Chapter One

Weekend Teach-In: Opening Session

1. On Kennedy's fraudulent "missile gap" and major escalation of the arms race, see for example, Fred Kaplan, Wizards of Armageddon, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983, chs. 16, 19 and 20; Desmond Ball, Politics and Force Levels: The Strategic Missile Program of the Kennedy Administration, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980, ch. 2.

On Reagan's fraudulent "window of vulnerability" and "military spending gap" and the massive military buildup during his first administration, see for example, Jeff McMahan, Reagan and the World: Imperial Policy in the New Cold War, New York: Monthly Review, 1985, chs. 2 and 3; Franklyn Holzman, "Politics and Guesswork: C.I.A. and D.I.A. estimates of Soviet Military Spending," International Security, Fall 1989, pp. 101-131; Franklyn Holzman, "The C.I.A.'s Military Spending Estimates: Deceit and Its Costs," Challenge, May/June 1992, pp. 28-39; Report of the President's Commission on Strategic Forces, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, April 1983, especially pp. 7-8, 17, and Brent Scowcroft, "Final Report of the President's Commission on Strategic Forces," Atlantic Community Quarterly, Vol. 22, Spring 1984, pp. 14-22 (the administration's own Scowcroft Commission's rejection of the "window of vulnerability" story). See also chapter 3 of U.P. and its footnotes 3 and 4.

On Kennedy in Latin America, see for example, Charles Maechling, Jr. [leading U.S. counterinsurgency planner from 1961 to 1966], "The Murderous Mind of the Latin American Military," Los Angeles Times, March 18, 1982, part II, p. 11 (discussing how the Kennedy administration shifted the mission of the Latin American military from "hemispheric defense" [i.e. defense against external enemies] to "internal security" [i.e. control of domestic dissidence] after the Cuban Revolution and the failed U.S.-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion attempt against Cuba, and thereby changed the U.S. position in the region from toleration "of the rapacity and cruelty of the Latin American military" to "direct complicity . . . [in] the methods of Heinrich Himmler's extermination squads"); Stephen Rabe, "Controlling Revolutions: Latin America, the Alliance for Progress, and Cold War Anti-Communism," in Thomas Paterson, ed., Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 105-122; Jenny Pearce, Under the Eagle: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Caribbean, London: Latin America Bureau, 1982, Part II; A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors, New York: Pantheon, 1978, especially pp. 99, 115-116 (detailed description of how Kennedy liberals engineered the overthrow of Brazilian democracy in 1964 and replaced it with the subfascist regime that ruled for decades, after the Brazilian President Goulart had refused Robert Kennedy's admonition to end his flirtation with "romantic left-wing causes"). See also, David F. Schmitz, Thank God They're On Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921-1965, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999, ch. 6.

Chomsky adds that military-controlled states dedicated to "internal security" constituted one of the two major legacies of the Kennedy Administration to Latin America. The other was the Alliance for Progress, a 1961 program of U.S. aid to Latin America, which was a statistical success but a social catastrophe (apart from foreign investors and domestic elites). On the devastating effects of the Alliance for Progress, see for example, Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, New York: Norton, 1983 (2nd revised and expanded edition 1993), ch. 3; Walter LaFeber, "The Alliances in Retrospect," in Andrew Maguire and Janet W. Brown, eds., Bordering on Trouble: Resources and Politics in Latin America, Bethesda, MD: Adler & Adler, 1986, pp. 337-388; Simon Hanson, Five Years of the Alliance for Progress, Washington: Inter-American Affairs, 1967. And see generally, Robert Williams, Export Agriculture and the Crisis in Central America, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

On Reagan in Latin America, see footnote 13 of this chapter; chapter 2 of U.P. and its footnote 15; chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnotes 3 and 10; and chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 48.

2. On U.S. terrorism against Cuba, see the text following this footnote in U.P., and footnote 21 of this chapter; and chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 29.

3. On Kennedy's authorization of attacks against Vietnam beginning in late 1961, see The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam, Senator Gravel Edition, Boston: Beacon, 1972, Vol. II, pp. 656-658, 677; William Conrad Gibbons, ed., The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships, Part II (1961-1964), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986, pp. 70-71. For early press coverage of these attacks -- which elicited little protest in the U.S. for several years -- see for example, A.P., "U.S. Pilots Aiding Combat In Vietnam," New York Times, March 10, 1962, p. A8.

4. On public opposition to U.S. intervention in Central America in the 1980s, see for example, Edward Walsh, "Reagan Gets First Public Opinion Backlash," Washington Post, March 27, 1981, p. A9 (mail to the White House was reported to be "running 10 to 1 against the administration's new emphasis on military aid and advisers" to El Salvador, and the strong public opposition was confirmed in polls); Cynthia Arnson, El Salvador: A Revolution Confronts the United States, Washington: Institute for Policy Studies, 1982, p. 73 (less than 2 percent of the U.S. public favored military intervention in El Salvador, and 80 percent opposed sending advisers, according to March 1981 Gallup polls); Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, New York: Norton, 1983 (2nd revised and expanded edition 1993), ch. 5.

The Reagan administration was so concerned about the public's attitudes towards its policies that it developed plans to suspend the Constitution and impose martial law in the event of "national crises," such as "violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad." On these plans, see for example, Alfonso Chardy, "Reagan advisers ran 'secret' government," Miami Herald, July 5, 1987, p. 1A (reporting based on internal government documents that in such an event the administration intended to turn control of the United States over to the national crisis-management unit F.E.M.A., an agency directed by Louis Guiffrida, a close associate of Reagan and Attorney General Edwin Meese, who while at Army War College in 1970 wrote a memorandum recommending the internment of at least 21 million "American Negroes" in "assemble-centers or relocation camps" in the event of an uprising by black militants); Dave Lindorff, "Oliver's Martial Plan," Village Voice, July 21, 1987, p. 15; Christopher Hitchens, "The adoration of the mad guy," New Statesman (U.K.), July 17, 1987, p. 20.

For an example of how these revelations were treated by Congress, see Taking the Stand: The Testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North, New York: Pocket Books, 1987. An excerpt (p. 643):

Rep. Brooks: Colonel North, in your work at the N.S.C. [National Security Council], were you not assigned at one time to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster?

Mr. Sullivan [North's Lawyer]: Mr. Chairman? (Gavel sounds.)

Chairman Inouye: I believe the question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area. So may I request that you not touch upon that, sir?

Rep. Brooks: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers and several others that there had been a plan developed by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency that would suspend the American Constitution, and I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was the area in which he had worked. I believe that it was, but I wanted --

Chairman Inouye: May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage? If we wish to get into this I'm certain arrangements can be made for an Executive Session.

On the Reagan administration's move towards intervention in Central America, see for example its so-called "White Paper" on El Salvador, Communist Interference in El Salvador: Documents Demonstrating Communist Support of the Salvadoran Insurgency, Special Report No. 80, Washington: United States Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, February 23, 1981. On the subsequent exposure of the basis for the "White Paper" as fraudulent, see for example, Robert G. Kaiser, "White Paper on El Salvador Is Faulty," Washington Post, June 9, 1981, p. A1; Robert G. Kaiser, "The Man Behind the White Paper and the Unfolding of the Story," Washington Post, June 9, 1981, p. A14; James Petras, "White Paper On The White Paper," Nation, March 28, 1981, pp. 353f; Raymond Bonner, Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador, New York: Times Books, 1984, ch. 13; Jonathan Kwitney, Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World, New York: Congdon & Weed, 1984, pp. 359-374.

