UPI Moscow desk by Operation Mockingbird’s Phil Graham.
Of course he did. Because the corporate media, at least at the level Walter Cronkite occupied, is rife with spooks, government agents, and disinfo operatives. The CIA has “important assets” inside every major news publication in the country, a fact established by numerous FOIA documents. A rare glimpse was also provided by Frank Church’s committee in the mid-70s.
Some of the journalists working the CIA’s side of the street “were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their country,” Carl Bernstein wrote in an article published in Rolling Stone in October, 1977. “Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested it the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles, and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad.”
“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,” writes Alex Constantine in The Depraved Spies and Moguls of the CIA’s Operation MOCKINGBIRD. “Most consumers of the corporate media were — and are — unaware of the effect that the salting of public opinion has on their own beliefs.”
“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.”
Cronkite was a trusted and valued part of that huge mass propaganda effort.
Cronkite betrayed his kindly and fatherly demeanor in 1999 when he accepted the Norman Cousins Global Governance Award at the ceremony at the United Nations:
It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace. To do that, of course, we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order. But the American colonies did it once and brought forth one of the most nearly perfect unions the world has ever seen.
It is said Cronkite “somehow spoke for the nation he spoke to,” according to the Los Angeles Times, when in fact — like all corporate media figures — Cronkite was reading from a script provided by the CIA at the behest of the ruling elite.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:10 pmREMARKS ON ACCEPTING THE 1999 NORMAN COUSINS GLOBAL GOVERNANCE AWARD
by Walter Cronkite
I am greatly honored to receive this Norman Cousins Global Governance Award for two reasons. First, I believe as Norman Cousins did: that the first priority of humankind in this era is to establish an effective system of world law that will assure peace with justice among the peoples of the world.
Second, I feel sentimental about this award because half a century ago Norman offered me a job as spokesman and Washington lobbyist for the World Federalist organization, which was then in its infancy.
I chose instead to continue in the world of journalism. For many years, I did my best to report on the issues of the day in as objective a manner as possible. When I had my own strong opinions, as I often did, I tried not to communicate them to my audience.
Now, however, my circumstances are different. I am in a position to speak my mind. And that is what I propose to do.
Those of us who are living today can influence the future of civilization. We can influence whether our planet will drift into chaos and violence, or whether through a monumental educational and political effort we will achieve a world of peace under a system of law where individual violators of that law are brought to justice.
For most of this fairly long life I have been an optimist harboring a belief that as our globe shrank, as our communication miracles brought us closer together, we would begin to appreciate the commonality of our universal desire to live in peace and that we would do something to satisfy that yearning of all peoples. Today I find it harder to cling to that hope.
For how many thousands of years now have we humans been what we insist on calling “civilized?” And yet, in total contradiction, we also persist in the savage belief that we must occasionally, at least, settle our arguments by killing one another.
While we spend much of our time and a great deal of our treasure in preparing for war, we see no comparable effort to establish a lasting peace. Meanwhile, emphasizing the sloth in this regard, those advocates who work for world peace by urging a system of world government are called impractical dreamers. Those impractical dreamers are entitled to ask their critics what is so practical about war.
It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace.
To do that, of course, we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order.
But the American colonies did it once and brought forth one of the most nearly perfect unions the world has ever seen. The circumstances were vastly different, obviously. While the colonies differed on many questions, at least the people of the colonies were of the same Anglo-Saxon stock. Yet just because the task appears forbiddingly hard, we should not shirk it.
We cannot defer this responsibility to posterity. Time will not wait. Democracy, civilization itself, is at stake. Within the next few years we must change the basic structure of our global community from the present anarchic system of war and ever more destructive weaponry to a new system governed by a democratic UN federation.
I suppose I’m preaching to the choir here. So let’s not talk generalities but focus tonight on a few specifics of what the leadership of the World Federalist Movement believe must be done now to advance the rule of world law.
For starters, we can draw on the wisdom of the framers of the US Constitution in 1787. The differences among the American states then were as bitter as differences among the nation-states in the world today.
In their almost miraculous insight, the founders of our country invented “federalism,” a concept that is rooted in the rights of the individual. Our federal system guarantees a maximum of freedom but provides it in a framework of law and justice.
