Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Cover-Up at News Corp.: Spouse in Ensign Affair Sought Help in Letter to Fox News

By Jeff German, Lisa Mascaro
Las Vegas Sun
Jun 19, 2009

Doug Hampton, husband of Sen. John Ensign’s affair partner, Cynthia Hampton, appears in this KLAS-TV video Wednesday. The Hamptons were both employees of Ensign when the affair reportedly took place, and in a letter to Fox News, Doug Hampton blamed Ensign’s “relentless pursuit of my wife” for their “dismissal.”


In a letter dated five days before Sen. John Ensign’s public confession of an extramarital affair, Doug Hampton pleaded to a national Fox News anchorwoman for help in exposing the senator’s “heinous conduct and pursuit” of Hampton’s wife.

Hours before the Sun obtained an unsigned copy of the letter, Ensign’s spokesman said the senator disclosed the affair with Cynthia Hampton because her husband had approached “a major television news channel before Tuesday,” the day Ensign admitted the affair. “We learned of this fact before the news conference,” the spokesman noted in an e-mail. (UPDATE: Ensign’s office says Hampton made ‘exorbitant demands’)

In his letter, Hampton, a former top administrative aide in Ensign’s Capitol Hill office, said: “The actions of Senator Ensign have ruined our lives and careers and left my family in shambles. We have lost significant income, suffered indescribable pain and emotional suffering. We find ourselves today with an overwhelming loss of relationships, career opportunities and hope for recovery. Our pursuit of justice continues to place me and my family in harm’s way as we fear for our well being.”

Hampton could not be reached for comment, and his Las Vegas lawyer, Daniel Albregts, declined to comment on the letter.

“We are not commenting on any aspect of the case at the present time,” he said.

The letter presented for the first time Doug Hampton’s view of what took place. It was addressed to Megyn Kelly at Fox News’ corporate office in New York. Kelly is the co-host of Fox News Channel’s American Newsroom. She also appears regularly on the O’Reilly Factor with Bill O’Reilly, according to the network’s Web site.

Kelly could not be reached for comment late Thursday.

Reached by e-mail late Thursday, Ensign spokesman Tory Mazzola would not comment on the letter and wouldn’t say whether the senator was aware of it.

So among the key questions that remain unanswered are:

— Did Fox News receive the letter, and if the network did, what did it do with the information?

— How did Ensign learn that Hampton had “approached a major television news channel”?


In the letter, Hampton states that he wanted “to establish the framework for discussion and provide enough information to warrant a meeting with you (Kelly) and Fox News.” He said he had “great respect” for Fox News and was contacting Kelly because she is a lawyer and the story had several legal elements to it. Near the end of the two-page, single-spaced document, he noted: “I could have sought the most liberal, Republican hating media to expose this story, but there are people’s lives at stake and justice is about proper process as well as outcome. Senator Ensign has no business serving in the US Senate anymore!”
Hampton’s timeline of the affair — December 2007 through August 2008 — matches what Ensign and his staff described earlier this week.

“Senator Ensign’s conduct and relentless pursuit of my wife led to our dismissal in April 2008,” Hampton wrote. “I would like to say he stopped his heinous conduct and pursuit upon our leaving, but that was not the case, and his actions did not subside until August of 2008.” Hampton also wrote that he and others had confronted Ensign about his “unethical behavior and immoral choice” on a number of occasions over the past year.

“In fact, one of the confrontations took place in February 2008 at his (Ensign’s) home in Washington D.C. with a group of his peers,” Hampton added. “One of the attendees was Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma, as well as several other men who are close to the senator.”

Don Tatro, a spokesman for Oklahoma Republican, said late Thursday that Coburn had no comment.

In his letter, Hampton said he sought Fox News’ help out of desperation.

“It appears there may be nothing the law can do to correct and bring justice and restitution to this terrible wrong that has been done us,” he wrote. “I have sought a number of lawyers who are having difficulty finding charges that may hold up in court.”

Hampton said he understood the story was difficult to believe, but he added that there was a paper trail, phone records and witnesses to corroborate the allegations.

“It is my belief we are dealing with a very powerful person and institution in the U.S. Senate that only the media can pierce to expose the wrong and bring light and focus to what needs to be done.

“Please help me! This should not be how the leadership of our country should be allowed to behave. I need justice, help and restitution for what Senator Ensign has done to me and my family.”


He said he wanted to meet with Kelly and her “team as soon as possible” and would follow up with an e-mail.

Ensign’s sudden acknowledgment of the affair continues to create fallout in the nation’s capital and Nevada. The Ensign-backed Republican Renewal Project — a political action committee in Nevada launched on Ensign’s vision to rejuvenate the state’s Republican Party after Democratic gains — had been scheduled to host a fundraising barbecue Friday. Ensign was to be the featured guest at the dinner, but it has been postponed, according to the Web site.

Ensign remains away from Washington, missing several votes, and is not expected to return until next week.

The Senate is scheduled to resume debate next week on a tourism bill important to Nevada that Ensign co-sponsored with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The affair with Cynthia Hampton occurred while she, her husband and their adult son were all on the senator’s payroll. She was Ensign’s onetime campaign treasurer and the former treasurer of the senator’s Battle Born Political Action Committee.

Unnamed sources cited in various media reports initially raised the specter of extortion as the reason for Ensign’s news conference, but Metro Police and the FBI said they were not investigating. Ensign’s office on Thursday declined to say today whether the Hamptons sought any money to keep quiet.

Cynthia Hampton’s salary doubled as she took over as treasurer for Ensign’s leadership campaign account until she left in May 2008. Doug Hampton’s final month’s salary as a top aide at the senator’s office was nearly $20,000 — more than his normal pay at the $160,000-a-year-job, although the extra sum could have been for accrued sick or vacation time, or as a stipend.

The couple’s son, Brandon, was also on the payroll with a $1,000-a-month summer job at the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2008, which Ensign chaired at the time.

The New York Times reported today that after Ensign reconciled with his wife and dismissed Cynthia Hampton, he paid her a severance out of his own pocket.

Ensign’s office has declined to comment on the Hamptons’ salaries, or any severance.

Doug Hampton took a job with Allegiant Air, a Las Vegas company whose CEO is a major Ensign supporter.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/jun/19/we-have-suffered-indescribable-pain/

Monday, June 29, 2009

The Solution to William F. Buckley's Bladder Control Problem

Bill Buckley, Chris Buckley, And The American Conservative Movement’s Missing Second Act
By Peter Brimelow
http://vdare.com/pb/090603_buckley.htm
June 03, 2009

The fascinating news that the ageing William F. Buckley, beset by bladder problems, developed the habit of opening the door of his moving limousine and urinating into passing traffic—revealed by his son, Christopher Buckley in Losing Mum and Pup, his unsparing memoir of his just-deceased parents’ final year—is almost laughably symbolic.

CB himself—whose father certainly presented him with much more distressing problems at the terrible end—seems to think WFB was just importing the manly casualness of his much-publicized yachting days. He writes jovially to WFB’s possible victims: "If you’re out there, the answer is, yes, you were selected from among thousands of other motorists on I-95 to be tinkled on by the Lion of the Right. You should feel honored.” ...

Continued

Sunday, June 28, 2009

October 2001: Andrew Sullivan, State Propagaindst, on the "Iraqi Anthrax Attacks"

Andrew Sullivan, writing at his blog The Daily Dish on October 2001, in which he makes it clear that he is a state propagandist, not a free-thinking conservative ... if there is such a thing ... a mental programmer with no discernible professional ethics whatsoever:

THE COMING CONFLICT: The sophisticated form of anthrax delivered to Tom Daschle’s office forces us to ask a simple question. What are these people trying to do? I think they’re testing the waters. They want to know how we will respond to what is still a minor biological threat, as a softener to a major biological threat in the coming weeks. They must be encouraged by the panic-mongering of the tabloids, Hollywood and hoaxsters. They must also be encouraged by the fact that some elements in the administration already seem to be saying we need to keep our coalition together rather than destroy the many-headed enemy. So the terrorists are pondering their next move. The chilling aspect of the news in the New York Times today is that the terrorists clearly have access to the kind of anthrax that could be used against large numbers of civilians. My hopes yesterday that this was a minor attack seem absurdly na? in retrospect. So they are warning us and testing us. At this point, it seems to me that a refusal to extend the war to Iraq is not even an option. We have to extend it to Iraq. It is by far the most likely source of this weapon; it is clearly willing to use such weapons in the future; and no war against terrorism of this kind can be won without dealing decisively with the Iraqi threat. We no longer have any choice in the matter. Slowly, incrementally, a Rubicon has been crossed. The terrorists have launched a biological weapon against the United States. They have therefore made biological warfare thinkable and thus repeatable. We once had a doctrine that such a Rubicon would be answered with a nuclear response. We backed down on that threat in the Gulf War but Saddam didn’t dare use biological weapons then. Someone has dared to use them now. Our response must be as grave as this new threat. I know that this means that this conflict is deepening and widening beyond its initial phony stage. But what choice do we have? Inaction in the face of biological warfare is an invitation for more in a world where that is now thinkable. Appropriate response will no doubt inflame an already inflamed region, as people seek solace through the usual ideological fire. Either way the war will grow and I feel nothing but dread in my heart. But we didn’t seek this conflict. It has sought us. If we do not wage war now, we may have to wage an even bloodier war in the very near future. These are bleak choices, but what else do we have?

http://sullivanarchives.theatlantic.com/index.php.dish_inc-archives.2001_10_01_dish_archive.html#6398404

Friday, June 26, 2009

Swiftboaters-Funded Republican Blogger Caught Plagiarizing

by Carnacki
Jun 15, 2009

In mid-May the Republicans launched a counter to West Virginia Blue called West Virginia Red. The site launched Sunday and takes its name from West Virginia Blue, a site that features pieces on Democratic politics and progressive issues.

