The FBI's Mass Media Program Historically--Part 3

(The following article first appeared in the April 14, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown. See below for Parts 1 and 2 of article).

As part of the FBI’s 1960s mass media program in Puerto Rico, its agents also “systematically planted articles and editorials (often containing malicious gossip concerning independentista leaders’ alleged sexual and financial affairs) in `friendly’ newspapers, and dispensed `private’ warnings to the owners of island radio stations that their FCC licenses might be revoked if pro-independence material were aired,” according to The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents From The FBI’s Secret War Against Domestic Dissent by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall. Among the `friendly’ newspapers utilized as tools by the FBI in Puerto Rico were El Mundo, the San Juan Star and the El Imparcial, according to an unpublished 1979 study by Carmen Gautier, Maria Teresa Blanco and Maria del Pilar Arguella, titled “Persecution of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement and Their Leaders by the Counterintelligence Program [COINTELPRO] of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], 1960-1971.” Among the Puerto Rican radio stations whose owners were “talked to” by FBI agents in order to influence their programming, according to the same study, were WLEO in Ponce, WKFE in Yauco and WJRS in San German, and “a one-hour daily time-block allotted to `Radio Bandera,’” was cancelled as a result.

The FBI also used its mass media connections to distribute hostile propaganda about the U.S. Baby-Boom Generation’s New Left during the 1960s and to promote destructive factionalism within white and African-American New Left activist circles. In the words of a May 29, 1968 memo from the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia office to FBI Director Hoover, regarding “Disruption of the New Left:”

“As noted in referenced Bureau letters, we must seize upon every opportunity to capitalize upon organizational and personal conflicts of the New Left leaders. The creation of factionalism is a potent weapon which must not be overlooked…Cooperative news media representatives have been used in the past. Reliability and discreetness have been proven. Recommendations for specific action will include necessary assurances that the Bureau’s interest will be protected.”

The COINTELPRO Papers book also observed that of the FBI’s 290 separate COINTELPRO actions that targeted New Left activists between 1968 and 1971, “some 40 percent were designed to keep targeted activists from speaking, teaching, writing or publishing.” (end of part 3)

(Downtown 4/14/93)

The FBI's Mass Media Program Historically--Part 2

(The following article first appeared in the April 14, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown. See below for Part 1 of article).

A former FBI agent named William Turner also noted in his 1970 book, Hoover’s FBI: The Men and The Myth, that “the virtues of the FBI have been recited for years in a Niagara of books, articles, feature stories, movies, radio shows, and TV accounts” and that “burnished to brightness by publicity techniques that are the envy of Madison Avenue, Hoover” was “made to appear bigger than life” and, as a result, became “one of the most powerful men in America.” And in his 1990 introduction to The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents From The FBI’s Secret War Against Domestic Dissent by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, human rights lawyer Brian Glick wrote that “the old myth of the FBI as crime-busting protector of democratic rights have been revived in modern garb by films like Mississippi Burning and the television series, Mancuso FBI, in recent years.”

Human rights lawyer Glick also noted in his introduction to The COINTELPRO Papers that the FBI also “authored articles and editorials which `cooperative news media’ ran as their own.” During the 1960s, for example, an FBI mass media program operation targeting Martin Luther King and his Southern Christian Leadership Council [SCLC] civil rights organization “was approved by memo in an exchange between Assistant Director William C Sullivan and one of his aides, Fred J. Baumgardner, on Oct. 8 [1962],” according to The COINTELPRO Papers; and “the initial five newspapers selected for purposes of surfacing the anti-King propaganda were the Long Island Star-Journal, Augusta (GA) Chronicle, Birmingham (AL) News, New Orleans Times-Picayune, and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (where the reporter utilized in spreading the lies was Patrick J. Buchanan, later part of the White House press corps under President Nixon and Reagan, as well as a…host on the Cable News Network’s Crossfire program)…” In addition, when “a group of editors from a well-known pro-Hoover magazine visited him in Washington,“ FBI Director Hoover also “entertained them with a rendition” of his Martin Luther King “hotel tapes,” which his FBI agents had recorded during their spying on King, according to the Investigating The FBI book. (end of part 2)

(Downtown 4/14/93)

The FBI's Mass Media Program Historically--Part 1

Although nobody ever elected him to be FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover monopolized his U.S. government position from 1924 until the day he died in May of 1972. And, in addition to being the director of the U.S. White Corporate Male Power Structure’s secret police, Hoover also apparently spent years moonlighting as a U.S. magazine writer, in order to whip up popular support for FBI activities. As Robert Sherrill noted in his essay, “The Selling Of The FBI,” which appeared in the 1973 book, Investigating The FBI:

“Let us now make a final survey of propaganda devices adroitly used by Hoover…By his death he had written well over a hundred articles for the major magazines—that is, magazines indexed by Reader’s Guide—not to mention probably an equal number in magazines of lesser repute and circulation.”