5. On the Office of Public Diplomacy, see for example, Alfonso Chardy, "N.S.C. supervised office to influence opinion," Miami Herald, July 19, 1987, p. 18A ("'If you look at it as a whole, the Office of Public Diplomacy was carrying out a huge psychological operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in denied or enemy territory,' a senior U.S. official familiar with the effort said"); Robert Parry and Peter Kornbluh, "Reagan's Pro-Contra Propaganda Machine," Washington Post, September 4, 1988, p. C1 ("the campaign came to resemble the sort of covert political operation the C.I.A. runs against hostile forces overseas but is outlawed from conducting at home"); Robert Parry and Peter Kornbluh, "Iran-Contra's Untold Story," Foreign Policy, Fall 1988, pp. 3-30; Joanne Omang, "The People Who Sell Foreign Policies," Washington Post, October 15, 1985, p. A21; Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990, pp. 131-141; Alfonso Chardy, "Secrets leaked to harm Nicaragua, sources say," Miami Herald, October 13, 1986, p. 12A (reporting that a disinformation campaign named "Project Truth," designed to set the agenda for debate over Nicaragua, apparently was activated in a secret National Security Directive titled "Management of Public Diplomacy Relative to National Security," dated January 4, 1983); Staff Report, State Department and Intelligence Community Involvement in Domestic Activities Related to the Iran/Contra Affair, Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, October 1992, pp. 3-4 (the Comptroller General of the General Accounting Office condemned the Office of Public Diplomacy's activities as illegal).

President Wilson's propaganda office during the First World War was the "Committee on Public Information," also known as the "Creel Commission."

6. On Carter military spending projections, see for example, Robert Komer [former Under-Secretary of Defense], "What 'Decade of Neglect'?," International Security, Fall 1985, pp. 70-83. An excerpt (pp. 73, 76, 78-79):

Actual defense outlays went up in every Carter year, in strong contrast to the declines characteristic of every Nixon-Ford year from F.Y. 1969 through F.Y. 1976 [with a] substantial increase in F.Y. 1981 [i.e. under Carter]. . . . As it turns out, the F.Y. 1982-1985 outlays actually approved by Congress average slightly lower than the Carter projections. . . . Almost every Reagan equipment program to date was begun under Carter, or even before, with the notable exception of S.D.I. [i.e. "Star Wars"]. . . . Reagan rhetoric tended to obscure the fact that Reagan's program was mostly an acceleration of a buildup already begun under Carter.

Bernard Weinraub, "White House Plans Rise to $124 Billion in Military Budget," New York Times, November 16, 1978, p. A1. An excerpt:

Administration sources said defense officials were especially gratified because the President [Carter] has decided to cut about $15 billion out of the normal growth of a range of social and domestic programs . . . [while raising military spending by some $12 billion]. Officials indicated that the "guns and butter" argument waged within the Administration had now been settled by Mr. Carter in favor of the Defense Department.

See also, Thomas B. Cochran et al., Nuclear Weapons Databook, Volume I: U.S. Nuclear Forces and Capabilities, Cambridge, MA: Ballinger/Harper & Row, 1984, p. 13; Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan, Washington: Brookings Institution, 1985 (revised edition 1994), pp. 865-882.

On Reagan's military budget, see footnote 1 of this chapter.

7. On public opposition to Reagan's policies and popular attitudes remaining stubbornly social-democratic in important respects since the New Deal years, see for example, Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics, New York: Hill and Wang, 1986 (tracing the myth of a "right turn" in public attitudes in the U.S., and discussing general popular opposition to Reagan's policies); Thomas Ferguson, Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, chs. 5, 6, and Postscript (extending Right Turn's analysis and confirming its conclusions through 1994); Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans' Policy Preferences, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, chs. 3 and 4, at pp. 169-170 (after reviewing an enormous number of polls over time, the authors conclude: "Ferguson and Rogers [in Right Turn] are correct, therefore, in arguing that the policy right turn of the Reagan years cannot be accounted for as a response to public demands"); Stanley Kelley, Jr., "Democracy and the New Deal Party System," in Amy Guttman, ed., Democracy and the Welfare State, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988, pp. 185-205 (presenting poll results that demonstrate consistent public support for New Deal-type programs from 1952 to 1984, with only a brief dip in 1980); Vicente Navarro, "The 1984 Election and the New Deal: An Alternative Interpretation (2 parts)," Social Policy, Spring 1985, pp. 3-10 (reporting that polls during the 1980s regularly indicated that the public would support a tax increase devoted to New Deal and Great Society programs; support for equal or greater social expenditures was about 80 percent in 1984, and a greater number viewed social welfare programs favorably in 1984 than in 1980; 95 percent of the public opposed cuts in Social Security, people preferred cuts in military spending to cuts in health programs by about 2 to 1, they supported the Clean Air Act by 7 to 1, opposed cuts in Medicare or Medicaid by well over 3 to 1, preferred defense spending cuts over cuts in these medical aid programs by 3 or 4 to 1, and opposed a ban on abortions by over 2 to 1; three-fourths of the population supported government regulations to protect worker health and safety, and similar levels supported protection of consumer interests and other social expenditures, including help for the elderly, the poor, and the needy); Mark N. Vamos, ed., "Portrait of a Skeptical Public," Business Week, November 20, 1995, p. 138 (reprinting a Business Week/Harris poll on popular attitudes towards the role of government, and concluding based upon its findings: "the public agrees more with the Democratic notion of government as protector of society's most vulnerable than with the Republican vision of Washington as arm's-length guarantor of an 'opportunity society'"). See also footnote 50 of chapter 10 of U.P.

On Reagan's electoral "mandate," see for example, Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, On Democracy: Toward a Transformation of American Society, New York: Penguin, 1983. An excerpt (p. 33):

On election day in 1980, the 53.2 percent turnout was the third lowest in American history, higher only than the 1920 and 1924 elections that followed the abrupt swelling of the eligibility rolls resulting from the enfranchisement of women. In winning the victory that continues to be labeled a "mandate" and a "landslide" by the national press, Ronald Reagan gained a smaller percentage of the eligible electorate than did Wendell Willkie in his decisive 1940 loss to Roosevelt.

See also, E.J. Dionne Jr., "Bush Names Baker As Secretary of State, Hails 40-State Support," New York Times, November 10, 1988, p. A1 ("estimates put the turnout [in the 1988 Presidential election] at from 49 to 50 percent of eligible voters. That would make it the lowest since 1924"). On public attitudes and the 1994 Congressional elections, see the text of chapter 10 of U.P. and its footnote 18.

For a poll on how past Presidents are remembered, see Adam Pertman, "Carter makes a triumphant return," Boston Globe, July 15, 1992, p. 19 (among ex-Presidents, Carter is well in the lead in popularity ratings at 74 percent, followed by the virtually unknown Ford at 68 percent, with Reagan at 58 percent, barely above Nixon at 54 percent).

8. On the Congressional origins of U.S. human rights programs, see for example, Lars Schoultz, Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981, especially ch. 2; Lars Schoultz, "U.S. Foreign Policy and Human Rights Violations in Latin America: A Comparative Analysis of Foreign Aid Distributions," Comparative Politics, January 1981, p. 155 ("Over the open and intense opposition of the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations, since 1973 Congress has added human rights clauses to virtually all U.S. foreign assistance legislation"). See also, Edward S. Herman, The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda, Boston: South End, 1982, especially p. 244 n.10.

Chomsky adds that it is a real tribute to the propaganda system that the press can still refer to a "human rights campaign" during the Carter administration, a Presidency which sponsored and supported the Somoza family in Nicaragua, the Shah of Iran, Marcos in the Philippines, Park in South Korea, Pinochet in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia, Mobutu in Zaire, the Brazilian generals, and their many confederates in repression and violence (The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism -- The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume I, 1979, Boston: South End, pp. 370 n.80, 40).

