Editor of major German newspaper says he planted stories for CIA
"...taught to lie, to betray and not to tell the truth to the public."
Editor of major German newspaper says he planted stories for CIA
By Ralph Lopez
Common Dreams, Jan 26, 2015
Becoming the first credentialed, well-known media insider to step forward and state publicly that he was secretly a "propagandist," an editor of a major German daily has said that he personally planted stories for the CIA.
Saying he believes a medical condition gives him only a few years to live, and that he is filled with remorse, Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, the editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany's largest newspapers, said in an interview that he accepted news stories written and given to him by the CIA and published them under his own name. Ulfkotte said the aim of much of the deception was to drive nations toward war.
Dr. Ulfkotte says the corruption of journalists and major news outlets by the CIA is routine, accepted, and widespread in the western media, and that journalists who do not comply either cannot get jobs at any news organization, or find their careers cut short.
Dr. Ulfkotte is the author of a book currently available only in German, "Bought Journalists" (Kopp 2014.) Aged 55, he was also once an advisor to the government of German Chancellor Helmet Kohl.
The book has become a bestseller in Germany but, in a bizarre twist which Ulfkotte says characterizes the disconnect caused by CIA control of the western media, the book cannot be reported on.
Ulfkotte says:
"No German mainstream journalist is allowed to report about (my) book. Otherwise he or she will be sacked. So we have a bestseller now that no German journalist is allowed to write or talk about."
CONTINUED...
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/editor-of-major-german-newspaper-says-he-planted-stories-for-cia/article/424470
= new reply since forum marked as read
And the Carl Bernstein quotes, etc. as well.
War is one of the biggest money making schemes ever devised...pushing for mass murder so some people can make more money.
It is so pathetic and horrible, but reminiscent of WW1, and other wars pushed by private interests...
This should be front page news everywhere.
But of course it will never be.
In the total absence of truth in our media, our world's prospects are not very good...
And why trying matters:
Drone Killings and Torture: Peace Activists to be “Rehabilitated” in Jail
Institute for Public Accuracy
Press Release, December 15, 2014
Students gather at the site of a suspected U.S. drone strike on an Islamic seminary in Hangu districtMarcy Wheeler writes in “From Bush to Obama, Eyes Wide Shut: The same memo Bush used to wall himself off from the details of CIA torture is keeping Obama’s drone war alive” that: “On the second day of Barack Obama’s presidency, he prohibited most forms of physical torture. On the third, a CIA drone strike he authorized killed up to 11 civilians.”
Also, see: “U.S. drone strikes kill 28 unknown people for every intended target, new Reprieve report reveals.”
KATHY KELLY, kathy at vcnv.org, @voiceinwild
Co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Kelly was just sentenced to three months in prison for protesting against drone killings. Recently in Afghanistan, Kelly is currently in Chicago. She will be in New York City around Christmas and in Washington, D.C. just after New Years. She has been told to “self-report” by the court on Jan. 23.
She recently wrote the piece “Drones and Discrimination: Kick the Habit,” which states: “On December 10, International Human Rights Day, federal Magistrate Matt Whitworth sentenced me to three months in prison for having crossed the line at a military base that wages drone warfare. The punishment for our attempt to speak on behalf of trapped and desperate people, abroad, will be an opportunity to speak with people trapped by prisons and impoverishment here in the U.S.
“Our trial was based on a trespass charge incurred on June 1, 2014. Georgia Walker and I were immediately arrested when we stepped onto Missouri’s Whiteman Air Force where pilots fly weaponized drones over Afghanistan and other countries. We carried a loaf of bread and a letter for Brig Gen. Glen D. Van Herck. In court, we testified that we hadn’t acted with criminal intent but had, rather, exercised our First Amendment right (and responsibility) to assemble peaceably for redress of grievance.
“A group of Afghan friends had entrusted me with a simple message, their grievance, which they couldn’t personally deliver: please stop killing us.
“I knew that people I’ve lived with, striving to end wars even as their communities were bombed by drone aircraft, would understand the symbolism of asking to break bread with the base commander. Judge Whitworth said he understood that we oppose war, but he could recommend over 100 better ways to make our point that wouldn’t be breaking the law.
