No More Learning

93. We will see below that Time even tries to make out a coercive threat that produced the vote in Nicaragua.
94. See the quotation from Warren Hoge given above, on p. 108.
95. These points were discussed in the LASA report, as we note below, but for Kinzer and the rest of the mass media, they were off the agenda.
96. Note that the exact opposite is true in the United States, reflecting the recognition on the part of the general public in both societies of who stands to gain through the electoral process.
97. The rate was, in fact, far higher than in the 1984 U. S. presidential election, in which just over half the electorate participated.
98. "Sandinistas Hold Their First Election," New York Times, November 5, 1984.
99. Duarte is quoted to this effect by Edward Schumacher in the New York Times, February 21, 1981.
100. On April 23, 1985, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Cruz was on the CIA payroll. Oliver North then took over his financing, hoping that this might divert attention from the fact that Cruz had been funded by the CIA during the period when the U. S. government was trying to discredit the Nicaraguan elections. See Stephen Engelberg, New York Times, July 15, 1987.
101. Stephen Kinzer, "Ex-Contra Looks Back Finding Much to Regret," New York Times, January 8, 1988. Cruz now expresses the belief that the anti- Sandinista coalition (the Coordinadora) that nominated him "was dominated by people who never intended to go through with an election campaign," and "sought to embarrass the Sandinistas by withdrawing. "
102. See note 91, above, and tables 3-2 and 3-3, below.
103. Philip Taubman, "U. S. Role in Nicaragua Vote Disputed," New York Times, October 21, 1984. Robert McCartney, in the Washington Post of June 30, 1984, stated that "Opposition leaders admitted in interviews that they never seriously considered running in the Nov. 4 election but debated only whether to campaign for two months and then withdraw from the race on grounds that the Sandinistas had stacked the electoral deck against them. "
104. Lord Chitnis, a veteran British election observer who attended the Sal- vadoran election on behalf of the British Parliamentary Human Rights Group,
noted that "First, and crucial to the whole standing of the exercise, was the fact that no politicians to the left of the Christian Democrats [PDC], and not all of them, were free to contest the election. . . . [Exclusion of the FDR made the election] a contest of vague promises and inferences by two candidates who already bore a heavy responsibility for the situation in which El Salvador finds itself today. " The 1984 elections in El Salvador, he continued, were held in an "atmosphere of terror and despair, of macabre rumour and grisly reality" (Pratap C. Chitnis, "Observing El Salvador: The 1984 Elections," Third World Quarterly [October 1984], pp. 971-73). Chitnis was never cited as a source anywhere in the U. S. mass media.
105. Stephen Kinzer, "Ortega: Can He Be Trusted? " New York Times Maga- zine, January 10, 1988; Kinzer, "Ex-Contra Looks Back" New York Times, January 8, 1988. On the realities of the peace accords, and the media contribu- tion to effacing them in serving the government's agenda, see Chomsky, Cul- ture ofTerrorism, and articles updating the record in Z magazine (January 1988, March 1988).
106. There is also an elaborate media pretense that La Prensa is the journal that courageously opposed Somoza, and whose editor was a victim of this U. S. -backed gangster. But the media are surely well aware that the relation of the two journals is barely more than that of a shared name. The editor left in 1980, after a conflict with the owners, to form the new journal El Nuevo Diario, and was joined by 80 percent of the staff. It is this journal, if any, that can fairly claim to be the descendant of the old La Prensa (Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Washington Report on the Hemisphere, July 23, 1986). 107. The leading church opponent of the state in El Salvador, Archbishop Oscar Romero, was murdered, and his murderers have never been ap- prehended. In Nicaragua, the leading church opponent of the state, Cardinal Obando, continues to live and speak out without fear. This difference is never pointed out in the free press.
108. For a more detailed discussion of the Times's articles on these subjects, see Edward S. Herman, " 'Objective' News as Systematic Propaganda: The New York Times on the 1984 Salvadoran and Nicaraguan Elections," Covert Action Information Bulletin 21 (Spring, 1984).