9. On continued funding of Guatemala despite Congressional legislation, see for example, Lars Schoultz, "Guatemala: Social Change and Political Conflict," in Martin Diskin, ed., Trouble in our Backyard: Central America and the United States in the Eighties, New York: Pantheon, 1983, pp. 187-191 and Tables pp. 188-189 (annual U.S. military aid deliveries to Guatemala for 1977 to 1980 continued at between 94 percent in 1979 and 61 percent in 1980 of the 1976 level, with economic aid continuing as well); Allan Nairn, "The Guatemala Connection: While Congress Slept, U.S. Arms Merchants Delivered the Goods," Progressive, May 1986, pp. 20-23 (and see the exchange of letters with a State Department official, at pp. 6-8 of the September issue).

10. On the 42-page document outlining the mercenary-state network, see for example, Stephen Engelberg, "Document in North Trial Suggests Stronger Bush Role in Contra Aid," New York Times, April 7, 1989, pp. A1, A11 (summarizing and quoting excerpts from the 42-page document); Joe Pichirallo, "Bush Joined Efforts by Reagan, Aides To Solicit Arms for Contras During Ban," Washington Post, April 7, 1989, p. A1.

On the rise of U.S. mercenary states and clandestine foreign policy activities in the 1980s, see for example, Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era, Boston: South End, 1987.

On U.S. control over the World Anti-Communist League, a collection of Nazis, fanatic anti-Semites, death squad assassins, torturers and killers from around the world, see Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, Inside the League: The Shocking Exposé of How Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986.

11. On Israel as a U.S. mercenary state, see for example, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, The Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms and Why, New York: Pantheon, 1987; Israel Shahak, Israel's Global Role: Weapons for Repression, Belmont, MA: Association of Arab-American University Graduates, 1982; Jane Hunter, Israeli Foreign Policy: South Africa and Central America, Boston: South End, 1987; Bishara Bahbah, Israel and Latin America: The Military Connection, New York: St. Martin's, 1986. See also, "Carving a big slice of world arms sales," Business Week, December 8, 1980, p. 43. An excerpt:

Although excluded from the lucrative Middle East [armaments] market, Israel has made headway in other parts of the globe -- notably Latin America, the Far East, and Africa. The Latin American market has developed rapidly in recent years following the Carter Administration's decision to prohibit U.S. arms sales to many right-wing regimes. Israel has become a leading supplier to such countries as Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, and Guatemala. Other major Israeli clients include South Africa, Taiwan, Nigeria, Thailand, and Singapore.

And see footnote 16 of this chapter.

12. For Arce's interviews in Mexico, see for example, Rubén Montedonico, "Militarily and Morally the Contras Are Finished: Horacio Arce," Honduras Update (Cambridge, MA; Honduras Information Center), November/December 1988, pp. 13-16 (from El Día of Mexico City, November 6 and 7, 1988); Marcio Vargas, "'This War Is Lost. It Is Over' -- Exclusive Interview With Top Contra Defector, Comandante Mercenary," Central America Information Bulletin (Managua; Agencia Nueva Nicaragua), No. 40, December 21, 1988, pp. 1, 4-5. Arce, whose nom de guerre as a contra leader was "Mercenario," explained:

We attack a lot of schools, health centers, and those sorts of things. We have tried to make it so that the Nicaraguan government cannot provide social services for the peasants, cannot develop its project . . . that's the idea.

13. On the death toll in Guatemala in the 1980s, see Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification (C.E.H.), Guatemala: Memory of Silence, 1999 (quotations are from paragraphs 1, 2, 15 and 82). This report of an international human rights investigatory panel administered by the United Nations concludes that "the number of persons killed or disappeared as a result of the fratricidal confrontation reached a total of over 200,000" in Guatemala since 1962, with 91 percent of these violations occurring between 1978 and 1984. The Commission found that "state forces and related paramilitary groups were responsible for 93% of the violations documented by the C.E.H., including 92% of the arbitrary executions and 91% of forced disappearances."

For additional sources, see for example, Susanne Jonas, The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991, p. 149; Piero Gleijeses, "The Reagan Doctrine and Latin America," Current History, December 1986, pp. 401f at p. 435; Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, New York: Norton, 1993 (revised and expanded edition). An excerpt (p. 362):

[T]he years from 1979 to 1991 turned out to be the bloodiest, most violent, and most destructive era in Central America's post-1820 history. The number of dead and "disappeared" varies according to different sources. The minimum is 200,000 (40,000 in Nicaragua, 75,000 in El Salvador, 75,000 in Guatemala, 10,000 in Honduras and the frontier fighting in Costa Rica), but this is only an estimate. Millions have been displaced or made refugees. If a similar catastrophe struck the United States in proportion, 2.5 million North Americans would die and 10 to 20 million would be driven from their homes.

See also, Amnesty International, Guatemala: A Government Program of Political Murder, London: Amnesty International, February 1981. An excerpt (pp. 5-6):

The bodies of the victims have been found piled up in ravines, dumped at roadsides or buried in mass graves. Thousands bore the scars of torture, and death had come to most by strangling with a garrotte, by being suffocated in rubber hoods or by being shot in the head. . . .

By far the majority of victims were chosen after they had become associated -- or were thought to be associated -- with social, religious, community or labor organizations, or after they had been in contact with organizers of national political parties. In other words, Amnesty International's evidence is that the targets for extreme governmental violence tend to be selected from grass roots organizations outside official control.

And see footnote 54 of chapter 8 of U.P.

14. For the McNamara-Bundy intercommunication, see Memorandum for the Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, "Study of U.S. Policy Toward Latin American Military Forces," Secretary of Defense, June 11, 1965 (available in the Lyndon Baines Johnson library).

For similar statements in secret but now declassified U.S. government documents, see footnote 52 of chapter 2 of U.P.

On U.S. training of Latin American military leaders, see for example, Jan Knippers Black, United States Penetration of Brazil, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977, pp. 220-221, 170-171 (over 200,000 Latin American military personnel had been trained in the U.S. by the late 1970s, and U.S. military training has purposefully built a network of personal relationships between United States and Latin American military cadres); Joanne Omang, "Latin American Left, Right Say U.S. Militarized Continent," Washington Post, April 11, 1977, p. A16 (over 30,000 Latin American officers had been trained in the U.S. "School for the Americas" alone by the 1970s, and the training of Latin American military personnel in U.S. bases and training schools has placed great weight on ideological conditioning and has "steeped young Latin officers in the early 1950s anti-Communist dogma that subversive infiltrators could be anywhere"); Jeffrey Stein, "Fort Lesley J. McNair: Grad School For Juntas," Nation, May 21, 1977, pp. 621-624 (on the Inter-American Defense College).

15. On the U.S. overthrow of the Chilean government, see for example, U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, Interim Report, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975, section IIIF, especially p. 231 n.2. This report explains that the White House and C.I.A. pursued a "two track" policy in Chile. The hard line called for a military coup, which was finally achieved. The soft line -- which included a White House directive to "make the economy scream" -- was explained by U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry, a Kennedy liberal, who stated: "not a nut or bolt will be allowed to reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty, a policy designed for a long time to come to accelerate the hard features of a Communist society in Chile." Chomsky stresses (Year 501: The Conquest Continues, Boston: South End, 1993, p. 36):

[E]ven if the hard line did not succeed in introducing fascist killers to exterminate the virus, the vision of "utmost deprivation" [in Chile] would suffice to keep the rot from spreading, and ultimately demoralize the patient itself. And crucially, it would provide ample grist for the mill of the cultural managers, who can produce cries of anguish at "the hard features of a Communist society," pouring scorn on those "apologists" who describe what is happening.