“The prosecution recommended the maximum six month sentence. ‘Ms. Kelly needs to be rehabilitated,’ said an earnest young military lawyer. The judge paged through a four page summary of past convictions and agreed that I hadn’t yet learned not to break the law.”
JACK GILROY, jgilroy1 at stny.rr.com
Gilroy recently completed a two month sentence for protesting drone killings at the Hancock Air base in upstate New York. See from Syracuse.com: “Grandfather of eight/drone protester says he was not ‘corrected’ at Jamesville Correctional Facility.” Gilroy wrote the play “The Predator” about drone killing.
MARK COLVILLE, amistadcwh at yahoo.com
Colville is a member of the Amistad Catholic Worker in New Haven, Conn. and is, like Gilroy, one of about 100 activists who have been charged following protests at the Hancock Air base organized by the Upstate New York Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars.
He was recently on the program “Democracy Now!,” where he stated: “The United States government, through its drone program, is claiming the legal right to targeted assassinations, extrajudicial killings, indiscriminate killing and the targeting, deliberate targeting, of civilians. For example, even the military admits that one of its modes of operation in drone strikes is something that they have called ‘double tapping,’ which is that after striking a target, the drone is directed back to that same target 20 minutes or a half an hour later in order to strike again after first responders have come to help the wounded. And so, it’s on a foundation of criminality. And as we’ve experienced in the numerous public actions and arrests at Hancock Air Field, this program operates beyond the reach of courts and law. And what we’re trying to do is to get courts to [address] the criminality in which the United States government is engaged through the drone program.”
See IPA news release: “31 Protesters Arrested at Drone Base in Syracuse.”
SOURCE w/links: http://www.accuracy.org/release/drone-killings-and-torture-peace-activists-to-be-rehabilitated-in-jail/
Judy: Have you met my friend, the great DUer Savannahmann?
The Man Who Sold the War
by James Bamford
Rolling Stone, November 18, 2005
The road to war in Iraq led through many unlikely places. One of them was a chic hotel nestled among the strip bars and brothels that cater to foreigners in the town of Pattaya, on the Gulf of Thailand.
On December 17th, 2001, in a small room within the sound of the crashing tide, a CIA officer attached metal electrodes to the ring and index fingers of a man sitting pensively in a padded chair. The officer then stretched a black rubber tube, pleated like an accordion, around the man's chest and another across his abdomen. Finally, he slipped a thick cuff over the man's brachial artery, on the inside of his upper arm.
Strapped to the polygraph machine was Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a forty-three-year-old Iraqi who had fled his homeland in Kurdistan and was now determined to bring down Saddam Hussein. For hours, as thin mechanical styluses traced black lines on rolling graph paper, al-Haideri laid out an explosive tale. Answering yes and no to a series of questions, he insisted repeatedly that he was a civil engineer who had helped Saddam's men to secretly bury tons of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. The illegal arms, according to al-Haideri, were buried in subterranean wells, hidden in private villas, even stashed beneath the Saddam Hussein Hospital, the largest medical facility in Baghdad.
It was damning stuff -- just the kind of evidence the Bush administration was looking for. If the charges were true, they would offer the White House a compelling reason to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. That's why the Pentagon had flown a CIA polygraph expert to Pattaya: to question al-Haideri and confirm, once and for all, that Saddam was secretly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
There was only one problem: It was all a lie. After a review of the sharp peaks and deep valleys on the polygraph chart, the intelligence officer concluded that al-Haideri had made up the entire story, apparently in the hopes of securing a visa.
The fabrication might have ended there, the tale of another political refugee trying to scheme his way to a better life. But just because the story wasn't true didn't mean it couldn't be put to good use. Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. And the man who had long been in charge of the marketing was a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment named John Rendon.
Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists. Two months before al-Haideri took the lie-detector test, the Pentagon had secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda. One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result. His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power." Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam. It was as if President John F. Kennedy had outsourced the Bay of Pigs operation to the advertising and public-relations firm of J. Walter Thompson.