109? In a larger framework, too, Nicaragua is playing the dangerous game of trying to defend itself against external attack, resisting the demands of the godfather. The absurdity of the claim that Nicaragua would become a military "threat" to its neighbors with added MIGs, when the Reagan administration has been looking for an excuse to attack Nicaragua and would welcome any such Nicaraguan move as an opportunity to intervene directly, never strikes the U. S. mass media. The possibility that the administration wants to constrain Nicaraguan arms imports to reduce its capacity to defend itself against ongoing aggression against it also never arises for the press. Note that unlike guerrilla forces, the contras can survive only with regular airdrops, reaching the level of thirty to forty a month by mid-1987, and two or three times that amount after August, as the U. S. sought to undermine the Guatemala accords. Hence Nicaragua would have good reason to obtain vintage 1950S jet planes to defend itself from the U. S. proxy army.
110. For an account of the performance of U. S. official and semi-official ob- servers in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, El Salvador, and Zimbabwe, see
Herman and Brodhead, Demonstration Elections. Appendix I provides a sum- mary of the views of an official U. S. observer team to Guatemala in July 1984. All of these fully confirm the statement made in the text.
III. LASA, Report, p. 5.
Chapter 4: The KGB-Bulgarian Plot to Kill the Pope
I. Some qualification is required by the fact that the three principal sources hired by and/or relied upon by the private media-Claire Sterling, Paul Henze, and Michael Ledeen-all had long-standing relations with the govern- ment, and that various Italian government organizations such as the intelli- gence agency SISMI played a role in the genesis and propagandizing of the charges, as described in the text below.
2. The limited exceptions to these generalizations will be noted below.
3. See further, Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection (New York: Sheridan Square Publications, 1986), pp. 66-71; also Philip Paull, "International Terrorism: The Propaganda War" (M. A. thesis in international relations, San Francisco State University, June 1982).
4. The reasons why this was important to Begin are discussed in the works cited in the previous footnote.
5. Tying the assassination attempt to the Soviet Union and KGB was espe- cially helpful in discrediting the Soviet leadership in 1982 and early 1983, as Yuri Andropov, who had just succeeded Brezhnev as head of state, was at one time head of the KGB. The Bulgarian, Sergei Antonov, was arrested in Italy within three weeks of Andropov's assuming power.
6. See Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Conn~ction, pp. 102-3, 206-7.
7. For an analysis of these NBC-TV programs, see Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, "The KGB Plot to Assassinate the Pope: A Case Study in Free World Disinformation," Covert Action Information Bulletin 19 (Spring- Summer 1983), pp. 13-24.
8. Both Sterling and Henze asserted this many times, without providing any evidence and without attempting to explain how destabilization would serve Soviet interests, given the likelihood-eventually realized, in fact-that insta- bility and internal disorder in Turkey would bring into power a military regime even more closely aligned with the United States. Sterling and Henze were fortunate that they were never called upon to explain these things to Western audiences.
9. Marvin Kalb expounded this precise sequence, without the benefit of a single piece of evidence beyond the fact that Agca had had a brief stay in Bulgaria-among twelve countries-asserting that "it seems safe to conclude that he had been drawn into the clandestine network of the Bulgarian secret police and, by extension, the KGB-perhaps without his even being aware of their po~sibleplans for him" (transcript of the Sept. 21, 1982, show, pp. 44-45)? 10. See how Sterling handles the problem of Agca's gun, in the text below.
II. SHK regularly assume that the Soviet leadership is wild, and regularly engages in "Dr. No"-type plots, and the mass media do not challenge this image. On the conservative reality, see George Kennan, The Nuclear Delusion: Soviet-Amen'can Relations in the Nuclear Age (New York: Pantheon, 1982); John Lowenhardt, Decision-Making in Soviet Politics (New York: St. Martin's, 1981); and Jerry Hough and Merle Fainsod, How the Soviet Union Is Governed (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1979).
12. NBC-TV stressed an alleged note sent by the pope to Brezhnev threatening that in case of a Soviet invasion, the pope would give up his papal crown and return to Poland to lead the Polish resistance. Thus the assassination attempt was to get the pope out of the way to clear the ground for a prospective invasion. This note has never been produced, and the Vatican has denied its authenticity. See page 162. For a further discussion of these issues, see Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, pp. 14-15, 200.
