CIA Countered Critics of Warren Report

In his introduction to Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and the Garrison Case by James DiEugenio, Zachary Sklar noted that “Although we still do not know the full extent of the disinformation campaign against Garrison, some evidence of it surfaced in a CIA memo dated April 1, 1967, and released in 1977 under the Freedom of Information Act.”

The CIA’s April 1, 1967 memo, titled “Countering Criticism of the Warren Report,” was apparently sent to “Chiefs, Certain Stations and Bases,” and it included the following recommendations:

“Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us…

“…We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active, however, addressees are requested:

“a. To discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)…Urge them to use their influence…

“b. To employ propaganda assets…Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for the purpose…”

According to Chapter VI of the Warren Commission Report, titled “Investigation of Possible Conspiracy,” then-CIA Director John McCone and then-CIA Deputy Director Richard Helms “testified before the Commission that no one connected with the CIA had ever interviewed Oswald or communicated with him in any way.” Yet, according to a book published in the 1990s, the U.S. diplomat who interviewed Oswald prior to his “defection” to Russia in 1959—Richard Snyder—was apparently connected to the CIA. As Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and The Garrison Case by James DiEugenio noted:

“Oswald’s defection and entry into the U.S.S.R. and his departure were both handled by U.S. Moscow Embassy Consul Richard E. Snyder. Snyder was, in his own words, `the sole officer handling the Oswald case.’ Snyder sent Oswald his passport, months before his return, and processed Oswald and Marina’s exit from the Soviet Union as well. CIA document #609-786 says that Snyder joined the CIA in 1949…Julius Mader’s 1968 Who’s Who In CIA…lists Snyder as still in the Agency.”

(Downtown 5/12/93)

Next: Big Media Coverage of JFK Assassination

More On The CIA's Mass Media Program Historically

Although CIA: The Pike Report of a House Committee found that the largest officially approved covert action category of the CIA between 1965 and 1975 was its “Election Support” category, the same report also stated that “It is believed that if the correct number of all media and propaganda projects could be determined it would exceed Election Support as the largest single category of covert action projects undertaken by the CIA.” Among the secret actions utilized by the CIA to manipulate public opinion through mass media manipulation, according to CIA: The Pike Report, were “support of friendly media, major propaganda efforts, insertion of articles into the local press, and distribution of books and leaflets.”

In its CIA: The Pike Report, a House Committee also concluded that:

“The free flow of information…has been threatened as a result of CIA’s use of the world media for cover and for clandestine information-gathering.

“There are disturbing indications that the accuracy of many news stories has been undermined as well. Information supplied to the Committee suggests that some planted, falsified articles have reached readers in the U.S.”

CIA: The Pike Report also observed that “The CIA’s Cover and Commercial staff files show that in 1975, 11 CIA employees used media cover with 15 news field companies—TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines” and “The CIA had fiduciary relations with 5 full-time correspondents of major American news organizations.”

In their 1970s book, The CIA and The Cult of Intelligence, Victor Marchetti and John Marks estimated that “as late as November 1973…there were still about 40 fulltime reporters and free-lancers on the CIA payroll” and “Under [former CIA Director] Helms, the CIA also continued its practice of intervening with editors and publishers to try to stop publication of books either too descriptive or too critical of the agency.”

The CIA and The Cult of Intelligence also noted that “Many…anti-communist publishing concerns in Germany, Italy, and France were also supported and encouraged by the agency during the post-WW II years.” Ironically, in support of its anticommunist political goals, the CIA also “subsidized the New York communist paper, the Daily Worker,…in the form of several thousand secretly purchased prepaid subscriptions,” according to The CIA and The Cult of Intelligence. According to the same book, by subsidizing the U.S. Communist Party’s daily newspaper after World War II, “The CIA apparently hoped to demonstrate by this means to the American public that the threat of communism in this country was real.”

