-Caveat Lector-
Debate or CIA Propaganda?
By Carla Binion
What is the difference between propaganda and honest debate? Honest debate
depends on fact and reason, and its goal is to disclose factual information.
When politicians or media pundits mischaracterize their opponents' arguments,
they show contempt for fact and reason. The information they pass along to
the public becomes misleading disinformation, or propaganda. Some members of
the mainstream media and certain politicians have used misleading arguments
when it comes to Bush's John Ashcroft nomination. However, this kind of
deception is nothing new.
Before we focus on the Bush team's twisting of facts regarding the Ashcroft
nomination, here is an example of earlier political and media propaganda. In
"Unreliable Sources" (Lyle Stuart:Carol Publishing Group, 1992) journalists
Norman Solomon and Martin A. Lee write about the Reagan's administration's
public-opinion-shaping Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD.) The OPD worked to
influence the American people's opinion of Reagan's foreign policy.
Solomon and Lee report that the Office of Public Diplomacy was part of the
State Department, but "actually took its marching orders from the National
Security Council and indirectly from the CIA." In 1982, Congressman David
Bonior expressed concern about Reagan's Nicaraguan policies and spoke on the
House floor about, "a highly orchestrated propaganda effort by the
administration which unfortunately the media of this country to a very large
degree is buying hook, line and sinker."
According to Solomon and Lee, "A senior U. S. official described OPD as 'a
vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to
influence a population in enemy territory' -- only in this case the target
was the American people." In other words, you, Mr. and Ms. America, were the
stated targets of an NSA and CIA-ordered psy-op to convince you to support
the Reagan policies.
To promote grassroots support for Reagan's foreign policy, the Office of
Public Diplomacy recruited a team of psy-ops specialists from Fort Bragg,
North Carolina. Solomon and Lee report that OPD planted stories in the press
and coached journalists. A March 13, 1985, White House memo to White House
Communications Director Pat Buchanan used the term "White Propaganda
Operation" when it referred to several examples of the OPD project.
Solomon and Lee write that the OPD helped NBC's Fred Francis with a positive
piece on the contras for NBC Nightly News; helped write a Wall Street Journal
column on "the Nicaraguan arms build-up;" wrote op-ed columns for contra
leaders to sign; and prepared to leak a State Department anti-Sandinista
cable. OPD said to Buchanan, "Do not be surprised if this cable somehow hits
the evening news."
The Office of Public Diplomacy tried to intimidate dissenting members of the
press, according to Solomon and Lee. In a secret State Department memo, a
Professor John Guilmartin was described as an OPD "consultant."
Guilmartin wrote a pro-White House op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal,
pretending to be an independent citizen. Later in the Journal, Clifford
Kraus and Robert Greenberger rebutted some of Guilmartin's assertions. OPD
chief, Otto Reich sent an angry letter claiming the Journal's independent
rebuttal was "an echo of Sandinista propaganda." Actually Reich was echoing
Reagan administration propaganda, note Solomon and Lee.
Otto Reich once referred to National Public Radio (NPR) as the "little Havana
on the Potomac," according to the authors. He visited the office after NPR
aired a report unfavorable to the contras. According to NPR employees, Reich
claimed that he had convinced other media editors to change their reporting
and said he had a team monitoring all NPR programs. Solomon and Lee report
that an NPR staffer saw Reich's comments as a "calculated attempt to
intimidate."
Journalist Robert Parry ("Fooling America," William Morrow and Company, 1992)
writes that in April 1994, Otto Reich went to CBS after Reagan complained
about the network's Central America coverage. According to Parry, Secretary
of State George Schultz sent Reagan a memo saying Reich had spent an hour
complaining to the CBS correspondent and spent two hours with his Washington
bureau chief "to point out flaws in the information."
How do the propaganda efforts of the Reagan administration relate to current
events? George W. Bush has not even been inaugurated, and already his
spokesmen are mischaracterizing Bush's political opponents and using
misleading arguments regarding opposition to Bush's cabinet nominations.
Many members of the mainstream media, especially on various cable TV
networks, parrot the Bush team line.
Last night on a number of cable networks, Bush mouthpieces repeated the idea
that opponents of Ashcroft's nomination are exclusively members of the "far
left." For example, on Fox Network's Hannity and Colmes program, Former
Attorney General Ed Meese said attacks on Ashcroft were not coming from
"ordinary Americans" but only from "far left organizations."
Meese said that "right thinking Americans" have to stand up to the
"extremists" who disapprove of the Bush nominations. On MSNBC's Hardball, G.
