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Alex Constantine - May 28, 2014
By Andrew Kreig
Global Research, May 28, 2014
CNN and Newsweek recently launched dubious tirades against what they called "conspiracy theories." Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal published U.N. Considers Reopening Probe into 1961 Crash that Killed Dag Hammarskjöld, a report that broached the possibility that the United States may have been involved in the death of the secretary-general, who is shown in a file photo. As a way to understand such varied messages, I urge readers to evaluate evidence with an open mind — and regard with special suspicion those commentators who slant their coverage with the loaded smear words "conspiracy theory" without citing specific evidence.
No one has time to investigate everything without preconceptions. For efficiency, we rely in part on slanted commentary by our favorite sources. But if the stakes are high and we want to be honest we should admit (at least to ourselves) that our preliminary conclusions should be subject to change based on new data.
My suggestions follow the spirit of the Justice Integrity Project's JFK Assassination "Readers Guide" last fall. That 11-part series began with a catalog of books, archives, reports and videos.Then it proceeded to assess various theories of President Kennedy's 1963 murder.
By now, we know from declassified documents that the CIA undertook a massive secret campaign to smear critics of the Warren Commission with the label "conspiracy theorist."
The campaign used members of mainstream media friendly to the CIA, for example, to discredit New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, shown below. Garrison was prosecuting New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw in what Garrison alleged was a conspiracy to murder Kennedy. Shaw, an OSS liaison to high-ranking British officials during World War II, founded a major regional trade mart in New Orleans shortly after the war. Garrison alleged that Shaw met with rightist opponents of JFK to plan the death.
A 50-page CIA memo, known as "CIA Dispatch 1035-960," instructed agents to contact their media contacts and disparage those, like Garrison, criticizing the Warren Commission findings that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK and acted alone. The 1967 document is here in the original, and herein reformatted text of its summary.
Minutes of CIA meeting that same year indicated fear that Garrison would win a conviction.
But a jury promptly acquitted Shaw following more than a dozen deaths (including suicide) of potential witnesses and an intense smear campaign against Garrison by the national media. NBC News hired former high-ranking Justice Department official Walter Sheridan, who had been an early recruit to the super-secret NSA in the 1950s. Publicly an investigative reporter, Sheridan was involved also in operational efforts to undermine Garrison.
More generally, Operation Mockingbird was the CIA's secret program to plant stories in the nation's most prestigious news outlets.
"With this [CIA] memo and the CIA's influence in the media," author Peter Janney wrote in a guest column on our site last fall, "the concept of 'conspiracy theorist' was engendered and infused into our political lexicon and became what it is today: a term to smear, denounce, ridicule, and defame anyone who dares to speak about any crime committed by the state, military or intelligence services."
Janney, whose late father Wistar Janney had been a high-ranking CIA executive, continued: "People who want to pretend that conspiracies don't exist — when in fact they are among the most commonmodus operandi of significant historical change throughout the world and in our country — become furious when their naive illusion is challenged."
After that background, let's look at more recent uses of the term by the mainstream media to discredit those who suggest government complicity in notorious events.
CNN, Newsweek Lash Out Against Government Critics
Last week, CNN's Jake Tapper engaged in little more than name-calling in his segment 'Truthers' to protest 9/11 Museum. Tapper brought in a like-minded guest, Salon columnist Emily Bazelon, who relied on the same kind of seat-of-the-pants speculation to denounce protesters.
Another example of selective analysis was a Newsweek cover story May 15, The Plots to Destroy America, written by Kurt Eichenwald. Oddly, Newsweek's sensationalistic title itself implied a conspiracy — that the diverse government critics on the right and left whom the magazine attacked intended to "destroy" the nation with their "plots."
I recognized the pattern. Three years ago, I hosted author Jonathan Kay on my weekly public affair radio show, Washington Update. Kay, a Canadian newspaper editor and law school graduate, had authored Among the Truthers, a 340-page book. Upon reading it, however, I saw that it raised alarm and mocked critics of 9/11 official accounts but did not analyze their arguments.