Marchetti and Marks’ book also pointed out that “only about 20 percent of the CIA’s career employees (spending less than 10 percent of the budget) work on intelligence analysis and information processing,” but “about 2/3” of all CIA funds and manpower are spent on its “covert operations,” such as its manipulation of public opinion and elections and its mass media manipulation activity. The CIA and The Cult of Intelligence also reminded its readers that:

“The CIA is big, very big. Officially, it has authorized manpower of 16,500…The 16,500 figure does not reflect the tens of thousands who serve under contract (mercenaries, agents, consultants, etc.) or who work for the agency’s proprietary companies.”

During the early 1990s, the CIA still had authorized manpower of about 25,000, according to the 1990s book Games of Intelligence by Nigel West a/k/a British Tory MP Rupert Allason. [Yet what happened on September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center was apparently not stopped by any of the CIA’s 25,000 employees].

(Downtown 6/24/92)

Next: CIA Countered Critics of Warren Report

Yale University's Historical CIA Connection

Coincidentally, former President Bush I, current U.S. President Bush II and 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton are Yale University alumni, as was former Warren Commission member and former U.S. President Gerald Ford.

Yale University and its alumni have long played an influential role in relation to the CIA. According to Cloak and Gown: Scholars In The Secret War by Robin Winks, “Rightly or wrongly, a historian could, in assessing the link between the university and the agency, declare in 1984 that Yale had influenced the CIA more than any other university had…”

During the years when George W. Bush II’s father attended Yale and excelled as an Ivy League athlete, “Skip Walz, Yale crew coach from 1946 to 1950, working simultaneously for the university and for the Central Intelligence Agency on a salary of $10,000 from each, laid his arms on the shoulders of athletic young men, introducing them to official recruiters who would apply the appropriate persuasion,” according to Cloak and Gown. The same book also noted that Yale Crew Coach Walz “looked for bright undergraduates in other sports than crew as well, who were going into business careers after graduation, so that they might use their business connection as a cover” and “Once every three weeks he would meet with a CIA agent at the Reflecting Pool in Washington, passing on names and evaluations.” Coincidentally, after his graduation from Yale University in 1948, Bush I began his business career and, along with a major Chevron/Gulf stockholder in the early 1990s named J. Hugh Liedtke, founded Zapata/Pennzoil in the early 1950s.

In addition to being an athletic young man at Yale in the late 1940s, Bush I (like his son) was a member of the Skull & Bones society at Yale. Cloak and Gown noted that “Yale’s most prestigious social life turned on secret societies, of which perhaps Skull and Bones was the most exclusive” and that “It was widely rumored that the secret societies were recruiting grounds as well,” for the CIA.

Although former President Bush I claimed on the Establishment’s television screen in the early 1990s to be opposed to discrimination against women, on May 20, 1991, the New York Times reported on its back pages that “Mr. Bush” belonged “to only four clubs, and they” were “men-only organizations: the Alibi Club, the Alfalfa Club, the Bohemian Club and Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society that recently locked its crypt rather than admit women.”

After 1980, George W. Bush II’s father, former President Bush I, sought to play down his 1970s membership in David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission. In his 1989 book, The Right Place, The Right Time, former NYU Trustee, former Time Inc. director and former Trilateral Commission member Hedley Donovan recalled:

“When I congratulated George Bush on his election as vice-president in 1980, I said I hoped he didn’t mind receiving correspondence from a member of the Trilateral Commission, to which he belonged. He scrawled a card of thanks and said, `Sh-sh-sh’ about the Trilateral stuff.’ I have kept this exchange secret until now.”

(Downtown 6/24/92)

Next: More On The CIA’s Mass Media Program Historically

CBS News' Coverage Of The JFK Assassination and Bush I's Role

Former CIA Director Bush's 1970s official "Company" portrait photo

Downtown asked CBS News’ Director of Communications Tom Goodman in 1992 what was CBS’s official response to a 1992 Village Voice article which charged that CBS News helped cover-up the existence of a conspiracy to assassinate JFK?

