Date: Mon May
27
[Date
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"David D. Piney" <wu712@victoria.tc.ca>
http://www.consortiumnews.com/1999/080499a3.html
sniped…
Nixon's
Legacy
The modern
history of the right-wing machinery dates back at least to the first years of
Richard Nixon's presidency. Beset by growing public outrage over the Vietnam
War, Nixon determined that Republicans needed a more compliant media to promote
their points of view -- and to make his hardball political strategies
work.
On
First; "to
infiltrate the John Gardner 'Common Cause' deal and needle them, and try to push
them [to a publicly distressing] left. Next; form a front group named to sound
like their "SDS" to support the Democratic candidates and [offer public] praise
for their liberal efforts, etc., [but actually] spin their 'bad' elements in
guise of praise."
But Nixon
always returned to his pet plan. "Nixon was pushing again on [his] project of
building Our Establishment in [the] press, business, education, etc., Haldeman
wrote. "In the months that followed, Nixon kept pushing for an infrastructure
that would help him to destroy his political enemies.
His anger
reached a boiling point when Daniel Ellsberg leaked the secret Pentagon Papers'
history of the Vietnam War. The president demanded counter-leaks in friendly
publications to discredit Ellsberg and others involved. "We're up against an
enemy, a conspiracy", Nixon said in a tape-recorded White House conversation on
July 1, 1971. "They're using any means. We are going to use any means. Is that
clear? ... Now, how do you fight this [Ellsberg case]? You can't fight this with
gentlemanly gloves. ... We'll kill these sons of bitches."[See Stanley I.
Kutler's Abuse of Power]
But Nixon soon
found the press corps harder to manipulate than it was during the early years of
the Cold War. He lectured his staff on the need to bully journalists into line.
Nixon believed that "the press and TV don't change their attitude and approach
unless you hurt them", Haldeman recounted on April 21, 1972. "The only way we
can fight the whole press problem, he [Nixon] feels, is through the [Charles]
Colson operation, the nutcutters, forcing our news in a brutal vicious attack on
the opposition."
Two months
later, Nixon's pugnacious politics would become a cropper in the Watergate
scandal. As the scope of Nixon's criminality slowly emerged, The Washington Post
and other major news outlets led the way in exposing the evidence and ultimately
forcing Nixon's resignation on Aug. 9, 1974.
The disgraced
president retreated to his estate in San Clemente, Calif. But
Nixon's followers blamed the "liberal" news media for hounding Nixon from
office and for "losing" the Vietnam War. They concluded that a more conservative
press was vital to their success.
Taking the
lead in this major endeavor was Nixon's treasury secretary, William Simon, who
was president of the John M. Olin Foundation. In the late 1970s, Simon began
pulling together executives of other conservative foundations with the goal of
further building "Our Establishment."
In
1979, Simon argued in his book, "A Time for Truth", that only a strong
conservative ideological movement could break the back of the dominant Liberal
Establishment. Simon accused them of enforcing misguided concepts of "equality"
and of being "possessed of delusions of moral
grandeur".
To
build the Right's counter-intelligence and to transform the Republican Party
into a conservative weapon would require multi-millions from business, Simon
said. Simon's Olin Foundation allied itself with other like-minded foundations
to advance this cause, giving rise to the nucleus of the Right's national
infrastructure of think tanks, media, and pressure
groups.
In
1980, Simon published "A Time for Action", which demanded that the "death grip"
of the Liberal Establishment and its "New Despotism" be broken. Simon saw the
news media of the day as part of the enemy camp. He especially targeted
journalists who, Simon charged, "had been working overtime to deny liberty to
others".
Through his
writing and his actions, Simon emerged as the principal architect of the
right-wing machine's financial structure, while others provided more of its
intellectual framework. As then-journalist Sidney Blumenthal wrote, "by
controlling the wellsprings of funding, Simon makes this movement green". [See
The Rise of the Counter Establishment, published in 1986. Blumenthal is now a
special assistant in the White House.
The Reagan
Era
With Ronald
Reagan's election in 1980, the conservative movement gained a powerful new
momentum. The fledgling conservative magazines and expanding think tanks also
had a new clear-cut goal to further advance the hard right interests now made
possible with the Reagan presidency.
The fledgling
conservative infrastructure now supplied an important intellectual veneer to
many of Reagan's radical policies. The daring anti Keynesianism, and unabashed
self-serving-ness of supply-side economics -gleaned wholly at the public's
expense-, a brutal military foreign policy (and a corresponding rise in domestic
military ascension) were important elements of Reagan's neo-conservative
movement wholly supported by the media.
In
early 1982 for example, when the New York Times' Raymond Bonner reviled the
Salvadoran army's massacre of nearly 1,000 men, women and children at El Mozote,
both Irvine's Accuracy in Media and the Wall Street Journal's editorial page led
a harsh personal counterattack against Bonner in
response.