Similarly, Eichenwald cited as authority a handful of establishment "experts" who mocked those who criticize government or other establishment institutions.
Among the experts the Newsweek author repeatedly quoted was Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor, author of the recent book Conspiracy Theories, and a former high-ranking Obama administration official. During the Obama first term, Sunstein in effect oversaw all federal regulation at the White House's Office of Management and Budget.
A White House photo shows Sunstein with his wife, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, when Vice President Joe Biden swore her into office last summer. Her appointment followed her high-level work in national security at the White House and State Department during Obama's first term. As noted in my book, Presidential Puppetry, she is a leading proponent for regime change and military intervention globally on the grounds of humanitarian principles.
Also last summer, Obama appointed Sunstein along with four others to the president's review commission for a response to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations of massive illegal spying on the American public.
Eichenwald glosses over this heavy national security background and the rhetoric needed to foster public support for global interventions.
Even more relevant is that Eichenwald failed to note that Sunstein co-authored in 2008 what has become a notorious paper advocating propaganda techniques.
In the paper "Conspiracy Theories," Sunstein advocated that the government secretly hire academics and journalists to thwart the dissemination of what federal authorities might regard as dangerous beliefs held by millions of voters, such as suggestion that officials were complicit in 9/11 or a cover-up.
Sunstein's own proposal sounds, in other words, like the kind of plot government critics most fear as a violation of constitutional rights by an Orwellian, Big Brother state.
Yet Eichenwald argued that "not a scintilla of evidence" exists for the theories he disparaged. He called them "unsubstantiated nonsense." But he failed, like most with his mind-set, to refute the best arguments of his targets.
Instead, he repeatedly cited well-credential experts, who applauded government officials for the most part and trivialized the concerns of complainers.
Such elitist, slanted reporting by Newsweek and CNN suggests why their audiences are plunging and the outlets find themselves focused on half-truths important to someone, but not audiences. The Internet provides alternative news sources.
In 2010, the Washington Post sold Newsweek for just $1 and assumption of debts. The Post announced that it wanted to place the publication into the hands of a like-minded publisher. This was Sidney Harman, the husband of Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA), a Harvard Law grad and prominent advocate of the intelligence-military complex. Newsweek, much like CNN, retains only a shell of its former clout and has twice been sold since Sidney Harman died.
That said, most of us still rely heavily on the mainstream media to complement our information from other sources.
A striking example last week was a bold, exclusive report by Joe Lauria, the Wall Street Journal's United Nations correspondent. Lauria (shown in a file photo) drew on his years on the beat to report for the Journal that the United Nations may reactivate on the basis of new evidence its dormant inquiry on whether its late leader, Hammarskjöld, was intentionally killed during his 1961 peace-keeping mission.
As a former stringer for the Journal for two years earlier in my career, I can imagine how much research the reporter must have produced before such a story would make it into print. His achievement is especially striking at a Murdoch-owned paper, whose owner is better known for benefiting from high-level intrigues than exposing them.
And what if the United Nations proceeds — and finds that the secretary-general died from foul play?
For one thing, that would not be good news for those who deny conspiracies. But they would surely find a way to avoid in-depth reporting.
Contact the author Andrew Kreig


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subset: commoncrawl


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TROY, Ohio — After finding out his teenage sister had been killed in a car accident over the weekend, Mark Ross said he wanted to be with his mother as soon as he could.
Without a vehicle, Ross said that he convinced someone he knew to drive, and jumped in the man's car just after 3 a.m. Sunday in Indiana. Ross wrote in a Facebook post that they were speeding through Ohio, bound for Detroit, when the lights flashed behind them.
"I knew I was going to jail due to a petty warrant," Ross wrote.