Hoover’s FBI apparently initiated its mass media program to manipulate U.S. public opinion in the 1930s, according to The FBI Nobody Knows by Fred Cook, when “Hoover finally decided to promote the image of the G-man as the incorruptible fighter against crime.” The same book also noted in 1964 that:

“All possible media of information that could be used to build the image have been tapped. Newspapers…have gloried in displaying cops-and-robbers features, with Hoover and the men of the FBI cast in infallible heroes’ roles. Magazines have followed in the footsteps of the press. Comic strips have featured the FBI in daily sequences…Radio and television have dramatized the great manhunts. Books bearing Hoover’s name or, if not his name his blessing, make the best-seller list. Movies have poured out documentaries and full-length feature dramas, lending visual impact to the promotion of the legend. The barrage has been overwhelming. Never before, on any level of government, have the American people been subjected to such brainwashing on behalf of any agency.” (end of part 1)

(Downtown 4/14/93)

`U.S. News & World Report' & Mort Zuckerman's Hidden History

“…The new publication was called U.S. News & World Report. Lawrence was editor until his death, publisher until 1958, and chairman of the board until 1973…He received the National Press Club of Washington’s Certificate of Appreciation in 1963 and a special award in 1964 from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in appreciation of his friendly and sympathetic assistance to the FBI.” (The National Cyclopedia of American Biography)

For most of the 20th Century, the U.S. White Corporate Male Power Structure’s Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] secret police operation was not too popular with U.S. political dissidents. But for most of the 20th Century the FBI was treated like a sacred cow by U.S. Establishment magazines like Mort Zuckerman’s U.S. News & World Report. And U.S. News & World Report apparently also acted covertly as a propaganda instrument of J.Edgar Hoover’s FBI between 1948 and 1972.

In a 1993 telephone interview, Downtown asked then-U.S. News & World Report senior vice-president for Communications, Sherrie Rollins, if U.S. News & World Report has ever acted as a public relations tool of the FBI since 1948?

“No. I’ve never heard anything like that. To my knowledge, U.S. News & World Report has never acted as a PR tool of the FBI,” replied the official spokesperson for U.S. News & World Report in 1993. She also said she was unaware of the existence of any past relationship between former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and U.S. News & World Report founder David Lawrence.

Yet in 1973, the book Investigating The FBI revealed that “Over the years, Hoover maintained extremely close ties with several magazines—U.S. News & World Report and Reader’s Digest being perhaps the closest.”

(Downtown 4/14/93)

Firm of Bush's Ex-Treasury Secretary Owns Chrysler

One reason the Bush & Obama Administration's Treasury Department may have been interested in recently bailing out the Big Three automobile corporations with a big corporate welfare grant is that the chairman of the board of the private investment firm that owns Chrysler--Cerberus Capital Management--is John W. Snow.

Coincidentally, between January 2003 and July 2006 Cerberus Capital Management Chairman of the Board Snow was the Bush Administration's Secretary of the Treasury.

Goldman Sachs-Linked Foundation Funds Economic Policy Institute

If you check out the Ford Foundation website, you’ll notice that sitting on the Ford Foundation board of trustees are Goldman Sachs Senior Director Robert Kaplan, former Carlyle Asset Management Group CEO Afsaneh Beschloss and former Morgan Stanley Senior Advisor Peter Nadosy. Yet the Economic Policy Institute [EPI] has apparently been accepting large amounts of money from the Wall Street-linked Ford Foundation at the same time it claims to be “a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that seeks to broaden the public debate about strategies to achieve a prosperous and fair economy,” on its website.

According to the EPI’s Form 990 filing for 2006, for example, the Goldman Sachs-linked Ford Foundation has contributed over $3.7 million to subsidize the research work of the EPI. The Ford Foundation’s own website indicates that the EPI’s New York office was given by the Ford Foundation a grant of $1,250,000 in 2005, two grants (totaling $650,000) in 2006, two grants (totaling $1 million) in 2007 and two grants (totaling $400,000) in 2008.

Billionaire Wall Street Speculator George Soros’s Open Society Institute also has apparently invested a lot of money in the EPI think-tank. According to EPI’s Form 990 filing for 2006, Soros’ Open Society Institute, for example, has contributed over $1 million to the EPI. The Open Society Institute’s own website indicates that the EPI was given by Soros’ Open Society Institute 3 grants (totaling $1,050,000) in 2005 and a grant of $800,000 in 2006.

