-sponsored elections that he is prepared to set aside in talking about the
integrity
of an election in an enemy state.
Manufacturing Consent - Chomsky
Shawcross, in Chandler and Kiernan, Revolution and Its Aftermath.
87. See PEHR, and Edward S. Herman, The Real Terror Network (Boston: South End Press, 1982), for extensive discussion. See particularly chapter 2, above.
88. John Holdridge (State Department), Hearing before the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, 97th Cong. , 2d sess. , September 14, 1982, p. 71.
89. For discussion of their qualms, and how they resolved them, and similar concerns elsewhere, see Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War, chapter 13. 90. Nayan Chanda, FEER, November I, 1984; November 7, 1985, with minor modifications, their general position from early on in phase III.
91. Henry Kamm, New York Times, November 8, 1981. See chapter 5, note 45 above, on the reported level of U. S. support for the Khmer Rouge.
92. FEER, August 16, 1984. Essentially the same story appeared in the Wash- ington Post, July 8, 1985, with no acknowledgment of their source, as the FEER commented editorially with some annoyance on August 8, 1985.
93. Pringle, FEER, February 25, 1988; Crossette, New York Times, April I, 1988. Holbrooke, quoted in Indochina Issues (June 1985). See also Robert Manning, South (September 1984), and Elizabeth Becker, "U. S. Backs Mass Murderer," Washington Post, May 22, 1983, on U. S. pressures to force the non-Communist resistance "into an ignominious coalition with Pol Pot. " Dith Pran, quoted by Jack Colhoun, Guardian (New York), June 5, 1985. Hawk, letter, FEER, August 2, 1984, with a picture of Alexander Haig "meeting, drink in hand, a smiling Ieng Sary" (Khmer Rouge foreign minister) in New York. 94. Chanda, Brother Enemy, p. 379.
95. Chanthou Boua, "Observations of the Heng Samrin Government," in Chandler and Kiernan, Revolution and Its Aftermath.
96. Our own expressed view at the time was that "the Vietnamese invasion can be explained, but it cannot be justified" (pEHR, II, preface, xix). With the
. information that has since appeared about the Pol Pot terror in 1977-78 and the border attacks against Vietnam, that judgment might have to be qualified, even in terms of a rather restrictive interpretation of the right of self-defense under international law.
97. London Guardian, October 26, 1984.
98. Abrams, letter, New York Times, January 8, 1985; also Abrams and Diane
388 NOTES TO PAGES 288-295
NOTES TO PAGES 297-304 389
Orentlicher, Washington Post Weekry, September 9, 1985. Hawk, New Republic, November 15, 1982; Economist, October 13, 1984; O'Brien, London Observer, September 30, 1984.
99. Quality ofMercy; Washington Post, September 2,1984; his article in Chan- dler and Kiernan, Revolution and Its Aftermath.
100. Quality ofMercy, pp. 55; Washington Post, September 2, 1984.
101. It is concocted from a series of phrases that appear in various places in the introduction to volume I of PEHR, pp. 19-20, with crucial omissions-not noted-that would at once demonstrate the absurdity of the argument he presents.
102. Cited by Vickery, Cambodia, pp. 58f. , in a discussion of Shawcross's subsequent effort "to efface his earlier good judgment and claim to have been a purveyor of a sensationalist STV, when he clearly was not. "
103. Shawcross may indeed have had other motives; see note 33.
104. See author's preface, American edition of Ponchaud's Cambodia: Year Zero. On Ponchaud's remarkable deception concerning this matter, see PEHR, 11. 6, 278f.
105. For a record based on further inquiry, see PEHR, 11. 6, 253-84.
106. See note 79 above.
107. To be precise, we have found one suggestion, although well after'the event. In The Times Higher Education Supplement, December 6, 1981, along with a series of falsifications of our position of the sort discussed here, Shaw- cross states that given our "political influence," we could have played an important part in mobilizing world opinion to bring pressure on China to call
off Khmer Rouge atrocities-as he was no doubt desperately trying to do, but failing, because of his lack of outreach comparable to ours. Comment should be superfluous. Evidently the editors of the journal so believed, refusing publication of a response, despite our awesome "political influence. " It seems doubtful that Shawcross would have published such childish absurdities had he not been assured that no response would be permitted.