Ross was in the passenger seat of the car when Trooper J. Davis pulled them over, and the driver had a suspended license and an outstanding warrant as well, according to Inside Edition.
Trooper Davis ended up taking the driver into custody and having the car towed, which left Ross stranded in Ohio.
Ross explained what happened next when Ohio State Highway Patrol Sergeant David Robison arrived:
"I broke down crying and he saw the sincerity in my cry. He REACHES OVER AND BEGAN PRAYING OVER ME AND MY FAMILY. He offered to bring me 100 miles further to Detroit because they towed the vehicle. Everybody knows how much I dislike Cops but I am truly Greatful (sic) for this Guy. He gave me hope"
True to his word, Robison drove Ross more than 100 miles to a Detroit coffee shop where he could meet his cousin.
"It was just so overwhelming," Ross told Inside Edition. "They were trying to help us."
Ross and his family said they are so grateful for Robison's generosity, and that the sergeant has even promised to attend the funeral.


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A woman accusing Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct more than 30 years ago came forward publicly Sunday, detailing her allegations about the Supreme Court nominee inan interviewwith The Washington Post.
The paper said Christine Blasey Ford, a professor in California, reached out to the Post in July as Kavanaugh's name appeared on short lists to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, but she opted not to speak with the Post on the record for weeks. As her private outreach to California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein became public over the past week, she decided to go ahead and speak out herself, Sunday's report said.
"Now I feel like my civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation," Ford told the Post.
Ford said she kept silent about the alleged incident until she was in couples' therapy with her husband in 2012. Her husband, Russell Ford, recalled to the Post that she talked during their 2012 sessions about the incident and said she had mentioned Kavanaugh's last name and that he was a federal judge who might be on the Supreme Court eventually.
In a statement on Friday, Kavanaugh denied the reported allegations that while at a party during his time in high school, he pushed a woman into a room, locked the door to the room along with another male and tried to take off the woman's clothes.
"I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time," his statement said.
Asked for a response to Ford's detailed allegations, White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah offered CNN the same denial Kavanaugh issued previously.
The White House would not comment further.
Going through the allegation she had made in her letter, Ford told the Post that Kavanaugh and his friend were drunk at the time and that he put his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream.
"I thought he might inadvertently kill me," Ford said. "He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing."
According to the Post, Ford is a professor at Palo Alto University who teaches in a consortium with Stanford University.
Ford said she was able to escape Kavanaugh and his friend, whom she identified as Mark Judge. Judge denied the allegations in an interview with The Weekly Standard, a conservative publication, after The New Yorker detailed them on Friday.
"I never saw Brett act that way," Judge said.
Citing unreleased records from Kavanaugh's official work over the years, Democrats have called for a delay in considering his nomination. The Senate Judiciary Committee has set its vote on his nomination for this coming Thursday.


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The Dry Bones
Born Pasadena, California
Grew up in Tucson, Arizona and Danville, California
Presently reside in Tucson.
Graduated from University of Arizona with bachelor's degrees in Biology and Wildlife Biology
Married to an engineer and we have one son whom I homeschooled for 8 years. He has since earned his Master's Degree in MIS and works in San Diego
Activities/Experiences: besides being wife and mother, I am a keeper of hounds and a watercolor artist. I have raised chickens, turkeys and goats, made apple cider, hiked the Grand Canyon in a day, snowshoed three times into the Sierra Nevada's Desolation Wilderness (encountering blizzards two times), managed a stable of sixty horses, worked at Steward Observatory as an artist and in the Biology Department at the University of Arizona as a keeper of rats, mice and frogs for experiments. I have cleaned oil spill off scores of seabirds so they could be re-released, nursed a sparrow and a red-tailed hawk back to health, and lost a snake in the couch. I play tennis, walk, journal, sketch and am teaching myself how to make books. I love to read, and I watch a lot of movies and I drive my friends and family crazy with my analysis and discussion of both categories. I am completely captivated by stories and words, especially in their function of communicating the truths of life. Most of all, I love my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and learning more about Him every day.