The Rockefeller Foundation has also contributed $850,000 to the EPI, according to the EPI’s Form 990 filing for 2006. In addition, $730,000 has been contributed by the Mott Foundation and $650,000 has been contributed by the Joyce Foundation to the EPI.

Besides collecting large amounts of money from Wall Street-linked foundations, the EPI also is apparently heavily-funded by some of the same U.S. labor union leaders who have not had much success lately in preventing U.S. corporations from laying off large numbers of U.S. labor union members during the “Great Recession of 2007-2009.”

UAW leaders, for example, have contributed $400,000 to help subsidize the research reports of the EPI, while the AFL-CIO has contributed $595,000, according to the EPI’s Form 990 financial filing for 2006. Over $1.1 million has been contributed by the American Federation of Teachers and over $370,000 has also been contributed by the National Education Association to the EPI. In addition, the United Steelworkers of America has contributed $400,000, AFSCME has contributed $562,000 and SEIU has contributed $410,000 to the EPI, according to the 2006 financial filing. Not surprisingly, therefore, U.S. labor union leaders like UAW President Ron Gettlefinger, Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO, Lee Gerard of the United Steelworkers of America and Gerald McEntee of AFSCME have been sitting alongside folks like former Soros Fund Managing Director Robert Johnson, Lehman Brothers Senior Managing Director Ernest Green, former American Income Life Insurance Company CEO Bernard Rapoport, American Prospect magazine co-editor Robert Kuttner and an unsuccessful 2002 Democratic Party candidate for governor in Massachusetts, Robert Reich, on the board of directors of the “nonpartisan” EPI think-tank.

Much of the Wall Street-linked foundation and labor union money that the EPI is given each year is apparently used to pay the EPI executives, consultants and researchers annual salaries that are a lot more than what the average U.S. factory worker, U.S. office worker or U.S. student anti-war activist earns each year. In 2006, for example, the “nonprofit” Economic Policy Institute’s total revenues exceeded $6 million and the EPI’s President, Larry Mishel, was paid an annual salary of $199,457 that even exceeded the annual salary of UAW President Gettelfinger. At leasat five employees of the “nonprofit” EPI also were paid annual salaries in 2006 which exceeded $98,000 per year; and for his “professional services” of “project research,” the EPI apparently paid a researcher named Peter D. Hart $127,500 in 2006, according to its Form 990 financial filing.

So given the heavy extent to which the EPI is dependent on Wall Street-linked foundations and U.S. labor union leaders for its funding, it’s not likely that any of its economic research reports will ever demand that “nonprofit” institutions like the Ford Foundation or Harvard University be taxed at the same rate as “for-profit” corporations, in order to obtain the government tax revenue needed to provide union-wage jobs for all unemployed U.S. workers.

Nor is it likely that the EPI will produce an economic research report which demands that U.S. automobile industry finally be nationalized under democratic, working-class community control, in order to avert more mass layoffs of U.S. auto industry workers in 2009 and to protect the economic class interests of rank-and-file U.S. union members, all U.S. working-class people and U.S. consumers.

76th Anniversary Of 30-Hour Work Week Bill

Most people in the United Stares are still forced by the White Corporate Male Power Structure to toil at least 35 hours per week at menial jobs for inadequate wages. Yet it’s been over 76 years since a 30-Hour Work Week Bill was first introduced in the United States Senate. According to the book Our Own Times: A History of American Labor and the Working Day by David Roediger and Phillip Foner:

“On December 21, 1932…Senator Hugo L. Black of Alabama introduced a simple bill for shorter hours. The measure called for a 30-hour week as the `only practical and possible method for dealing with unemployment’…

“`Hunger in the midst of plenty is the great problem,’ he declared, adding that the prompt enactment of his measure, which was known as the `30-hour Work Week Bill,” `would bring about the quick employment of about 6.5 million jobless Americans’…

“On March 30,1933, the Judiciary Committee reported the 30-hour bill favorably and urged the Senate to adopt it. In its report, the committee stated that the unemployed could not be put to work without reducing hours…

“On April 6, 1933, the Senate passed the amended 30-hour-week bill by a vote of 53 to 30…”

Unfortunately for workers in the United States, the Democratic Administration of FDR chose to not push the 30-hour work week bill through its House of Representatives during its first 100 Days. And 76 years later—although there’s still a lot of jobless workers in the United States—the White Corporate Male Power Structure’s Obama Regime is apparently still unwilling to reduce the standard U.S. work-week to 28 hours in 2009.

