The CIA's 'Mighty Wurlitzer'

As the Cold War was being won, Peter Coleman, author of Liberal Conspiracy, gained complete access to the archives of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an American and European writers' support group that had been covertly established by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The path to easy publication of books and articles throughout the "free" world was through this worldwide, CIA-orchestrated and funded network:

Five years after their victory in 1945, the Western democracies were about to lose the battle for Europe, but this time to Stalinist totalitarianism instead of Nazis. To combat this prospect, an intellectual guerrilla group was formed: over one hundred European and American writers and intellectuals met in Berlin to establish the Congress for Cultural Freedom to resist the Kremlin's sustained assault on Western and liberal values. During the 1950s the Congress spread throughout the world, creating a network of affiliated national committees, a worldwide community of liberal intellectuals fiercely committed to democratic governance, but supported by grants which, unknown to most of them, originated in the Central Intelligence Agency. Through the Congress's influential publications, conferences, and international protests, it kept the issues of Soviet totalitarianism and liberal anti-Communism alive in a largely hostile environment. . . . It was finally dissolved in 1967 amid the revelations of its funding by the CIA.2

Frances Stoner Saunders, in The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, tells us how every aspect of culture was covertly orchestrated to inoculate the so-called free world against any thoughts which might lead to a restructuring of the philosophical or legal base that was the foundation of their current wealth and power:

Whether they liked it or not, whether they knew it or not, there were few writers, poets, artists, historians, scientists or critics in post-war Europe whose names were not in some way linked to this covert enterprise. . . . Defining the Cold War as a 'battle for mens' minds' it stockpiled a vast arsenal of cultural weapons: journals, books, conferences, seminars, art exhibitions, concerts, awards. . . . Endorsed and subsidized by powerful institutions, this non-Communist group became as much a cartel in the intellectual life of the West as Communism had been a few years earlier (and [since it was the intellectual left that was being targeted for control through the establishment of a Non-Communist left] it included many of the same people). . . . It spied on tens of thousands of Americans, harassed democratically elected governments abroad, plotted assassinations, denied these activities to Congress, and, in the process, elevated the art of lying to new heights. (Saunders, The Cultural Cold War, pp. 1-3, 197.)

Covert coordination of the writings of Western authors--such as George Orwell (including producing the movies), Hannah Arendt, Irving Kristol (then buying 50,000 books for free distribution worldwide), Isaiah Berlin, Sidney Hook, Arthur Koestler, Henry Luce, Reinhold Neibuhr, Bertrand Russell, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Robert Conquest and Peter Coleman who wrote the above cited exposure and the simultaneous sabotage of media they could not control (such as Ramparts Magazine, the Nation and the New Statesman of which only the last two were able to maintain readers)--was only one of the many "black ops" and covert actions, occasionally breaking out into overt actions, which became the hidden history of the Cold War. That hidden history was first exposed by the Church and Pike Congressional Committees in 1975 and 1976 and by many good researchers and reporters since. The CIA had its own wire service and its own publishing companies. It set up and supported magazines, newspapers, and radio stations. It established the largest news conglomerate in West Germany and other major media in many countries (including Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Voice of America, roughly 100 transmitters each, and many lessor-known regional radio stations beamed to Asia, the Middle East and Africa). Canned Cold War editorials were prepared and sent to large and small newspapers all over the world. These editorials were available for any editor to restructure as his or her own creation. Large independent think tanks were established, funded, and staffed with ideological supporters, as were think tanks within universities. CIA-established and-funded foundations were only one of the many financial conduits that provided the funds for this immense operation, money was passed covertly through over 170 major foundations as well as the Marshall Plan and the American Federation of Labor). The CIA's covert propaganda budget throughout the Cold War exceeded that of UPI, AP, and Reuters even as those news services were the unwitting primary carriers of its carefully crafted views of the world. That the CIA offered reporters news scoops in exchange for publication of fraudulent articles tells us some of the leading columnists in the world were planting this nonsense (though all denied it, it seems columnists were on the ground floor of cold war planning and they, Frank Wisner and other managers of the CIA were close dinner and social friends). If they were not already successful, their scoops would be so sensational they would rise quickly to the top. In fact, according to Frances Saunders, well-known Washington columnists such as Joe and Stewart Alsop and Walter lippman socialized with the Managers of State, were in on the ground floor of cold war planning, knew well that the "Grand Strategy" was to massively misinform the nation, cooperated with spreading that misinformation, and never breathed a word. "A central feature of this [propaganda] programme was to advance the claim that it did not exist." (Ibid and Saunders, The Cultural Cold War, pp. 1-3, 37, 60-63, 68, 71, 91, 101-39, 142, 150-51, 166, 201, 206, 245, 294-99, 353-58, 382, 403-403, 409-411, 420, some author's names also listed on the dustjacket. See also Coleman Liberal Conspiracy)