Gordon Liddy gave a similar spin and said the Bush team should go on the
offensive.
On other cable programs, including one featuring journalists Mort Kondracke
and Fred Barnes, opposition to Linda Chavez was repeatedly mischaracterized
as being exclusively about Chavez's live-in immigrant friend and was
portrayed as a matter of "the politics of personal destruction." No mention
was made of the stronger arguments against the Chavez nomination, namely her
stand against the minimum wage and her other anti-labor stances.
Most of last night's cable news discussion about Ashcroft focused only on
Ashcroft's blocking the appointment of African-American judge Ronnie White.
However, most opponents of the Ashcroft nomination believe the strongest
argument centers around the Bush nominee's overall record regarding his
longtime stand against school desegregation, affirmative action, civil
rights, and civil liberties.
None of the cable programs focused on another strong argument against
Ashcroft -- namely, his tacit approval of the neo-confederate publication,
The Southern Partisan. Ashcroft has praised The Southern Partisan and
claimed the magazine "helps set the record straight." He gave the
publication an interview two years ago in which he lauded the magazine for
defending "Southern patriots like Lee, Jackson and Davis."
According to a Salon article ("Ashcroft Whistles Dixie," Alicia Montgomery,
1/3/00) Missouri white supremacists set up a government in exile in Texas
during the Civil War. As the author of the Salon article points out,
Ashcroft would probably characterize the exiles differently, however, in his
Southern Partisan interview, Ashcroft told the magazine, "I was down in Texas
the other day, and someone asked 'Where was Missouri during the Civil War?'
I said, 'Frankly, it was in Texas.'" The comment was not well considered.
The Southern Poverty Law Center's Mark Potok said Ashcroft's pro-confederate
comments for The Southern Partisan were a foolish step for a seasoned
politician trying to raise his national profile. According to Salon, The
Southern Partisan regularly features such articles as a 1983 column claiming
Martin Luther King Day should have been rejected "because its purpose is
vitriolic and profane," and a 1990 article saying former KKK member David
Duke won his Louisiana legislature seat because he spoke for ordinary
Americans fed up with such things as "reverse discrimination" and "the
bloating of the welfare state."
Surely Ashcroft knew the general nature of The Southern Partisan when he
endorsed the magazine with his interview and his praise for the publication.
However, most of the cable network talking heads have not examined this
objection to Ashcroft. They more often only deal with straw man arguments.
The straw man fallacy involves misrepresenting your opponent's argument by
setting up a "straw" person who can be knocked down more easily than the real
person. The real person, or real argument, against Ashcroft involves his
stand against school desegregation and other aspects of his public record, in
addition to his tacit approval of The Southern Partisan.
The Bush team and most cable TV talking heads restrict the debate to
Ashcroft's blocking the appointment of Judge Ronnie White -- a viewpoint
easier to knock down than the argument against Ashcroft's overall record and
his support of The Southern Partisan.
The various straw man arguments and the Bush spokesmen's repeated assertions
that only "far left organizations" oppose Bush cabinet nominations are
deceptive and misleading. Honest political debate is one thing, and
misleading propaganda is another.
As writer Deborah Lipstadt has said of another group of deceptive debaters,
"they are contemptuous of the very tools that shape any honest debate: truth
and reason. Debating them would be like trying to nail a glob of jelly to a
wall." Although Lipstadt was not writing about the Bush team and their media
mouthpieces, the same principle applies.
Before we debate the slippery-as-jelly Bush team and the folks in the media
who parrot their views, it helps to notice how they distract us from focusing
on our strongest arguments. As with so many other political realities, it is
also useful to remember history.
In light of Ed Meese's recent assertion that only the "far left" opposes the
Ashcroft nomination, and considering that some of the cable networks gave us
a drumbeat of that same idea last night, it helps to remember the following.
The Reagan administration -- and Meese was part of that administration --
used psychological operations (operations traditionally reserved to use
against enemy nations) for the admitted purpose of propagandizing the
American people into supporting Reagan's policies. Some members of the media
went along.
If the public wants information instead of propaganda, we have to be alert to
straw man arguments. We also have to be awake to the Bush team's and their
media parrot's efforts to promote ideas and policies not rooted in fact and
reason. Such fallacies as the straw man argument are deceptive and
irrational by definition.
Honest debate is based on fact and reason, and its goal is to bring to light
factual information and reasonable conclusions. Propaganda is none of those
things.
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