108. Quality of Mercy, P. 357.
109. Review of Quality ofMercy, Washington Post Weekry, July 30,1984, Book World.
110. See his essay in Chandler and Kiernan, Revolution and Its Aftermath, his only attempt to provide evidence for his widely heralded claims.
III. New Statesman, November 2, 1984. On the question of whether DK was "Marxist-Leninist"-whatever that is supposed to mean, exactly-see Vick- ery, Cambodia.
II2. The opening pages of our chapter on Cambodia in PEHR, II, 135-36. For some of our comments in the article in question, see p. 290, above.
II3. See references of note 22.
II4? Quality of Mercy, p. 357.
II5? Ibid. , pp. 358-59; New York Review of Books, September 27, 1984. We emphasize that the correctness of his accusation is not at issue here, but, rather, the evidence he uses to support it.
II6. For many earlier cases, see PEHR, 11. 6, and Vickery, Cambodia.
II7. And, significantly, comparable and ongoing atrocities for which the United States bore primary responsibility were suppressed (and still largely are), with shameful apologetics when the facts could no longer be denied.
Chapter 7: Conclusions
I. Lewis, "Freedom of the Press-Anthony Lewis Distinguishes Between Brit- ain and America," London Review of Books, November 26, 1987. Lewis is presenting his interpretation of the views ofJames Madison and Justice Bren- nan (in the case of The New York Times v. Sullivan that Lewis describes as the "greatest legal victory [of the press] in modern times"), with his endorse- ment.
2. See, among others, N. Blackstock, ed. , COINTELPRO (New York: Vin- tage, 1976); Frank J. Donner, The Age ofSurve? llance: The Aims and Methods ofAmerica's Political Intelligence System (New York: Knopf, 1980); Robert J. Goldstein, Political. Repression in Amen'ca (Cambridge: Schenkman, 1978); Mo~on H. Halpenn et aI. , The Lawless State (New York: Penguin, 1976); Chnsty Macy and Susan Kaplan, eds. , Documents (New York: Penguin, 1980). 3? The diffused-cost cases would include the multi-billion-dollar outlays borne by the taxpayers for CIA covert operations and the subsidization of client regimes, the overhead costs of empire and the arms race, the enormous ripoffs by the military-industrial complex in providing unneeded weapons at inflated
prices, and the payoffs to campaign contributors in the form of favorable tax legislation and other benefits (e. g. , the huge tax bonanzas given business following Reagan's election in 1981, and the increase in milk prices given by Nixon in 1971 immediately after substantial gifts were given by the milk lobby to the Republican party).
4? In fact, the scandals and illegalities detailed by the Tower Commission and congressional inquiries were largely known long before these establishment "revelations," but were suppressible; see Noam Chomsky, The Culture of Ter- rorism (Boston: South End Press, 1988).
5? See also the preface. On the persistence of the elite consensus, including the media, through the period of the Iran-contra hearings and beyond, see Chomsky, Culture of Terrorism.
6. Laurence R. Simon and James C. Stephens, Jr. , EI Salvador Land Reform 1980- 19&, Impact Audit (Boston: Oxfam America, February 1981), p. 51, citing Ambassador Robert White and land-reform adviser Roy Prosterman on "the Pol Pot left"; Raymond Bonner, Weakness and Deceit (New York: Times Books, 1984), p. 88, citing Ambassador White, and p. 207, citing Archbishop Rivera y Damas, who succeeded the assassinated Archbishop Romero. Jeane Kirkpatrick, "U. S. Security and Latin America," Commentary (January 1981).
7? Washington Post, May 21, 1987. The "genocide" to which Buckley refers is "of the Miskito Indians," of whom perhaps several dozen were killed by the Sandinistas in the context of attacks by U. S. mercenary forces, at a time when the U. S. -backed Guatemalan military were in the process of slaughtering tens of thousands of Indians, but not committing "genocide" by Buckley's lights. 8. Although, as we noted, with little constraint on passing along useful fabrica- tions and rumors, even relaying tales long conceded to be fabrications.
9? W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics ofIllusion, 2d ed. (New York: Long- man, 1988), pp. 178-79.
10. Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopory (Boston: Beacon Press, 1980), p. x. II. Edgar Chamorro, who was selected by the CIA as press spokesman for the contras, describes Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times as "like an errand
boy, building up those stories that fit in with Reagan's agenda--one day it's the church, the next day the Miskitos, then the private sector. In the last two weeks I've seen at least eight articles by Kinzer which say exactly what the White House wants. Kinzer always raises questions about Sandinista inten- tions, whether they're truly democratic, and so on. When you analyze his articles you see he's just responding to what the White House is saying" (Interview, Extra! [the newsletter of FAIR, Fairness & Accuracy in Report- ing], October-November 1987). FAIR is a left-liberal counterpart to the right- wing organization Accuracy in Media, therefore underfunded and regularly excluded from debate, as distinct from AIM. Its letters to editors often are refused publication, even when their accuracy is privately conceded; see the same issue for some remarkable examples.
12. For classic accounts, see Warren Breed, "Social Control in the Newsrooms: A Functional Analysis," Social Forces (May 1955), pp. 326-35; Gaye Tuchman, "Objectivity as Strategic Ritual," A mericanJournal ofSociology (January 1972), pp. 66cr-70. For a useful application, see Jim Sibbison, "Environmental Reporters: Prisoners of Gullibility," Washington Monthly (March 1984),
PP? 27-35?
13. See Chomsky, in Z magazine (March 1988), for discussion of these tenden-
cies.
14. For evidence on these matters, see the specific examples discussed above and, for a broader picture, Chomsky, Culture of Terrorism, and sources cited. 15. The Cable Franchise and Telecommunications Act of 1984 allows cities to require public-access channels, but it permits cable operators to direct these channels to other uses if they are not well utilized. Thus nonuse may provide the basis for an elimination of public access.
16. On the differences between commercial and public television during the Vietnam War years, see Eric Bamouw, The Sponsor (New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 1978), pp. 62-65.
17. See the programs spelled out for Great Britain in James Curran, Jake Ecclestone, Giles Oakley, and Alan Richardson, eds. , Bending Reality: The State of the Media (London: Pluto Press, 1986).
Appendix 1
I. On Penniman's background, and for a study of his methods as an observer, see "Penniman on South Vietnamese Elections: The Observer-Expert as Pro- moter-Salesman," in Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, Demonstration Elections: U. S. -Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador (Boston: South End Press, 1984), appendix 2.
2. In a letter of December 20, 1984, to one of his constituents who had complained of his gullibility as an observer, Brier asserted that his obligation was to report "observed election fraud, coercion of the voters, or denials of the right to vote. . . . " On fundamental conditions, Brier wrote: "I made and make no statements concerning pre-election day freedom of speech, although the election I just witnessed in Guatemala would lead me to believe it existed
because of the 14 to 16 different political parties and based on press accounts, we have been led to believe it does not exist in Nicaragua as they prepare for elections. " Actually, the occasional press accounts in the United States about state-organized murder in Guatemala might have alerted Brier to the possibil- ity of some constraints on freedom there, but he apparently asked no questions and did no reading up on the subject. His inference from numerous parties to freedom of speech is a non sequitur-an authoritarian and terror-ridden state can easily allow, and may even encourage, a proliferation of candidates within a prescribed political spectrum. Brier cites press accounts on constraints on
freedom of speech in Nicaragua as if this is a relevant subject, but he failed to pursue the matter with regard to Guatemala. He also makes the patriotic assumption that press accounts in the United States about conditions in client and disfavored states are objective. Brier wears blinders in U. S.
-sponsored elections that he is prepared to set aside in talking about the integrity of an election in an enemy state. This dichotomization is openly employed by the Stat~ Department, and was followed by Hedrick Smith, of the Times, and the media more generally, as we have seen.
Brier distinguished himself as a member of the official delegation to the Philippines election of February 1986 won by Ferdinand Marcos by attacking the media's focus on negatives like "violence, vote-buying and fraud," with the result that "they missed entirely the fact that 20 million people conscientiously went to the polls without intimidation and wrote down their choice for Presi- dent" (Robert Pear, quoting Jack Brier, "U. S. Observers Disagree on Extent of Philippines Fraud," New York Times, Feb. 12, 1986). Brier was so accus- tomed to focusing on the superficial in his apologies for client-state elections that he failed to grasp the fact that the administration's line was in the process of shifting-which caused him some embarrassment a few days later, when the
freedom-loving Marcos was escorted out of the country.