"I think all of us who are involved in political circles in West Virginia are very aware of West Virginia Blue," said Stauffer, who managed state Supreme Court candidate Beth Walker's unsuccessful campaign.

Carnacki's diary

Beth Walker was a rightwinger who got major support from the Swiftboaters. Fortunately she was defeated, due in no small part to those of us who canvassed and campaigned for the state Democratic Party's unified campaign.

Now Stauffer is working on West Virginia Red trying to change the state party's infrastructure in a state dominated by Democrats. ...

While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, plagiarism is not.

WVaBlue diarist Mary Jones discovered that a recent post from Stauffer contains sentences directly lifted and put in his post on cap and trade. ...

Continued

Prince: Symbol of Sexual Liberation Blasts Gay Marriage

By Robert Paul Reyes
newsblaze.com

"God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, 'Enough.' "

Who uttered this crazy quotation in response to a question about gay marriage and Proposition 8?

There's a long list of usual suspects, it could have been a televangelist like James Dobson, a talking head like Sean Hannity or a conservative politician like Sarah Palin. But believe it or not it was none other than Prince, the diminutive rock star who used to perform in bikini briefs and whose music oozes with unbridled sexuality.

How sad that a performer with a long catalog of songs celebrating sexual freedom has turned into a homophobe. Prince converted to the Jehovah's Witness faith a few years ago, and that denomination believes that homosexuality is a sin. ...

Story continues

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Gays Outraged over Censorship at NPR

Media could Use a Stonewall Uprising of their Own
By Karl Frisch
mediamatters.org

In early May, National Public Radio, a supposed bastion of liberal media bias, found itself in the crosshairs of the lesbian and gay community over an online review of Outrage, a documentary chronicling the hypocrisy of prominent, purportedly closeted politicians with staunchly anti-gay voting records.

What sparked the controversy was not the documentary itself, but the fact that NPR's review failed to name names. In fact, while Nathan Lee, the review's initial author, had included the identities of those fingered in the film, NPR editors took it upon themselves to censor the review prior to publication.

Would a review of a film exposing the hypocrisy of politicians on any other subject fail to identify the politicians in question? Not likely.

Alas, NPR's skittishness seems to be reserved only for those who may be gay and enjoy positions of power to legislate on matters directly affecting the gay community. NPR has shown no such hesitation speculating about the sexuality of celebrities like American Idol's recently out-and-proud Adam Lambert. ...

Continued

Monday, June 22, 2009

Exxon's Brazen Greenwashing, on the Front Page of The New York Times

By Cliff Kuang
www.fastcompany.com
Jun 19, 2009 at 2:11 PM


Yesterday, on the bottom of it's front page, The New York Times ran [an] ad from ExxonMobil, which touts the idea that car emissions have fallen by 95% since 1970. Which sounds great! There's nothing at all to worry about with global warming! We're already doing such an amazing job!

Not exactly, says noted climate scientist and physicist Joseph Romm. While it's clear that various tailpipe emissions such as ozone have fallen thanks in large part to catalytic converters, carbon emissions have not. And even though our cars get better gas mileage now than in 1970, our country has vastly more cars and drives them further thanks to sprawl. As a result, our carbon emissions have actually accelerated. (Atmospheric carbon was, in fact, just found to be at its highest point in 2 million years, and the government just released a sobering climate report that unpacks some of the best climate science currently available.) As Romm writes:

Needless to say--or, rather, in this case, needful to say--while today's car has lower emissions of urban air pollutants thanks to government regulation, today's car has, if anything, higher emissions of greenhouse gases, which threaten the health and well-being of the next 50 generations. And needful to say, ExxonMobil has done more than just about any other company to undermine efforts to achieve the greenhouse gas regulations that could lower those emissions.

ExxonSecrets details the millions of dollars that the company has shoveled to fund the disinformation campaigns of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, all of which continue to advance unfactual anti-scientific attacks as I have detailed recently (see posts on Heritage and CEI and AEI). Chris Mooney wrote an excellent piece on ExxonMobil's two-decade anti-scientific campaign. A 2007 Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report looked at ExxonMobil's tobacco industry-like tactics in pushing global warming denial (see "Today We Have a Planet That's Smoking!").

So it is especially egregious that The New York Times would take money to publish this disinformation on their front page. Had this been a news article, I do think that the NYT would never have published it, although they have certainly been running a lot of questionable stuff--see NYT suckered by ExxonMobil in puff piece titled "Green is for Sissies."

And in the irony department, if you go to ExxonMobil.com, as the ad urges, you'll see ... wait for it ... a picture of a huge hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast, with the headline "Learn how ExxonMobil prepares and responds to hurricanes." How about "Learn how ExxonMobil works hard to make sure future hurricanes will be far more destructive" (see "Nature: Hurricanes ARE getting fiercer--and it's going to get much worse" and "Why future Katrinas and Gustavs will be MUCH worse at landfall")?

You can't make this stuff up. Well, ExxonMobil can, and The New York Times will let them publish it--but you can't make stuff up and publish it on the front-page of the New York Times because you don't have the tens of thousands of dollars needed and frankly the NYT would probably subject your ad to more scrutiny.


Bracing stuff. Do magazines and newspapers have a responsibility to factcheck their ads? It sounds difficult to do--and unlikely, given how those outlets are hurting for cash--but note how severely cigarette ads have been curtailed. Why shouldn't ads that fly in the face of established scientific and journalistic evidence--and which advocate policies that are widely harmful to the public, in the form of global warming--be similarly curtailed? Just wondering.

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/exxons-brazen-greenwashing-front-page-new-york-times

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Media deceptively claim stimulus funds going to "train station" that "hasn't been used in 30 years"

Media Matters
June 17, 2009

SUMMARY: Media figures repeated Sen. Tom Coburn's claim that stimulus funds are being used "to renovate an abandoned train station that hasn't been used in 30 years." But while the station house has long been closed, "[t]he station's platform currently serves more than 80,000 passengers a year," as Coburn's report noted.

Story

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Neo-Nazi-Radio Host Hal Turner: Arrested for Inciting Violence

June 4, 2009

Radio host has strong connections to Sean Hannity

(ChattahBox)—”It is our intent to foment direct action against these individuals personally. These beastly government officials should be made an example of as a warning to others in government: Obey the Constitution or die,” wrote neo-nazi Hal Turner on his blog last week, referring to two Connecticut officials.

Combined with other incendiary statements and a promise to publish the home addresses of Connecticut officials, the Capitol police in Hartford, CT. arrested Turner in his New Jersey home on Wednesday, before someone rose to Turner’s call for violence.

Turner was charged with inciting injury to persons or property and is in jail awaiting extradition to Connecticut. The remainder of his post reads: “If any state attorney, police department or court thinks they’re going to get uppity with us about this, I suspect we have enough bullets to put them down, too.”

Capitol Police Chief Michael J. Fallon described Turner’s statements as “…above and beyond the threshold of free speech.”

Turner’s statements were designed to incite others to commit acts of violence and now finally, law enforcement officials are holding Turner criminally accountable. Turner has built a career based on hate, racism and anti-Semitism.

This recent controversary involved a local Catholic church in a legal dispute with Bridgeport state ethics officials, claiming the Church violated lobbying laws. Turner became involved, essentially rallying Catholics to take up arms against the state ethics officials.

For over two decades, Hal Turner focused most of his energy into neo-nazism, race-baiting, denying the Holocaust, promoting various White Supremacist causes, including the Nationalist Movement and worked as an activist in New Jersey’s Republican Party. He has called for the murder of illegal immigrants, raged against “bull-dyke lesbians,” “savage Negro beasts” and “filthy mongrels.”