13? Papa, Mafya, Agca (Istanbul: Tekin Yayinevi, 1984), pp. 213-20. Mumcu also wrote a substantial volume on Agca and his record, Agca Dosyasi (Ankara: Tekin Yayinevi, 1984).
14? After Agca decided to "confess," he explained to the Italian magistrates that he was a killer for hire by anyone who wanted a reliable "international terrorist. " He sounded just as Claire Sterling said he ought to sound. This was taken quite seriously by the Italian judiciary and Western press. See Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, pp. 113-14.
IS? For a full analysis of this theory, see Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection~ pp. 138-4? .
16. Michael Dobbs, "Child of Turkish Slums . . . ," Washington Post, October
14, 1984. Agca's shooting of the pope may have been motivated in part by his quest for notoriety.
17? For a full account of this strategy and the other matters dealt with in this paragraph, see Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, pp. 71--98.
18. Criminal Court of Rome, Judgment in the Matter ofFrancesco Pazienza, et al. ~ July 29, 1985, signed by Francesco Amato, president of the court.
19? Diana Johnstone, "Latest Scandal Leads to Reagan Administration," In These Times, December 5-11, 1984.
20. Tana de Zulueta and Peter Godwin, "Face to Face with the Colonel Accused of Plotting to Kill the Pope," Sunday Times~ May 26, 1983, p. 50. 21. "Behind the Scenes of the 'Agca Investigation,''' Milliyet, November 1984.
This excellent two-part series by Milliyet's correspondent in West Germany describes the Italian investigation then in process as an extremely biased and incompetently managed exercise. Its many inconvenient but highly relevant facts may also have contributed to it being entirely ignored in the Western press.
22. For a discussion of the various suspicious aspects of this photo identifica- tion, see Herman and Brodhead, Bulgan'an Connection, pp. 110-II.
23? De Zulueta and Godwin, "Face to Face with the Colonel . . . ," p. 50. Even during the investigative phase of the case, it was disclosed that Agca's sensa- tional knowledge of the telephone numbers of the Bulgarian embassy in Rome was slightly compromised by the disclosure that he had "inadvertently" been left alone with a copy of the Rome phone directory. For other illustrations, see Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, pp. 112, 118-19.
366 NOTES TO P AGES 155-159
NOTES TO P AGES 159-161 367
24. The first significant departure in the mass media from the SHK model, even though no alternative was offered, did not occur till May 12, 1983, on ABC-TV's "20120. " On the pattern of deviations here and later, see note 26 below.
25. Late in this long article, Newsweek does state in passing that "It is difficult to believe that the Soviets would expect the murder of the pope to solve their Polish problem. To some, it seems odd that the Soviets would put their fate in the hands of Bulgarians and Turks, depriving themselves of the control that is so essential to a ticklish intelligence operation. " These sentences, unusual in the mass media for raising such questions, sit alone and undeveloped, after a lengthy discourse that accepts the SHK analysis as valid.
26. The only programs on national television that challenged the propaganda frame were on ABC: one, and the only program in five years of television coverage that showed the slightest degree of network enterprise, critical capa- bility, and honesty, was a program "To Kill the Pope," aired on "20120" on May 12, 1983. Subsequently, ABC also had a program in which Sterling debated with Alexander Cockburn, although this was arranged unbeknownst to Ster- ling, who was enraged at having to have her views contested. (See Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, pp. 123-24, for the story of this encounter. ) Among the newspapers, a propaganda conformity prevailed until the time that prosecutor Albano's report was made public in June 1984, when Michael Dobbs, of the Washington Post, began to take a more critical view, along with Don Schanche, of the Los Angeles Times. While skeptical of Agca's claims over the next several years, Dobbs remained equally skeptical of the idea that Agca was coached, which he referred to as "the Bulgarian view. " Dobbs never seriously explored the coaching hypothesis. See Herman and Brodhead, Bul- garian Connection, "The Small Voices of Dissent," pp. 199-202.