3. He did not mention or attempt to evaluate actual institutions in Guatemala, such as the civil-defense patrols, nor did he or any other member of the observer team even mention the pacification program and killings of peasants, which had been the subject of innumerable reports. We suspect that Edwards's "research" consisted of advice by the U. S. embassy, in addition to the fact that he did not see any peasants killed in his presence.
4. In the text above, we point out that the terror in Guatemala began with the U. S. intervention in 1954, and that its subsequent growth was correlated with enlarged U. S. counterinsurgency and police aid and training. See also Edward S. Herman, The Real Terror Network (Boston: South End Press, 1982), pp. 175-76.
Appendix 2
I. Immediately after the shooting of the pope in 1981, Tagliabue, then a Times correspondent in West Germany, wrote some enlightening articles on Agca's Turkish Fascist connections. All of this material was ignored by Tagliabue after he became the Times's correspondent at the Rome trial in 1985. His first
392 NOTES TO PAGES 313-326
NOTES TO PAGES 327-329 393
story on the trial, significantly, was coauthored with Claire Sterling, and his coverage of the trial remained faithful to her model.
2. The Plot to Kill the Pope (New York: Scribner's, 1985), p. 196.
3. For example, Martella's lack of control over Agca's visitors and reading materials badly compromised the case, as did the distressing number of leaks that came out of his supposedly secret investigation. See Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, The Rise and Fall ofthe Bulgarian Connection (New York: Sheridan Square Publications, 1986), pp. 118-20.
4. Ibid. , pp. 102ff.
5. Ibid. , pp. 14-15, for further discussion of the alleged Soviet motive. 6. Ibid. , chapter 5. .
7. Ibid. , pp. 139-41, for an analysis of Sterling's signaling theory.
Appendix 3
I. Pentagon Papers, Senator Gravel edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), IV, 548-49; see p. 225, above. As to what Schakne actually said, we cannot be sure, since Braestrup presents only a few scattered phrases embedded in his own highly unreliable paraphrases, unsubstantiated by any text.
2. Gareth Porter, "Who Lost Vietnam? " Inquiry, February 20, 1978; see refer- ences of chapter 5, note 119; also Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, Political Economy of Human Rights (Boston: South End Press, 1979), 1,5. 2. 3. Lengel, Big Story, I, 269; see p. 209, above.
3. As revealed, no doubt, by his book Viet Cong (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1969), where he contrasts our side, which sympathizes with "the usual revolutionary stirrings . . . around the world," with the backers ofrevolutionary guerrilla warfare, which "opposes the aspirations of people while apparently furthering them," and expresses his contempt for the "gullible, misled people" who were "turning the countryside into a bedlam, toppling one Saigon govern- ment after another, confounding the Americans," etc. The fact that Pike was an employee of the U. S. government and an "admirer" and avid defender of its policies does not suggest to Braestrup that he might be something other than "independent-minded"; only Porter's alleged political preference is relevant to "Freedom House objectivity. "
4. Big Story, I, xxviii; the same is true of Don Oberdorfer's Tet! (New York: Doubleday, 1971) and Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking, 1983), among others.
5. Seymour Hersh. My Lai Four (New York: Random House, 1970), pp. 139- 40.
6. Recall that "whatever losses the DRVIVC forces did suffer in the initial assaults were largely offset by the unimpeded recruiting that they conducted in the rural areas in the weeks that followed" (Wallace J. Thies, When Govern- ments Collide: Coercion and Diplomacy in the Vietnam Conflict, I964-I968 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980], p. 201); see p. 215, above, and General Wheeler's comments, cited above, p. 225.
7. See the reviews cited in chapter 5, note I, for many further examples.
8. Elsewhere (Big Story, 1,159), the same quote is attributed to Frank McGee. 9? Douglas Kinnard, The War Managers (Hanover, N. H. : University Press of New England, 1977), pp. 75,47. In fact, the "body count" was unknown, since much of the air and artillery barrage was directed against targets where casual- ties could never be counted or even guessed at, as Kinnard and many other sources confirm. Westmoreland's subsequent writings show that reporters
would have been quite justified to treat his reports with skepticism. See George M. Kahin, Interuention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam (New York: Knopf, 1986), p. 536, on his falsification of the record concerning the suppres- sion of the Buddhist movement in Danang and Hue in 1966.