On the coup itself, see for example, James Petras and Morris Morley, The United States and Chile: Imperialism and the Overthrow of the Allende Government, New York: Monthly Review, 1975; William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995, ch. 34; John Gittings, ed., The Lessons of Chile: The Chilean Coup and the Future of Socialism, Nottingham, U.K.: Spokesman, 1975 (providing first-hand accounts of the effect of the coup on socialist activists in Chile); Fred Landis, "How 20 Chileans Overthrew Allende for the C.I.A.," Inquiry, February 19, 1979, pp. 16-20 (on the role of the Institute for General Studies, a C.I.A.-funded think-tank that ran vast anti-Allende propaganda operations for the C.I.A.). See also footnote 17 of this chapter.

16. Chomsky points out that the principal weakness of the "October Surprise" theory is that the arms flow to Iran began during the Carter administration -- before the 1980 election -- whereas under the "October Surprise" theory the quid pro quo of delaying release of the hostages was that the Reaganites would secretly begin to provide arms to Iran after they were elected. With respect to the "arms for hostages" theory concerning the hostages taken in 1985, reams of documentation prove that there was an arms flow to Iran prior to the earliest period that was examined by the Congressional Hearings and the Tower Commission. In addition, many express statements by insiders explain that their goal was, in fact, to bring about a military coup in Iran.

For some of the evidence supporting these points, see for example, David Nyhan, "Israel plan was aimed at toppling Khomeini," Boston Globe, October 21, 1982, p. 1 (Israeli Ambassador Moshe Arens stated in an interview that Israel had provided arms to the Khomeini regime "in coordination with the U.S. government . . . at almost the highest of levels." "The objective," Arens said, "was to see if we could not find some areas of contact with the Iranian military, to bring down the Khomeini regime"); Robert Levey, "U.S. denies Arens' claim," Boston Globe, October 22, 1982, p. 1 (the U.S. State Department's immediate denial of Arens's account); David Nyhan, "Israeli disputes Globe story," Boston Globe, October 23, 1982, p. 4 (Arens's attempt to correct his story the next day, maintaining that the arms deal with Iran was discussed in advance with U.S. officials but saying that not enough equipment was sent to topple the Khomeini regime, although he reaffirmed that "the purpose was to make contact with some military officers who some day might be in a position of power in Iran"); Transcript of Panorama, B.B.C.-1 T.V. (U.K.) at 8:10 p.m., February 1, 1982. After David Kimche, head of Israel's Foreign Office and former director of its intelligence agency M.O.S.S.A.D., discussed Israel's sending American armaments to Iran from 1980, he stated:

Question: So that if Israel wishes to see a strong Iranian army it would be in Israel's interests for America to supply those spare parts?

Kimche: Well, I don't want to reach the obvious conclusion here. I think I made our position plain. We think that the Iranian army should be strong, yes.

Question: So, really, an army take-over is what you're saying?

Kimche: Possibly, yes.

Former C.I.A. Director and U.S. Ambassador to Iran Richard Helms then elaborated:

One doesn't mount coups to change governments or influence events without specific assets in the form of guns, people, groups desirous of helping, people who are prepared to take risk, all of these things, so that this is not a theoretical matter, it's a very practical matter and I wouldn't have any doubt that the United States is trying to find out what assets it can bring to bear.

On the timing of the arms sales, see for example, Zbigniew Brzezinski [Carter's National Security Advisor], Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977-1981, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1983, p. 504 (reporting that the Carter administration had learned in 1980 of secret Israeli shipments of U.S. armaments to Iran); Dan Fisher, "Israel-Iran Arms Flow Reportedly Began In '79," Los Angeles Times, November 22, 1986, p. 1. An excerpt:

Israeli arms dealers, with the acquiescence of the government, have maintained a nearly continuous supply of weaponry to Iran since 1979, including at least seven shiploads dispatched independently of a U.S.-sponsored Iranian arms program over the last 14 months, according to informed sources [in Israel]. . . .

Pleased initially that revelation of the Reagan program [of clandestine weapons shipments to Iran] made Israel appear as a loyal strategic ally aiding an effort to free U.S. hostages held by pro-Iranian elements in Lebanon, Israeli policy-makers have watched with growing discomfort as Washington news reports seem increasingly to depict Jerusalem as a villain in the affair. . . . "The State of Israel has never sold American arms or weapons containing American components without having received authorization from the U.S.," Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin told an Israeli Army Radio interviewer last week. . . . [T]hen-Israeli Defense Minister . . . [Ariel] Sharon argued that arms shipments would help keep channels open to "moderate" or "pragmatic" elements in Iran, particularly in the military, who would one day overthrow or at least inherit the reins of power from Khomeini.

"Carving a big slice of world arms sales," Business Week, December 8, 1980, p. 43 (according to Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Mordechai Tsippori, "Iran, once a big customer for Israeli arms under the Shah, [is] now purchasing Israeli weapons again through European intermediaries"); John Walcott and Jane Mayer, "Israel Said to Have Sold Weapons to Iran Since 1981 With Tacit Approval of the Reagan Administration," Wall Street Journal, November 28, 1986, p. 3 (noting that U.S. authorization of Israeli arms sales to be compensated by the U.S. goes back to 1981, with the knowledge of Haig, Weinberger, Shultz, Baker, and others; "Officials said both Israel and the U.S. hoped that the arms sales would curry favor with the military people in Iran, the so-called moderates, helping to position these men to take over if Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died or there was a coup"); General Robert E. Huyser, Mission to Tehran, New York: Harper & Row, 1986 (Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's endorsement of Huyser's book about his dispatch to Iran to organize the Iranian military to carry out a coup states that Brzezinski remains convinced that only "procrastination and bureaucratic sabotage prevented the U.S.-sponsored military coup" he advocated and "that might have saved Iran from Khomeini" and "the masses").

See also, Samuel Segev, The Iranian Triangle: The Untold Story of Israel's Role in the Iran-Contra Affair, New York: Free Press, 1988; Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era, Boston: South End, 1987, chs. 7 and 8; Scott Armstrong et al., The Chronology: The Documented Day-by-Day Account of the Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Contras, New York: Warner, 1987, pp. 7-8.

17. For unclassified U.S. military aid figures during the Allende years, see for example, Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973, Staff Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, U.S. Senate, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, December 18, 1975, pp. 32-38 (with tables on military assistance, military sales, and training of Chilean military personnel in Panama, based on "unclassified" figures from the Defense Department). An excerpt (p. 37; emphasis in original):

[M]ilitary assistance was not cut off at the time of Allende's confirmation. Military sales jumped sharply from 1972 to 1973 and even more sharply from 1973 to 1974 after the coup. Training of Chilean military personnel in Panama also rose during the Allende years . . . [increasing the number of trainees from 1969 to 1973 by 150 percent].

18. On C.I.A. involvement in overthrowing Sukarno in Indonesia, see for example, Peter Dale Scott, "The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno, 1965-1967," Pacific Affairs, Summer 1985, pp. 239-264 (study documenting the C.I.A.'s role); Ralph McGehee [ex-C.I.A. officer], "The C.I.A. and The White Paper On El Salvador," Nation, April 11, 1981, p. 423f (this article was censored by the C.I.A. under a clause in the author's contract, and was published with deletions noted; the author reports that he is familiar with a highly classified C.I.A. report on the Agency's role in provoking the destruction of the P.K.I., the Indonesian Communist Party, and he attributes the slaughter to the "C.I.A. [one word deleted] operation"); Kathy Kadane, "Ex-agents say C.I.A. compiled death lists for Indonesians," San Francisco Examiner, May 20, 1990, p. A1 ("Silent for a quarter century, former high-ranking U.S. diplomats and C.I.A. officials described in lengthy interviews how they aided Indonesian army leader Suharto -- now president of Indonesia -- in his attack on the P.K.I. [Indonesian Communist Party]"); Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World: United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1980, New York: Pantheon, 1988, pp. 173-185 (concise summary of the events leading up to the massacre). An excerpt (p. 177 n."*"):

U.S. documents for the three months preceding September 30, 1965, and dealing with the convoluted background and intrigues, much less the embassy's and the C.I.A.'s roles, have been withheld from public scrutiny. Given the detailed materials available before and after July-September 1965, one can only assume that the release of these papers would embarrass the U.S. government.