27. Martella visited Washington, D. C. , in October 1982, during which time he benefited not only from the insights of Arnauld de Borchgrave, but was also given a special viewing of the NBC-TV special on "The Man Who Shot the Pope" (see Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, pp. 24-27).
Ledeen may have had a more direct involvement in the initiation of the case in Italy, a charge made by Francesco Pazienza. See Diana Johnstone, "Bulgarian Con- nection: Finger-pointing in the Pontiff Plot Labyrinth," In These Times, Janu- ary 29-February 4, 1986.
28. For a statistical tabulation ofthe extent ofthis bias, see table 7-1, "Sterling- Henze-Ledeen Dominance of Media Coverage of the Bulgarian Connection, September 1982-May 1985," in Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, pp. 182-83?
29. Their coercive tactics were effective because their preestablished promi- nence and drawing power made them important to program organizers, which gave them leverage. This is the basis for "tying agreements," outlawed under section 3 of the Clayton Act.
30. This Sterling theme and the ends sought by these conferees also reflected an elite consensus in the United States; otherwise the mass media would not have accepted her views so readily.
31. See Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, chapter 6, "The Disin-
formationists. "
32. In a characteristic lie, Sterling says in her Terror Network ([New York:
Holt, Rinehart & Winston/Reader's Digest Press, 1984], p. 290) that Sejna got out of Czechoslovakia "a jump ahead of the invading Soviet army," when in fact Sejna defected in the middle of the Czech Spring, long before the Soviet invasion, and in the midst of a corruption scandal in which Sejna was a principal. See Leslie Gelb, "Soviet-Terror Ties Called Outdated," New York Times, October 18, 1981. In his book Vei~ Bob Woodward notes that CIA analysts had at once dismissed Sterling's concoctions as "preposterous," giving some examples, including her reliance on Italian press stories that had been planted in CIA disinformation operations ([New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987], pp. 124-29). For detailed refutation, see Edward S. Herman, The Real Terror Network (Boston: South End Press, 1982).
33. Sejna, of course, failed this test by "recognizing" the forged document, which had slipped his mind, and used it in later years for its spectacular disclosures. See Lars-Erik Nelson, "The Deep Terror Plot: A Thickening of Silence," New York Daily News, June 24, 1984; Alexander Cockburn, "Beat the Devil," The Nation, August 17-24, 1985. Sterling was introduced to this Sejna information windfall by Michael Ledeen. (see Sterling, Terror Network p. 34). 34. See also "Why Is the West Covering Up for Agca? An Exclusive Interview with Claire Sterling," Human Events, April 21, 1984.
35. This quotation and line of thought was presented by Sterling in her speech given at the Conference on Disinformation, in Paris, December 5, 1984, spon- sored by Internationale de la Resistance, a coalition of right-wing resistance/ "liberation" organizations and support groups. We quote from page 2 of the copy of her speech distributed by the sponsor organization. The booklet by Andronov to which she attributes such great influence was, to our knowledge, never mentioned in the U. S. mass media except by Sterling and Henze.
36. Even Michael Dobbs failed to deal with the fact that the Bulgarian defense claimed that no publicly available sources-i. e. , newspapers, or radio and television programs-had ever had details on Antonov's apartment before Agca provided those details to the investigating magistrate. This would seem to imply that Agca got the details by some form of coaching while in prison. Dobbs dismisses coaching as the "Bulgarian view," but never explains what other view could account for Agca's knowledge of places he had never visited. 37? Panorama, May 26, 1985, p. 107.
38. Ugur Mumcu's books, cited earlier, are a running commentary on what Mumcu repeatedly and explicitly calls Henze's "lies. "
39. co? ? ? I believe we are past the point where it serves the interests of any party except the Soviets to adopt the minimalist, legalistic approach which argues that if there is no 'documentary evidence' or some other form of incontroverti- ble proof that the Government of the U. S. S. R. is behind something, we must assume that it is not" (Paul Henze, "The Long Effort to Destabilize Turkey,"
Atlantic Community [Winter 1981-82], p. 468).
40. Ledeen had three Op-Ed articles in the New York Times in the years 1984 -87.
41. New York Times Book Review, May 19, 1985. For an analysis of Ledeen's neoconservative theory of the media, see Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, pp. 166-70.
