CIA Agents Infest US Mass Media -- 1st of 4 parts


           T H E   P E O P L E'S   S P E L L B R E A K E R
    News They Never Told You .... News They'll Never Tell You
              THE NEWSPAPER FOR THE PEOPLE OF MONTANA
EDITOR: John DiNardo
 
 

From the Pacifica Radio Network station,
WBAI-FM (99.5)
by DANIEL SHEEHAN

GARY NULL:
The Public's right to know is not always what the Public ends up getting. The Public frequently gets such one-sided, biased information -- and not just from the mass media. It's easy to have a long arm that protects the special interest groups: this kind of a "one world family" of insiders that is capable of affecting federal judges, U.S. attorneys, to slant or obstruct justice, to hide or cover up crucial information, and to interfere with our liberties.

Daniel Sheehan, as much as any attorney in the United States, and the Christic Institute have taken it upon themselves to try to challenge some of these injustices and to give us the information that they have distilled from their work that gives us a different perspective. Unfortunately, rare is it that any of the mainstream media covers the work of the Christic Institute or of Daniel Sheehan. And if they did, it would be a very enlightened Public who would be benefiting from this. Welcome to our program, Daniel Sheehan.

DANIEL SHEEHAN:
Thank you, Gary.

GARY NULL:
Daniel, earlier on, one of our guests was talking about -- and I'd like for you to follow through on this theme -- that what we're told in the media (and what we're told officially from Government sources) and what is the truth are frequently at varying degrees against each other. Give us one specific example.....

DANIEL SHEEHAN:
That's absolutely true. There has been a major campaign on the part of the Central Intelligence Agency, for example, to place Central Intelligence Agency agents, trained agents, IN various news media posts. We've found the documents on this. It was called "Operation Mocking Bird." And they placed Central Intelligence Agency operatives in places like TIME Magazine and LIFE Magazine, the New York Times, inside CBS [TV] and ABC [TV] News.

Originally, the intent of "Operation Mocking Bird" was to make certain that these major media outlets reflected an adequately anti-communist perspective. And then, of course, as they became entrenched and in-place, any time the Central Intelligence Agency wanted a story killed or distorted they would just contact their agents inside.

Now, they have bragged openly in private memos back and forth inside the Agency about how proud they are of having really important "assets" inside virtually every major news media in the United States. And I've encountered this repeatedly.

For example, the Chief National Security Correspondent for TIME Magazine, Bruce Van Voorst, is a regular Central Intelligence Agency officer.  It turns out that Ben Bradlee from the Washington Post was a regular Central Intelligence Agency officer prior to coming to his post at the Washington Post. Bob Woodward at the Washington Post was the Point-Briefer for U.S. Naval Intelligence of the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff before he went over to the Washington Post.

We find these people constantly in the news media and, as I may have pointed out to you in one of your shows, when the New York Times was refusing to print any information about Oliver North and Richard Secord [President Reagan's assistants], Albert Hakim and Robert Owen, and all of these other men who, throughout 1985 and 1986, were engaged in this MASSIVE criminal conspiracy to violate the Boland Amendment prohibiting any weapons shipments to the Contras, and who were involved in smuggling TOW missiles to Iran ... as this information was being communicated to the New York Times by sources that we had, the New York Times absolutely refused to print any of this. And the reason for it was, according to Keith Schneider-- who was one of the reporters assigned to at least address this stuff and look into it .... he said that they were refusing to print any of it because their high-level sources inside the Central Intelligence Agency refused to confirm the stories.

Now, that kind of relationship between self-conscious "assets" of the Covert Operations Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a political police force on an international level, if you will, and an economic police force to protect the ostensible economic interests of United States industries ... to place those people inside a news media -- which, under the First Amendment, ostensibly has the responsibility to critique and investigate potential injustices on the part of the State, inside the Government -- is an extraordinarily dangerous development here in the United States.

GARY NULL:
Thank you for that insight.  Could you also give us some understanding of one case in particular (if you could highlight it) that you're privy to, to show how they can export a form of terrorism, how they can support movements to destabilize DEMOCRACIES in any country whose position they don't choose to support, where multi-national corporations' interests may feel threatened and, as a result, they'll use our various branches of Government to thwart the local populace, invade their sovereignty, disrupt their complete political system, and how they manipulate the stories in the Press so that it's NEVER the way that we're told it is.