And he has threatened the lives of public officials before, publishing their home addresses. In 2005 he published the names and home addresses of three federal judges and in 2006 Turner wrote on his website, “”We may have to ASSASSINATE some of the people you elect on Nov. 7! This could be your LAST ELECTION CHANCE, to save this Republic…”

Again in 2008, Turner threatened a school superintendent for establishing a curriculum for gay students, calling for parents to use force and violence against the school official for supporting…”disease-ridden sodomite lifestyles.” Ironically, of course, Turner has admitted in the past that he has homosexual tendencies.

Why it took so long for police officials to finally arrest Turner is a mystery, or maybe it isn’t. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported it had evidence that Turner was a FBI informant.

The dirty back-story to the rise of Hal Turner in hate circles is the helping hands he received along the way, namely from Pat Bucchan and Sean Hannity. Turner worked as the Northern New Jersey coordinator for Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign.

Buchanan, the hero to angry white men, with his anti-immigrant ideologies, anti-Semitic views and frequent racist statements, found the perfect campaign coordinator in Turner.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Media Conservatives Claim Holocaust Museum Shooter a "Leftist"

James von Brunn

mediamatters.org
June 11, 2009

In responding to the June 10 shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, several conservatives in the media have suggested that the alleged shooter, James von Brunn, reportedly a neo-Nazi, was a "leftist," as Talking Points Memo's Zachary Roth has noted. Indeed, in some cases, those media figures have stated or suggested that Nazism itself is "a leftist phenomenon" because the English translation of the official name of Adolf Hitler's political party was the "National Socialist German Workers' Party."

In a New Republic review of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning -- a book that furthers a similar premise and includes a chapter titled "Adolf Hitler: Man of the Left" -- Guardian America editor Michael Tomasky wrote that Goldberg's theory constitutes "revisionism" because, among other things, "there exist about a million nearly epileptic quotes from Hitler and [Josef] Goebbels and other Nazis expressing their luminous hatreds of liberalism and of communism."

Tomasky wrote:

We have also recognized, since at least the 1950s and in some prescient instances even earlier, that certain consanguinities between the far left and the far right did exist in those days, and that the Nazi program was in some respects a left-wing program, appealing on a class basis -- and, always, a racial basis -- to German workers and the petit bourgeoisie. It was not called National Socialism for nothing. Goldberg goes into great detail on all this in his chapter titled -- are you sitting down? -- "Adolf Hitler: Man of the Left."

Now that is revisionism. But for all his chapter and verse on the proletarian rhetoric that Nazis employed, Goldberg somehow forgets to mention certain other salient matters, like the fact that within three months of taking power Hitler banned trade unions -- and on the day after May Day, 1933. Their money was confiscated and their leaders imprisoned. And the trade unions were replaced with the Nazi "union" called the German Labor Front, which took away the right to strike. Hitler did many worse things, of course. I single out this act because it would hardly seem to be the edict of a "man of the left." And there exist about a million nearly epileptic quotes from Hitler and Goebbels and other Nazis expressing their luminous hatreds of liberalism and of communism, none of which seem to have found their way into the pages of Liberal Fascism.

Similarly, UCLA sociology professor and Fascists author Michael Mann wrote in a Washington Post review of Goldberg's book:

Goldberg finds similarities between fascism's so-called "third way" -- neither capitalism nor socialism -- and liberals who use the same phrase today to signify an attempt to compromise between business and labor. But there is a fundamental difference. The fascist solution was not brokered compromise but forcibly knocking heads together. Italian fascists formed a paramilitary, not a political, party. The Nazis did have a separate party, but alongside two paramilitaries, the SA and the SS, whose first mission was to attack and, if necessary, to kill socialists, communists and liberals. In reality, the fascists knocked labor's head, not capital's. The Nazis practiced on the left for their later killing of Jews, gypsies and others. And all fascists proudly proclaimed the "leadership principle," hailing dictatorship and totalitarianism.

Examples of conservative media figures stating or suggesting that von Brunn was a "leftist" include the following:

On the June 10 edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck, guest Harry Binswanger of the Ayn Rand Institute said, "Well, this Von Brunn's culture is a tribe of racist, anti-Jewish, anti-Negro, anti-immigrant, everything, and therefore he's a phenomenon of the left, because racism is a form of collectivism. The right wing is individualist -- believes in individual rights, freedom, the dignity of each individual life. But it's the left wing -- you know, Hitler was National Socialism, right? It's a leftist phenomenon." Host Glenn Beck replied in part, "[Y]ou look at people who are Nazis, and you say that those are right wing. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever." As Media Matters for America has documented, Beck has repeatedly invoked the Nazis in talking about President Obama and other progressives and frequently uses his program to smear liberals as fascists.

In a June 11 FrontPageMag.com article -- headlined "Holocaust Museum Shooter: Christian-Hating Socialist" -- managing editor Ben Johnson wrote [emphasis in original]:

Leftists have decided to exploit Von Brunn's madness to engender fear of rampant conservative terrorism. They overlook one point: the shooter was not a conservative.

A review of his lengthy associations reveals Von Brunn hardly fits the stereotype of a Religious Right, GOP precinct captain. He denounced the Christian faith as a dastardly Jewish conspiracy, a "HOAX" invented by the Apostle Paul to "DESTROY ROMAN CULTURE" from within by undermining its pagan virility. (All screaming capitalization and grammatical errors in this piece appear in the original.) Like others on the racist fringe, the shooter proclaimed clearly: "SOCIALISM, represents the future of the West."


Johnson's post was subsequently highlighted by NewsBusters under the headline "Holocaust Museum Killer Conservative? Not So Fast!"

On the June 11 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, Rush Limbaugh said, "Very predictably, ladies and gentlemen, the media, the American left is trying to score some political points as a result of this tragedy at the Holocaust museum in Washington yesterday, and as predictable, they are trying to blame this on me, other conservatives, and right-wingers. It's the traditional approach taken by the American left." Limbaugh continued:

The facts of the case, however, are such that if we want to start assigning blame for this beyond this nutcase Jew-hater -- and notice that very few people actually want to do that. They want to claim this guy didn't have the ability to act on his own. He only could act if he was inspired by somebody. Well, who did he hate? He hated both Bushes. He hated neocons. He hated John McCain. He hated Republicans. He hated Jews, as well. He believed in an inside-job conspiracy of 9-11. This guy is a leftist, if anything. This guy's beliefs, this guy's hate stems from influence that you find on the left, not on the right.

From the June 10 edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck:

BINSWANGER: It's only going to get worse, because under pressure, people should resort to their standards and principles, but they don't have any standards and principles today. Standards have been knocked down by our universities who tell us that truth is relative, there is no morality; it's all your culture or my culture.

Well, this Von Brunn's culture is a tribe of racist, anti-Jewish, anti-Negro, anti-immigrant, everything, and therefore he's a phenomenon of the left, because racism is a form of collectivism. The right wing is individualist -- believes in individual rights, freedom, the dignity of each individual life. But it's the left wing -- you know, Hitler was National Socialism, right?

BECK: How did, Harry -- how did it --

BINSWANGER: It's a leftist phenomenon.

BECK: How did it happen that this was -- that you look at people who are Nazis, and you say that those are right wing. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

BINSWANGER: Well, there was a deal made between the communists and the Nazis in Germany in the '30s where they each agreed to define themselves as the opposite of the other. You see the percentage in that -- you define my gang or your gang, and you rule out of court any other possibility, such as freedom without any gang rule.

BECK: Right.

BINSWANGER: So it's actually a strategy adopted in Germany in the Weimar Republic in the '30s.

BECK: We're -- we're -- America, we're surrounded by people who want to control you. You've got the government that is -- I think, just going crazy out of control. You have -- you have some crazy nutjob who wants to control what races are here, you know, how -- what our makeup looks like. You have everybody who is struggling for control, and I think you are just somebody that just wants to be left alone, quite honestly. Just wants to be -- let me just, please, let my kids go to school, be safe. Let me go to work, let me -- let me just have a normal life. But it's getting harder and harder.


http://mediamatters.org/research/200906110038

Thursday, June 11, 2009

The CIA in Hollywood: US Cable Channel Whitewash of the CIA/Director Profile/CIA & 20h Century Fox - Documented Agreement

CIA's Entertainment Industry Liaison Office

“If you’ve got government agencies working in Hollywood covertly to improve their own images, that’s not only a bad use of funds, it’s also fundamentally anti-Democratic and wrong.” - Matthew Alford, Ph.D.