“The Village Voice article was absolutely absurd and ludicrous. Had all that time used to prepare that article been used to investigate the assassination, people would have been better served. The article was not at all relevant. CBS News has not been and is not involved in any cover-up regarding the assassination. The article was preposterous,” answered the CBS News spokesperson.

Reached by telephone, a spokesperson for the Village Voice told Downtown in 1992 that the Voice stood by its story.

Coincidentally, a few days after JFK was ambushed, FBI Director J.Edgar Hoover sent a memorandum to the U.S. State Department regarding the JFK assassination. According to an article, “`George Bush’ C.I.A. Operative” by Joseph McBride, which appeared in the July 16/23, 1988 issue of The Nation, this Nov. 29, 1963 FBI memorandum was “subject headed `Assassination of President John F. Kennedy Nov. 22, 1963'” and “In it, Hoover reports that the bureau had briefed `Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency’ shortly after the assassination…”

The same Nation article also revealed that “a source with close connections to the intelligence community confirms that Bush [I] started working for the agency in 1960 or 1961, using his oil business as a cover for clandestine activities.” The Nation’s intelligence community source had “worked with the agency in the late 1950s and through the 1960s” and he stated that Bush [I] “was involved in the Caribbean” and “`I know he was involved in the suppression of things after the Kennedy assassination.’”

Plausible Denial: Was The CIA Involved in The Assassination Of JFK? By Mark Lane also noted in the early 1990s:

“There is evidence suggesting that [George] de Mohrenschildt served as a CIA control officer who directed Oswald’s actions. De Mohrenschildt died from a gun shot just as he was about to be questioned by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. After his death, his personal telephone book was located. It contained this entry: `Bush, George H.W. (Poppy) 1412 W. Ohio also Zapata Petroleum Midland.’”

(Downtown 6/24/92)

Next: Yale University’s Historical CIA Connection

The CIA and The 1988 Election of Ex-CIA Director Bush I

Former CIA Director Bush's official CIA portrait of 1970s

The CIA spent over $65 million to manipulate Italian voters in Italy between 1948 and 1972. Following JFK’s assassination in 1963, the CIA continued to express a special interest in manipulating the electoral process. According to a House Committee Report, CIA: The Pike Report, from 1965 to 1973, “32 percent” of the CIA’s officially approved covert action programs were "for providing some form of financial election support for foreign parties and individuals” and this was “the largest covert action category.” CIA: The Pike Report also noted that “with few exceptions, financial support has been given to incumbent…party leaders and heads of State” and that “One Third World leader received some $960,000 over a 14-year period.”

Coincidentally, the father of George W. Bush II, former CIA Director Bush I, received the support of the U.S. Establishment’s mass media in 1988 when he decided he felt like moving into the White House in January 1989. According to Television and The Crisis Of Democracy by Douglas Kellner:

“George Bush [I] was elected president largely due to the failure of the mainstream broadcast media to report in any detail on the many scandals in which he was implicated during the Reagan years—including involvement with Panamanian dictator and drug dealer Manuel Noriega, connections to an illegal Contra supply operation also involved in drug dealings, and participating in the illegal arms-for-hostages deal with the Iranian ayatollahs…

“The mainstream media also failed to investigate either Bush [I]’s record as head of the CIA or well-documented allegations that he was in the CIA as early as 1962—a claim denied by Bush’s team but argued in The Nation and other print media sources.”

(Downtown 6/24/92)

Next: CBS News’ Coverage Of The JFK Assassination and Bush I’s Role

Racism and Sexism at the `New York Times' Historically

During the 1970s, the New York Times was sued by its African-American employees who charged the Sulzberger Dynasty’s newspaper with “racial discrimination in hiring, job classification, salaries and other issues,” according to Fit To Print: A.M. Rosenthal And His `Times’ by Joseph Goulden. New York Times managers were accused by New York Times columnist Roger Wilkins in a deposition of running a “racist paper” and the case was eventually settled out-of-court by the Times. The African-American Times employees covered by the settlement received substantially more than $250,000 in legal settlement money.

