From: jad@Turing.ORG (John DiNardo)
Subject: Part I, DANIEL SHEEHAN: CIA Agents Infest U.S. Mass Media
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The Turing Project, Charlottesville Virginia.
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 22:12:35 GMT

        I made the following transcript from a tape recording 
        of a broadcast by Pacifica Radio Network station
               WBAI-FM (99.5)
               505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl.
               New York, NY 10018       (212) 279-0707

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
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 .....

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 and ABC 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[sp], 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.

     [JD: Once CIA, always CIA, unless they go public (e.g. Agee,
          Stockwell, McGehee, MacMichael, Marchetti, Riconosciuto, etc.)]

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. 

     [JD: If anyone can summarize or make direct transcripts from
      published sources attesting to the CIA's subornation of such 
      journalists as Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather regarding the
      cover-up of the assassination of President Kennedy, please
      post it as a follow-up to this article. I know, from my own 
      observations of the Watergate scandal, that Dan Rather was the
      most vociferous attacker of Richard Nixon throughout that 
      long series of press conferences punctuating the process of
      what we now know to be a CIA-sponsored soft-coup -- the second 
      CIA coup d'etat in recent history.]  

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
Rob 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 we can export a form of terrorism,
we can support movements to destabilize DEMOCRACIES in any country
whose position we don't choose to support, where multi-national
corporations' interests may feel threatened and, as a result,
we'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.
                         (to be continued)
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

     This is one of countless stories unveiling the deeply corrupted     
     and subverted state of our theoretically democratic Government.  
     This story makes disgustingly obvious the fact that patriotism
     is not the waving of flags, the tying of yellow ribbons and the 
     mindless support of the Government, just because it happens to be ours.
     You don't support cancer just because you happen to have it.
     Patriotism is telling the truth to the people of our country
     in order that they may unite to conquer the anti-democratic
     cancer that is gradually destroying ours and our children's
     freedom. So please post the installments of this ongoing series
     to other bulletin boards, and post hardcopies in public places,
     both on and off campus.  That would be a truly patriotic deed.

       John DiNardo


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