CIA TELEVISION SERIES PROJECT
Created: 10/3/1995

" ... TPP's initial agreement with CIA affords the Agency much greater control than what appears to be the industry norm and the concerns raised represent attempts to bring this agreement back into line with accepted industry practices. It is unlikely that CIA would have agreed to these requirements if they had been presented during the initial discussions. ... "

OCR scan of the original document
Fox/ClA-TPP Letter of Agreement

Twentieth Century Fox Television Internal PP Correspondence to DD/PAS
•••
Producer/Director Charles C. Stuart (see bio below)

US cable channel whitewashes the CIA
Into the Shadows: The CIA in Hollywood, written, produced and directed by Charles C. Stuart
By Joanne Laurier
12 December 2001

The US cable television channel American Movie Classics (AMC), devoted to broadcasting Hollywood films of the past, aired its own special on December 4. Into the Shadows: The CIA in Hollywood is as revealing for what it omits as what it presents. From its title and the breathless quality of the narration, the viewer might have reasonably expected an exposé of the filthy deeds of the spy outfit and its connections to the American film industry. Instead, however, the show, with its pseudo- film noir veneer, essentially depicts the CIA as a life-saving, humanitarian entity. The program amounts to little more than a propaganda piece to improve the agency’s image at a time when it is playing a central role in the US war drive. Indeed the show might rightfully be considered an element in one of the agency’s own “disinformation” campaigns.

Against a background of “suspenseful” music, the narration, read by prominent liberal Democrat actor Alec Baldwin, initially tantalizes by suggesting that the CIA has involved the entertainment industry in clandestine and sometimes “sordid” operations. The tone then quickly shifts and becomes sycophantic toward one of the world’s most hated and discredited organizations.

The program is more or less given over to Tony Mendez, introduced as the former CIA chief of disguise. Needing some Mission Impossible -style help in the 1960s, Mendez approached Disney Studios, founded by right-winger Walt Disney, and enlisted the help of an award-winning makeup specialist, John Chambers. Chambers’ skills were used to put together “disguise kits” with which CIA operatives went into the field. A company that Chambers later formed with fellow makeup expert Tom Burman was called upon to design masks, concoct fake personas and phony companies for CIA missions in Laos, Poland, the USSR and Iran.

The show provides only two or three examples of these missions. In one case Hollywood talent was used to effect the 1979 escape from Iran of six American diplomats. The latter had taken refuge in the Canadian embassy during the student takeover of the US embassy following the overthrow of the shah. Every detail of this rather trivial enterprise is discussed. No mention is made, of course, of the bloody repression carried out by the secret police, the notorious SAVAK, which the CIA helped set up and train, under the shah’s regime.

In order to appease the angry Iranian populace and perhaps win the release of the American hostages held by the students, thought was also given at the time to a scheme to fake the death of the shah, who was in the US undergoing cancer treatment. An individual was hired and work was done to prepare him to impersonate the shah. The “fake shah caper” came to naught, but the tale was told to highlight the “extraordinary work” of the CIA. The other story concerns the production of masks for a black CIA operative in Laos during the Vietnam War so that he could pass through checkpoints undetected.

This is all very sanitized and unreal. The program fails to answer the obvious question: how often were Hollywood talents put to use in the course of assassination plots, the overthrowing of governments and mass killings?
In fact, Mendez explains that his hope is that the program will counteract Hollywood’s too-often portrayal of “the CIA as the bad guy, and give a more balanced view of what spies do; that they are not the dregs of humanity.” In the not-so-distant past, it would have been unthinkable for film industry technicians and artists to openly acknowledge collaboration with these “dregs of humanity.” The agency’s crimes in Iran, Chile, Central America, Vietnam and elsewhere were too well known. It is not the CIA and its assets who have changed, but the liberal and media establishment, which now chooses to portray Mendez and the others as “unsung heroes.”

In the second portion of Into the Shadows, entitled Hollywood Goes to War—referring to the present conflict in Afghanistan —the program’s makers interview figures such as Michael Bay, director of Pearl Harbor, and Steven E. de Souza, scriptwriter for Die Hard. In the light of current efforts to enlist Hollywood’s support for the new war drive, the show’s producers apparently want to make clear that there is a precedent for such government use of the entertainment industry.

In a cursory review of the postwar period, the program notes that President Eisenhower set up a department of “psychological warfare” which availed itself of the talents of screenwriter Howard Hunt, among others, who was later to become a Watergate burglar. It also reveals, significantly, that an unnamed CIA mole was charged with changing Hollywood scripts during the 1950s and removing any portrayals of Americans as “racist, drunk or trigger-happy”! This is passed over rather quickly. In other words, at the same time as the US government was denouncing the Soviet Stalinist state-run “propaganda” machinery, it was employing spies to monitor and alter the content of American films. (This was necessary to finish whatever was left undone by the blacklist and the anticommunist witch-hunt.)

In regard to the present situation, the program glowingly explains how Hollywood technology is used to aid the US war effort. Like a scene out of Wag the Dog, we are shown a soldier being trained with virtual reality technology at the Institute for Creative Technologies near Los Angeles. The show also makes reference to the two meetings between Hollywood executives and representatives from the Bush administration in October and November [See: Hollywood enlists Bush’s war drive]. De Souza (Die Hard) talks about the government “brainstorming with Hollywood about future terrorist threats.” There is consensus among the talking heads on the need to “balance patriotism and creativity and still make blockbusters.”

Into the Shadows unwittingly reveals the astonishingly low level of principle and morality that dominates the Hollywood scene. Fittingly, all the “artists” interviewed for the program were creators of dreadful films—Pearl Harbor, Independence Day, Die Hard, Armageddon, The Patriot. In summing up, Jonathan Hensleigh, screenwriter for Armageddon, explained his reason for altering a recent script that “showed the CIA as bad guys. My first instinct was not patriotism. I thought the script was in trouble commercially, that [Disney chief Michael] Eisner would not produce it.”

According to the AMC special the question that keeps the “patriotic” studio executives, screenwriters and directors awake at night, following September 11, is: “how can Hollywood embrace the new spirit of America and still succeed at the box office?”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/dec2001/cia-d12.shtml

Charles C. Stuart
Stuart Television Productions
Director of "Into the Shadows: The CIA in Hollywood"

Charles C. Stuart has more than twenty-five years experience in television and filmmaking, all of it at the network level for both public and commercial broadcasting. He is the recipient of seven national Emmy Awards, two duPonts and various other national awards for producing, reporting and writing.

He has written, produced and directed more than 50 hours of documentary programming for all major networks including eight Frontline hours for PBS, many co-productions with ABC, stories for 60 Minutes on CBS, and documentaries for Home Box Office, the Discovery Channel , A&E, TLC, Lifetime, CNN, MSNBC, ESPN, AMC and National Geographic.

Stuart has traveled the world for his work, which includes four films shot in Africa, Asia and the Middle East for "The New Heroes" series on PBS. He has received a grant from the MacArthur Foundation to produce a one-hour documentary about ex-extremists in the Middle East.

http://www.thedocumentarygroup.com/who.php?147
•••
" ... The real reasons for the CIA adopting an 'advisory' role on all of these productions are thrown into sharp relief by a solitary comment from former Associate General Counsel to the CIA, Paul Kelbaugh: ... 'We didn’t want Hollywood getting too close to the truth,' the journalist quoted Kelbaugh as saying. ... "




Lights, Camera… Covert Action: The Deep Politics of Hollywood

by Matthew Alford and Robbie Graham
Global Research, January 21, 2009

Here we build a prima facae case supporting the idea that Hollywood continues to be a target for infiltration and subversion by a variety of state agencies, in particular the CIA. ...

The Latest Picture

A variety of state agencies have liaison offices in Hollywood today, from the FBI, to NASA and the Secret Service. Few of these agencies, though, have much to offer in exchange for favourable storylines, and so their influence in Hollywood is minimal. The major exception here is the Department of Defense, which has an ‘open’ but barely publicized relationship with Tinsel Town, whereby, in exchange for advice, men and invaluable equipment, such as aircraft carriers and helicopters, the Pentagon routinely demands flattering script alterations. Examples of this policy include changing the true identity of a heroic military character in Black Hawk Down (2001) due to his real-life status as a child rapist; the removal of a joke about "losing Vietnam" from the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), and cutting images of Marines taking gold teeth from dead Japanese soldiers in Windtalkers (2002). Instances such as these are innumerable, and the Pentagon has granted its coveted "full cooperation" to a long list of contemporary pictures including Top Gun (1986), True Lies (1994), Executive Decision (1996), Air Force One (1997), The Sum of All Fears (2002), Transformers (2007), Iron Man (2008), as well as TV series such as JAG (1995-2005).

Such government activity, whilst morally dubious and barely advertised, has at least occurred within the public domain. This much cannot be said of the CIA’s dealings with Hollywood, which, until recently, went largely unacknowledged by the Agency. In 1996, the CIA announced with little fanfare the dry remit of its newly established Media Liaison Office, headed by veteran operative Chase Brandon. As part of its new stance, the CIA would now openly collaborate on Hollywood productions, supposedly in a strictly ‘advisory’ capacity.

The Agency’s decision to work publicly with Hollywood was preceded by the 1991 "Task Force Report on Greater CIA Openness," compiled by CIA Director Robert Gates’ newly appointed ‘Openness Task Force,’ which secretly debated –ironically– whether the Agency should be less secretive.