Here is how the propagandizing of the so-called free world was accomplished: CIA leaders moved in the same social circles as—and were personal friends of—leading columnists, newspaper editors, and media owners. With the base of fraudulent books and articles all in place, the CIA would leak dramatic stories (missile gaps, Soviet aggression, threats from rogue terrorist nations, or whatever had been decided was crucial for the masses to believe to support the suppression of the colonial world's break for freedom). When these media leaders published those extreme threats to national security and it was passed on over all the wire services, virtually every media in the nation would publish these CIA wordsmith's nonsense on their front pages and as their lead articles. All follow up interviews were channeled to prepared spokespersons and the threat is confirmed. In one day, virtually the entire nation and much of the world will faithfully believe what in final analysis is little more than carefully crafted propaganda. After many incremental propaganda blitzes, the masses would fully support whatever the military campaign was on the agenda of the State Department/National Security Council. Below the above addressed elite group in on the ground floor of the planned disinforming of the nation and the world were accredited reporters. Each reporter instinctively knew that only by parroting what was fed them could he or she remain accredited. As no one—except those ideologically safe media (personal and social friends of CIA managers)—knew this was created propaganda and all accredited reporters were straitjacketed, there were no reporters to seriously challenge such silly things as El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, or Cuba being serious military threats to America. Of course no one would stand up, to do so while the whole nation believed fully in these threats would be career and social suicide. With the "free" media saturated with those articles carefully crafted to control the masses view of the world, propaganda became, and is still being written as, history. This can be seen in the news being nearly identical in today's newspapers and newscasts while reporting only a small portion of the world, national, and local news. These media do not have reporters checking if those are facts, they only have reporters rushing to be the first to report what they are told. Once it was in every newspaper and newscast in the nation as fact and every applicable organ of government backing it, no reporter would dare challenge that report. With the masses firmly believing that they were under the dire threat these reports proclaimed, any media that would dare stand up would not only lose readers enmass, they would lose their lucrative corporate advertising and a few editors would lose their jobs.

The powerful were, and still are, writing history to maintain control of the thoughts of the masses well into the future (the intention is forever). Unless the process is fully exposed, sincere researchers will forever be using these published accounts as sources to write history. In addition, intelligence agencies of most major nations were simultaneously producing supporting propaganda. In fact, the British had been practicing just such black-ops to protect their empire for centuries and the OSS and CIA were taught by Britain's MI6. The intelligence services of all empires then cooperated in misinforming their citizens to gain their backing supposedly for suppressing tyrants but in reality to maintain control of the world. This orchestrated propaganda machine was eventually described by the CIA itself as its "Mighty Wurlitzer."3

These gross fabrications and crafted propaganda provided a firm foundation for the social-control belief systems of the Cold War and are now not only a major part of Western literature and history, they are Western literature and history. Little did professors know that, just like the hard right (Aryan Nations, Posse Commitatus, John Birch Society, etc.), which all respectable academics know better than to source, they were, unwittingly, creating their own false reality and then referencing each other.