10. For evidence from the Pentagon Papers, see Noam Chomsky, For Reasons of State (New York: Pantheon, 1973), pp. 86ff.
87. See PEHR, and Edward S. Herman, The Real Terror Network (Boston: South End Press, 1982), for extensive discussion. See particularly chapter 2, above.
88. John Holdridge (State Department), Hearing before the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, 97th Cong. , 2d sess. , September 14, 1982, p. 71.
89. For discussion of their qualms, and how they resolved them, and similar concerns elsewhere, see Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War, chapter 13. 90. Nayan Chanda, FEER, November I, 1984; November 7, 1985, with minor modifications, their general position from early on in phase III.
91. Henry Kamm, New York Times, November 8, 1981. See chapter 5, note 45 above, on the reported level of U. S. support for the Khmer Rouge.
92. FEER, August 16, 1984. Essentially the same story appeared in the Wash- ington Post, July 8, 1985, with no acknowledgment of their source, as the FEER commented editorially with some annoyance on August 8, 1985.
93. Pringle, FEER, February 25, 1988; Crossette, New York Times, April I, 1988. Holbrooke, quoted in Indochina Issues (June 1985). See also Robert Manning, South (September 1984), and Elizabeth Becker, "U. S. Backs Mass Murderer," Washington Post, May 22, 1983, on U. S. pressures to force the non-Communist resistance "into an ignominious coalition with Pol Pot. " Dith Pran, quoted by Jack Colhoun, Guardian (New York), June 5, 1985. Hawk, letter, FEER, August 2, 1984, with a picture of Alexander Haig "meeting, drink in hand, a smiling Ieng Sary" (Khmer Rouge foreign minister) in New York. 94. Chanda, Brother Enemy, p. 379.
95. Chanthou Boua, "Observations of the Heng Samrin Government," in Chandler and Kiernan, Revolution and Its Aftermath.
96. Our own expressed view at the time was that "the Vietnamese invasion can be explained, but it cannot be justified" (pEHR, II, preface, xix). With the
. information that has since appeared about the Pol Pot terror in 1977-78 and the border attacks against Vietnam, that judgment might have to be qualified, even in terms of a rather restrictive interpretation of the right of self-defense under international law.
97. London Guardian, October 26, 1984.
98. Abrams, letter, New York Times, January 8, 1985; also Abrams and Diane
388 NOTES TO PAGES 288-295
NOTES TO PAGES 297-304 389
Orentlicher, Washington Post Weekry, September 9, 1985. Hawk, New Republic, November 15, 1982; Economist, October 13, 1984; O'Brien, London Observer, September 30, 1984.
99. Quality ofMercy; Washington Post, September 2,1984; his article in Chan- dler and Kiernan, Revolution and Its Aftermath.
100. Quality ofMercy, pp. 55; Washington Post, September 2, 1984.
101. It is concocted from a series of phrases that appear in various places in the introduction to volume I of PEHR, pp. 19-20, with crucial omissions-not noted-that would at once demonstrate the absurdity of the argument he presents.
102. Cited by Vickery, Cambodia, pp. 58f. , in a discussion of Shawcross's subsequent effort "to efface his earlier good judgment and claim to have been a purveyor of a sensationalist STV, when he clearly was not. "
103. Shawcross may indeed have had other motives; see note 33.
104. See author's preface, American edition of Ponchaud's Cambodia: Year Zero. On Ponchaud's remarkable deception concerning this matter, see PEHR, 11. 6, 278f.
105. For a record based on further inquiry, see PEHR, 11. 6, 253-84.
106. See note 79 above.
107. To be precise, we have found one suggestion, although well after'the event. In The Times Higher Education Supplement, December 6, 1981, along with a series of falsifications of our position of the sort discussed here, Shaw- cross states that given our "political influence," we could have played an important part in mobilizing world opinion to bring pressure on China to call
off Khmer Rouge atrocities-as he was no doubt desperately trying to do, but failing, because of his lack of outreach comparable to ours. Comment should be superfluous. Evidently the editors of the journal so believed, refusing publication of a response, despite our awesome "political influence. " It seems doubtful that Shawcross would have published such childish absurdities had he not been assured that no response would be permitted.
108. Quality of Mercy, P. 357.
109. Review of Quality ofMercy, Washington Post Weekry, July 30,1984, Book World.
110. See his essay in Chandler and Kiernan, Revolution and Its Aftermath, his only attempt to provide evidence for his widely heralded claims.
