Media Influence by the CIA

Ever since the passage of the National Security Act of 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has conducted media influence in the United States through its “Operation Mockingbird”.  This is probably the main reason the international “Reporters Without Borders” gives a very low free press ranking among all nations, lower than other G7 nations such as Canada, Germany, Japan, France, and Britain.  Only Italy is lower probably due to the press there being owned by a recent former conservative Prime Minister.  National security issues particularly are subject to this kind of CIA influence. This is an empire story issue.

National Security Act of 1947

This Act represents a radical departure from American traditions begun by our first president George Washington and the founding figures.  The act was passed over the opposition to it by the Department of War and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Their opposition was based on the American tradition of maintaining a small standing army between wars and using volunteer forces to fill out the ranks during war.  Their opposition was based in part on Washington’s admonition against foreign entanglements.  Changing the name of the Department of War to the Department of Defense represents the change in attitude from that of a republic to that of a worldwide empire.  In actuality, this represented a change from defense to offense, from national border concerns to world control concerns.  Inside the CIA the change went from classic intelligence operations to also include covert overseas operations to maintain the new empire.

Commercialism and Democracy

A long running theme in American history is the foreign policy clash between pursuing commercial interests and pursuing democratic values.  In founding figure terms this was the clash between Hamilton and Jefferson.  In twentieth century terms this was the clash between business interests and worker interests in the democracies, or the clash between small business freedom Leninism and totalitarian complete state control Stalinism in the communist world.  Contradictions abound here so I hesitate to elaborate too much.

President Kennedy

Kennedy’s journey toward peace was a long and difficult one.  In between crises in the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis, back channel negotiations continued between Zorin representing the Soviet Union and McCloy representing the USA for mutual disarmament and an end to the Cold War in his second term.  His Peace Corps and Alliance for Progress used carrots instead of sticks in his diplomacy and he was determined to end covert operations in the CIA in his second term.  In a September 8^th 1963 executive order he planned to begin troop pullouts from Vietnam starting in December 1963.  His treaty banning atmospheric nuclear testing was the first on many with the Soviet Union.  All of this was ended by his assassination.  Lyndon Johnson was opposed to this peace initiative and asked McCloy to break it off.  Kennedy laughed when McCloy told him this and assured him he had the full support of the president.  The CIA man Kennedy had fired was put in charge of the Warren Commission whitewash.  In the book “Brothers” Bobby Kennedy intuitively understood the forces opposed to his brother and blamed them for his brother’s death.  Jackie had the French intelligence look into the assassination and they came back with the word Lyndon Johnson was behind it.  Watergate burglar and long-time CIA operative E. Howard Hunt also confirms CIA and Johnson involvement with the plot in his death bed tape.  Tony Morales of the CIA was Johnson’s alleged coordinator for the plot and also was in the Ambassador Hotel when Bobby Kennedy was shot.  Khrushchev cried when he heard Kennedy died and lost his leadership the next year, as militarists on both sides prevailed.  The Brezhnev military buildup that ensued ultimately brought the Soviet Union down.  Likewise Vietnam brought Johnson down.  Bobby Kennedy’s election to the presidency threatened to undue Johnson’s legacy and reopen the investigation into President Kennedy’s death.  FBI director J. Edger Hoover did not have the blackmail material against Bobby that he had against John and Martin Luther King Jr.

