The Washington Post: McCarthyism’s Rightful Heir
“The notion that a newspaperman doesn’t have a duty to his country is perfect balls.” — Joseph Alsop, former American journalist and CIA operative
I was always under the impression that the Washington Post was one of the pillars of our democracy. Putting journalistic integrity ahead of personal or professional gain, they worked for us. They stood on the frontlines, unwavering in the face of partisan influence, leaving hyperbole and sensationalism at the checkout lane. The truth was sensational enough, and they knew it. They protected us from the corruption and illegalities that are inevitable in a representative government. They broke Watergate. They caused a president to resign.
BUT WHAT HAPPENED NEXT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND!
Or not. But you may find it interesting.
See, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein may have forever in the eyes of the public branded The Washington Post as the publication that brought down a presidency, but some of its biggest accomplishments may never be credited.
In the 50’s, at the height of the Cold War, Frank Wisner supervised the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), the CIA’s espionage and counter-intelligence branch. He was told to create an organization that concentrated on “propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world.”
This led to Wisner activating Operation Mockingbird, a disinformation program whose sole purpose was to influence American mainstream media. But in order to have a significant impact in the national narrative, Wisner would have to build a team. His first recruit?
Philip Graham, the owner of The Washington Post. Heading the program from within the industry meant Graham was tasked with filling out the team. By 1953, thanks to Graham’s recruitment, Operation Mockingbird had significant influence over at least 25 major publications including the New York Times, Newsweek, the New York Post, CBS, Time and Life Magazines, and of course The Washington Post and many others.
But what exactly was the point of all this? Well, like probably nothing I’ve seen in my lifetime, the U.S. faced a legitimate existential threat in the U.S.S.R. McCarthyism was in full swing and the Red Scare had the nation in a frenzy. People were being blacklisted on national television, and our own government feared the populace being influenced by “godless” communists so much that they added the words “In God We Trust” to our currency. Students in all public schools added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance, and then practiced hiding under their desks to shield themselves from a nuclear blast.
The first real test of this disinformation campaign came when Senator Joseph McCarthy put the CIA itself in the crosshairs of his fear-mongering and xenophobic crusade, calling it a “sinkhole of communists”. Wisner then tasked five Operation Mockingbird operatives with attacking McCarthy. Drew Pearson, Joe Alsop, Jack Anderson, Walter Lippmann, and Ed Murrow orchestrated the take down, and McCarthyism was over.
Except that it wasn’t. With Senator McCarthy out of commission, U.S. intelligence agencies continued to target those with “leftist views”, using the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to summon people in for interrogation. The CIA and FBI also gave information on people in the industry who were suspected of belonging to subversive organizations during WWII to conservative television producer Vincent Harnett, who published the names of those 121 individuals.
The results of being blacklisted were devastating, by the way. Passports were revoked. Those affected were under constant surveillance, causing Lee J. Cobb’s wife to be institutionalized. Cobb himself was rendered unemployable and unable to borrow. People were held prisoner in their own country, forced to cooperate in the investigations of others who shared their political views.
Graham and Operation Mockingbird came under fire in 1956 when David Bruce, a member of the President’s Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities (PBCFIA), wrote in an Eisenhower commissioned report on the CIA, “what right have we to go barging around in other countries buying newspapers and handling money to opposition parties or supporting a candidate for this, that, or the other office”.
Not to get ahead of myself, but that sounds like what a country would do when it still cared about discretion. Unlike now, where we sponsor terrorist groups, and then send in our own military to finish the job. (Iraq, Libya, Syria?)
Operation Mockingbird and it’s network of mainstream media outlets continued their assault on American leftists well after the Red Scare. In the late 1960’s, the FBI sanctioned program COINTELPRO (COunter INTELligence PROgram), which was initially created to target the Communist Party, was tasked with disrupting and discrediting what they called “black nationalist hate groups”. But their main targets were civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Black Panthers, a group created to protect citizens from police brutality, and that instituted the Free Breakfast for Children program.
In 1970, COINTELPRO teamed up with Operation Mockingbird to run a smear campaign on actress Jean Seberg. Seberg had been providing financial support to the NAACP, Native American school groups, and the Black Panthers. Operation Mockingbird ran stories that Seberg’s unborn child was fathered by Black Panther member Raymond Hewitt, rather than her husband Romain Gary.
The smear campaign sought to “possibly cause her embarrassment and tarnish her image with the general public”. Instead, Seberg went into premature labor, and the child died two days later.
The rumor was dismissed at the funeral, as the open casket exposed the baby’s white skin for reporters to see.
Remember, this entire program is being run by the owner of The Washington Post, and the CIA, who now has a $600 million contract with Jeff Bezos, the current owner of The Washington Post.
Jeff Bezos’ other company, Amazon, secured the contract in December of 2013 by offering the CIA “advanced, high-tech cloud infrastructure”, just three months after Bezos purchased the publication for $250 million in cash.
