Also essays by Vickery and Ben Kiernan in
Chandler
and Kiernan, Revolution and Its Aftermath; and Ben Kiernan, Cambodia: The Eastern Zone Massacres, Center for the Study of Human Rights, Documenta- tion Series, nO.
Manufacturing Consent - Chomsky
David Chandler and Ben Kiernan, eds.
, Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea, Monograph 25/Yale University Southeast Asia Series (1983), p.
I.
36. See note 32, above; FEER, January 19, 1979?
37. Douglas Pike, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 29, 1979, and Chn'stian Science Monitor, December 4, 1979; cited by Vickery, Cambodia, p. 65. On the Freedom House and Times assessments of Pike's work, see p. p. 324,326; Fox Butterfield, "The New Vietnam Scholarship," New York Times Magazine cover story, February 13, 1983, where Pike is regarded as the exemplar of the "new breed" of dispassionate scholars.
38. Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), pp. 329, 394, for a detailed analysis of the maneuverings during this period. See also Grant Evans and Kelvin Rowley, Red Brotherhood at War (London: Verso, 1984).
39. Derriere Ie sourire khmer (Paris: PIon, 1971); see FRS, chapter 2, section 2. 40. Vickery, Cambodia, pp. 7, 17, 5-6, 17, 43; ViCKery, "Looking Back at Cambodia," Westerry (Australia) (December 1976). See PEHR, 11. 6 for ex- cerpts from the latter study.
41. See FRS, pp. 192ft'. , and sources cited, particularly the fall 1971 studies by T. D. Allman, based on interviews with members of the Cambodian elite. 42. See Elizabeth Becker, When The War Was Over (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), p. 28, citing a 1963 U. S. embassy cable quoting Sihanouk; Chanda, Brother Enemy, pp. 61f. See A WWA and FRS on contemporary studies of the Sihanouk period that provide more detail.
43. Michael Leifer, "Cambodia," Asian Survey (January 1967). Becker, When the War Was Over, p. 27, asserts that the CIA was behind the 1959 plot. For sources on these developments here and below, largely French, see A WWA and FRS. See Peter Dale Scott in Pp, V, on the regional context of the 1963 escalation.
44. See A WWA and FRS for references and other examples.
45. Bombing in Cambodia, Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services, U. S. Senate, 93d Cong. , 1st sess. , July I August 1973, pp. 158-60, the primary source on the "secret bombings. "
46. See PEHR, 11. 6,288.
47? PEHR, 11. 6, 380; also 383. Shawcross, Quality ofMercy, p. 49, referring solely to B-52 bombings of Vietnamese "sanctuaries" in the border areas, the standard evasion of the issue.
48. See PEHR, 11. 6, 383, where the same point is noted, and its irrelevance discussed. These matters had been specifically brought to Shawcross's atten- tion during the period when he was working on his Sideshow, in commentary (which he had requested) on earlier articles of his on the topic in the British press.
49. William Beecher, New York Times, May 9, 1969; PEHR, 11. 6, 271, 289, 383.
50. Elterman, State-Media-Ideological Hegemony, p. 344. Note that the post- Tet operations were in part reported at the time, although often in the highly distorted framework already discussed. For samples, see A WWA. On media coverage of the Laos bombings in 1969, see "Laos" (p. 253).
51. T. D. Allman, FEER, April 9, 1970; Manchester Guardian, September 18, 1971. See note 41.
52. See FRS, p. 194, and sources cited; see A WWA on media coverage of the invasion.
53. Richard Dudman, Forty Days with the Enemy (New York: H. Liveright, 1971), p. 69?
54. Terence Smith, New York Times, December 5, 1971; Iver Peterspn, New York Times, December 2, 1971. See FRS, pp. 188f. , for citations from U. S. and primarily French sources. See also Fred Branfman, in Pp, V.
55. See FRS, pp. 19~2, for excerpts from Le Monde.
56. Elterman, State-Media-Ideological Hegemony, pp. 335f.
57. Vickery, Cambodia, p. 15.
58. UPI, New York Times, June 22, 1973, citing Pentagon statistics.
59. Shawcross, Sideshow, pp. 272, 297; see p. 262, above.
60. See PEHR, 11. 6, 154f. , 22of. , 365f. , for sources, excerpts, and discussion. 61. E. g. , Henry Kamm, New York Times, March 25, 28, 1973.