III. New Statesman, November 2, 1984. On the question of whether DK was "Marxist-Leninist"-whatever that is supposed to mean, exactly-see Vick- ery, Cambodia.
II2. The opening pages of our chapter on Cambodia in PEHR, II, 135-36. For some of our comments in the article in question, see p. 290, above.
II3. See references of note 22.
II4? Quality of Mercy, p. 357.
II5? Ibid. , pp. 358-59; New York Review of Books, September 27, 1984. We emphasize that the correctness of his accusation is not at issue here, but, rather, the evidence he uses to support it.
II6. For many earlier cases, see PEHR, 11. 6, and Vickery, Cambodia.
II7. And, significantly, comparable and ongoing atrocities for which the United States bore primary responsibility were suppressed (and still largely are), with shameful apologetics when the facts could no longer be denied.
Chapter 7: Conclusions
I. Lewis, "Freedom of the Press-Anthony Lewis Distinguishes Between Brit- ain and America," London Review of Books, November 26, 1987. Lewis is presenting his interpretation of the views ofJames Madison and Justice Bren- nan (in the case of The New York Times v. Sullivan that Lewis describes as the "greatest legal victory [of the press] in modern times"), with his endorse- ment.
2. See, among others, N. Blackstock, ed. , COINTELPRO (New York: Vin- tage, 1976); Frank J. Donner, The Age ofSurve? llance: The Aims and Methods ofAmerica's Political Intelligence System (New York: Knopf, 1980); Robert J. Goldstein, Political. Repression in Amen'ca (Cambridge: Schenkman, 1978); Mo~on H. Halpenn et aI. , The Lawless State (New York: Penguin, 1976); Chnsty Macy and Susan Kaplan, eds. , Documents (New York: Penguin, 1980). 3? The diffused-cost cases would include the multi-billion-dollar outlays borne by the taxpayers for CIA covert operations and the subsidization of client regimes, the overhead costs of empire and the arms race, the enormous ripoffs by the military-industrial complex in providing unneeded weapons at inflated
prices, and the payoffs to campaign contributors in the form of favorable tax legislation and other benefits (e. g. , the huge tax bonanzas given business following Reagan's election in 1981, and the increase in milk prices given by Nixon in 1971 immediately after substantial gifts were given by the milk lobby to the Republican party).
4? In fact, the scandals and illegalities detailed by the Tower Commission and congressional inquiries were largely known long before these establishment "revelations," but were suppressible; see Noam Chomsky, The Culture of Ter- rorism (Boston: South End Press, 1988).
5? See also the preface. On the persistence of the elite consensus, including the media, through the period of the Iran-contra hearings and beyond, see Chomsky, Culture of Terrorism.
6. Laurence R. Simon and James C. Stephens, Jr. , EI Salvador Land Reform 1980- 19&, Impact Audit (Boston: Oxfam America, February 1981), p. 51, citing Ambassador Robert White and land-reform adviser Roy Prosterman on "the Pol Pot left"; Raymond Bonner, Weakness and Deceit (New York: Times Books, 1984), p. 88, citing Ambassador White, and p. 207, citing Archbishop Rivera y Damas, who succeeded the assassinated Archbishop Romero. Jeane Kirkpatrick, "U. S. Security and Latin America," Commentary (January 1981).
7? Washington Post, May 21, 1987. The "genocide" to which Buckley refers is "of the Miskito Indians," of whom perhaps several dozen were killed by the Sandinistas in the context of attacks by U. S. mercenary forces, at a time when the U. S. -backed Guatemalan military were in the process of slaughtering tens of thousands of Indians, but not committing "genocide" by Buckley's lights. 8. Although, as we noted, with little constraint on passing along useful fabrica- tions and rumors, even relaying tales long conceded to be fabrications.
9? W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics ofIllusion, 2d ed. (New York: Long- man, 1988), pp. 178-79.
10. Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopory (Boston: Beacon Press, 1980), p. x. II. Edgar Chamorro, who was selected by the CIA as press spokesman for the contras, describes Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times as "like an errand
boy, building up those stories that fit in with Reagan's agenda--one day it's the church, the next day the Miskitos, then the private sector. In the last two weeks I've seen at least eight articles by Kinzer which say exactly what the White House wants. Kinzer always raises questions about Sandinista inten- tions, whether they're truly democratic, and so on. When you analyze his articles you see he's just responding to what the White House is saying" (Interview, Extra! [the newsletter of FAIR, Fairness & Accuracy in Report- ing], October-November 1987). FAIR is a left-liberal counterpart to the right- wing organization Accuracy in Media, therefore underfunded and regularly excluded from debate, as distinct from AIM. Its letters to editors often are refused publication, even when their accuracy is privately conceded; see the same issue for some remarkable examples.
12. For classic accounts, see Warren Breed, "Social Control in the Newsrooms: A Functional Analysis," Social Forces (May 1955), pp. 326-35; Gaye Tuchman, "Objectivity as Strategic Ritual," A mericanJournal ofSociology (January 1972), pp. 66cr-70. For a useful application, see Jim Sibbison, "Environmental Reporters: Prisoners of Gullibility," Washington Monthly (March 1984),
PP? 27-35?
13. See Chomsky, in Z magazine (March 1988), for discussion of these tenden-
cies.
14. For evidence on these matters, see the specific examples discussed above and, for a broader picture, Chomsky, Culture of Terrorism, and sources cited. 15. The Cable Franchise and Telecommunications Act of 1984 allows cities to require public-access channels, but it permits cable operators to direct these channels to other uses if they are not well utilized. Thus nonuse may provide the basis for an elimination of public access.
16. On the differences between commercial and public television during the Vietnam War years, see Eric Bamouw, The Sponsor (New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 1978), pp. 62-65.
17. See the programs spelled out for Great Britain in James Curran, Jake Ecclestone, Giles Oakley, and Alan Richardson, eds. , Bending Reality: The State of the Media (London: Pluto Press, 1986).
Appendix 1
I. On Penniman's background, and for a study of his methods as an observer, see "Penniman on South Vietnamese Elections: The Observer-Expert as Pro- moter-Salesman," in Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, Demonstration Elections: U. S. -Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador (Boston: South End Press, 1984), appendix 2.
2. In a letter of December 20, 1984, to one of his constituents who had complained of his gullibility as an observer, Brier asserted that his obligation was to report "observed election fraud, coercion of the voters, or denials of the right to vote. . . . " On fundamental conditions, Brier wrote: "I made and make no statements concerning pre-election day freedom of speech, although the election I just witnessed in Guatemala would lead me to believe it existed
because of the 14 to 16 different political parties and based on press accounts, we have been led to believe it does not exist in Nicaragua as they prepare for elections. " Actually, the occasional press accounts in the United States about state-organized murder in Guatemala might have alerted Brier to the possibil- ity of some constraints on freedom there, but he apparently asked no questions and did no reading up on the subject. His inference from numerous parties to freedom of speech is a non sequitur-an authoritarian and terror-ridden state can easily allow, and may even encourage, a proliferation of candidates within a prescribed political spectrum. Brier cites press accounts on constraints on
freedom of speech in Nicaragua as if this is a relevant subject, but he failed to pursue the matter with regard to Guatemala. He also makes the patriotic assumption that press accounts in the United States about conditions in client and disfavored states are objective. Brier wears blinders in U. S.
-sponsored elections that he is prepared to set aside in talking about the integrity of an election in an enemy state. This dichotomization is openly employed by the Stat~ Department, and was followed by Hedrick Smith, of the Times, and the media more generally, as we have seen.
Brier distinguished himself as a member of the official delegation to the Philippines election of February 1986 won by Ferdinand Marcos by attacking the media's focus on negatives like "violence, vote-buying and fraud," with the result that "they missed entirely the fact that 20 million people conscientiously went to the polls without intimidation and wrote down their choice for Presi- dent" (Robert Pear, quoting Jack Brier, "U. S. Observers Disagree on Extent of Philippines Fraud," New York Times, Feb. 12, 1986). Brier was so accus- tomed to focusing on the superficial in his apologies for client-state elections that he failed to grasp the fact that the administration's line was in the process of shifting-which caused him some embarrassment a few days later, when the
freedom-loving Marcos was escorted out of the country.