The report acknowledges that the CIA "now has relationships with reporters from every major wire service, newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation," and the authors of the report note that this helped them "turn some ‘intelligence failure’ stories into ‘intelligence success’ stories, and has contributed to the accuracy of countless others." It goes on to reveal that the CIA has in the past "persuaded reporters to postpone, change, hold, or even scrap stories that could have adversely affected national security interests…"

These admissions add weight to several reports and Congressional hearings from the 1970s which indicated that the CIA once maintained a deep-rooted and covert presence in national and international media, informally dubbed "Operation Mockingbird." In its 1991 report, the CIA acknowledged that it had, in fact, "reviewed some film scripts about the Agency, documentary and fictional, at the request of filmmakers seeking guidance on accuracy and authenticity." But the report is at pains to state that, although the CIA has "facilitated the filming of a few scenes on Agency premises," it does "not seek to play a role in filmmaking ventures." But it seems highly implausible that the CIA, whilst maintaining a decades-long presence in media and academia, would have shown no interest in the hugely influential Cinema industry.

Indeed, it should come as no surprise that the CIA has been involved in a number of recent blockbusters and TV series. The 2001 CBS TV series, The Agency, executive produced by Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, Air Force One) was actually co-written by ex-CIA agent and Marine Bazzel Baz, with additional ex-CIA agents working as consultants. The CIA gladly opened its doors to the production, and facilitated both external and internal shots of its Langley headquarters as the camera gazed lovingly at the CIA seal. This arrangement was comparable to the Feds’ efforts on the popular TV series The FBI (1965-74) which was shaped by the Bureau in cooperation with ABC and which thanked J. Edgar Hoover in the credits of each episode. Similarly, The Agency glorified the actions of US spooks as they fought predictable villains including the Russian military, Arab and German terrorists, Columbian drug dealers, and Iraqis.

One episode even shows the CIA saving the life of Fidel Castro; ironically, since the CIA in real life had made repeated attempts to assassinate the Cuban President. Promos for the show traded on 9/11, which had occurred just prior to its premiere, with tag lines like "Now, more than ever, we need the CIA."

A TV movie, In the Company of Spies (1999) starring Tom Berenger depicted a retired CIA operative returning to duty to save captured Agency officers held by North Korea. The CIA was so enthusiastic about this product that it hosted its presentation, cooperated during production, facilitated filming at Langley, and provided fifty off-duty officers as extras, according to its website.

Espionage novelist Tom Clancy has enjoyed an especially close relationship with the CIA. In 1984, Clancy was invited to Langley after writing The Hunt for Red October, which was later turned into the 1990 film. The Agency invited him again when he was working on Patriot Games (1992), and the movie adaptation was, in turn, granted access to Langley facilities. More recently, The Sum of All Fears (2002) depicted the CIA as tracking down terrorists who detonate a nuclear weapon on US soil. For this production, CIA director George Tenet gave the filmmakers a personal tour of the Langley HQ; the film’s star, Ben Affleck also consulted with Agency analysts, and Chase Brandon served as on-set advisor.

Media sources indicate that the CIA also worked on the Anthony Hopkins/Chris Rock feature Bad Company (2002) and the Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster Enemy of the State (2001). However, no details whatsoever about these appear to be in the public domain. Similarly, Spy Game director Tony Scott’s DVD commentary for said film indicates that he visited Langley whilst in pre-production but, according to one report, endorsement appeared to have been withheld after Chase Brandon read the final draft of the script.

More details than usual emerged about CIA involvement in the Tom Hanks movie Charlie Wilsons War (2007) and Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd (2006) – but not many. Milt Beardon had traveled to the Moscow Film Festival with De Niro and claims the pair then "disappeared and hung out with the mob and KGB crowd for a while. I introduced him to generals and colonels, the old guys I had been locked with for so many years." De Niro later tagged along with Beardon to Pakistan. "We wandered around the North-West Frontier Province," Bearden recalls, "crossed the bridge [to Afghanistan] I built years ago, hung out with a bunch of guys firing off machine guns and drinking tea." Still, The Good Shepherd didn’t fulfill the CIA’s earnest hopes of being the CIA equivalent of Flags of Our Fathers (2006), which the Agency’s official historian says it should have been – all in the interests of what he calls a "culture of truth."

Charlie Wilson’s War depicted the United States’ covert efforts to supply arms to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union in the 1980s which had the real-life consequence of America’s old ally turned against it in the form of al-Qaeda (as Crile explains in the book of the film). However, Beardon, who was the CIA agent who supplied the weapons, worked as consultant on the film and said prior to its release that it "will put aside the notion that because we did that, we had 9/11." CIA involvement in the film therefore appears to have paid dividends.

The real reasons for the CIA adopting an "advisory" role on all of these productions are thrown into sharp relief by a solitary comment from former Associate General Counsel to the CIA, Paul Kelbaugh. In 2007, whilst at a College in Virginia, Kelbaugh delivered a lecture on the CIA’s relationship with Hollywood, at which a local journalist was present. The journalist (who now wishes to remain anonymous) wrote a review of the lecture which related Kelbaugh’s discussion of the 2003 thriller The Recruit, starring Al Pacino. The review noted that, according to Kelbaugh, a CIA agent was on set for the duration of the shoot under the guise of a consultant, but that his real job was to misdirect the filmmakers: "We didn’t want Hollywood getting too close to the truth," the journalist quoted Kelbaugh as saying.

Peculiarly, in a strongly-worded email to the authors, Kelbaugh emphatically denied having made the public statement and claimed that he remembered "very specific discussions with senior [CIA] management that no one was ever to misrepresent to affect [film] content – EVER." The journalist considers Kelbaugh’s denial "weird," and told us that "after the story came out, he [Kelbaugh] emailed me and loved it… I think maybe it’s just that because [the lecture] was ‘just in Lynchburg’ he was okay with it – you know, like, no one in Lynchburg is really going to pay much attention to it, I guess. Maybe that’s why he said it, and maybe that’s why he’s denying it now." The journalist stands by the original report, and Kelbaugh has pointedly refused to engage us in further discussion on the matter.

Early Screening

Clandestine agencies have a long history of interference in the cinema industry. Letters discovered in the Eisenhower Presidential Library from the secret agent Luigi G. Luraschi (identified by British academic John Eldridge), the Paramount executive who worked for the CIA’s Psychological Strategy Board (PSB), reveal just how far the CIA was able to reach into the film industry in the early days of the Cold War, despite its claims that it sought no such influence. For instance, Luraschi reported that he had secured the agreement of several casting directors to subtly plant "well dressed negroes" into films, including "a dignified negro butler" who has lines "indicating he is a free man" in Sangaree (1953) and in a golf club scene in the Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis vehicle The Caddy (1953). Elsewhere, CIA arranged the removal of key scenes from the film Arrowhead (1953), which questioned America’s treatment of Apache Indians, including a sequence where a tribe is forcibly shipped and tagged by the US Army. Such changes were not part of a ham-fisted campaign to instill what we now call "political correctness" in the populace. Rather, they were specifically enacted to hamper the Soviets’ ability to exploit its enemy’s poor record in race relations and served to create a peculiarly anodyne impression of America, which was, at that time, still mired in an era of racial segregation.

Other efforts were made. The PSB tried –unsuccessfully– to commission Frank Capra to direct Why We Fight the Cold War and to provide details to filmmakers about conditions in the USSR in the hope that they would use them in their movies. More successfully, in 1950, the CIA –along with other secretive organizations like the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) and aided by the PSB– bought the rights to and invested in the cartoon of George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1954), which was given an anti-Soviet spin to satisfy its covert investors. Author Daniel Leab has pointed to the fact it took decades for the rumours about CIA involvement in Animal Farm to be properly documented; this, he observes, "Speaks volumes about the ability of a government agency to keep its activities covert."

Additionally, the production of the Michael Redgrave feature Nineteen-Eighty Four (1956) was in turn overseen by the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, which was supervised by the CIA. Key points in the movie were altered to demonise the Soviets.

The CIA also tampered with the 1958 film version of The Quiet American, provoking the author, Graham Greene, to denounce the film. US Air Force Colonel Edward Lansdale, the CIA operative behind Operation Mongoose (the CIA sabotage and assassination campaign against Cuba) had entered into production correspondence with director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who accepted his ideas. These included a change to the final scene in which we learn that Redgrave’s anti-hero has been hoodwinked by the Communists into murdering the suspicious American, who turns out not to be a bomb-maker as we had been led to believe, but instead a manufacturer of children’s toys.

Behind the Scenes

It would be a mistake to regard the CIA as unique in its involvement in Hollywood. The industry is in fact fundamentally open to manipulation by a range of state agencies. In 2000, it emerged that the White House’s drug war officers had spent tens of millions of dollars paying the major US networks to inject anti-drug plots into the scripts of primetime series such as ER, The Practice, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Chicago Hope. Despite criticism for this blatant propagandizing, the government continued to employ this method of spreading its message on drugs.