The Reagan
administration continually nourished a raw expediency ethos and growth of the
hard-right infrastructure. Inside the National Security Council, former CIA
propagandist Walter Raymond Jr. coordinated plans for enlisting private
organizations into wide-ranging "public diplomacy" operations. Raymond's plan --
initially called Project Truth, and later "Project Democracy" -- enlisted
foundations in a novel public/private strategy.
Perry
discovered a typical planning paper prepared for Raymond in his declassified
files at the Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, Calif. dated June 14,
1982, entitled "Project Democracy: Proposals for Action". A draft proposal
spelled out his plans for drawing non-governmental organizations into the
process. The plan also called for harnessing financial resources from a
coalition of wealthy individuals; U.S. defense contractors; and private
foundations, such as the Twentieth Century Fund.
He
planned to hold "White House meetings of top U.S. business and philanthropic
figures to elucidate need and stimulate the will to give urgently" stated the
proposal. The paper recommended reaching out beyond the base of conservative
funders to include more moderate and even liberal foundations, such as the Ford
Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and the Rockefeller
Brothers Fund.
The
administration also earmarked $200 million in federal money for political action
proposals, ranging from expanded broadcasting to the development of new
magazines and the sponsoring of international
conferences.
A
chart, marked Appendix A and also dated June 14, 1982, identified Freedom House
and the Atlantic Institute as important instruments for gaining research and
contacts with universities. The chart also included segments for "elite groups"
that would be drawn into the operation, including the Trilateral Commission, the
Bilderberg Group and the Chamber of Commerce.
The Trilateral
Commission and the Bilderberg Group are secretive organizations that sponsor
closed-door policy discussions involving leading international businessmen,
bankers, politicians and media moguls.
The Project
Democracy proposal enjoyed the discreet support, too, of CIA director William J.
Casey, who wrote an undated letter to then-White House counsel Edwin Meese III.
Casey stated that the plan "has significant merit" and offered to make
"suggestions" about who might serve on a working group "to refine the
proposal".
Casey added,
however, that "obviously, we here should not get out front in the development of
such an organization, nor do we wish to appear to be a sponsor or advocate.
Nevertheless, the needs appear real and I believe our national fabric for
dealing with many issues and problems would be well served by such an
institute."
Like several
other documents in Raymond's file, the Casey letter had been torn in half as if
Raymond were planning to discard it but later changed his mind. An archivist at
the library said she pieced a number of Raymond's torn letters back together and
put them in plastic casing for their protection.
On
other occasions, the Reagan administration directly solicited support for its
political allies. According to one National Security Council memo dated May 20,
1983, U.S. Information Agency director Charles Z. Wick brought private donors to
the White House Situation Room for a fund-raiser. The event collected $400,000
for Accuracy in Media, Freedom House and other groups assisting the "public
diplomacy" operations.
As
the domestic side of the program moved forward, one of Raymond's recurring
concerns was Casey's insistence that he keep his oar in the water. Given its
clear goal of influencing U.S. politics and policies, Raymond fretted about the
legality of Casey's continued involvement in what amounted to domestic
propaganda. Raymond confided in one memo that it was important "to get [Casey]
out of the loop." But Casey would not back off.
During this
same period, another major source of conservative media money came on line. In
1982, drawing on his shadowy resources in Asia and apparently South America,
Rev. Moon launched a daily newspaper, The Washington Times. The right-wing paper
soon became President Reagan's favorite as it promoted his policies and
denounced his opponents.
As
the years wore on, Raymond sought more resources for "public diplomacy." On
"I
have attempted to proceed forward with a whole range of political and
information activities," Raymond wrote. "There are a raft of ties to private
organizations which are working in tandem with the government in a number of
areas ranging from the American Security Council to the Atlantic Council, to the
nascent idea of a 'Peace Institute.'
Among the
examples of his "specific activities", Raymond listed "significant expansion of
our ability to utilize book publication and distribution as a public diplomacy
tool. (This is based on an integrated public/private strategy). ... The
development of an active PSYC-OPS strategy... Regular meetings with the German
political foundations concerning programming. ... Meetings (ad hoc) with
selected CIA operational people to coordinate and clarify lines between
overt/covert political operations on key areas. Examples: Afghanistan, Central
America, USSR-EE [Eastern Europe] and Grenada."
To
reinforce Reagan's "war of ideas", the administration even assigned real-time
warriors. The Pentagon transferred a half dozen psychological warfare experts
from U.S. Special Forces. One, Lt. Col. Daniel Jake Jacobowitz, served as
executive officer inside the chief "public diplomacy" office located at the
State Department. Later, the White House transferred in another five
psychological warfare specialists from the 4th Psychological Operations Group at
Fort Bragg, N.C.
The main job
of the psyc-ops specialists was to pick out provocative incidents in
Raymond's
public diplomacy teams also exacted a high price from those mainstream reporters
whose work challenged the administration's assertions about Central America and
other international hot spots. By 1986, a much-chastened
In
March 1986, Otto Reich, a senior public diplomacy official, reported that his
office was taking a very aggressive posture vis-à-vis a sometimes-hostile press
and did not give the critics of the policy any quarter in the
debate.
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