3. He did not mention or attempt to evaluate actual institutions in Guatemala, such as the civil-defense patrols, nor did he or any other member of the observer team even mention the pacification program and killings of peasants, which had been the subject of innumerable reports. We suspect that Edwards's "research" consisted of advice by the U. S. embassy, in addition to the fact that he did not see any peasants killed in his presence.
4. In the text above, we point out that the terror in Guatemala began with the U. S. intervention in 1954, and that its subsequent growth was correlated with enlarged U. S. counterinsurgency and police aid and training. See also Edward S. Herman, The Real Terror Network (Boston: South End Press, 1982), pp. 175-76.
Appendix 2
I. Immediately after the shooting of the pope in 1981, Tagliabue, then a Times correspondent in West Germany, wrote some enlightening articles on Agca's Turkish Fascist connections. All of this material was ignored by Tagliabue after he became the Times's correspondent at the Rome trial in 1985. His first
392 NOTES TO PAGES 313-326
NOTES TO PAGES 327-329 393
story on the trial, significantly, was coauthored with Claire Sterling, and his coverage of the trial remained faithful to her model.
2. The Plot to Kill the Pope (New York: Scribner's, 1985), p. 196.
3. For example, Martella's lack of control over Agca's visitors and reading materials badly compromised the case, as did the distressing number of leaks that came out of his supposedly secret investigation. See Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, The Rise and Fall ofthe Bulgarian Connection (New York: Sheridan Square Publications, 1986), pp. 118-20.
4. Ibid. , pp. 102ff.
5. Ibid. , pp. 14-15, for further discussion of the alleged Soviet motive. 6. Ibid. , chapter 5. .
7. Ibid. , pp. 139-41, for an analysis of Sterling's signaling theory.
Appendix 3
I. Pentagon Papers, Senator Gravel edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), IV, 548-49; see p. 225, above. As to what Schakne actually said, we cannot be sure, since Braestrup presents only a few scattered phrases embedded in his own highly unreliable paraphrases, unsubstantiated by any text.
2. Gareth Porter, "Who Lost Vietnam? " Inquiry, February 20, 1978; see refer- ences of chapter 5, note 119; also Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, Political Economy of Human Rights (Boston: South End Press, 1979), 1,5. 2. 3. Lengel, Big Story, I, 269; see p. 209, above.
3. As revealed, no doubt, by his book Viet Cong (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1969), where he contrasts our side, which sympathizes with "the usual revolutionary stirrings . . . around the world," with the backers ofrevolutionary guerrilla warfare, which "opposes the aspirations of people while apparently furthering them," and expresses his contempt for the "gullible, misled people" who were "turning the countryside into a bedlam, toppling one Saigon govern- ment after another, confounding the Americans," etc. The fact that Pike was an employee of the U. S. government and an "admirer" and avid defender of its policies does not suggest to Braestrup that he might be something other than "independent-minded"; only Porter's alleged political preference is relevant to "Freedom House objectivity. "
4. Big Story, I, xxviii; the same is true of Don Oberdorfer's Tet! (New York: Doubleday, 1971) and Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking, 1983), among others.
5. Seymour Hersh. My Lai Four (New York: Random House, 1970), pp. 139- 40.
6. Recall that "whatever losses the DRVIVC forces did suffer in the initial assaults were largely offset by the unimpeded recruiting that they conducted in the rural areas in the weeks that followed" (Wallace J. Thies, When Govern- ments Collide: Coercion and Diplomacy in the Vietnam Conflict, I964-I968 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980], p. 201); see p. 215, above, and General Wheeler's comments, cited above, p. 225.
7. See the reviews cited in chapter 5, note I, for many further examples.
8. Elsewhere (Big Story, 1,159), the same quote is attributed to Frank McGee. 9? Douglas Kinnard, The War Managers (Hanover, N. H. : University Press of New England, 1977), pp. 75,47. In fact, the "body count" was unknown, since much of the air and artillery barrage was directed against targets where casual- ties could never be counted or even guessed at, as Kinnard and many other sources confirm. Westmoreland's subsequent writings show that reporters
would have been quite justified to treat his reports with skepticism. See George M. Kahin, Interuention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam (New York: Knopf, 1986), p. 536, on his falsification of the record concerning the suppres- sion of the Buddhist movement in Danang and Hue in 1966.
10. For evidence from the Pentagon Papers, see Noam Chomsky, For Reasons of State (New York: Pantheon, 1973), pp. 86ff.