The White House went to Tinsel Town again the following year when, on November 11, 2001 a meeting was held in Hollywood between President Bush’s then Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, and representatives of each of the major Hollywood studios to discuss how the film industry might contribute to the ‘War on Terror.’ Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America said with a straight face that, "content was off the table", but Rove had clearly outlined a series of requests. It is hard to gauge the consequences of the meeting, but a Rambo sequel, for instance, was certainly discussed, and duly produced. Similarly, several series with national security themes emerged within a short time of the meeting including She Spies (2002-2004) and Threat Matrix (2003).

The meeting was, in fact, just one in a series between Hollywood and the White House from October to December, 2001. On October 17, in response to 9/11, the White House announced the formation of its "Arts and Entertainment Task Force," and by November, Valenti had assumed leadership of Hollywood’s new role in the ‘War on Terror’. As a direct result of meetings, Congress sought advice from Hollywood insiders on how to shape an effective wartime message to America and to the world. In November 2001, John Romano, writer-producer of the popular US TV series Third Watch, advised the House International Relations Committee that the content of Hollywood productions was a key part of shaping foreign perceptions of America.

On December 5, 2001, the powerful Academy of Television Arts & Sciences convened its own panel entitled "Hollywood Goes to War?" to discuss what the industry might do in response to 9/11. Representing the government at the meeting were Mark McKinnon, a White House advisor, and the Pentagon’s chief entertainment liaison, Phil Strub. Also in attendance, among others, were Jeff Zucker, President of NBC Entertainment, and Aaron Sorkin, creator and writer of the White House drama The West Wing (1999-2006). Immediately after, Sorkin and his team set about producing a special episode of the show dealing with a massive terrorist threat to America entitled "Isaac and Ishmael". The episode was given top priority and was successfully completed and aired within just ten days of the meeting. The product championed the superiority of American values whilst brimming with rage against the Islamist jihadists.

The interlocking of Hollywood and national security apparatuses remains as tight as ever: ex-CIA agent Bob Baer told us, "There’s a symbiosis between the CIA and Hollywood" and revealed that former CIA director George Tenet is currently, "out in Hollywood, talking to studios." Baer’s claims are given weight by the Sun Valley meetings, annual get-togethers in Idaho’s Sun Valley in which several hundred of the biggest names in American media –including every major Hollywood studio executive– convene to discuss collective media strategy for the coming year. Against the idyllic backdrop of expansive golf courses, pine forests and clear fishing lakes, deals are struck, contracts are signed, and the face of the American media is quietly altered. The press has yet to be granted permission to report on these corporate media gatherings and so the exact nature of what is discussed at the events has never been publicly disclosed. It is known, however, that Tenet was keynote speaker at Sun Valley in 2003 (whilst still CIA head) and again in 2005.

Conclusions

Many would recoil at the thought of modern Hollywood cinema being used as a propagandist tool, but the facts seem to speak for themselves. Do agencies such as the CIA have the power, like the Pentagon, to affect movie content by providing much-sought-after expertise, locations and other benefits? Or are they able to affect script changes through simple persuasion, or even coercion? Do they continue to carry out covert actions in Hollywood as they did so extensively in the 1950s, and, beyond cinema, might covert government influence play some part in the creation of national security messages in TV series such as 24 and Alias (the star of the latter, Jennifer Garner, even made an unpaid recruitment video for the CIA)? The notion that covert agencies aspire to be more open is hard to take seriously when they provide such scant information about their role within the media, even regarding activities from decades past. The spy may have come in from the cold, but he continues to shelter in the shadows of the movie theatre.

Matthew Alford (PhD: University of Bath) lectures on Film and Television at the University of Bristol and is currently writing a book about propaganda in Hollywood. Robbie Graham is Associate Lecturer in Media at Stafford College. They can be contacted at: matthewalfordphd@gmail.com and rbbgraham@aol.com

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11921

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Bill Moyers, CIA "Liberal" (and Nazi Joseph Campbell)

By Alex Constantine

The Power of the Bill Moyers Myth - Who will Tell Amy Goodman?

On PBS, Moyers promotes the work of the late fascist eugenicist Joseph Campbell, a vicious anti-Semite who has proposed relocating Jewish people to the moon. Moyers seems to have no problem with that, though - as long as his audience doesn't know and he continues to reap his share of Campbell's book profits UNDER THE TABLE, a massive perk that he has publicly denied ...


Bill Moyers is the most visible "liberal" in the national media, and Amy Goodman's icon of progressive journalism. The Schumann Foundation, chaired by Moyers for years, has been busily shaping the mass-market progressive press. Television Quarterly, a journal of The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, ranks Moyers among the ten journalists who have most influenced television news. He has won more than 30 Emmys, a George Peabody award, a Ralph Lowell medal and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel. His documentaries have paid off handsomely in network fund drives. Several of his books have been best-sellers. The avuncular Moyers, a former Baptist minister from Marshall, Texas, has been an Arthur Morse Fellow at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies and a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation's International Social Research Institute.

But Moyers does not exactly fit the traditional liberal profile. Morley Safer of 60 Minutes fame recalls that, as President Lyndon Johnson's press secretary, Moyers was responsible for the FBI's bugging of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the leaking of transcripts to the media. Moyers denied the bugging and leaking allegations in a letter to The New Republic in 1991, but did allow that he leaked "information" only to "officials involved in national security." This much was confirmed by a Senate Intelligence Committee staff report released in 1976: "Moyers expressly approved the circulation within the Executive Branch of a secret FBI report on King."

Moyers was also the instigator of a disgraceful episode at the White House, one that anticipated Nixon's "dirty tricks." His pissing match with Safer began in August, 1965, when CBS News reported that U.S. Marines had torched a village in Vietnam. The story was followed by public indignation and it fed the rising opposition to Johnson's escalation policy. CBS president Frank Stanton was called on the carpet for the exposé at a private meeting with LBJ and his Kennedy-coifed aide. LBJ told Stanton that Moyers had a damaging file on Safer compiled from the records of the FBI, CIA and Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The extortion "file" was an idle threat - it didn't exist. Unless Safer "cleaned up his act," the administration would "go public" with the CBS reporter's "communist ties." Safer scoffed at the accusation and held his job at CBS. Today, Moyers waves off the episode as "a bluff."

McGeorge Bundy

Public television's premiere "liberal" is as practiced at the art of deception as he is blackmail. In October, 1977, Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame reported in Rolling Stone that Bill Moyers ran a "super-secret" CIA task force mustered to study the feasibility of short-waving propaganda to the People's Republic of China. The project was overseen by the CIA's Cord Meyer, McGeorge Bundy, a national security advisor to Johnson, USIA director John Marks and Moyers.

He certainly wore hawk feathers when taped in the White House by LBJ: "Mr. President, I would like to suggest that you really keep pressure on Bundy and Rusk and McCone and others to press forward on what we can do about Cuba - about subversion, espionage and intelligence. Now there are two reasons for this: One, I think we've got to do it. It's necessary. Cuba has got to be dealt with..."

"Moyers regards himself as the "catalyst' of the Johnson administration," Current Biography (1966 edition) reported, "and Johnson has described him as my vice-president in charge of anything.'" Vice President Moyers became Hoover's pipeline to Johnson in 1964, after Walter Jenkins, his predecessor, was busted for "disorderly conduct" in a Beltway men's room.

Moyers dropped from the sinking Johnson administration in 1967 to become publisher of Newsday in Long Island, then owned by millionaire Harry Guggenheim. Two years passed and Guggenheim confided to Moyers his intent in selling the newspaper. In an attempt to save his job, Moyers tried to interest CIA director William Casey, Chase Manhattan Bank, the New York Times and Time-Life in buying it. He moved on to PBS the same year – after Guggenheim reneged on bequeathing him his fortune, as promised – and joined the board of the Rockefeller Foundation where he remained for 17 years. In 1980, Moyers produced The World of David Rockefeller, an unabashed PR whitewash.

In 1976, CBS forgave his White House antics and drafted Moyers to the news division. Employees of the network recall him as "brilliant" ... also "duplicitous," "calculating," "cunning." Gordon Van Sauter, a right-wing CBS executive, recollects "a truly reprehensible human being." The multi-faceted news analyst dropped CBS two years later for PBS.

In 1981, he bugged out once again when his contract at Bill Moyers' Journal expired and returned to CBS News. He passed through the revolving door, from corporate compromise to public pabulum, for years. "Everybody calls me Hamlet," he explains of his own seeming indecisiveness, "but I call it brilliance."

Say what you will of Bill Moyers, his Muckrake Lite approach (fascism in government? No mention of the obvious ...) has actually served the public interest on occasion. His October, 1973 "Essay on Watergate," delivered on a program funded by the Ford Foundation, was a dirge that warmed the republic to Nixon's impending political collapse. His documentaries, What Can We Do About Violence?, Minimum Wages, and The Secret Government (it didn't tell the half the story) served the commonweal in their fashion.