Personal Experience

As a peace activist I have learned about CIA influence gradually over the course of my lifetime.  Initially I read Newsweek cover to cover during the Vietnam War years, and assumed their hawkish perspective even after Tet in 1968.  I also assumed military spending stimulated the economy until my exposure to Sivard’s research in 1983.  I assumed the Warren Commission was right about the Kennedy assassination until a 1988 Geraldo Rivera show began the long process of casting doubt and numerous books and academic conference presentations increasing confirmed the clear new realistic interpretation.  Then the Gulf and Iraq Wars cast increasing doubt about official positions.  Particularly the national and local peace movement discussion list-serves 2001-2005 were huge in clarifying my current understandings.  Watching Ted Koppel’s nightline July 24, 2001 confirmed one of my key suspicions.  Koppel was former Naval Intelligence, hence could get better stories with the help of Intelligence insiders and his own security clearance.  He had Bush’s deputy defense guy on Nightline; Paul Wolfowitz, who insisted nuclear missile defense is a top defense priority.  But Ted used the pentagon’s own list of ten major threats to show that terrorism was most likely (#1) and rogue nation nuclear attack was #9 and assault by another nuclear threat like Russia or China was only #10.  He could not have done this without security clearance as I found out trying to obtain a copy of this ranked list.  I had someone at the Defense Monitor guiding me through numerous phone calls in my effort, only to end up with the pentagon refusing to give me the list because it was classified.  That’s why Bob Woodward, former naval intelligence, Walter Cronkite, OSS during the war, and Ben Bradley, Washington Post Editor and former CIA, and many others like them rise to the top of the media.

Church Commission

The 1975-76 Church Commission on Intelligence Activities revealed many abuses of power by the CIA, domestic and foreign, including foreign assassinations and domestic control of the American media, including the 400 top press persons in the nation. While Woodward and Bernstein became household words for their unraveling of the Watergate scandal that brought down Nixon, Woodward’s career was soaring while Bernstein was ignored after his expose of Operation Mockingbird’s control of the American press in a 25,000 word article for Rolling Stone magazine.  This is how the CIA handles whistleblowers about its various blunders and misdeeds.  Only now, some thirty years later is Bernstein reappearing on television shows in recent years.  Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News “Dark Alliance” series is another treated poorly by former CIA veterans in the media.  He dared to uncover the CIA role in the crack cocaine epidemic started by Freeway Rick in Los Angeles and protected by the Drug Enforcement Administration to fund the Contra Wars in Central America in the eighties.

Recent Years

National Security continues to be a weak spot in America’s so-called free press.  Even though 15 million protested in major cities worldwide February 15^th one month before the 2003 Iraq War started, this was dismissed by President Bush as a “focus group.”  I personally attended a protest of 500,000 people in the nation’s capital in September 2003 and the New York Times reported the crowd as “tens of thousands” deliberately understating the crowd size.  This happened again when 600,000 protested the Republican Convention in August 2004.  Judy Miller dutifully reported in the New York Times the exaggerations and distortions of Dick Cheney and company about the weapons of mass destruction of Iraq.  Phil Donahue was taken off the air for daring to counter these lies.  Even one year after the invasion, 90% of American troops in Iraq falsely believed Saddam Hussein was behind the 9-11-01 attacks, so carefully inserted and repeated wording by the administration had left that impression.

For a tribute to the world peace President Kennedy:

https://www.academia.edu/5184189/KENNEDY_50th_Anniversary_Tribute_12ppt.2p. 2013

President Kennedy was my mother’s third cousin.

Please cite this work as follows:

Reuschlein, Robert. (2018, May 28), “Media Influence by the CIA”, Madison, WI:  Real Economy Institute.  Retrieved from: https://www.expertclick.com/NewsRelease/Media-Influence-by-the-CIA,2018157946.aspx

Dr. Peace, Professor Robert Reuschlein, Real Economy Institute

Nominated Vetted for 2016, Given Odds for 2017 Nobel Peace Prize

Possible Favorite in 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Announced October 5th.
Contact: bobreuschlein@gmail.com, Info: www.realeconomy.com

Good Concepts 2018 Update

These ten pages of key concepts will give the reader some understanding of both my breakthrough ideas and personal background.  The first seven pages have eight power point frames each about a major concept of empire and climate theory.  The eighth page looks at ten key points about paradigm shifting revolutions, then the last two pages are biographical notes about my curriculum vitae.  The detail can be found on the academia.edu website link at the end, but the gist of each is given below:

Socioeconomic Decline of Empire

This is the best way to frame the effect of military spending on society.  It starts dragging the economy down and after a generation or so starts consuming the whole society politically, socially, economically, corrupting everything in sight.  Effects the economy immediately year by year and things like the crime and health rates over the time to raise a child.

