-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- from: http://www.webcom.com/ctka/index.html Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.webcom.com/ctka/index.html">CTKA/Probe Home Frames Page</A> ----- >From the March-April, 1998 issue (Vol. 5 No. 3) CBS and the RFK Case By Lisa Pease Late last year, it looked like the RFK case had finally gotten a big break. Two newsman—Philip Shimkin, a CBS producer in New York, and Robert Buechler, of CBS News in San Francisco— had written to Sirhan Sirhan in prison, asking for an interview based on his recent and new claim of innocence at his last parole hearing. Sirhan forwarded CBS’s letter to his trusted researcher, to whom he has granted limited power of attorney, Rose Lynn Mangan. Mangan called up CBS and asked them to put in writing their intentions. They responded with little information, writing only that they wanted an interview with Sirhan to discuss developments in his case for a possible segment on Bryant Gumbel’s show Public Eye. Mangan told them that prison rules generally do not allow for on-camera interviews of prisoners, but that the two men could come to see Sirhan as visitors, and sent them the requisite forms. The two went to see Sirhan in the company of Mangan, Sirhan’s brother Adel, and Sirhan’s current lawyer Larry Teeter. During the conversation, the two CBS men suggested staging a "chance encounter" with Sirhan where they could "happen" upon him in the yard outside, and film him through the fence. A genuine chance encounter with a prisoner in a public area is not prohibited. But Mangan smelled a rat, and asked Teeter to follow up with the Department of Corrections, saying that she would only recommend that Sirhan give an interview if CBS obtained written permission from the Warden. Teeter wrote to the Department of Corrections, informing them of the proposed plan (without mentioning CBS or the people involved by name), and asked the Department for guidance. A Senior Staff Counsel responded, saying that while the media "may interview randomly encountered inmates in general population areas," the Department "vigorously objects to any plans to circumvent the Department’s media policy i.e., by prearranging to have a specific inmate present at a particular place and time." In response to the query of what punishment might be enacted in the event of such an accident, the Department responded that "Enforcement of these policies include [sic] disciplinary action against the inmate and statewide exclusion of the media or legal personnel involved." In other words, had Sirhan agreed to go ahead with this plot, he might have been cut off from his lawyer, his brother, his researcher and the very media people he was hoping to reach. Why would CBS propose such a scheme? Was this approach genuinely based in a serious interest in the case, or was some other motivation at work? Shimkin and Buechler had shown particular interest in some of Mangan’s latest research, but when she showed it to them they immediately strove to find fault with it, hardly the kind of objective approach for which the group had been hoping. The CBS men suggested hiring their own expert to examine the findings in Mangan’s research. Mangan said that she would want to be present at the examination. This suggestion caused the men to suggest that would be tantamount to having Mangan run the show. As the evidence is extremely complex, Mangan wanted to be present herself to make sure that were there any questions, she would be available to answer and explain, rather than have someone guess and misinterpret what she had presented. When the CBS men flatly refused this offer, Mangan, who for years has felt that nothing would be a greater boon to this case than some serious publicity, balked, and told them "Give me back my papers." The men went into shock, not dreaming she could be serious. They told her that the very papers they had earlier ridiculed were critical to the show’s success, and that they would not do a segment if she withdrew the papers at this time. "Give me back my papers," Mangan repeated. She also suggested that CBS hire three experts, not just one. She suggested as an additional two both Cyril Wecht and Henry Lee, forensic experts whom she felt would do their best to deal honestly with the evidence. Using only one expert left the door open for a rigged situation, or suspicions of such. The men refused to assent to any of these suggestions, and drove off visibly perturbed by what had transpired. The Sirhan brothers, Teeter, and Mangan herself were predictably disappointed. Perhaps they would have been less so had they remembered the broadcast CBS did on the Sirhan case back in 1975. In 1975, in the wake of the Church and Pike committee investigations of the CIA, CBS produced a four-part series called The American Assassins, hosted by Dan Rather. The first two shows dealt with the John F. Kennedy assassination, the third dealt with the Martin Luther King assassination, and the fourth dealt with both the Robert Kennedy assassination and the 1972 attempt on the life of George Wallace. In the first three episodes, CBS presented a reasonable account of some of the major problems with the official stories in the JFK and MLK cases, even going so far as to call for new official investigations of these crimes. They did quite the reverse, however, in the RFK case. They ended that segment with the following statement: One day, at least this case may be stamped completely closed in the minds of most reasonable Americans. Such an amazingly brash implication that those who continued to believe there was a conspiracy were not "reasonable Americans" begs a question. Was CBS really ready to eat those words and do a fair treatment of the case? Such a turnaround would be a watershed event in media history. Given that the intelligence agencies of our government, and the CIA in particular, have long been suspects in each of the major assassinations of the sixties, one needs to consider whether there is perhaps something more at work here than meets the eye. CBS has had a long and close working relationship with the CIA. In Carl Bernstein’s landmark article, titled "The CIA and the Media" (Rolling