The Meat — Or How I Came to Write Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy
More than 25 years ago I left my college area apartment to go to a meeting with a man who would supposedly answer all my questions about the Bible and Creation versus the theory of Evolution, which I passionately supported. As I locked the front door, I remember saying to myself, "Those people think they're going to convert me, but they're wrong. No one can know for sure which explanation is right because no one was actually there back when whatever happened happened."
The man did answer all my questions — every one of them. I just didn't understand any of his answers. What I did understand — suddenly, stunningly — was the reality of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and the fact that I deeply desired to know Him. Without understanding much of anything about what sin was, I acknowledged I was a sinner and believed that He died for me on the cross some 2000 years ago.
I came home utterly changed. Family members couldn't figure out what was the matter with me. "What happened?" one asked. "Did they give you some sort of injection over there at that church?"
I was one of those wildly enthusiastic, intensely emotional converts. Evolution flew out the window and I've never looked back.
A year later I was married and living in Northern Arizona where the Lord introduced me to the taped sermons of Col. R.B. Thieme, Jr out of Houston, Tx. Col Thieme taught six times a week in those days, using an intensive isagogical, categorical and exegetical approach to teaching the Bible. I couldn't get enough of it, sometimes listening to three tapes a day, which, since I was carless and jobless and still new to the community, I had plenty of time to do.
A year after that while house-sitting for some Christian friends I was complaining about a best-selling novel I had picked up, and my husband suggested that instead of complaining I might want to write my own. The light went on, the fire blazed and off I went. The very next day while dusting I discovered a copy of The Writer's Market on the bottom shelf of a bedside table and in it was an article that was supposed to help you decide if you were a writer or not. I was.
Reading since before I even started school, I'd routinely carried home armloads of books from the library and read them all. I'd made up stories since I could remember, and when I was in junior high school I began to actually write them down. I wrote an entire novel in high school (a western) and started another (SF) before I left for college. I even had the audacity to send the western off to Doubleday for consideration for publication. When it was returned to me six months later I was mortified that I had actually shown it to anyone and threw it away lest I ever be tempted again.
Now, with my husband's encouragement I started a Christian western. Four months later I saw Star Wars at the same time as I was in the midst of a Bible study about putting on the armor of God, and something clicked. Suddenly I could see all the parallels and metaphors. I scrapped the western and launched into SF allegory . . . It changed into fantasy entitled The Shadow of Ghel, a novel that got me two agents and an almost-sale before I rewrote it from scratch for the third time, renamed it The Light of Eidon and submitted it to yet another agent. He loved my work, but told me the market was saturated with that sort of fantasy. I needed to do something entirely different.
So I wrote Arena, had it critiqued by multiple critiquers, worked and reworked it, polished it to a high sheen and sent it out to the world… only to have it bounce off publishers' desks. After about six months of that, and rejections from almost every major house, I picked up a book on Christian fiction and suddenly realized that what I was doing fit right into their parameters (except for the SF/F part).
Within three months of that decision the Lord had sent me to Mt. Hermon where I met Steve Laube who was then an editor at Bethany House. I showed him my proposal for Arena and after snorting somewhat disparagingly at my characters' names, grumbling about synopsis writing being the worst a writer ever does and asking me to tell him off the cuff what the book was about, he decided that he wouldn't be able to tell without seeing it. So he asked me to cut 20,000 words and send it to him. Which I did.
And then, once more, I waited…and waited…It was a year and a half before he finally pitched it to the editorial board and they bought it. A year and a few months later just before it released, Publisher's Weekly gave it a very positive review and suddenly they wanted to The Light of Eidon and the other books in my Guardian-King series. Before Arena had even hit the bookstore shelves, Bethany House had purchased all four Guardian-King books. Even more amazing, they went on to publish them all.