62. Becker, When the War Was Over, P. 32.
63. Malcolm Browne, "Cambodians' Mood: Apathy, Resignation," New York Times, June 29, 1973? On the forceful recruiting from "the poorer classes,
386 NOTES TO PAGES 274-283
. . . refugees and the unemployed," including the "poor peasants" who have "poured into the capital" after their villages were destroyed, but not the children of the wealthy elites, see Sydney Schanberg, New York Times, August
4,1973?
64. Kamm, New York Times, March 25, 1973.
65. See Vickery, Cambodia, pp. 9f. , on Buddhism, about which "probably more arrant nonsense has been written in the West . . . than about any other aspect of Southeast Asian life," particularly with regard to Cambodia.
66. Schanberg, New York Times, May 3, 8, July 19, July 30, August 16, August 12, 1973.
67. August 22, 1973. The material reviewed here is from May 3 to August 16. 68. Mostly Malcolm Browne; also Henry Kamm, wire services, specials. We omit brief reports here, and this record may not be complete.
69. Compare, for example, Jon Swain's horrifying account of the situation in the hospitals in Phnom Penh at the time of the 1975 evacuation with Sydney Schanberg's cursory remark that "many of the wounded were dying for lack of care" (Swain, Sunday Times (London), May II; Schanberg, New York Times, May 9, 1975); see PEHR, 11. 6, 370-71, for details.
70. Sunday Times (London), May II, 1975. See PEHR, 11. 6, 249f. , for longer excerpts.
71. Schanberg, New York Times, April 6, 8, 23, 1985.
72. New York Times, October 28, 1984.
73. Editorials, New York Times, April II, 1985; April 7, September 9, 1985. Others do note "America's role in the tragic destruction ofCambodian civiliza- tion," which "renders suspect any belated show of concern for Cambodian sovereignty" (Editorial, Boston Globe, April 12, 1985).
74. Editorial, New York Times, July 9, 1975; also Jack Anderson, Washington Post, June 4, 1975?
75. See PEHR, 11. 6.
76. Our review cited in the preceding footnote was therefore limited to materi- als based on this earlier period, all that was available at the time we wrote. 77. See PEHR, 11. 6, VI; Vickery, Cambodia.
78. PEHR, 11. 6, 135-36, 290, 293, 140, 299.
79. In the only scholarly assessment, Vickery concludes that "very little of [the discussion in PEHR, 11. 6] requires revision in the light of new information available since it appeared. " He also comments on the "scurrilous," "incompe- tent," and "dishonest criticism of Chomsky and Herman which has character- ized media treatment of their work," noting falsifications by William Shawcross, among others (Cambodia, pp. 308, 310).
80. Guenter Lewy, Commentary (November 1984), a typical example of a substantial literature. To our knowledge, Lewy, like other infuriated critics, did not condemn the Khmer Rouge in print as harshly, or as early, as we did. Recall that Lewy has experience with these matters, given his record as an apologist for war crimes, which reaches levels rarely seen. See chapter 5, notes 33,86.
81. John Barron and Anthony Paul, Murder in a Gentle Land (New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1977). Anderson, Washington Post, October I, 1978. Kamm, New York Times Magazine, November 19, 1978, including fabricated photographs; see PEHR, 11. 6,202,253; and 367, 372, on the scholarly literature
describing a country where "the population is ever on the edge of starvation" in earlier years and completely lacking an economy by 1975. Wise, FEER, September 23, 1977? See PEHR, 11. 6, for further examples and details, here and below; and Vickery, Cambodia, for additional evidence.
82. See our citations from his writings in the Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong) and Le Monde diplomatique (Paris), in PEHR, II.
83. Cambodia, p. 48. See also the review of his book by British Indochina scholar R. B. Smith, emphasizing the same point (Asian Affairs [February 1985]).
84. Cambodia, chapter 3.
Also essays by Vickery and Ben Kiernan in Chandler and Kiernan, Revolution and Its Aftermath; and Ben Kiernan, Cambodia: The Eastern Zone Massacres, Center for the Study of Human Rights, Documenta- tion Series, nO. 1 [c. 1986], (New York: Columbia University).