Banks and Fascism

This side looks at the evolution of an empire and things like the imperial presidency and fascism.  The press, opportunity costs, and current history events are covered also.

Land Ocean Cycle

This powerful phenomenum emerges clearly out of a detailed analysis of the many sections of the planet as the temperature of the whole changes differently from the various parts.  There are many confirming patterns in the details beyond this simple summary.

Climate Cycle Affects Economics and War

When Nicolai Kondratieff first documented the long economic cycle of about 50 years in 1926, he thought of it as a manmade cycle.  Little did he see the relationship between the natural cycle, the economic cycle, and the war cycle.  Adherents of each type of cycle don’t seem to venture out of their silos to see how they each relate to the other.

Defense Strategy Lessons from World War II

The high cost and strategy of war are hinted at in these slides.  The concept of keeping the military low to keep the economy strong for the long run major wars every fifty years or so and the ability to mobilize over a short period of time argue for lower levels of military spending.  The defense strategy paper on academia.edu is necessary to better understand the possibilities for an effective defense recognizing the economic danger of high military spending.

Economic Model of 20^th Century

The three to five major components of the long term model show how an accurate theory of economics can be built.  This is often believed impossible by many in the economic profession.  The basics are covered here, but the economic model paper on my academia.edu website is necessary for a more detailed understanding.

Birth of “Dungeons and Dragons”

These insights came from my wargaming years 1964-1974 with Gary Gygax, the inventor of Dungeons and Dragons role playing games. At the end is a comparison of Reuschlein and Gygax.

Scientific Revolution Facts

I distilled these key ideas from Thomas Kuhn’s “Structure of a Scientific Revolution” and live the adventure all the time as I endeaver to stake my claim to my own scientific discoveries.  These ten facts hit home to me the hardest.

Nine Fields of Knowledge Create Ideas

Here is a two page version of my curriculum vitae, with the important addition of nine fields of knowledge I found essential to the building of my theories.  Any one of them missing and I would not have succeeded.

For a basic ten pages read on my ideas and background:

https://www.academia.edu/s/979f0fe1e3/good-concepts-2018-update-ten-pages

Please cite this work as follows:

Reuschlein, Robert. (2018, May 13), “Good Concepts 2018 Update”, Madison, WI:  Real Economy Institute.  Retrieved from: https://www.expertclick.com/NewsRelease/Good-Concepts-2018-Update,2018157444.aspx

Great Reads Make Theories

World Military and Social Expenditures (1981-1996) Ruth Leger Sivard

Sivard maintained for many years a worldwide catalogue of military education and healthcare expenditures for each of the 191 countries.  One year she catalogued the deaths from each war in the twentieth century, mainly the 77 million in the two world wars, but also the many third world proxy wars costing tens of millions of lives during the Cold War.  From my point of view, her multi-decade bar charts of the G7 and leading economies of world showing how as military spending increases capital investment and manufacturing productivity decrease.

Climate and Life (1983) Steven Schneider

This is a fascinating account of the rise of life on planet Earth over 4.5 billion years. How volcanoes gave the early Earth water for the oceans and carbon dioxide for the atmosphere, the two key ingredients for plant life.  How for the first 2.2 billion years of 3.8 billion years of life, life existed without the benefit of even a cell wall in the primordial sea.  Here I learned in a paragraph the importance of evaporation as the main first use of solar energy (85%) and the main difference in heating rates of land and ocean. This leads to all that follows in my discovery of the natural global warming cycle origins of the Kondratieff Wave.  The book is an impressive tour de force by a leading climate scientist and journal editor.

