The CIA and the Media: 50 Historical Facts the World Needs to Know
https://alethonews.wordpress.com/2016/04/10/the-cia-and-the-media-50-historical-facts-the-world-needs-to-know/39.
Operation Gladio, the well-documented collaboration between Western spy agencies, including the CIA, and NATO involving coordinated terrorist shootings and bombings of civilian targets throughout Europe from the late 1960s through the 1980s, has been effectively expunged from major mainstream news outlets. A LexisNexis Academic search conducted in 2012 for Operation Gladio retrieved 31 articles in English language news mediamost appearing in British newspapers. Only four articles discussing Gladio ever appeared in US publicationsthree in the New York Times and one brief mention in the Tampa Bay Times. With the exception of a 2009 BBC documentary, no network or cable news broadcast has ever referenced the state-sponsored terror operation. Almost all of the articles referencing Gladio appeared in 1990 when Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti publicly admitted Italys participation in the process. The New York Times downplayed any US involvement, misleadingly designating Gladio an Italian creation in a story buried on page A16. In reality, former CIA director William Colby revealed in his memoirs that covert paramilitaries were a significant agency undertaking set up after World War II, including the smallest possible coterie of the most reliable people, in Washington [and] NATO. James F. Tracy, False Flag Terror and Conspiracies of Silence, Global Research, August 10, 2012.
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Days before the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City DCI William Colby confided to his friend, Nebraska State Senator John DeCamp his personal concerns over the Militia and Patriot movement within the United States, then surging in popularity due to the use of the alternative media of that erabooks, periodicals, cassette tapes, and radio broadcasts. I watched as the Anti-War movement rendered it impossible for this country to conduct or win the Vietnam War, Colby remarked. I tell you, dear friend, that the Militia and Patriot movement in which, as an attorney, you have become one of the centerpieces, is far more significant and far more dangerous for American than the Anti-War movement ever was, if it is not intelligently dealt with. And I really mean this. David Hoffman, The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror, Venice CA: Feral House, 1998, 367.
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Shortly after the appearance of journalist Gary Webbs Dark Alliance series in the San Jose Mercury News chronicling the Agencys involvement in drug trafficking, the CIAs public affairs division embarked on a campaign to counter what it termed a genuine public relations crisis for the Agency. Webb was merely reporting to a large audience what had already been well documented by scholars such as Alfred McCoy and Peter Dale Scott, and the 1989 Kerry Committee Report on Iran-Contrathat the CIA had long been involved in the illegal transnational drug trade. Such findings were upheld in 1999 in a study by the CIA inspector general. Nevertheless, beginning shortly after Webbs series ran, CIA media spokesmen would remind reporters seeking comment that this series represented no real news, a CIA internal organ noted, in that similar charges were made in the 1980s and were investigated by the Congress and were found to be without substance. Reporters were encouraged to read the Dark Alliance series closely and with a critical eye to what allegations could actually be backed with evidence.
http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/DOC_0001372115.pdf42.
On December 10, 2004 investigative journalist Gary Webb died of two .38 caliber gunshot wounds to the head. The coroner ruled the death a suicide. Gary Webb was MURDERED, concluded FBI senior special agent Ted Gunderson in 2005. He (Webb) resisted the first shot [to the head that exited via jaw] so he was shot again with the second shot going into the head [brain]. Gunderson regards the theory that Webb could have managed to shoot himself twice as impossible! Charlene Fassa, Gary Webb: More Pieces in the Suicided Puzzle, Rense.com, December 11, 2005.
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The most revered journalists who receive exclusive information and access to the corridors of power are typically the most subservient to officialdom and often have intelligence ties. Those granted such access understand that they must likewise uphold government-sanctioned narratives. For example, the New York Times Tom Wicker reported on November 22, 1963 that President John F. Kennedy was hit by a bullet in the throat, just below the Adams apple. Yet his account went to press before the official story of a single assassin shooting from the rear became established. Wicker was chastised through lost access, complaints to editors and publishers, social penalties, leaks to competitors, a variety of responses no one wants. Barrie Zwicker, Towers of Deception: The Media Coverup of 9/11, Gabrioloa Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2006, 169-170.