Although some U.S. women still like to spend their Sundays and their evenings wading through the Sulzberger Dynasty’s New York Times, U.S. women were not treated as equals by the Times during most of the 20th Century. As Women And The Mass Media by Matilda Butler and William Paisley noted in 1980:

“In November 1974, six women sued the New York Times. Approximately one year later, the U.S. District Court ordered that the Times release salary information from its computer tapes. In February 1977, the suit was granted a class action status. One year later, analysis of the computer tapes was submitted to the Federal District Court. Although most findings focus on salaries, the report notes that women are 41 percent of the editors and reporters in the United States. However, they are only 16 percent of the editors and reporters at the Times…

“In 1978, the Federal District Court heard testimony that the New York Times pays males more than $3700 more than women. This difference is attributable to sex discrimination…

“When John Aboud analyzed 10 years of salary data from the New York Times, he was able to assess the relative promotion patterns of males and females. He found, for instance, that 84 percent of the women versus 70 percent of the men who were in the lower salary group (one to eight) in 1965 were still there 10 years later. Among those individuals hired in that 10-year period, 71 percent of the women and 49 percent of the men were still in the lower salary levels in 1974.”

(Downtown 4/14/93)

Although the Ochs-Sulzberger Dynasty’s New York Times sometimes poses as being against institutional sexism, the historical practice of the Ochs-Sulzberger Dynasty’s Times in relation to women has never been too democratic. Times publisher Sulzberger’s great-grandfather—Adolph Ochs—“fought personally and in his paper’s editorials against women’s right to vote” and “during the four decades that Adolph Ochs held sway, only four women worked as reporters in the Times’ city room,” according to The Girls In The Balcony: Women, Men and the `New York Times’ by Nan Robertson. The same book also revealed the following news about the Times that is not often seen as being “fit to print” by the editors of the New York Times:

“In 1987 the average salary of men in the news division hired within the previous five years was $13,000 higher than the average salary of women hired during the same period…In 1987 men in the business division with 6 to 10 years of experience earned, on average, $25,000 more than women with the same experience…The masthead, at the top of the editorial page, tells people where the real power lies within the New York Times…By early 1991, only two women were listed there…

“By early 1991 in the newsroom—23 percent of the reporters, correspondents, and critics were women—only 10 percent higher than in 1972, when the women of the Times began organizing. In 1990, the new hires of non-minority women reporters amounted to only 18 percent of the total.”

(Downtown 6/9/93)

Next: The CIA and The 1988 Election of Ex-CIA Director Bush I

`Law School'

(chorus)
They rob you of your life
They beat you when you rebel
They chain you in a cage
George Jackson knew it so well.

(verses)
Law school taught the judge to sentence that man to death
Law school taught the D.A. to try to suppress the Left
Law school trained that youth to lie for the corporate board
Law school pumps out pigs, and justice is ignored. (chorus)

Law school teaches men to twist truth if they can
Law school teaches women to imitate crooked men
Law school trained that youth who sent that Black man to jail
Law school pumps out pigs, and justice does not prevail. (chorus)

Law school excludes the poor who might want to change the rules
Law school excludes the merciful who might seek to be moral
Law school trained that thief to steal for the businessmen
Law school pumps out pigs, and justice does not win. (chorus)

Law school taught the rich to go seek an injunction
Law school taught the tricks so property can be secured
Law school trained that parasite who bullies the working-class
Law school pumps out pigs, but Justice will not submit. (chorus)

The Law School protest folk song was written during the early 1980s, when I was doing political prisoner solidarity work; and when I noticed how uninterested most U.S. university law school professors and U.S. lawyers were in protecting the civil liberties of anti-imperialist political activists, eliminating institutional racism and institutional classism or resisting the growth of the U.S. prisoner-industrial complex during the last years of the 20th century.

Next: Racism and Sexism at the New York Times Historically