Stone Magazine, 10/20/77), he reported that: CBS was unquestionably the CIA’s most valuable broadcasting asset. CBS President William Paley and Allen Dulles enjoyed an easy working and social relationship. Over the years, the network provided cover for CIA employees, including at least one well-known foreign correspondent and several stringers....Once a year during the 1950s and early 1960s, CBS correspondents joined the CIA hierarchs for private dinners and briefings. Bernstein reported that in 1976, CBS News president Richard Salant, who had also been president when the above-mentioned 1975 special was made, asked for an in-house investigation of his network’s ties with the CIA. Curiously, Bernstein reported, "Salant’s report makes no mention of some of his own dealing with the Agency, which continued into the 1970s." Bernstein, found, for example, that In 1964 and 1965, Salant served on a supersecret CIA task force which explored methods of beaming American propaganda broadcasts to the People’s Republic of China. The other members of the four-man study team were Zbigniew Brzezinski, then a professor at Columbia University; William Griffith, then professor of political science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and John Hayes, then vice-president of the Washington Post Company for radio-TV. The principal government officials associated with the project were Cord Meyer of the CIA; McGeorge Bundy, then special assistant to the president for national security; Leonard Marks, then director of USIA; and Bill Moyers, then special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson and now a CBS correspondent. Another famous CBS correspondent accused of having CIA ties was Walter Cronkite. Daniel Schorr wrote of this episode in his book Clearing the Air: [T]he luncheon that Paley held in his private dining room on the thirty-fifth floor on February 4, 1976, for George Bush, the new CIA director, did not go as he had hoped. What was to be a sociable welcome for the son of the late Senator Prescott Bush, warmly remembered as an early CBS board member, turned, after dessert, into an argument about CIA agents posing as reporters. It was started by Walter Cronkite, angry because he had been identified by a former television newsman, Sam Jaffe, as having appeared on an alleged White House list of journalists who had purportedly worked for the CIA. To remove the stain on him and on journalism, Cronkite demanded that Bush disclose the list of news people who actually had been CIA agents." On February 8 of this year, a CBS Sixty Minutes segment dealt with the case of the tabloid paper The Globe versus a man named by author and former CIA man Robert Morrow as "the assassin" of Robert F. Kennedy. I will not name this man here, as I have reason to believe Morrow’s claims to be false and wish no more trouble for this man. This man is suing The Globe to clear his family’s name, claiming libel in their report on a book by Robert Morrow. In his book The Senator Must Die, former CIA agent Morrow recounted a story, pieced together through some evidence, some unnamed sources, and apparently some false information given to Morrow. He implicated a young man who was wearing a gold sweater and carrying a camera around his neck at the Ambassador Hotel the night Senator Kennedy was killed. Morrow claimed in his book that this man was the assassin, and that his camera was really a secret CIA weapon. The man sued Morrow not long ago, and won a judgment that included the destruction of all extant copies of the book. The Globe portrayed their report as a "neutral report" of Morrow’s book, stating that they were really reiterating Morrow’s claims, not stating their own. The lawyers of the man implicated stated that they feel The Globe was singling this man out and adding to what Morrow had claimed by showing a front-page photo with an arrow pointing at the man accused. So far, ABC, NBC, CBS and other media organizations have sided with The Globe, claiming first amendment protections against speech. CBS could not find any high-level media executive that was willing to speak out against The Globe in this case, and turned to the Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz instead. Kurtz came down strongly against the Globe, stating we should now allow our laws to protect the worst of media excesses. But the major media players fear that any time you draw a line, you do so at the peril of future reporting. This case raises serious questions that deserved a better hearing than this heavily unbalanced CBS program. CBS gave the accused man, his family, his lawyer, his investigator, and Howard Kurtz the bulk of the segment to attack T he Globe, while only a small amount of time was provided to any defense of The Globe’s position. The timing of the case itself is also of interest. Right now, this case is being argued before the California State Supreme Court, the very place where Sirhan’s writ is now filed. The CBS segment included a judge’s rant against Th e Globe’s failure to investigate whether there was "a scintilla of evidence" to support any of the "outlandish" claims in Morrow’s book. That this case should precede Sirhan’s case is unfortunate at best, as the case may well be made to serve a dual purpose of discrediting the whole notion of conspiracy in the RFK assassination. The John Kennedy assassination has long been plagued with false revelations, which when exposed, are then touted as if to say that see, only crazy people who believe the most outlandish of stories would believe there was a conspiracy. Perhaps this was CBS’s intended subtext in airing this segment. In case you were wondering, CBS gave no time at all to any discussion of the real evidence of conspiracy in Sirhan’s case, or to his efforts to win a new trial based on that evidence. But then, that should come as no surprise to most reasonable Americans. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Return to Previous Page | Get Subscription Information | Return to the Home Page Probe Magazine. The Truth Is In Here. ® http://www.webcom.com/ctka ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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