But it is the larceny in his heart that TV Guide does not probe. Nowhere was his dark side more apparent than in his series of highly-publicized interviews with famed mythologist Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). A book based on the series was an immediate best-seller. Ruppert Murdoch's New York Post found it "provocative and inspirational." Truth to tell, The Power of Myth was an inspirational but deceitful promotion of a Nazi occultist and a vicious anti-Semite with ties to the American neo-Nazi underground. Promotion of the book was a display of greed that would put a blush on the face of a fugitive financier.

After the series aired, the September 28, 1989 number of New York Review of Books published an article by Brendan Gill, a long-time friend of Campbell's at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. Gill reports that in December 1941, three days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Campbell delivered a talk discouraging students from supporting American entrance into the war with Nazi Germany. Campbell soiled German author Thomas Mann, an exile in the States who had "lost altitude" as a writer by criticizing the Nazi Party. Mann, in a letter to Campbell, responded that he found this rebuke "strange," and pointed out that his books were "forbidden in Germany and in all countries that Germany rules, and whoever reads them or even should sell them, and whoever would so much as praise my name publicly would be put into a concentration camp and his teeth would be bashed in and his kidneys split in two. You teach that we must not get upset about that ... once again, this is strange."

Not necessarily, considering Campbell's acute and unswerving anti-Semitism. Ms Carol Wallace recalled in a letter to NYRB: "In the early 1970s, I worked with Joe Campbell on his Mythic Image at Princeton University Press. It was amazing to me that this man of cosmic vision could harbor such mean-spirited and seemingly unexamined biases against much of humankind. In addition to anti-Semitism, I remember in particular his vexation over blacks' being admitted to Sarah Lawrence."

"When the astronauts landed on the moon," Gill recalled, "Joe made the repellent jest to a member of my family, who was a student of his at the time, that the moon would be a good place to put the Jews..."

A correspondent, Carol Luther of San Anselmo, California, wrote Gill to say that she once "attended a lecture in which Campbell recounted what he called a popular Indian fable (a favorite of Campbell's in old age), the gist of which was that we are not all mere mild grass-eating goats but, instead, are blood-thirsty, carnivorous tigers, who do well to prey upon whatever lower species of animal makes up our natural diet." Incited, Luther "rose shaking from my chair and shouted, 'What about the six million [Jews] who were gassed during World War II?'" In response, Campbell simply shrugged and spat, "That's your problem."

Joseph Campbell not only shrugged off the Holocaust – he was a major force in the racial eugenics movement until his death in 1987. For many years he sat on the editorial board of Mankind Quarterly, the notorious "race journal" subsidized by the notorious Pioneer Fund. The Quarterly's founder, Robert Gayre, held that African-Americans are "worthless." The Quarterly was long published by Roger Pearson, an official of the pro-fascist Northern League, an organization that included among its ranks a number of veterans of Himmler's SS. Other prominent academics who contributed to the journal: Henry Garrett of the White Citizens Council, Ottmar von Verschuer, Josef Mengele's mentor, and Corrado Gini, an Italian biologist under Mussolini, author of The Scientific Basis of Fascism.

But here he was on the "public" airwaves, discussing Buddha and the Burmese Snake Goddess and following his bliss with an obsequious, doe-eyed Bill Moyers.

Even the Campbell approach to myth recalled Nazi Germany – handed down from Carl Jung, a CIA recruit, former editor of the ranking psychiatric journal of the National Socialist Party, whose books, translated in the United States with funding from Edith Rockefeller, reek of proto-Nazi occultism.

The Power of Myth still reaps a windfall in donations to the network and its affiliates. A book based on the series was co-authored and edited with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis by a consultant to the series, Betty-Sue Flowers, a former English professor at the University of Texas and director of the LBJ Library. John Trimble, a UT English professor who has known her for 30 years, calls Flowers "the female Bill Moyers." Like the original, she is comfortable in the boardroom and knows her way around Washington. The Austin American Statesman observed on April 7, 2002 that Flowers travels "in the world of multinational corporations – and once spent a couple of weeks in the Pentagon as a special advisor to the secretary of the Navy. "

The "female Bill Moyers" sits on the boards of Breckenridge Petroleum Co. Also the Arlington Institute, a research center in Virginia with blue-chip corporate and federal clients, a distinction Flowers shares with former CIA director James Woolsey, Gerald Ford appointee George H. Kuper, and Colin Crook, former chief technologist at Citicorp. The institute was founded in 1989 by John Peterson, formerly an official of the Institute for National Security Studies, the office of the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council.

Like Joseph Campbell, Ms. Flowers is enrolled in the Jung school of comparative religion. Besides The Power of Myth, she edited Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership (1996), a Jungian romp for corporate executives by tin-horn visionary Joseph Jaworski, son of the Watergate prosecutor appointed by then Attorney General Robert Bork, Leon Jaworski.

Fascination with Nazis is apparently imprinted on the Jaworski phenotype. A repugnant hallmark of Leon Jaworski's career was his release of Nazis to the American intelligence services as a Nuremberg war crimes trial prosecutor.

He also worked with the Red Cross International Rescue Division to relocate SS officers around the world. In exchange, he was made chairman of Houston's Red Cross chapter in 1954. Other blots on the old man's résumé include his legal work for the Warren Commission. Despite a career of collaboration with fascists, he was endowed with every honor the legal profession has to offer. He was "very close" friend of George H.W. Bush, and supported his fellow Houstonian in his 1980 bid for president.

"The constant act of being true to oneself – authentic in thought, work and deed – is what carves the path in front of you, a path you can't predict," Flowers says. Who could predict that the bubbly former beauty pageant contestant, feminist, poet and Jungian from Austin would make a splash promoting the work of a Nazi mystic for PBS, and pouring on a lubricious New Age veneer?

Perdido magazine had it in a review of Synchronicity: "Jaworski begins by telling the story of his father, Leon Jaworski, a nationally prominent litigator, and his role as special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal. 'The Colonel,' as Jaworski called his father, related the dimensions of the conspiracy to his son one day, before the details of the Watergate tapes became public. Watergate marked a significant revelation in Joe Jaworski's life, the realization that a crisis in leadership existed in this country. With an immensely personal style, Jaworski examines the experiences of his life that seemed to transcend the moment, that were guided by some unseen hand." In 1990, Jasworski was hired by Royal Dutch/Shell Oil in London to direct a multinational panel on future "global scenarios."

Jung defined synchronicity as "a meaningful coincidence of two or more events, where something other than the probability of chance is involved."

Synchronicity

Every turn in this story leaves chance begging for something to do. The main beneficiary in the pimping of Joseph Campbell was the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) when presided over by Robert Coonrod. Coonrod was executive VP and chief operating officer of Voice of America for five years. In 1992 ,VOA director Richard Carlson moved to CPB and Coonrod followed. When Carlson set sail in April, 1997 to run King World Public Television, Coonrod was promoted to head up CPB.

Under President George W. Bush, the CPB was overseen for one year by CEO Kathleen Cox. Executive vice president and CEO Ken Ferree succeeded her as interim president in April 2005. Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, told Media Week that Cox’s departure was integral to a plan to bring public television and radio into line with right-wing policies. "The ideologically driven majority on the board is pursuing a zealous campaign to promote conservative/GOP-approved public broadcasting programming,” Chester said. Ferree, who hailed from Michael Powell's FCC, joined the CPB one month before his the promotion was announced. At the FCC, Ferree served as chief of the media division, where he paved the way for greater corporate control of the airwaves.

A FOX NEWS CONNECTION TO THE ORLANDO TRIPLE MURDER-SUICIDES

FOX NEWS' Ultra-Con Pundit & Convicted Felon Doug Guetzloe

In four steps:

1) David Abrami, shot dead by Young Republican Robert Drake, formerly worked with Doug Guetzloe
2) Guetzloe extortion plot
3) Guetzloe biography
4) Guetzloe sentenced to prison/Mel Sembler & Mark Foley ties

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-bk-threedead082707,0,7573624.story

" ... All three men died in Gonzalez's Union Park home last Tuesday but the bodies were not discovered until Thursday.

"Gonzalez, 39, the president of Strategum Group and a former head of the Republican Party in Georgia, was buried Monday in Miami.

"Abrami, 36, an attorney who previously worked with Orlando political consultant DOUG GUETZLOE, had a room in Gonzalez's house on Hickory Oak Boulevard. The plans for his burial could not be learned Monday."

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-bk-threedead082707,0,7573624.story
•••••••••••••••••••••••
Doug Guetzloe Under Fire For Alleged "Extortion"
http://www.wftv.com/news/10072833/detail.html

October 13, 2006

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Political consultant Doug Guetzloe was under more fire Friday. Eyewitness News has new information on how he allegedly tried to get Orange County schools to pay him, "or else," while the Orlando Magic coughed up $200,000 to keep him from opposing a new arena.