85? PEHR, 11. 6, 138-39, 152-53,156-57, 163.
86. 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.
36. See note 32, above; FEER, January 19, 1979?
37. Douglas Pike, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 29, 1979, and Chn'stian Science Monitor, December 4, 1979; cited by Vickery, Cambodia, p. 65. On the Freedom House and Times assessments of Pike's work, see p. p. 324,326; Fox Butterfield, "The New Vietnam Scholarship," New York Times Magazine cover story, February 13, 1983, where Pike is regarded as the exemplar of the "new breed" of dispassionate scholars.
38. Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), pp. 329, 394, for a detailed analysis of the maneuverings during this period. See also Grant Evans and Kelvin Rowley, Red Brotherhood at War (London: Verso, 1984).
39. Derriere Ie sourire khmer (Paris: PIon, 1971); see FRS, chapter 2, section 2. 40. Vickery, Cambodia, pp. 7, 17, 5-6, 17, 43; ViCKery, "Looking Back at Cambodia," Westerry (Australia) (December 1976). See PEHR, 11. 6 for ex- cerpts from the latter study.
41. See FRS, pp. 192ft'. , and sources cited, particularly the fall 1971 studies by T. D. Allman, based on interviews with members of the Cambodian elite. 42. See Elizabeth Becker, When The War Was Over (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), p. 28, citing a 1963 U. S. embassy cable quoting Sihanouk; Chanda, Brother Enemy, pp. 61f. See A WWA and FRS on contemporary studies of the Sihanouk period that provide more detail.
43. Michael Leifer, "Cambodia," Asian Survey (January 1967). Becker, When the War Was Over, p. 27, asserts that the CIA was behind the 1959 plot. For sources on these developments here and below, largely French, see A WWA and FRS. See Peter Dale Scott in Pp, V, on the regional context of the 1963 escalation.
44. See A WWA and FRS for references and other examples.
45. Bombing in Cambodia, Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services, U. S. Senate, 93d Cong. , 1st sess. , July I August 1973, pp. 158-60, the primary source on the "secret bombings. "
46. See PEHR, 11. 6,288.
47? PEHR, 11. 6, 380; also 383. Shawcross, Quality ofMercy, p. 49, referring solely to B-52 bombings of Vietnamese "sanctuaries" in the border areas, the standard evasion of the issue.
48. See PEHR, 11. 6, 383, where the same point is noted, and its irrelevance discussed. These matters had been specifically brought to Shawcross's atten- tion during the period when he was working on his Sideshow, in commentary (which he had requested) on earlier articles of his on the topic in the British press.
49. William Beecher, New York Times, May 9, 1969; PEHR, 11. 6, 271, 289, 383.
50. Elterman, State-Media-Ideological Hegemony, p. 344. Note that the post- Tet operations were in part reported at the time, although often in the highly distorted framework already discussed. For samples, see A WWA. On media coverage of the Laos bombings in 1969, see "Laos" (p. 253).
51. T. D. Allman, FEER, April 9, 1970; Manchester Guardian, September 18, 1971. See note 41.
52. See FRS, p. 194, and sources cited; see A WWA on media coverage of the invasion.
53. Richard Dudman, Forty Days with the Enemy (New York: H. Liveright, 1971), p. 69?
54. Terence Smith, New York Times, December 5, 1971; Iver Peterspn, New York Times, December 2, 1971. See FRS, pp. 188f. , for citations from U. S. and primarily French sources. See also Fred Branfman, in Pp, V.
55. See FRS, pp. 19~2, for excerpts from Le Monde.
56. Elterman, State-Media-Ideological Hegemony, pp. 335f.
57. Vickery, Cambodia, p. 15.
58. UPI, New York Times, June 22, 1973, citing Pentagon statistics.
59. Shawcross, Sideshow, pp. 272, 297; see p. 262, above.
60. See PEHR, 11. 6, 154f. , 22of. , 365f. , for sources, excerpts, and discussion. 61. E. g. , Henry Kamm, New York Times, March 25, 28, 1973.