42. For documentation and sources, see Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, pp. 93-98, 160-61; see also Jonathan Kwitny, "Tale of Intrigue:
368 NOTES TO PAGES 161-169
NOTES TO PAGES 169-173 369
Why an Italian Spy Got Closely Involved in the Billygate Affair," Wall Street Journa~ August 8, 1985.
43. The comprehensiveness of the Times's protection of its disinformation sources was shown amusingly in February 1987 when Charles Babcock, of the Washington Post, revealed that Ledeen had very possibly been dismissed from Washington University in St. Louis in 1972 for plagiarism. On the very same day, an article by Stephen Engelberg in the Times, on Ledeen, describes Ledeen's history as follows: "Mter being denied tenure at Washington Univer- sity in St. Louis in 1972, Mr. Ledeen became. . . . " This was all the news fit to print about a useful asset.
44. "McNeil-Lehrer News Hour," program of May 27, 1985.
45. See our reference earlier to its wholly uncritical presentation in the News- week article of January 3, 1983.
46. For a discussion of the compromised character of the photo identification of the Bulgarians on November 9,1982, as well as the general conduct of the case by Investigating Judge Martella, see Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, chapter 5.
47. On the likelihood that this Antonov photo had been "manufactured" as an instrument of disinformation, see Howard Friel, "The Antonov Photo and the 'Bulgarian Connection,' " Covert Action Information Bulletin 21 (Spring-Sum- mer 1984), pp. 20-21.
48. This was treated outstandingly in the ABC "20120" program of May 12, 1983; and Agca's shifting testimony was also discussed well by Michael Dobbs in the Washington Post, beginning in June 1984. These were exceptional, however, as pointed out in note 26 above.
49. Dobbs is an honorable exception, although he remained very cautious in generalizing about Martella's handling of the case, and, as noted, he failed to
take seriously the obvious alternative model.
50. Initially, Sterling suggested obliquely that any retracted claims had already been "corroborated"-a falsehood. Later, Sterling followed Italian prosecutor Albano's solution to the problem: that Agca really was in Antonov's apartment but was denying it to signal the Bulgarians that they had better break him out of jail.
Chapter 5: The Indochina Wars (I)
1. Among these, the most comprehensive, to our knowledge, are unpublished studies by Howard Elterman: The State, The Mass Media and Ideological He- gemony: United States Policy Decisions in Indochina, 1945-75-Hiscorical Record, Government Pronouncements and Press Coverage (Ph. D. diss. , New York Uni- versity, 1978); and The Circle ofDeception: The United States Government, the National Press and the Indochina War, 1954-1984 (ms. , n. d. ). See also Daniel C. Hallin, The "Uncensored War": The Media and Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). The latter is based on a complete coverage of the New York Times from 1961 through mid-1965, and an extensive sample of television network news from August 1965 through January 1973. Elterman's work covers
the New York Times and the newsweeklies, contrasting their coverage with that of the "alternative press. " The most extensive analysis of a particular incident is Peter Braestrup, Big Story, 2 vols. (Boulder: Westview, 1977), on the Tet offensive, published in cooperation with Freedom House. For detailed exami- nation of this highly influential study, to which we return in "The Tet Offen- sive," pp. 2II-228, and appendix 3, see Noam Chomsky, "The U. S. Media and the T et Offensive," Race & Class (London) XX, 1 (1978), and an excerpted version in the journalism review More (June 1978); also Gareth Porter, "Who Lost Vietnam? " Inquiry, February 20, 1978.
2. Inside Story Special Edition: Vietnam Op/ED, Press and the Public Project, Inc. (1985), transcript of the AIM critique with discussion; Robert Elegant, cited from Encounter by narrator Charlton Heston, on camera. Transcripts of the PBS series Vietnam: A Television History are published by WGBH Tran- scripts (Boston: 1983). See also the "companion book" by the chiefcorrespond- ent for the PBS series, Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking, 1983).