Control of the masses required control of governments through control of information. Ralph McGehee was a career CIA agent who spent the last few years of his career studying CIA archives. He concluded:

"The CIA is not now nor has it ever been a central intelligence agency. It is the covert action arm of the President's foreign policy advisers. In that capacity it overthrows or supports foreign governments while reporting "intelligence" justifying those activities. It shapes its intelligence . . . to support presidential policy. Disinformation is a large part of its covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target of its lies."4

To target the American people, American intelligence services must simultaneously target those the masses look up to for designing and interpreting our world, Congress and academics. McGehee claimed that "He has never once seen a CIA official tell the truth to Congress. Instead comes a steady stream of lies."5 Even the information going to those with security clearances is controlled. The "Mighty Wurlitzer" was established to write history to protect power brokers as they imposed enormous violence upon the world to protect their wealth and power, those outright lies and distorted histories are recorded as real history, and there is little else in the historical record.

Freedom and democracy is taught, preached, and believed in fully throughout the world. So suppression of these breaks for freedom could only be accomplished under a cover of "free" elections. As the progressive leaders of the impoverished of those countries could easily explain true freedom to their followers, controlling the elections required funding the campaigns of current dictators and even establishing reactionary newspapers.

But not even these massive efforts could fool the people into voting against their own best interests. No matter how idealistic these second-and third-tier planners were, it was obvious to them that those standing up and preaching freedom for their countries had to be eliminated. Because they were so thoroughly indoctrinated into the enemy belief system, idealistic people, no different than you and I, established and orchestrated death squads which, counting their family members and closest confidants, assassinated 150,000 to 300,000 teachers, professors, labor leaders, cooperative leaders, and church leaders, the budding Washingtons, Jeffersons, Madisons, Lenins, Gandhis, Churchills, and Martin Luther Kings of those countries.

Then, to protect this exceptionally violent suppression of freedom and democracy by imperial centers of capital, the "Mighty Wurlitzer" of the imperial nations created the image to the world that these primarily nonviolent, patriotic, and courageous people were terrorists and a threat to the world. The real terrorists, armed insurgents battling for freedom who would be praised as heroes if they were fighting for our side, were dealt with by U.S.-supported military forces. Civilians, whose only threat was a potential win at the ballot box, were dealt with by CIA-orchestrated death squads. One marvels at the courage of these people to keep standing up for the freedom and rights of their country and their people when they knew their name would go on a death squad list. One cannot help but notice that those on the periphery of trading empires are fighting for freedom just as the suppressed on the periphery of empire have fought for freedom from the imperial centers throughout all history.

------------------------------------------------------------

For almost two generations social scientists have used, and are still using, those fraudulent books and articles as the foundation of their research. Such books have been the official textbooks for forty years. And the intelligence agencies, corporate think tanks, and state departments of all powerful nations were busy writing the same distorted history. With intellectual figures and skillful writers throughout the Western world supported and coordinated in this massive falsification of history, as the above quote on the Congress for Cultural Freedom demonstrates, only academics and intellectuals on the fringe knew the difference and even they could only be very unsure of what was real and what was not real. When it was learned that the CIA had supported the printing of these thousands of books, sincere academics sued for the titles of those fraudulent books to be revealed. But the Supreme Court ruled that this would expose CIA methods and endanger the national security.12

1. Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory Tower (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 2. Peter Coleman, Liberal Conspiracy (London: Collier Macmillan Publishers), dustjacket cover; Frances Stoner Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: The Free Press, 1999). 3. Ralph McGehee, CIABASE (12-megabyte database on this history), http://come.to/CIABASE/, Box 5022, Herndon, VA 22070; Coleman, Liberal Conspiracy; John Prados, The Presidents' Secret Wars (New York: William Morrow, 1986 and revised edition Warwick: Elephant Paperbacks, 1996); William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History (London: Zed Press, 1986), pp. 127-28, 131, 185; Victor Marchetti, John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York: Dell, 1980), chapter 6, especially pp. 152-56, also pp. 53-54, 62-63, 541-42; John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard (Boston: South End Press, 1991), pp. 100-101; Ralph W. McGehee, Deadly Deceits (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1983), especially pp. 30, 58, 62, 189; Philip Agee, Louis Wolf, Dirty Work (London: Zed Press, 1978), especially p. 262; David Wise, Thomas B. Ross, The Espionage Establishment (New York: Bantam Books, 1978), pp. 256, 257; Frank J. Donner, The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System (New York: Random House, 1981); John Prados, Keepers of the Keys: A History of the National Security Council from Truman to Bush (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991); Loch .K. Johnson, America's Secret Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); C.D. Ameringer, U.S. Foreign Intelligence (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990); H.B. Westerfield, ed., Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal 1955-1992 (New Haven, CT. Yale University Press, 1995); J. Adams, Secret Armies (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987); P.V. Parakal, Secret Wars of the CIA (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1984); Christopher Simpson, Blowback (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988); Ernest Volkman, Blaine Baggett, Secret Intelligence (New York: Doubleday, 1989); John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987); Dan Jacobs, The Brutality of Nations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987); Darrell Garwood, Under Cover: Thirty-Five Years of CIA Deception (New York: Grove Press Inc., 1985); Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New York: Bantam Books, 1975); B. Hersh, The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992); H. Rositzke, The CIA's Secret Operations (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1977); T. Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979); P. Willan, Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy (London: Constable, 1991); E. Thomas, The Very Best Men Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995); K. Nair, Devil and His Dart: How the CIA is Plotting in the Third World (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1986); D.S. Blaufarb, The Counterinsurgency Era: U.S. Doctrine and Performance 1950 to the Present (New York: The Free Press, 1977); Michael T. Klare and P. Kornbluh, Low Intensity Warfare (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988); S.E. Ambrose, Ike's Spies (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1981); Susanne Jonas, The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power (San Francisco: Westview Press, 1991); C. Andrew, For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (New York: HarperCollins Publishers 1995); William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military Interventions Since World War II (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1995); H. Frazier, Editor, Uncloaking the CIA (New York: The Free Press, 1978); Covert Action Information Bulletin, all issues; Counterspy, all issues. See also, Wendell Minnick, Spies and Provocateurs: A Worldwide Encyclopedia of Persons Conducting Espionage and Covert Action, 1946-1991 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company,1992); I.F. Stone, The Hidden History of the Korean War (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1952); John Loftus, The Belarus Secret (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982); Robin W. Winks, Cloak & Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961 (New York: Quill, 1987); ); D.F. Fleming, The Cold War and Its Origins (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1961); Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955); Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms (London: Zed Books, 1997).

To understand why powerful nations resort to state terrorism as covered in the above books, one must understand policies of State. The following books on diplomacy further outline those policies: John R. Commons, Legal Foundations of Capitalism (New Brunswick/London: Transaction Publishers, 1995); John R. Commons, Institutional Economics (New Brunswick/London: Transaction Publishers, 1995); Carey B. Joynt and Percy E. Corbett, Theory and Reality in World Politics (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978); Richard L. Rubenstein, The Age of Triage (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983); Peter Rodman, More Precious than Peace (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1994); Angelo Codevilla, Informing Statecraft (New York: The Free Press, 1992); Arie E. David, The Strategy of Treaty Termination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975); Francis Neilson, How Diplomats Make War (San Francisco: Cobden Press).
4. McGehee, Deadly Deceits, p. 192.
5. McGehee, http://come.to/CIABASE/, check Wade Frazier's review of McGehee's Deadly Deceits.
6. United Nations Human Development Report, 1998.
7. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987), pp. 373-379; the complete NSC-68 document can be found in Thomas H. Etzold and John Lewis Gaddis, Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy, 1945-50, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), chapter 7. See also note three above.
8. Acheson, Present at the Creation p. 377; Etzold and Gaddis, Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy, 1945-50, chapter 7.
9. See note three, especially Hersh, Old Boys; Winks, Cloak & Gown; Willan, Puppetmasters; Thomas, Very Best Men.
10. Acheson, Present at the Creation, p. 377. See also Stone, Hidden History, and Etzold and Gaddis, Containment.
11. Stone, Hidden History; Coleman, Liberal Conspiracy; Saunders, The Cultural Cold War; Schrecker, No Ivory Tower; Etzold and Gaddis, Containment, chapter 7.
12. See note three (Coleman's Liberal Conspiracy, especially Appendix D, lists almost 200 of these thought control books also Saunders, The Cultural Cold War, pp. 60, 63, 111, 140, 294-96, 105-106; see chapters Six. Seven and Nine of this work.

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)