Spirit Level (UK 2010 US 2011) Richard Wilkinson and Kate Puckett

These authors document the extensive relationship between social disfunction and rising income inequality.  Human beings, as social animals, do not relate well to a sharp rich poor divide.  Indeed, this may well have been the central message of Jesus of Nazareth.  Society operates better as equals than as lords and serfs.  The lack of social mobility, crime, and poor health are all functions of the Genie coefficient.  Also, anxiety levels continue to escalate over recent decades in America.

Guns, Germs, and Steel:  the Fate of Human Societies (1997) Jared Diamond

Diamond documents the emergence of Western civilization in a scientific non-racist way.  He notes the importance of large mammals to domesticate as a key.  No region of the world has more than one or two such animals except for the fertile crescent.  The cow goat sheep pig combination of four allowed mankind to inoculate from disease becoming hardier.  Later the separation into many nations allowed Europe to learn from others nation’s mistakes and successes, speeding development.

Long Cycles (1987) Joshua S. Goldstein

This political scientist at MIT was no doubt influenced by J. W. Forrester’s long cycle work in the business school.  Forrester founded system dynamics.  Goldstein tracks European war deaths as a percentage of the European population for each war since year 1500.  This five hundred year study clearly shows a robust 50 some year cycle in major wars.  I find a clear 54 year cycle in the start date of these major wars by my own analysis.

Statistical Abstract of the United States (1899-2012)

My favorite here is the Bicentennial Edition showing a continuous record of economic data from 1889 to 1975, free from the obvious political bias of the individual year publications under various presidencies.  The rich variety and inherent accuracy of these records are confirmed by their use in my stunningly accurate economic model from 1920 to 1996 of the United States. Crime records and state by state military spending records are invaluable.  That this has been discontinued is a terrible shame.

Trends 90 (1990) Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center

This compendium of temperature records for various sections of the planet allows for the necessary data to document my natural cycle theory on several levels.  The key for me was graphing the difference between the annual warming records over the last century and a half of the Northern versus Southern Hemispheres.  This is a good proxy for the land versus the ocean.  The dominant Southern Hemisphere for the sixty years 1860 to 1920 and the subsequent Northern Hemisphere dominance of 48 years from 1921 to 1968 show the 108 year cycle that colors the successive 54 year cycles.  Now we are in a new Southern Hemisphere dominant cycle from 1969 to 2028.

1984 (1948) George Orwell

Orwell correctly anticipated the war is peace double speak of the Ronald Reagan re-election bid in 1984.  He saw how the Cold War was beginning to color our dialogue after World War Two.  He anticipated the tortured language and justifications of empire as power transferred from the British Empire to the American Century (a euphemism for American Empire).  Wars in this period of time are repeatedly justified with language later shown to be false and misleading, just aa in this great work by a great author.  Having read this book in the sixties, I later re-read it in 1984 and noted how well it described that year’s dominant politics.

The Gospels of the Bible (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John)

The Sermon on the mount in Matthew’s chapter four states that the peacemakers shall inherit the earth.  Indeed, this is the fundamental truth of Peace Economics.  Low military spending nations grow their economies faster than high military spending nations, eventually becoming dominant. Those nations who live by the sword die by the sword just as the gospels say.  As you sow, so shall you reap, and pride cometh before a fall also ring true in my Peace Economics research.

For a basic seven pages read on my ideas and background:

https://www.academia.edu/33884446/Main_Ideas_Summary_July_2017_7_pages

Please cite this work as follows:

Reuschlein, Robert. (2018, May 6), “Great Reads Make Theories”, Madison, WI:  Real Economy Institute.  Retrieved from: https://www.expertclick.com/NewsRelease/Great-Reads-Make-Theories,2018157177.aspx

Dr. Peace, Professor Robert Reuschlein, Real Economy Institute

Nominated Vetted 2016, Given Odds 2017 Nobel Peace Prize

Possible Favorite in 2018 Nobel Peace Prize October 5th.
Contact: bobreuschlein@gmail.com, Info: www.realeconomy.com