During Congressional testimony, Pentagon official Paul Warnke, a reputed dove, acknowledged the purpose of U.S. military aid to Indonesia before the 1965 coup. See Foreign Assistance Act of 1968 Hearings, Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, 90th Congress, 2nd Session, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968, p. 706:

[Connecticut Senator John] Monagan: Speaking of military assistance programs, I think of one that is in Indonesia, where at least in the latter days the purpose for which it was maintained was not to support an existing [i.e. the Sukarno] regime. In fact, we were opposed, eventually and increasingly, to the then existing regime. It was to preserve a liaison of sorts with the military of the country which in effect turned out to be one of the conclusive elements in the overthrow of that regime.

Warnke: That is correct, sir.

On the subsequent massacre in Indonesia, and for more on the U.S. involvement, see footnote 23 of chapter 2 of U.P.

On U.S. government involvement in another "classic operation," overthrowing the democratic Goulart government in Brazil in 1964, see for example, A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors, New York: Pantheon, 1978, pp. 38-116; Jan Knippers Black, United States Penetration of Brazil, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977; Phyllis Parker, Brazil and the Quiet Intervention, 1964, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979; Ruth Leacock, Requiem for Revolution: The United States and Brazil, 1961-1969, Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990. See also, Thomas Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964-85, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988 (comprehensive scholarly study of the post-coup period).

19. On the C.I.A. coup in Iran, see for example, William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995, ch. 9; Bill A. James, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988, ch. 2; Kermit Roosevelt, Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979 (first-person account of the coup by a former C.I.A. officer; this book was recalled from stores by its publisher McGraw-Hill in 1979 under pressure from British Petroleum Company, the successor corporation to the petroleum entity which Roosevelt implicated in the coup). See also, William A. Dorman and Mansour Farhang, The U.S. Press and Iran: Foreign Policy and the Journalism of Deference, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987, ch. 2 (on the distorted U.S. press coverage of the coup, and of Iran generally). On the recall of Roosevelt's book, see Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Boston: Beacon, Fifth Edition, 1997, p. 39.

20. On the C.I.A. coup in Guatemala, see for example, Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999 (expanded edition); Richard H. Immerman, The C.I.A. in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982; Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, New York: Norton, 1983 (2nd revised and expanded edition 1993), pp. 113-127; Stephen Schlesinger, "How Dulles Worked the Coup d'Etat," Nation, October 28, 1978, p. 425 (based upon more than 1,000 pages of State Department documents from 1953 and 1954, released to Schlesinger under the Freedom of Information Act; concluding that the coup "was conceived of and run at the highest levels of the American government in closest cahoots with the United Fruit Company and under the overall direction of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, backed by President Eisenhower").

For a statement of the U.S.'s reasons for the coup, see Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991, p. 365. This study quotes a State Department official's warning prior to the coup that "Guatemala has become an increasing threat to the stability of Honduras and El Salvador. Its agrarian reform is a powerful propaganda weapon; its broad social program of aiding the workers and peasants in a victorious struggle against the upper classes and large foreign enterprises has a strong appeal to the populations of Central American neighbors where similar conditions prevail."

21. On the scale, illegality and activities of Operation MONGOOSE, see for example, Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (1989 edition), Washington: Brookings Institution, 1989. An excerpt (p. 32 and n.53):

[A] secret Special Group . . . [was] established in November 1961 to conduct covert operations against Cuba under the code-name "Mongoose." Attorney General Kennedy was a driving force in this covert action program. A Washington headquarters group had been set up under General Lansdale and a C.I.A. "Task Force W" in Florida under William K. Harvey, both veteran covert action managers. The operation came to involve 400 Americans, about 2,000 Cubans, a private navy of fast boats, and an annual budget of about $50 million. Task Force W carried out a wide range of activities, initially mostly against Cuban ships and aircraft outside Cuba (and non-Cuban ships engaged in the Cuba trade), such as contaminating sugar shipments out of Cuba and tampering with industrial imports into the country. A new phase, calling for more raids into Cuba, opened in September. . . . A Miami C.I.A. station was also established, in probable violation of the law banning C.I.A. operations in the United States, to say nothing of organizing activities that contravened the Neutrality Act.

U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Final Report, 94th Congress, 2nd Session, Books II, III, and VI (Report No. 94-755), Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976; Warren Hinckle and William Turner, The Fish is Red: The Story of The Secret War Against Castro, New York: Harper & Row, 1981, ch. 4; Morris H. Morley, Imperial State and Revolution: The United States and Cuba, 1952-1986, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 148-154; Edward S. Herman, The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda, Boston: South End, 1982, ch. 2.

One of the commandos who participated in paramilitary operations against Cuba under the command of William "Rip" Robertson describes them as follows (quoted in Taylor Branch and George Crile III, "The Kennedy Vendetta: How the C.I.A. waged a silent war against Cuba," Harper's, August 1975, pp. 49-63):

After the Bay of Pigs is when the great heroic deeds of Rip really began. I was on one of his teams, but he controlled many teams and many operations. . . . Our team made more than seven big war missions. Some of them were huge: the attacks on the Texaco refinery, the Russian ships in Oriente Province, a big lumberyard, the Patrice Lumumba sulfuric acid plant at Santa Lucía, and the diesel plant at Casilda. But they never let us fight as much as we wanted to, and most of the operations were infiltrations and weapons drops.

We would go on missions to Cuba almost every week. When we didn't go, Rip would feel sick and get very mad. He was always blowing off his steam, but then he would call us his boys, and he would hug us and hit us in the stomach. He was always trying to crank us up for the missions. Once he told me, "I'll give you $50 if you bring me back an ear." I brought him two, and he laughed and said, "You're crazy," but he paid me $100, and he took us to his home for a turkey dinner. Rip was a patriot, an American patriot. Really, I think he was a fanatic. He'd fight anything that came against democracy. . . . At the end of December, 1961, [commando Ramon] Orozco went on a ten-day operation with a seven-man team. The commandos blew up a railroad bridge and watched a train run off the ruptured tracks, then they burned down a sugar warehouse.

See also, U.P.I., "C.I.A. reportedly tried to dry up Cuban crop," Boston Globe, June 27, 1976, p. 3 (reporting the allegation by former Pentagon researcher Lowell Ponte that the C.I.A. and the Pentagon seeded clouds "to try to dry up the Cuban sugar crop in 1969 and 1970"; in the next day's issue the report is denied by the Pentagon); Drew Fetherston and John Cummings, "Canadian Says U.S. Paid Him $5,000 to Infect Cuban Poultry," Washington Post, March 21, 1977, p. A18 ("The major details of the Canadian's story [i.e. in the title] have been confirmed by sources within and outside the American intelligence community"); Drew Fethersten and John Cummings, "C.I.A. tied to Cuba's '71 pig fever outbreak," Boston Globe, January 9, 1977, p. 1. An excerpt:

With at least the tacit backing of Central Intelligence Agency officials, operatives linked to anti-Castro terrorists introduced African swine fever virus into Cuba in 1971. Six weeks later an outbreak of the disease forced the slaughter of 500,000 pigs to prevent a nationwide animal epidemic.

