Launching the Private Network

In 1987 the United States Congress concluded an investigation of what came to be known as the Iran-Contra scandal. This wide-ranging collection of covert operations, headed primarily by CIA Director William Casey and little-known NSC staffer Oliver North, involved secretly selling weapons to Iran (a violation of U.S. law, since Iran was officially listed as a state sponsor of terrorism), then secretly channeling the profits to various Nicaraguan paramilitary groups, (in violation of a U.S. law known as the Boland amendment).

This investigation uncovered a plethora of illegal and quasi-legal actions ranging from terrorism to drug-running, to money-laundering, to propaganda, all over Latin America and the Middle-East, in the name of fighting the Communist threat. Although many of the perpetrators were convicted by Congress of various crimes against the American people, most of them were pardoned by President George H.W. Bush. Sadly, many of those perpetrators, such as John Poindextor, Otto Reich, John Negroponte, and Elliot Abrams, later found work in the Bush Jr. administration.

However, one facet of the story never made it into the final congressional report. A chapter was left out. As it turns out, the Democratic majority on the committee allowed themselves to be bullied by the ranking Republicans, including Republican Whip Dick Cheney, into leaving that section out.

This section has now been released. It was buried deep in the congressional record and discovered by journalist Robert Parry. Titled Launching the Private Network, this fascinating document explains how the CIA, the National Security Council, and the State Department, secretly channeled taxpayer money to private public relations and news organizations, to manage the perception of the media, the American people, and the United States Congress. The document refers to this as "public diplomacy". In other words, they ran a covert propaganda operation on us. On me and you. They did the kind of thing they've always done against hostile nations, but they did it to our nation. I've always assumed the government does this and I guess I'm not surprised to be proven right.

Oh, and by the way, Oliver North, the liaison between the CIA and the NSC, whose official duty it was to lie to the Congress and manipulate the American public through use of the media? He has his own show on Fox News now.

I'm reminded of a question Noam Chomsky asked a while back: if the American media were not free, but were instead a propaganda arm of the US government, would it look substantially different from Fox News?