Investigators were not limiting their probe to political consultant Guetzloe. The school district attorney said "Ax the Tax" leader Doug Guetzloe offered himself as a hired gun to the district when it was pushing a sales tax hike for new school construction.

The school district's attorney said the implied threat was that if political consultant Guetzloe was not hired that he would fight the tax hike. The school district said it didn't bite and never hired Guetzloe.

The Orlando Magic admitted to paying Guetzloe a total of $200,000 in 2001 and in 2006. Both occasions were supposed to stop him from fighting against a new arena. Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty is a supporter of building a new arena, but was disappointed that Guetzloe was paid off to hush up.

“We cannot be a top-tiered community if we're going to have a reputation, along with some other challenges we have, that you have to have anybody paid to get decisions made,” Crotty said.

Former Orlando Magic executive Bob Poe was so concerned after he heard about the first payment the Magic made to Guetzloe that he reported an accusation of extortion to the State Attorney's Office.

Friday, the Orlando Magic said that their attorney, Hal Kantor, had said if the Magic didn't hire Guetzloe, opponents of a new arena would.

State Attorney's Office investigators said they were reviewing all the players in the transactions to see what their motives might have been and whether there was anything illegal involved.

“How deep is this? Are there are other things to be disclosed that we don't know about,” Crotty asked.

Kantor and his law firm, Lowndes, Drosdick, Doster, Kantor and Reed would not speak to Eyewitness News.

Guetzloe denied the accusations of election law violations, campaign finance violations and of extortion that he is under investigation for.
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Doug Guetzloe Bio

750 South Orlando Avenue, Suite 202
Winter Park, FL 32789
(407)-388-1776
email: dougguetzloe@guetzloe.com

Educational Background

Florida State University, Bachelor of Science, 1978
Student Body President, 1978
Student Body Vice President, 1977
Student Senator, 1975-1976

St. Petersburg Junior College, Associate of Arts, 1975
Student Body President, 1974-1975
Student Body Secretary, 1973-1974
Student Senator, 1973-1974

Positions Held

1984-Present President of Advantage Consultants, a public relations, governmental relations and marketing firm, Orlando.

1981-1984 Director, Florida Medical Association, East Central Florida Office, Winter Park. Coordinated FMA legislative, lobbying and political action activities in a 15 county area.

1979-1981 Public Relations and Legislative Director, Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association, Orlando. Coordinated statewide public relations, political and legislative activities for growers.

1996-present Host, The Guetzloe Report, a syndicated radio talk show heard on Fox News Radio WAMT AM 1190 Talk radio - weekdays from 11:00 a.m.- Noon /ESPN 1080 Every Sunday 6-7 a.m.

Professional Experience

Florida Public Relations Association
Vice President & Board of Directors
International Association of Business Communicators
Vice President & Board of Directors
Central Florida Society of Association Executives
Treasurer, Secretary & Board of Directors
American Association of Political Consultants
Orlando Press Club
Central Florida Radio Talk Show Hosts

Political Experience

Ax the Tax, Founder and Chairman. Since 1982, Ax the Tax has successfully led thirteen (13) anti-tax efforts that have resulted in a savings to taxpayers of over $10.5 billion in taxes.

Republican nominee, Florida Senate (1986) – received 48% of the vote against incumbent Democrat State Senator George Stuart. Stuart never won another election.

Central Florida Young Republican Club, Founder and President. The CFYR club was the largest YR club in Florida (4th largest in the nation) within months of being established. With over 600 active members, the CFYR club became a political force with Central Florida with many current elected Republican officials coming from its ranks. The most notable CFYR alumni are former Florida House Speaker & Congressman Tom Feeney and Former House Speaker, State Sen. Dan Webster. The Young Republican National Federation named CFYR the “Most Outstanding Club in the Nation,” two years after Guetzloe founded the organization.

Orange County Republican Executive Committee – elected 1980, re-elected in 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004.

Florida Federation of Young Republicans, Region III Chairman 1980-81, FFYR National Committeeman, elected 1983, re-elected 1984. FFYR Executive Committee member 1980-86.

Florida College Republican Federation, Vice Chairman 1973, Chairman, 1974.

Legislative & Governmental Activities

Florida Senate Staff, 1976
Administrative Assistant, Curt Kiser, 1977
Legislative Intern, 1978
Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association, 1979-1981
Florida Medical Association, 1981-1983
Florida Veterinary Medical Association, 1984-1985
American Senior Citizen Alliance, 1993 – 1994
National Mortgage Investors Institute, 1993 – 1994
The Watson Group, 1995
Organized Fishermen of Florida, 1993 – 1994
Attorneys’ Bar Association, 1994
Save Our State, 1996 – 1997
Ax the Tax Committee, 1996 – 1998
The Open University, 1995, 1996, 1997
Motorola, 1997 – 1998, 2001 - Present
Cherry, Bekeart & Holland – 2001
The Gathering/USA – 2003 – 2005
Sheridan House, Inc – 2003 – 2005
Family First, Inc. – 2003 - 2004

Community Involvement

Sons of the American Revolution, Central Florida Chapter

Vice President, 1983, President, 1984, Public Relations Chair 2001 - 2002

Orlando Opera Company Board of Directors, 1985-1987

Channel 24/FM 90 Board of Directors, 1980-1982

Orange County Community Action Board - Board of Directors, 1981-1982

ADDitions Volunteer - Orange County Public Schools 1981-1986

Junior Achievement - Business Consultant, 1981-1982

Chapel Leader - The Christ School, 1998 – present

Delaney Park Little League - Assistant Coach, 1996-1999

The Christ School Lion’s Den Boosters - Vice President, Membership, 2001
Boy Scouts of America - Assistant Den Leader, Cub Scouts,
Troop 24, First Presbyterian Church

Awards & Honors

Outstanding Young Men in America

Who’s Who in Politics

Personalities of the South

Who’s Who in American Colleges & Universities

Who’s Who in the South & Southwest

Who’s Who in the World

Who’s Who in the Twentieth Century

Directory of Distinguished Americans

International Youth in Achievement

Community Leaders of America

Outstanding Service Chairman’s Award, Orange County Republican Executive Committee, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987

Top Ten Young Republicans in Florida, 1981, 1982, 1983, and 1984
Outstanding Republican in Orange County - MJ Moss Award

Orange County Republican Executive Committee - 1990

Jeanie Austin Membership Award, Heart of Orange Republican Club, 1983
Outstanding Service Award -1990 & 1992

Orange County Republican Executive Committee

Congressional Quarterly, Guest speaker, Campaign & Elections National Symposium, Washington, D.C., March 1998

National Direct Democracy Conference, Guest Speaker, The Center for
Governmental Studies, University of Virginia, June 2000

'100 Most Influential Central Floridians” Orlando Business Journal, 2000
Founders Award - Ax the Tax - Presented by Florida House Speaker Tom Feeney and Florida Senator Dan Webster, October 2000

Named "Citizen Diplomat," The International Council of Central Florida, 2001

Member, White Historical Association - 2003-present

Leadership Institute Consultant

Governmental Appointments

Co-Chairman, Superintendent’s Accountability & Responsibility Advisory Board, Orange County Public Schools - 2001 - 2002

Florida Study Committee on Public Records - 2002 – 2003

Office of the Governor. Appointed by Florida House Speaker Tom Feeney

Member, Mayor’s Transition & Management Team – 2003
Appointed by Mayor Buddy Dyer

Commissioner, Florida Film & Entertainment Advisory Council, 2003-2004.
Appointed by Florida House Speaker Johnnie Byrd

Media appearances

Host of The Guetzloe Report, a radio talk show heard on WAMT 1190 AM, The Fox News Station – Monday – Friday 11:00am – Noon and ESPN 1080 AM every Sunday from 6-7 a.m.

Appeared on Fox News Hannity & Colmes Show October 14, 2005

Frequent guest on WKMG TV 6, Flashpoint with weekday anchor Lauren Rowe.

Panelist for WMFE Channel 24 "Opinion Street"

Guest for WMFE FM 90 "On The Line"

Personal

Born in Tampa, Florida on June 15, 1954. Fourth generation Floridian. Married with three children. The Guetzloe's are members of the First Presbyterian Church in Orlando.
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http://ambazonia.indymedia.org/en//2006/08/1330.shtml

Now for the news on Mark Foley

Mark Foley's partner in crime at Drug Free America, Doug Guetzloe,
sentenced to prison. Guetzloe worked for Mel Sembler and the neocons
of AIPAC for a total of 30 odd years. Message to Melvin Sembler:
You're NEXT.....Don't think about going anywhere! You and AIPAC
have abused your last school program and caused your last rigged
elections. http://www.nogw.com/warforisrael.html