Pentagon PSYOPS worked in CNN newsroom!

[9215]

This is Operation Mockingbird on steroids!

Check the inbedded link for more info.

http://www.fair.org/activism/osi-propaganda.html

Pentagon Propaganda Plan Is Undemocratic, Possibly Illegal
February 19, 2002


The New York Times reported today that the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Influence is “developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations” in an effort “to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries.”
The OSI was created shortly after September 11 to publicize the U.S. government’s perspective in Islamic countries and to generate support for the U.S.’s “war on terror.” This latest announcement raises grave concerns that far from being an honest effort to explain U.S. policy, the OSI may be a profoundly undemocratic program devoted to spreading disinformation and misleading the public, both at home and abroad. At the same time, involving reporters in Pentagon disinformation puts the lives of working journalists at risk. .......

snip
According to the New York Times, “one of the military units assigned to carry out the policies of the Office of Strategic Influence” is the U.S. Army’s Psychological Operations Command (PSYOPS). The Times doesn’t mention, however, that PSYOPS has been accused of operating domestically as recently as the Kosovo war.

In February 2000, reports in Dutch and French newspapers revealed that several officers from the 4th PSYOPS Group had worked in the news division at CNN's Atlanta headquarters as part of an “internship” program starting in the final days of the Kosovo War. Coverage of this disturbing story was scarce (see FAIR’s “Why Were Government Propaganda Experts Working on News at CNN? <http://www.fair.org/activism/cnn-psyops.html >” 3/27/00), but after FAIR issued an Action Alert on the story, CNN stated that it had already terminated the program and acknowledged that it was “inappropriate.”

Even if the PSYOPS officers working in the newsroom did not directly influence news reporting, the question remains of whether CNN may have allowed the military to conduct an intelligence-gathering mission against the network itself. The idea isn’t far-fetched-- according to Intelligence Newsletter (2/17/00), a rear admiral from the Special Operations Command told a PSYOPS conference that the military needed to find ways to "gain control" over commercial news satellites to help bring down an "informational cone of silence" over regions where special operations were taking place. One of CNN’s PSYOPS “interns” worked in the network’s satellite division. (During the Afghanistan war the Pentagon found a very direct way to “gain control”-- it simply bought up all commercial satellite images of Afghanistan, in order to prevent media from accessing them.)
It’s worth noting that the 4th PSYOPS group is the same group that staffed the National Security Council's now notorious Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD), which planted stories in the U.S. media supporting the Reagan Administration's Central America policies during the 1980s. Described by a senior U.S. official as a "vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy territory" (Miami Herald, 7/19/87), the OPD was shut down after the Iran-Contra investigations, but not before influencing coverage in major outlets including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post (Extra!, 9-10/01).
The OPD may be gone, but the Bush administration’s recent recess appointment of former OPD head Otto Reich as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs is not reassuring. It suggests, at best, a troubling indifference to Reich’s role in orchestrating the OPD’s deception of the American people.

Indeed, as the Federation of American Scientists points out, “the Bush Administration’s insistent efforts to expand the scope of official secrecy have now been widely noted as a defining characteristic of the Bush presidency” (Secrecy News, 2/18/02). The administration’s refusal to disclose Enron-related information to the General Accounting Office is perhaps the most publicized of these efforts; another is Attorney General John Ashcroft’s October 12 memo urging federal agencies to resist Freedom Of Information Act requests. ......

[althecat]

1. Well that's true... but then CIA psyops work in every newsroom....

(on edit) ACTUALLY... you can all just ignore all of this.... it is really just a bit of comment on Mockingbird. Somthing that has always fascinated me.

The OSI was wound up after it was exposed in the NYT... it then became the OSP Office Of Strategic Plans... which seems to have done the same thing. This is PNACer Douglas Feith's baby, which fit like the OSI snugly under Rummy's wing.

So yes Mockingbird on steriods.. But as I point out below there is no reason to beleive Mockingbird was ever shut down.

***********

Original post follows...

After Watergate a whole bunch of papers were released about

Operation Paperclip or Operation Butterfly (On edit you had it in your intro Mockingbird!!!! Duh!!!) but basically it was an operation - long running - that had placed operatives in practically every important newsroom in the country. Many in senior positions.

The papers were damning because the had information on how much it cost to retain a NYT reporter and had comments about how having a reporter on the payroll was cheaper than having a hooker.

Of course the revelations didn't get a lot of airplay for obvious reasons - and there is no reason to think the operation was ever wound up.

How else do you explain Judith Miller.

Just another fine day in a country they call America I guess

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[JackRiddler]

4. chill baby

he means, I think, "you can ignore what I'm about to write, but I'd like to say it..."

[blm]

3. No doubt about it. Some of us have been saying so for years.

The BFEE was involved in the coverage of Clinton and election 2000, the propagandizing of 9-11 and Iraq, and they're involved in our Democratic primary.

[Braden]

5. 4th Psyop Group also worked at

NPR.

read newspaper articles and look at how carefully cultivated the key words are.

CIA Distorting reality worldwide.