A U.S. intelligence source said in an interview that he was given the virus in a sealed, unmarked container at an Army base and C.I.A. training ground in the Panama Canal Zone with instructions to turn it over to the anti-Castro group. The 1971 outbreak was the first and only time the disease has hit the Western Hemisphere. It was labeled the "most alarming event" of 1971 by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. African swine fever is a highly contagious and usually lethal viral disease that infects only pigs and, unlike swine flu, cannot be transmitted to human beings. . . . [A]ll production of pork, a Cuban staple, came to a halt apparently for several months.

And see chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 29.

22. On U.S. assassination attempts on Castro, see for example, U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, Interim Report (S. Rept. 94-465), 94th Congress, 1st Session, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975, sections IIIB and IV, pp. 71f, 139-180 (reporting both MONGOOSE and non-MONGOOSE efforts to kill Castro).

One of the known assassination attempts on Castro was implemented the very day that John F. Kennedy himself was assassinated. See Thomas G. Paterson, ed., Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. An excerpt (pp. 153-154):

In mid-June [1963] the N.S.C. [National Security Council] approved a new sabotage program. The C.I.A. quickly cranked up new dirty tricks and revitalized its assassination option by making contact with a traitorous Cuban official, Rolando Cubela Secades. Code-named AM/LASH, he plotted with the C.I.A. to kill Fidel Castro. . . . On the very day that Kennedy died, AM/LASH rendez-voused with C.I.A. agents in Paris, where he received a ball-point pen rigged with a poisonous hypodermic needle intended to produce Castro's instant death.

See also, William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995, Appendix III, p. 453 (listing all known prominent foreign individuals in whose assassination, or planning for the same, the United States has been involved since the end of World War II).

23. On MONGOOSE in the 1970s, see footnote 21 of this chapter.

24. On U.S. "contingency plans" for an invasion of Cuba and military deployment in the region before the Cuban Missile Crisis, see for example, Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (1989 edition), Washington: Brookings Institution, 1989. An excerpt (pp. 6-8, 31, 50-51):

American exercises in the region continued apace through the summer and fall. An airborne assault was tested in Jupiter Springs. In August the U.S. Strike Command carried out Swift Strike II, a major limited war exercise in the Carolinas with four Army divisions and eight tactical air squadrons, some 70,000 troops in all. A strategic mobility command post exercise called Blue Water was conducted in early October, and a large Marine amphibious assault was planned for mid-October under the code-name Phibriglex. . . .

On October 1, two weeks before discovery of the missiles, Secretary McNamara met with Joint Chiefs of Staff and directed that readiness for possible implementation of the contingency plans [to invade Cuba] be raised. For example, U.S. Air Force tactical air units designated to meet the contingency war plan for an air strike (Oplan 312) were put under the operational control of CINCSTRIKE (Commander-in-Chief, Strike Command); U.S. Navy forces were earmarked for 6-hour, 12-hour, and 24-hour reaction times, and the war plan was revised to put the base at Mariel for Soviet Komar missile patrol boats on the air-strike priority target list. On October 6, increased readiness was also directed for forces earmarked for Oplan 314 and 316, the two war plan variants for invasion of Cuba.

See also, Thomas G. Paterson, "Fixation with Cuba: The Bay of Pigs, Missile Crisis, and Covert War Against Castro," in Thomas G. Paterson, ed., Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 140-142.

25. For Bundy's denial, see McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years, New York: Random House, 1988, p. 416 ("We knew that we were not about to invade Cuba and we saw no reason for the Russians to take a clearly risky step because of a fear that we ourselves understood to be baseless").

26. On the "missile gap" being in the U.S.'s favor, see footnote 1 of this chapter.

27. For the two references to the factory bombing during the Cuban Missile Crisis, see David A. Welch and James G. Blight, "The Eleventh Hour of the Cuban Missile Crisis: An Introduction to the ExComm Transcripts," International Security, Winter 1987-88, p. 12 n.18; Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (1989 edition), Washington: Brookings Institution, 1989, pp. 122-123.

28. On the General openly raising the level of security alert without informing Washington, see for example, Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (1989 edition), Washington: Brookings Institution, 1989, pp. 61-62; David A. Welch and James G. Blight, "The Eleventh Hour of the Cuban Missile Crisis: An Introduction to the ExComm Transcripts," International Security, Winter 1987-88, p. 12 n.5.

29. On the enormous preponderance of U.S. military force at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Generals' attitudes, see footnotes 1, 24 and 28 of this chapter.

30. For Herodotus's analysis in the fifth century B.C., see Herodotus: A New and Literal Version, Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1972, Book One, Stanzas 95-100, pp. 44-46 (describing the story of the Medes, who gained their freedom through revolt, then "were again reduced under a despotic government" when they voluntarily made Deioces their king and he decreed: "that no man should be admitted to the king's presence, but every one should consult him by means of messengers, and that none should be permitted to see him; and, moreover, that it should be accounted indecency for any to laugh or spit before him. He established such ceremony about his own person, for this reason, that those who were his equals, and who were brought up with him, and of no meaner family, nor inferior to him in manly qualities, might not, when they saw him, grieve and conspire against him; but that he might appear to be of a different nature to them who did not see him").

For a classic American example of cult-making, see Lawrence Friedman, Inventors of the Promised Land, New York: Knopf, 1975, especially ch. 2, pp. xiii, 53-54. This study notes how in the early years of the American Republic, an absurd George Washington cult was contrived as part of the effort "to cultivate the ideological loyalties of the citizenry" and thus create a sense of "viable nationhood." See also the text following this footnote in U.P., and footnote 41 of this chapter.

For examples of U.S. government information that was classified, see Evan Hendricks, Former Secrets: Government Records Made Public Through the Freedom of Information Act, Washington: Campaign for Political Rights, 1982 (five hundred case studies of the use of the Freedom Of Information Act).

31. On Jefferson's and other Revolutionary War leaders' repressive attitudes and actions, see for example, Leonard W. Levy, Emergence of a Free Press, New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, chs. 7-10, especially pp. 177-181, 297, 337-348 (reviewing the writings and speeches of the leaders of the American Revolution and Framers of the U.S. Constitution, and documenting that none of them -- including Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine -- opposed criminalization of speech critical of the government and its officials; pointing out that Jefferson himself authorized the internment of political critics, and that the Continental Congress urged the states to enact legislation to prevent the people from being "deceived and drawn into erroneous opinion." Jefferson's statement that "a traitor in thought, but not in deed" should be punished is quoted at p. 178). See also, Leonard W. Levy, Jefferson and Civil Liberties: the Darker Side, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963, pp. 25f. An excerpt (p. 25):

During the Revolution, Jefferson, like Washington, the Adamses, and Paine, believed that there could be no toleration for serious differences of political opinion on the issue of independence, no acceptable alternative to complete submission to the patriot cause. Everywhere there was unlimited liberty to praise it, none to criticize it.

David Kairys, "Freedom of Speech," in David Kairys, ed., The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique, New York: Pantheon, 1982 (revised and expanded edition 1990), pp. 237-272. An excerpt (p. 242):

[T]he experience of revolution and the emergence of the new nation generated a wave of intolerance immediately before and after the adoption of the Constitution. . . . Belief and pride in the attainment of freedom were turned against itself; nonconformity and dissent were greeted with extreme, legally sanctioned, and sometimes violent intolerance.