62. Becker, When the War Was Over, P. 32.
63. Malcolm Browne, "Cambodians' Mood: Apathy, Resignation," New York Times, June 29, 1973? On the forceful recruiting from "the poorer classes,
386 NOTES TO PAGES 274-283
. . . refugees and the unemployed," including the "poor peasants" who have "poured into the capital" after their villages were destroyed, but not the children of the wealthy elites, see Sydney Schanberg, New York Times, August
4,1973?
64. Kamm, New York Times, March 25, 1973.
65. See Vickery, Cambodia, pp. 9f. , on Buddhism, about which "probably more arrant nonsense has been written in the West . . . than about any other aspect of Southeast Asian life," particularly with regard to Cambodia.
66. Schanberg, New York Times, May 3, 8, July 19, July 30, August 16, August 12, 1973.
67. August 22, 1973. The material reviewed here is from May 3 to August 16. 68. Mostly Malcolm Browne; also Henry Kamm, wire services, specials. We omit brief reports here, and this record may not be complete.
69. Compare, for example, Jon Swain's horrifying account of the situation in the hospitals in Phnom Penh at the time of the 1975 evacuation with Sydney Schanberg's cursory remark that "many of the wounded were dying for lack of care" (Swain, Sunday Times (London), May II; Schanberg, New York Times, May 9, 1975); see PEHR, 11. 6, 370-71, for details.
70. Sunday Times (London), May II, 1975. See PEHR, 11. 6, 249f. , for longer excerpts.
71. Schanberg, New York Times, April 6, 8, 23, 1985.
72. New York Times, October 28, 1984.
73. Editorials, New York Times, April II, 1985; April 7, September 9, 1985. Others do note "America's role in the tragic destruction ofCambodian civiliza- tion," which "renders suspect any belated show of concern for Cambodian sovereignty" (Editorial, Boston Globe, April 12, 1985).
74. Editorial, New York Times, July 9, 1975; also Jack Anderson, Washington Post, June 4, 1975?
75. See PEHR, 11. 6.
76. Our review cited in the preceding footnote was therefore limited to materi- als based on this earlier period, all that was available at the time we wrote. 77. See PEHR, 11. 6, VI; Vickery, Cambodia.
78. PEHR, 11. 6, 135-36, 290, 293, 140, 299.
79. In the only scholarly assessment, Vickery concludes that "very little of [the discussion in PEHR, 11. 6] requires revision in the light of new information available since it appeared. " He also comments on the "scurrilous," "incompe- tent," and "dishonest criticism of Chomsky and Herman which has character- ized media treatment of their work," noting falsifications by William Shawcross, among others (Cambodia, pp. 308, 310).
80. Guenter Lewy, Commentary (November 1984), a typical example of a substantial literature. To our knowledge, Lewy, like other infuriated critics, did not condemn the Khmer Rouge in print as harshly, or as early, as we did. Recall that Lewy has experience with these matters, given his record as an apologist for war crimes, which reaches levels rarely seen. See chapter 5, notes 33,86.
81. John Barron and Anthony Paul, Murder in a Gentle Land (New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1977). Anderson, Washington Post, October I, 1978. Kamm, New York Times Magazine, November 19, 1978, including fabricated photographs; see PEHR, 11. 6,202,253; and 367, 372, on the scholarly literature
describing a country where "the population is ever on the edge of starvation" in earlier years and completely lacking an economy by 1975. Wise, FEER, September 23, 1977? See PEHR, 11. 6, for further examples and details, here and below; and Vickery, Cambodia, for additional evidence.
82. See our citations from his writings in the Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong) and Le Monde diplomatique (Paris), in PEHR, II.
83. Cambodia, p. 48. See also the review of his book by British Indochina scholar R. B. Smith, emphasizing the same point (Asian Affairs [February 1985]).
84. Cambodia, chapter 3.
Also essays by Vickery and Ben Kiernan in Chandler and Kiernan, Revolution and Its Aftermath; and Ben Kiernan, Cambodia: The Eastern Zone Massacres, Center for the Study of Human Rights, Documenta- tion Series, nO. 1 [c. 1986], (New York: Columbia University).
85? PEHR, 11. 6, 138-39, 152-53,156-57, 163.
86. 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.