3? Samuel Huntington, in M. P. Crozier, S. J. Huntington, and J. Watanuki, The Cn"sis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission (New York: New York University Press, 1975), pp. 98, 102, 106, II3. The final remarks are from the summary of discussion by commis- sion members, appendix I, 4.
4. "Introduction" to Braestrup, Big Story, p. xviii; the latter phrase is the title of a 1967 Freedom House pamphlet inspired in part by Vietnam War coverage; see also p. vii.
5. John P. Roche, Washington Star, October 26,1977, commenting on Braest- rup's study.
6. John Corry, "Is TV Unpatriotic or Simply Unmindful? " New York Times, May 12, 1985. Corry alleges that this is true with regard not only to Vietnam but also to Central America-and, in fact, generally.
7. General Kinnard, now a military historian, was field commander for the 1970 Cambodia invasion. One of the commentators is the French historian Philippe Devillers, elsewhere a critic of the war but appearing here only in endorsement of one element of the AIM critique.
8. In Braestrup, Big Story, I, xix.
9. Bernard Fall, "Vietnam Blitz," New Republic, October 9, 1965. A French military historian and journalist, Fall was one of the few genuine experts on Vietnam writing in the United States at that time. He was also an extreme hawk, although he turned against the war when he saw that it was simply destroying the country and society of Vietnam.
10. Hallin, "Uncensored War," pp. 192ff.
II. Editorial, New York Times, May 7, 1972.
12. "An Irony of History," Newsweek, April 28, 1975; final document in William Appleman Williams, Thomas McCormick, Lloyd Gardner, and Walter LaFeber, America in Vietnam: A Documentary History (New York: Anchor, 1985)?
13? Lewis, New York Times, April 21, 24, 1975; December 27, 1979. For these and similar comments by perhaps the most outspoken critic of the war in the mainstream media, see Noam Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War (New York: Pantheon, 1982), pp. 28, 144f. and 417n.
370 NOTES TO PAGES I73-I79
NOTES TO PAGES I79-I82 37I
14. Karnow, Vietnam, pp. 9, 439, 650.
15. John King Fairbank, "Assignment for the '70'S," American Historical Re- view 74. 3 (February 1969); Irving Howe, Dissent (Fall 1979); Stanley Hoff- mann, International Security (Summer 1981).
16. David Fromkin and James Chace, "What Are the Lessons of Vietnam? " in "Vietnam: The Retrospect," Foreign Affairs (Spring 1985).
17. McGeorge Bundy, Foreign Affairs (January 1967); secret memorandum of
February 7, 1965, in Pentagon Papers, Senator Gravel edition (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1972), III, 309; henceforth PP.
18. The notion that the United States seeks American-style democracy in areas of intervention persists in liberal thought despite obvious and durable U. S. satisfaction with regimes such as those of Somoza, Pinochet, or Mobutu, and despite regular intervention to overthrow or bar democratic regim~s, as in Guatemala in 1954 and since, among many other examples, some discussed earlier. To postulate otherwise would be to acknowledge something other than benevolent ends. This would be intolerable.
19. For extensive references, see Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War, particu- larly chapter 4.
20. Lawrence Lifschultz, Far Eastern Economic Review, January 30, 1981. 21. "Don't Forget Afghanistan," Economist, October 25, 1980.
22. See Noam Chomsky, A t War with Asia (New York: Pantheon, 1970; here- after, A WWA), pp. 213-14, noting also an exception: D. S. Greenway, Life, April 3, 1970. See also pp. 214ff. and Chomsky, For Reasons ofState (New York: Pantheon, 1973; hereafter, FRS), 179, for a review of official data readily available to journalists, had they been interested to ascertain the facts. See also Fred Branfman, "Presidential War in Laos," in Nina S. Adams and Alfred W. McCoy, eds. , Laos: War and Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1970). 23. See Hallin, "Uncensored War," pp. 39f. , for discussion.
24. Hallin, "Uncensored War," p. 53. In 1962, the USIA announced a contest in Saigon to find a term more effective than "Vietcong" in inspiring "con- tempt," or "disgust," or "ridicule" among the country's illiterate masses (AP, New York Times, June 4, 1962). Apparently, no more effective term of abuse could be devised.