Although the issue of the relationship of the colonies to England was hotly and publicly debated before and during the war, any sign of even an early questioning of independence tended to be viewed as disloyalty. Many people had sentimental, familial, and economic allegiances to England, which was often also their birthplace. Because they believed or hoped differences could be settled without war, they were treated as traitors, regardless of whether they had actually acted or sided with England during the Revolution. They were subjected to special taxes, loyalty oaths, banishment, and violence; and laws in most states prohibited them from serving on juries, voting, holding office, buying land, or practicing certain designated professions.

Chomsky comments (Deterring Democracy, New York: Hill and Wang, 1991, p. 399): "It was not until the Jeffersonians were themselves subjected to repressive measures in the late 1790s that they developed a body of more libertarian thought for self-preservation -- reversing course, however, when they gained power themselves." See also chapter 8 of U.P. and its footnote 3.

32. For sources on the delivery of information to the media via news services, see for example, Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990. An excerpt (pp. 22-23):

A few wire services provide the vast majority of newspapers with windows on the world beyond the local horizon. . . . America's most conservative major wire service, Associated Press, is also the most far-reaching -- with its articles and photos running in more than 1,400 daily papers, about 85 percent of all the dailies in the country. A.P. machines also chatter inside about 6,000 of the nation's T.V. and radio stations. In 112 foreign countries, A.P. wires are hooked into 8,500 news outlets. A.P.'s global audience: a billion people a day.

Jonathan Fenby, The International News Services, New York: Schocken, 1986, pp. 7, 9, 73-74 (the four major Western news-wire services -- Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, and Agence France-Press -- account for some 80 percent of the international news circulating in the world today. Of these, A.P. is owned by member newspapers; U.P.I. is privately owned; Reuters was owned mainly by the British media until it went public in 1984, but control was retained by the original owners by giving lesser voting rights to the new stockholders; and Agence France-Presse is heavily subsidized by the French government. These wire services "exist to serve markets," and accordingly their prime concern "is with the rich media markets of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, and increasingly with the business community"); Anthony Smith, The Geopolitics of Information: How Western Culture Dominates the World, New York: Oxford University Press, 1980, ch. 3.

33. On corporate concentration of the media, see for example, Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Boston: Beacon, 5th edition, 1997 (original 1983), pp. xiii, 21-22. The 1997 preface to Bagdikian's study notes that the number of controlling firms in books, movies, television, magazines, radio and daily newspapers has shrunk from the 23 listed in the book's 1983 text to about ten dominant companies: Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corporation Limited/Murdoch, Sony, Tele-Communications, Inc., Seagram, Westinghouse, Gannett, and General Electric.

On Chomsky's views of the impact of concentrated ownership on the media product, see the text of chapter 6 of U.P.

34. On advertising rates and the media, see chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnote 36.

35. Chomsky and Herman summarize their "Propaganda Model" in Manufacturing Consent as follows (p. 2):

A propaganda model focuses on [the] inequality of wealth and power and its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public. The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news "filters," fall under the following headings: (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and "experts" funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) "flak" as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) "anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism.

These elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw material of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. They fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns.

In a lecture, Chomsky described two flaws in Manufacturing Consent's presentation of the "Propaganda Model":

If the two of us were rewriting it today, we would change some things. For one thing, I think when we talked about those "five filters," we realized at the time -- but we left it in -- that the fifth one, "anticommunism," is too narrow. That's really a sub-case of something more general: for the system to work properly, people have to be frightened, and they have to shelter under the wings of authority. Fear of the Soviet Union was a good way to frighten them. But by the time we wrote that book in the late Eighties, it wasn't working anymore. It was clear to the Reagan administration that the use of the Soviet Union as a device to intimidate and terrorize people wasn't going to work very long, because it was going to collapse. And in fact, if you look through the Reagan years -- and we should have put this in the book -- there was a constant search for some new devil to frighten people. So I don't know if you remember, but in 1981 the White House was surrounded by tanks because Libyan hitmen were supposedly wandering around Washington trying to assassinate our leader and so on. . . . And all through the Reagan years, just to try to intimidate people, Arab terrorism was a tremendous fear. It was a good way of frightening the American population.

The drug scares are another one of them: those are mostly concocted as a technique of social control. . . . In fact, the whole crime story is a political-class and media concoction. I mean, crime is a pain, it's not nice. But crime in the United States is not off the spectrum, it's very much like in other industrial societies. . . . On the other hand, fear of crime is far higher. And this has been inspired by propaganda, and it goes way back.

So I think when we talked about the "fifth filter" we should have brought in all this stuff -- the way artificial fears are created with a dual purpose . . . partly to get rid of people you don't like but partly to frighten the rest. Because if people are frightened, they will accept authority. During the Second World War, for example, people voluntarily (and, in my view, rightly) accepted discipline and authority. You know, you follow orders because there are bigger fears out there, so yeah you huddle under the protection of the authority figures and you do what they tell you. But in order to maintain that when there's no actual threat requires concocting threats. And the "anticommunist" filter was one of those, but we treated it much too narrowly. So that ought to be changed.

The other big change -- and I think both of us agree on this -- is that in the book as case studies we picked only foreign policy examples. And that creates the illusion that somehow it's different when the media deal with domestic issues -- and it isn't different, it's the same. So what we should have done is mixed it. And in fact, since then, both of us when we deal with the media address mostly the media and domestic issues. So that was an imbalance and very misleading, because then you get the sense -- and you can understand how you would get the sense -- that the media kind of conform to state power on international issues, but when you have domestic problems they don't do it. Which is totally false. It's dramatically the same on domestic issues: trade issues, crime, pick it, it's always the same. Those are the major changes that I would want to see made, and I think Ed Herman would probably agree on this.

See also, Robert W. McChesney, "The Political Economy of the Mass Media: An Interview With Edward S. Herman," Monthly Review, January 1989, pp. 35f.

36. The review's exact phrase -- stating the conventional view of the media -- was: "traditional Jeffersonian role as counterbalance to government power." See Ron Rosenbaum, "Staying the Course in the Go-Go Years," New York Times Book Review, April 9, 1989, section 7, p. 9.

37. For examples of use of terminology such as "the public mind," see footnotes 40 and 41 of this chapter; and chapter 10 of U.P. and its footnotes 74 to 78.

38. For the quotation from the English Revolution, see Clement Walker, History of Independency, I, 1661, quoted in Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution, New York: Viking, 1972. Walker's exact words (p. 58):

[T]hey have cast all the Mysteries and secrets of Government, both by Kings and Parliaments, before the vulgar (like Pearl before Swine), and have taught both the Souldiery and People to look so far into them as to ravel back all Governments, to the first principles of nature. . . . They have made the People thereby so curious and so arrogant that they will never find humility enough to submit to a civil rule.

On popular radicalism during the seventeenth-century English Revolution, see also, Fenner Brockway, Britain's First Socialists: The Levellers, Agitators, and Diggers of the English Revolution, London: Quartet Books, 1980. And see footnote 17 of chapter 6 of U.P.

39. For Walter Lippmann's exact words, see Clinton Rossiter and James Lare, eds., The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy, New York: Random House, 1963, pp. 91-92 ("The public must be put in its place, so that each of us may live free of the trampling and roar of a bewildered herd"); Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, New York: Macmillan, 1960 (original 1922). An excerpt (pp. 248, 310):

That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies. The process by which public opinion arises is certainly no less intricate than it has appeared in these pages, and the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the process are plain enough. The creation of consent is not a new art. It is a very old one which was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy. But it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technic, because it is now based on analysis rather than on rule of thumb. And so, as a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power.

Within the life of the generation now in control of affairs, persuasion has become a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government. . . . Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the old constants of our thinking have become variables. It is no longer possible, for example, to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. . . . In the absence of institutions and education by which the environment is so successfully reported that the realities of public life stand out sharply against self-centered opinion, the common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality.