Obama Regime Still Imprisons Leonard Peltier

The U.S. White Corporate Male Power Structure’s latest president, Barack Obama, promised to bring “change” to the United States during his 2008 election campaign. Yet the Obama Regime has not yet released U.S. political prisoners like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal.

One reason Obama has not immediately released Leonard Peltier may be because the Obama Regime’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is the wife of the Democratic President who refused to order the release of Leonard Peltier from federal prison in the 1990s. As the now-deceased William Kunstler noted in My Life As A Radical Lawyer, his 1994 autobiography:

“Leonard Peltier most recently appealed in Nov. 1992 with Ramsey Clark as his main attorney…

“In May 1993, I wrote to Hillary Rodham-Clinton in response to a rather terse letter she had sent to one of Leonard’s new lawyers, Eric Seitz, who had requested a presidential review of the case. She wrote to Seitz that her husband had no power to interfere in an ongoing criminal case. In my letter to Mrs. Clinton, I criticized her for her cold response to Seitz’s reasonable letter and informed her that she was quite incorrect about limits on presidential interference in criminal cases. She should have recalled former President Bush’s pardon of the indicted Caspar Weinberger…

“I only hope that I live long enough to see Leonard free…”

But U.S. political prisoner Peltier was still imprisoned by the Demcratic Clinton Regime on the day Kunstler died.

A recent letter to Leonard Peltier supporters from Peltier’s sister, Betty Peltier-Solano, indicated how Peltier has apparently been treated lately inside the U.S. federal prison system:

“I am so OUTRAGED! My brother Leonard was severely beaten upon his arrival at the Canaan Federal Penitentiary. When he went into population after his transfer, some inmates assaulted him. The severity of his injuries is that he suffered numerous blows to his head and body, receiving a large bump on his head, possibly a concussion, and numerous bruises. Also, one of his fingers is swollen and discolored and he has pain in his chest and ribcage. There was blood everywhere from his injuries.

“We feel that prison authorities at the prompting of the FBI orchestrated this attack and thus, we are greatly concerned about his safety. It may be that the attackers, whom Leonard did not even know, were offered reduced sentences for carrying out this heinous assault. Since Leonard is up for parole soon, this could be a conspiracy to discredit a model prisoner. He was placed in solitary confinement and only given one meal, this is generally done when you won’t name your attackers; incidentally being only given one meal seriously jeopardizes his health because of his diabetes. Prison officials refuse to release any info to the family, but they need to hear from his supporters to protect his safety, as does President Obama. His attorneys are trying to get calls into him now.

“This attack on LP comes on the heels of the FBI’s recent letter, prompting this attack by FBI supporters as an attempt to discredit LP as a model prisoner. Anyone who has been in the prison system knows well that if you refuse to name your attackers or file charges against them, then you lose your status as a victim and/or given points against your possible parole and labeled as a perpetrator. It is not uncommon, in fact is quite common for the government to use Indian against Indian and they still operate under the old adage “it takes an Indian to catch an Indian”. In 1978, they made an attempt to assassinate him through another Indian man who was also at Marion prison with LP. But Standing Deer chose to reveal the plot to him instead of taking his life in exchange FOR A CHANCE AT FREEDOM. When Standing Deer was released in 2001, he joined the former Leonard Peltier Defense Committee as a board member. He also began to speak on Leonard’s behalf until his murder six years ago today. Prior to his murder, Standing Deer confided with close friends and associates that the same man who visited him in Marion to assassinate Peltier, had came to Houston, TX and told him that he had better stay away from Peltier and anything to do with him.

“We are aware that currently, the FBI is actively seeking support for his continued imprisonment of Leonard Peltier and also also seeking support from Native People. So please be aware, and keep Leonard in your prayers. The FBI is apparently afraid of the impact we are having. If they will set him up to blemish his record just before a parole hearing, what will they do when it looks like his freedom will become a reality? We need to make sure that nothing happens to him again!

“Please write the President, send it priority or registered mail. Email to Change.gov or email President Obama. Call your congressional representatives and write letters, not email, to them. Do what you can to get the word out to insure that LP is receiving adequate medical attention for his injuries.

“I am asking you, supporters of Leonard and advocates of justice at this time to help. I don’t know what else to do. Please Help!

“Thank you Betty Peltier-Solano Executive Coordinator Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee

“Also call and request Leonard be treated with dignity and respect.
Canaan Federal Prison
570-488-8000 ‘