Our forefathers believed that the closer the laws are to the people, the better. Cities legislate on local matters; states make decisions on matters within their borders; and the national government deals with issues that transcend the states, such as interstate commerce and foreign relations. That is federalism.
Today we must develop federal structures on a global level. We need a system of enforceable world law– a democratic federal world government–to deal with world problems.
What Alexander Hamilton wrote about the need for law among the 13 states applies today to the approximately 200 sovereignties in our global village:
“To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.”
Today the notion of unlimited national sovereignty means international anarchy. We must replace the anarchic law of force with a civilized force of law.
Ours will neither be a perfect world, nor a world without disagreement and occasional violence. But it will be a world where the overwhelming majority of national leaders will consistently abide by the rule of world law, and those who won’t will be dealt with effectively and with due process by the structures of that same world law. We will never have a city without crime, but we would never want to live in a city that had no system of law to deal with the criminals who will always be with us.
Let me make three suggestions for immediate action that would move us in a direction firmly in the American tradition of law and democracy.
Keep our promises: We helped create the UN and to develop the UN assessment formula. Americans overwhelmingly want us to pay our UN dues, with no crippling limitations. We owe it to the world. In fact, we owe it as well to our national self-esteem.
Ratify the Treaty to Ban Land Mines, the Law of the Sea Treaty, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Convention to Eliminate All forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Most important, we should sign and ratify the Treaty for a Permanent International Criminal Court. That Court will enable the world to hold individuals accountable for crimes against humanity.
Consider, after 55 years, the possibility of a more representative and democratic system of decision making at the UN. This should include both revision of the Veto in the Security Council and adoption of a weighted voting system for the General Assembly. The World Federalists have endorsed Richard Hudson’s Binding Triad proposal. George Soros, in his recent book, “The Crisis of Global Capitalism” has given serious attention to this concept which would be based upon not only one-nation-one-vote but also, on population and contributions to the UN budget. Resolutions adopted by majorities in each of these three areas would be binding, enforceable law. Within the powers given to it in the Charter, the UN could then deal with matters of reliable financing, a standing UN Peace force, development, the environment and human rights.
Some of you may ask why the Senate is not ratifying these important treaties and why the Congress is not paying our UN dues. Even as with the American rejection of the League of Nations, our failure to live up to our obligations to the United Nations is led by a handful of willful senators who choose to pursue their narrow, selfish political objectives at the cost of our nation’s conscience.
They pander to and are supported by the Christian Coalition and the rest of the religious right wing. Their leader, Pat Robertson, has written that we should have a world government but only when the messiah arrives. Any attempt to achieve world order before that time must be the work of the Devil!
This small but well-organized group, has intimidated both the Republican Party and the Clinton administration. It has attacked each of our Presidents since FDR for supporting the United Nations. Robertson explains that these Presidents were and are the unwitting agents of Lucifer.
The only way we who believe in the vision of a democratic world federal government can effectively overcome this reactionary movement is to organize a strong educational counteroffensive stretching from the most publicly visible people in all fields to the humblest individuals in every community. That is the vision and the program of the World Federalist Association.
The strength of the World Federalist program would serve an important auxiliary purpose at this particular point in our history. There would be immediate diplomatic advantages in just the world knowledge that this country was even beginning to explore the prospect of strengthening the UN. We would appear before the peoples of the world as the champion of peace for all by the equitable sharing of power. This in sharp contrast to the growing concern that we intend to use our current dominant military power to enforce a sort of pax Americana.
Our country today is at a stage in our foreign policy similar to that crucial point in our nation’s early history when our Constitution was produced in Philadelphia.
Let us hear the peal of a new international liberty bell that calls us all to the creation of a system of enforceable world law in which the universal desire for peace can place its hope and prayers. As Carl Van Doren has written, “History is now choosing the founders of the World Federation. Any person who can be among that number and fails to do so has lost the noblest opportunity of a lifetime.”