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The CIA actively promotes a desirable public image of its history and function by advising the production of Hollywood vehicles, such as Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. The Agency retains entertainment industry liaison officers on its staff that plant positive images about itself (in other words, propaganda) through our most popular forms of entertainment, Tom Hayden explains in the LA Review of Books. So natural has the CIAentertainment connection become that few question its legal or moral ramifications. This is a government agency like no other; the truth of its operations is not subject to public examination. When the CIAs hidden persuaders influence a Hollywood movie, it is using a popular medium to spin as favorable an image of itself as possible, or at least, prevent an unfavorable one from taking hold. Tom Hayden, Review of The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television by Tricia Jenkins, LA Review of Books, February 24, 2013,
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Former CIA case officer Robert David Steele states that CIA manipulation of news media is worse in the 2010s than in the late 1970s when Bernstein wrote The CIA and the Media. The sad thing is that the CIA is very able to manipulate [the media] and it has financial arrangements with media, with Congress, with all others. But the other half of that coin is that the media is lazy. James Tracy interview with Robert David Steele, August 2, 2014,
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A well-known fact is that broadcast journalist Anderson Cooper interned for the CIA while attending Yale as an undergraduate in the late 1980s. According to Wikipedia Coopers great uncle, William Henry Vanderbilt III, was an Executive Officer of the Special Operations Branch of the OSS under the spy organizations founder William Wild Bill Donovan. While Wikipedia is an often dubious source, Vanderbilts OSS involvement would be in keeping with the OSS/CIA reputation of taking on highly affluent personnel for overseas derring-do. William Henry Vanderbilt III, Wikipedia.
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Veteran German journalist Udo Ulfkotte, author of the 2014 book Gekaufte Journalisten (Bought Journalists) revealed how under the threat of job termination he was routinely compelled to publish articles written by intelligence agents using his byline. I ended up publishing articles under my own name written by agents of the CIA and other intelligence services, especially the German secret service, Ulfkotte explained in a recent interview with Russia Today. German Journo: European Media Writing Pro-US Stories Under CIA Pressure, RT, October 18, 2014.
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In 1999 the CIA established In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm seeking to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge information technologies that serve United States national security interests. The firm has exercised financial relationships with internet platforms Americans use on a routine basis, including Google and Facebook. If you want to keep up with Silicon Valley, you need to become part of Silicon Valley, says Jim Rickards, an adviser to the U.S. intelligence community familiar with In-Q-Tels activities. The best way to do that is have a budget because when you have a checkbook, everyone comes to you. At one point IQT catered largely to the needs of the CIA. Today, however, the firm supports many of the 17 agencies within the U.S. intelligence community, including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate. Matt Egan, In-Q-Tel: A Glimpse Inside the CIAs Venture Capital Arm, FoxBusiness.com, June 14, 2013.
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At a 2012 conference held by In-Q-Tel CIA Director David Patraeus declared that the rapidly-developing internet of things and smart home will provide the CIA with the ability to spy on any US citizen should they become a person of interest to the spy community, Wired magazine reports. Transformational is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies, Patraeus enthused, particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft
Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing, Patraeus said, the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing. Spencer Ackerman, CIA Chief: Well Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher, Wired, March 15, 2012.
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In the summer of 2014 a $600 million computing cloud developed by Amazon Web Services for the CIA began servicing all 17 federal agencies comprising the intelligence community. If the technology plays out as officials envision, The Atlantic reports, it will usher in a new era of cooperation and coordination, allowing agencies to share information and services much more easily and avoid the kind of intelligence gaps that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The Details About the CIAs Deal With Amazon, The Atlantic, July 17, 2014.
One particular poster here has the air of a retired intelligence or CIA operative.