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1118-10.htm
Money and Power should be shared, not concentrated. So, to keep things honest, we need an honest news media. Which, is the problem...
That is usually used as homophobic slur. What you had to say before that part was spot on. I cringed when I saw that last word though.
Stephen Colbert from the 2006 correspondent's dinner.
Elite media figure reaction in the room . . . offended silence.
And he wrote for the leading conservative newspaper in his country for 17 years?
There is no doubt that Dr. Ulfkotte is a right-winger (just like most of his former colleagues and superiors at that newspaper). It is true that he makes provocative statements, sometimes bolstered with spurious evidence.
I'm afraid the same or worse must be said about your own 'source', though. It doesn't take much effort to find claims there which are outright false. As regards Ulfkotte:
where he accused the fourth estate of deliberately distorting the truth.
http://www.dialoginternational.com/dialog_international/2010/05/so-l%C3%BCgt-udo-ulfkotte.html
http://www.dialoginternational.com/dialog_international/2011/05/ulfkotte-turkish-womens-poor-hygiene-to-blame-for-ecoliehec-outbreak.html
http://www.dialoginternational.com/dialog_international/2015/01/fake-journalist-udo-ulfkotte-makes-a-comeback-as-putin-propagandist.html
According to this ominous blog, it was 'the Lügenpresse! battle-cry of the Pegida protesters' which gave 'Ulfkotte a convenient cover to go after the journalists who scorned or ignored him in the past'. 'Lügenpresse' means 'lying press' and is a fighting term with a long tradition reaching back almost 200 years. Since it has also been used by Goebbels (denouncing the foreign press), it is now seen as a given that everyone who uses it now must be a Nazi.
But was it in fact the 'Pegida' rabble who started denouncing the German press of unfairly reporting the events in Ukraine? 'Pegida' was founded in October 2014, after Ulfkotte's book came out. Harsh criticism of mainstream media reporting had been voiced much earlier, not only at 'Montagswachen' (Monday peace vigils) throughout the year but also by official supervisory organs:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/09/26/ardp-s26.html
The widely known and appreciated satirical TV progam 'Die Anstalt' had aired some skits on the same topic in September:
Some of the more interesting information mentioned by 'Die Anstalt' and also cited in Ulfkotte's book, about the pro-NATO networking among journalists, was cited from a book that came out in February 2014: Uwe Krüger: Meinungsmacht. Der Einfluss von Eliten auf Leitmedien und Alpha-Journalisten - eine kritische Netzwerkanalyse
That must be one big conspiracy indeed, I guess, no doubt directed by the lying press of Putin.
You made some half-assed ad hominem about my "source" while completely ignoring the lunacy Ulfkotte wrote, complete with references. Then you claimed that because some German committee wrote that German media "appears" to be biased against Russia, that must somehow mean that RT is now the gold standard of journalism.
Now you're claiming that because Ulfkotte gets published by somewhat notable publishers, that must mean he's not full of shit. I suppose if I wanted to offer a rebuttal I could point out Hannity and Beck are published by Simon & Schuster and Palin is published by HarperCollins.
I could care less if you give a "flying f" whether the only "news" outlets that are publishing Ulfkotte are RT and nutbag conspiracy theory website Kopp Verlag along with it's UFO, 9/11 "truther", and anti-vax bullshittery, but I suspect reasonable people might find that somewhat relevant. YMMV.
That proves the vast conspiracy Ulfkotte is alleging must be true. As if that wasn't good enough, the fact that the mainstream media is ignoring his nonsense proves the conspiracy is real.
More likely the reason nobody in mainstream media will touch this guy is because he is a far right wing bigoted nutjob.
Here's the guy you are so vehemently defending making a half-fast, yet highly bigoted speech cheering on far right, and batshit crazy PEGIDA. So it appears Ulfkotte and the "Pegida rabble" are pretty much one in the same.
CIA Document #1035-960, marked "PSYCH" for presumably Psychological Warfare Operations, in the division "CS", the Clandestine Services, sometimes known as the "dirty tricks" department.