As one of the most recognizable news reporters in American journalism, Cronkite is best known for his unbiased reporting that has spanned such major world events as World War II, the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the 1969 lunar landing, and the Watergate scandal. Following the war, from his UPI outpost in Brussels, Cronkite served as the chief correspondent during the Nuremberg trials. By 1962, he had become sufficiently established to headline his own news program. “The CBS News with Walter Cronkite” aired from 1962-1981 and featured Cronkite’s trademark nightly send-off, “And that’s the way it is,” at the end of every news broadcast. In 1973, an opinion poll voted Cronkite “the most trusted man in America.” He has long supported the work of the World Federalist Association. He was presented the 1999 Norman Cousins Global Governance Award at a ceremony at the United Nations for his comparison in his autobiography of the need for global federal government today with the political courage of the American founders in 1787.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:13 pmThe Family is the fundie mafia full of constitutional reconstructionists. We warned that they were trying to secretly take over the country and institute a theocracy. If it wasn’t a religion, it would be called treason.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:13 pmIf anyone is interested, the trolls are pleasuring themselves on the DeMint thread. :D
July 19th, 2009 at 11:17 pmThe Depraved Spies and Moguls
of the CIA’s Operation MOCKINGBIRD
by Alex Constantine
Who Controls the Media?
Soulless corporations do, of course. Corporations with grinning, double-breasted executives, interlocking directorates, labor squabbles and flying capital. Dow. General Electric. Coca-Cola. Disney. Newspapers should have mastheads that mirror the world: The Westinghouse Evening Scimitar, The Atlantic-Richfield Intelligentser . 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 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 William Paley (CBS), C.D. Jackson (Fortune), Henry Luce (Time) and Arthur Hays Sulzberger (N.Y. Times).
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 Blücher, 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 Düsseldorf, West Germany, and established a firm that developed not movie scripts, but anti-chemical warfare agents for the government. At the Industrie Club in Düsseldorf in 1982, von Blücher 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 totalling 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
July 19th, 2009 at 11:19 pmKevkev, a link is sufficient.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:24 pmsorry…
July 19th, 2009 at 11:31 pmSometimes the consequences will carry over in other ways too. The military coup in Honduras is likely another example of how this plays out.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:34 pm“TRUER WORDS HAVE NEVER BEEN SPOKEN”, Cronkie was right about the war in Iraq.
We have yet to see, the “REPERCUSSION”, of that INVASION.
July 20th, 2009 at 12:49 amthe mass media is more interested in numbers not in doing their job.
fox is very interested in pretty.
they do have some foxes on there channel.
nice to look at but dumber than dumb
this american’s is the future of america
the decline is on but we had our day
like most nations that attain wealth arrogance sits in and the decline sits in soon after
but first we will have some hope ie lots of hope
July 20th, 2009 at 3:45 amFarewell, Walter Cronkite.
July 20th, 2009 at 6:52 amThank you for all your good works.
Television journalism has gone down the tube.
(Pardon the pun)
And that’s the way it is.
Oh, and tell dbadass I saw a blue grosbeak.
July 20th, 2009 at 6:55 amI tried to cheer him up.
None of the bozo news people on any of the channels was listening to Walter Cronkite because they were too busy applauding & cheerleading America’s Dear Leader at the time! They all believed his rhetoric that Saddam Hussein could attack our nation in 45 minutes in the form of a mushroom cloud, they all believed gawd was backing George Bush in his waronterror and they all looked forward to the huge profits they would make on the backs of dead Iraqis and U.S soldiers! Nothing was going to get in their way…..not even that rational liberal guy, Walter Cronkite. Spit.
July 20th, 2009 at 8:31 am“What Has Happened To The “Free” Press?”
There’s a one-word answer.
July 20th, 2009 at 9:04 amAnd just when I think the privacy center can not come up with a lamer more trite noncomment to accompany their lame trite spamming…
July 20th, 2009 at 10:09 amDoris Kearns-Goodwin said this morning on Morning Joe that George McGovern considered asking Walter Cronkite to be his running mate in 1972. When Cronkite learned of this he said he would have taken him up on his offer. Boy, that would have been really interesting. May have changed the course of history.
July 20th, 2009 at 11:06 amRe: “when he stood up and announced that Americans shouldn’t trust the statements being made about the war by the U.S. Government and military, and that the specific claims they were making were almost certainly false” –he was talking about the Vietnam War. The rest of the article talks about his opposition to Iraq, which is kind of confusing.
July 20th, 2009 at 5:29 pm