Since then, discretion has become less of a priority, as Bezos’ obvious conflict of interest has delved into the metaphysical with, at least, his media publication.
The WaPo became the king of self references recently, running ten articles concerning the Deep State from February 21 through March 13 of this year. The general theme of this media blitz was to confirm the existence of the Deep State, but to limit public perception as to what it actually does. Someone forgot to tell The New Yorker though, as they were still trying to debunk the theory as late as March 20.
The CIA’s influence in our mainstream media, and in this case, specifically The Washington Post, has been glaring in its demonizing of progressive Democrats and movements.
Back in March of 2016, The Washington Post ran 16 anti-Bernie Sanders articles in just 16 hours, with 12 of those coming out during the debate in Flint, MI.
Their editorial board took meetings with four 2016 presidential candidates, including the Green Party’s Jill Stein. They used that meeting to run editorials with titles such as “Jill Stein’s Fairy-Tale Candidacy”, and slam her running mate, Ajamu Baraka, for calling then President Obama an “Uncle Tom”. The malicious intent veered into blatant ridicule when Jonathan Capehart used a WaPo editorial to compare Ajamu’s comment to the white nationalist rhetoric of Donald Trump.
Josh Rogin, a regular contributor to The Washington Post, has taken exception with Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who has consistently been the most vocal opposition to U.S. Military intervention aimed at toppling governments in Iraq, Libya, and the democratically elected Syria. Hit pieces such as “How Tulsi Gabbard became Assad’s mouthpiece in Washington”, served to discredit her fact-finding mission to Syria, no doubt spurred by the lack of mainstream media presence in the region, and call into question the legitimacy of the organization Gabbard and Dennis Kucinich’s mission was sponsored by.
Kucinich promptly took to social media to debunk Rogin’s claims that the organization did not exist, saying, “The organization is in my neighborhood. Here’s photos I took yesterday of AACCESS-Ohio’s marquee”. The Washington Post indeed printed a correction accompanying the original article, but made no mention of Representative Gabbard eventually bypassing the organization and funding the trip out of her own pocket.
These “shoot from the hip” tactics employed by WaPo contributors are nothing new, and have only helped to make enemies of those who oppose establishment narratives, mainly those calling for rational decision making, and opposing unnecessary yet highly profitable wars.
In a January 2017 Forbes piece titled “Fake News And How The Washington Post Rewrote Its Story On Russian Hacking Of The Power Grid”, Kalev Leetaru breaks down the timeline of events surrounding the initial publication of the story and The Washington Post’s attempts at reigning in their wildly false and baseless accusations.
The original headline read, “Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, U.S. officials say”. Over the next two hours, as more information became available, the article was edited and amended multiple times, with no noted corrections or edits. Anyone reading the piece would have no idea the WaPo had foregone journalistic integrity to chase a non-existent story, stoking the fire of public anti-Russia sentiment the entire way.
The story ended with no evidence of Russian hacking, and the lone laptop infected with the malware was isolated without incident. The title of the article was changed to “Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say”. Better than the tabloid-esque first draft, but still peddling completely unverified fear-inducing propaganda aimed at vilifying the world’s other nuclear power based on what could just as easily have been a lone utility worker watching porn on a laptop not connected to the grid whatsoever.
BUT RUSSIA MALWARE HACKING ELECTION VIRUS!
Maybe. We have no way of knowing. In 2012, Congress passed H.R. 5736, also known as the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012. The text of this bill allows for the U.S. Government to use tax dollars to fund propaganda campaigns aimed at influencing policy and public opinion in foreign countries. The bill also makes clear that some U.S. citizens, although not targeted, would be subjected to these same propaganda campaigns given the viral nature of social media. (Not to mention the ridiculous lack of oversight in the program.) The bill also authorizes agents to assume fake identities, and to originate their online presence in foreign countries, even while working from within U.S. borders.
That Macedonian teen who cashed in with fake news during the 2016 election? His name could be Rick, driving a Ford F-150 to pick up his kids from school in Roanoke, Virginia. Considering Congress passed a bill in order to carry out these exact kinds of covert actions, rational thinking leads us to consider this possibility and others, on our search for the truth. Journalistic integrity leads us to responsibly reporting these stories, as to not add to or incite public hysteria.
But, as is glaringly obvious when we take a closer look, The Washington Post represents anything but integrity. The same publication that accused an accomplished member of Congress as being the mouthpiece of a Middle Eastern country who has aligned itself with Russia in an attempt to thwart terrorist groups, who hope to oust elected leaders, and have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in the process, well that same publication has been the mouthpiece for decades of the CIA, the same agency John F. Kennedy once publicly stated a desire to “splinter … in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds”.
Almost 70 years later, and The Washington Post still leads the charge of baseless anti-Russia propaganda. Adding fuel to a fire that is undoubtedly used to incinerate logical, pro-peace sentiments, candidates, and movements. One can only assume Joseph McCarthy himself would approve.