CIA Instructions to Media Assets
RE: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report
1. Our Concern. From the day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report, (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved. Presumably as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission's report, a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of those polled thought that the Commission had left some questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse results.
2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization. The members of the Warren Commission were naturally chosen for their integrity, experience and prominence. They represented both major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination. Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.
3. Action. We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active addresses are requested:
a. To discuss the publicity problem with (?)and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.
b. To employ propaganda assets to and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passing to assets. Our ploy should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (II) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Epstein's theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher article and Spectator piece for background. (Although Mark Lane's book is much less convincing that Epstein's and comes off badly where confronted by knowledgeable critics, it is also much more difficult to answer as a whole, as one becomes lost in a morass of unrelated details.)
4. In private to media discussions not directed at any particular writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments should be useful:
a. No significant new evidence has emerged which the Commission did not consider. The assassination is sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten and Bertrand Russell) with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the attack on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits have been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics. (A better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire of 1933, which some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, AJ.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt) now believe was set by Vander Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for either Nazis or Communists; the Nazis tried to pin the blame on the Communists, but the latter have been more successful in convincing the world that the Nazis were to blame.)
b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others. They tend to place more emphasis on the recollections of individual witnesses (which are less reliable and more divergent--and hence offer more hand-holds for criticism) and less on ballistics, autopsy, and photographic evidence. A close examination of the Commission's records will usually show that the conflicting eyewitness accounts are quoted out of context, or were discarded by the Commission for good and sufficient reason.
c. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy, Attorney General at the time and John F. Kennedy's brother, would be the last man to overlook or conceal any conspiracy. And as one reviewer pointed out, Congressman Gerald R. Ford would hardly have held his tongue for the sake of the Democratic administration, and Senator Russell would have had every political interest in exposing any misdeeds on the part of Chief Justice Warren. A conspirator moreover would hardly choose a location for a shooting where so much depended on conditions beyond his control: the route, the speed of the cars, the moving target, the risk that the assassin would be discovered. A group of wealthy conspirators could have arranged much more secure conditions.
d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it; they also scoff at the Commission because it did not always answer every question with a flat decision one way or the other. Actually, the make-up of the Commission and its staff was an excellent safeguard against over-commitment to any one theory, or against the illicit transformation of probabilities into certainties.
e. Oswald would not have been any sensible person's choice for a co-conspirator. He was a "loner," mixed up, of questionable reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service. (Archivist's note: This claim is demonstrably untrue with the latest file releases. The CIA had an operational interest in Oswald less than a month before the assassination. Source: Oswald and the CIA, John Newman and newly released files from the National Archives.)
f. As to charges that the Commission's report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was largely due to the pressure of irresponsible speculation already appearing, in some cases coming from the same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting out new criticisms.
g. Such vague accusations as that "more than ten people have died mysteriously" can always be explained in some natural way e.g.: the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses (the FBI interviewed far more people, conduction 25,000 interviews and re interviews), and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected. (When Penn Jones, one of the originators of the "ten mysterious deaths" line, appeared on television, it emerged that two of the deaths on his list were from heart attacks, one from cancer, one was from a head-on collision on a bridge, and one occurred when a driver drifted into a bridge abutment.)
5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging reference to the Commission's Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should still be impressed by the care, thoroughness, objectivity and speed with which the Commission worked. Reviewers of other books might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with the report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics.
SOURCE: http://www.boston.com/community/forums/news/national/general/cia-instructions-to-media-assets-doc-1035-960/80/6210620
From 2003, first OP on DU I could find on it: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x765619
When the facts related or story told don't go as intended, the instructions call for an attack on the messenger. Must work the same in any format -- except in Sincerity. Thank you, Alkene!
- They were exposed for this in the 1970s!!! Remember, last century?!?!?!
K&R
WELL THEY NEVER STOPPED!!!!
THEY NEVER STOPPED ANY OF IT!!!
THEY ONLY GOT WORSE!!!
...you're really obvious.