40. For the public relations manual's opening words, see Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda, New York: Horace Liveright, 1928. The exact language (pp. 9, 31):

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. . . .

[C]learly it is the intelligent minorities which need to make use of propaganda continuously and systematically. In the active proselytizing minorities in whom selfish interests and public interests coincide lie the progress and development of American democracy.

41. For some articulations of this leading doctrine of liberal-democratic intellectual thought, see for example, footnotes 39 and 40 of this chapter. Also see for example, Edward L. Bernays [the leading figure of the public relations industry], Propaganda, New York: Horace Liveright, 1928. An excerpt (pp. 19-20):

In the days when kings were kings, Louis XIV made his modest remark, "L'Etat c'est moi." He was nearly right. But times have changed. The steam engine, the multiple press, and the public school, that trio of the industrial revolution, have taken the power away from kings and given it to the people. The people actually gained power which the king lost. For economic power tends to draw after it political power; and the history of the industrial revolution shows how that power passed from the king and the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie. Universal suffrage and universal schooling reënforced this tendency, and at last even the bourgeoisie stood in fear of the common people. For the masses promised to become king.

To-day, however, a reaction has set in. The minority has discovered a powerful help in influencing majorities. It has been found possible so to mold the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction. In the present structure of society, this practice is inevitable. Whatever of social importance is done to-day, whether in politics, finance, manufacture, agriculture, charity, education, or other fields, must be done with the help of propaganda. Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.

Edward L. Bernays, "The Engineering of Consent," The Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 250 ("Communication and Social Action"), March 1947, pp. 113-120. An excerpt (pp. 114-115):

[L]eaders, with the aid of technicians in the field who have specialized in utilizing the channels of communication, have been able to accomplish purposefully and scientifically what we have termed "the engineering of consent." This phrase quite simply means the use of an engineering approach -- that is, action based on thorough knowledge of the situation and on the application of scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs. . . .

The average American adult has only six years of schooling behind him. With pressing crises and decisions to be faced, a leader frequently cannot wait for the people to arrive at even general understanding. In certain cases, democratic leaders must play their part in leading the public through the engineering of consent to socially constructive goals and values. . . . The responsible leader, to accomplish social objectives, must therefore be constantly aware of the possibilities of subversion. He must apply his energies to mastering the operational know-how of consent engineering, and to out-maneuvering his opponents in the public interest.

Edward L. Bernays, Public Relations, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952. An excerpt (p. 78):

An important factor in developing the climate of public opinion was the demonstration to the peoples of the world in World War I that wars are fought with words and ideas as well as with arms and bullets. Businessmen, private institutions, great universities -- all kinds of groups -- became conditioned to the fact that they needed the public; that the great public could now perhaps be harnessed to their cause as it had been harnessed during the war to the national cause, and that the same methods could do the job.

Harold Lasswell [one of the leading figures of modern political science], "Propaganda," in Edwin R.A. Seligman, ed.-in-chief, Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, New York: Macmillan, 1933, Vol. 12 (reprinted in 1954 edition). An excerpt (pp. 527, 523-526):

[R]egard for men in the mass rests upon no democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests. The modern propagandist, like the modern psychologist, recognizes that men are often poor judges of their own interests. . . .

[The spread of schooling] did not release the masses from ignorance and superstition but altered the nature of both and compelled the development of a whole new technique of control, largely through propaganda . . . [which] attains eminence as the one means of mass mobilization which is cheaper than violence, bribery or other possible control techniques . . . [and] is no more moral or immoral than a pump handle. . . . [It is] certain that propaganda will in time be viewed with fewer misgivings.

Thomas Bailey [historian], The Man in the Street: The Impact of American Public Opinion on Foreign Policy, Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964 (original 1948). An excerpt (p. 13):

Because the masses are notoriously short-sighted and generally cannot see danger until it is at their throats, our statesmen are forced to deceive them into an awareness of their own long-run interests. . . . Deception of the people may in fact become increasingly necessary, unless we are willing to give our leaders in Washington a freer hand.

Reinhold Niebuhr [highly influential moralist and theologian], Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics, New York: Scribners, 1952 (original 1932). An excerpt (pp. 221, 21):

The naïve faith of the proletarian is the faith of the man of action. Rationality belongs to the cool observers. There is of course an element of illusion in the faith of the proletarian, as there is in all faith. But it is a necessary illusion. . . .

The stupidity of the average man will permit the oligarch, whether economic or political, to hide his real purposes from the scrutiny of his fellows and to withdraw his activities from effective control. . . . Since the increasing complexity of society makes it impossible to bring all those who are in charge of its intricate techniques and processes, and who are therefore in possession of social power, under complete control, it will always be necessary to rely partly upon the honesty and self-restraint of those who are not socially restrained.

(For a discussion of Niebuhr's ideas and their reception, see Noam Chomsky, "Reinhold Niebuhr," Grand Street, Vol. 6, No. 2, Winter 1987, pp. 197-212.)

Roughly the same stance was taken by Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States from 1913 to 1921. See Woodrow Wilson, "The Philosophy of Politics" (unfinished manuscript), in Henry Wilkinson Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967. An excerpt (p. 263):

It is asked . . . whether direct expressions of the will of the people be not the only just way of determining some of the graver questions of state policy, as, for instance, the question of peace and war. On the contrary is it not a pertinent suggestion that such questions may involve elements visible or appreciable only by the few -- the selected leaders of public opinion and rulers of state policy. Only to them will it be apparent upon which side lies obedience to the highest, most permanent and just ends of the nation. Only to them may it be revealed what these ends are. . . . The popular vote would probably have drawn us into the vortex of the French revolution, would doubtless have held us back from the second assertion of our rights against Great Britain. And, as regards other questions, are not the straight lines -- the projected course -- of national progress more likely to be seen by the thinking few who stand upon the high places of the nation than by the toiling multitudes in the valleys who give no part of their day to so much as an endeavour to descry these things? Must not the nation have trained eyes?

For the views of the Washington Post's publisher, Katharine Graham, see Mark Perry, "The Case Against William Webster," Regardie's Magazine, Vol. 10, No. 5, January 1990, pp. 90f. Graham explained in a speech delivered at C.I.A. headquarters:

"We live in a dirty and dangerous world," she said. "There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows."

The influential Harvard government professor Samuel Huntington advocates a similar position (Samuel P. Huntington, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981, p. 75):

The architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt but not seen. Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.

Likewise, a major publication of the Rockefeller-founded Trilateral Commission -- a private organization of elites in the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan, which achieved some notoriety when its members captured the posts of President, Vice-President, National Security Advisor, Secretaries of State, Defense, and Treasury, and a host of lesser offices during the Carter administration -- written by scholars from the trilateral regions, also articulates these same positions. See M.J. Crozier, S.P. Huntington and J. Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission, New York: New York University Press, 1975, at pp. 113, 98, 5-6 (concluding that, in the wake of the popular mobilization of the 1960s, more "moderation in democracy" was needed to alleviate the "crisis" that the popular movements brought on; as the American contributor recalled, with a sense of nostalgia perhaps, before the "crisis of democracy" had erupted, "Truman had been able to govern the country with the cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers. But by the mid-1960s, the sources of power in society had diversified tremendously, and this was no longer possible"). An excerpt (pp. 8, 113):

Finally, and perhaps most seriously, there are the intrinsic challenges to the viability of democratic government which grow directly out of the functioning of democracy. Democratic government does not necessarily function in a self-sustaining or self-correcting equilibrium fashion. It may instead function so as to give rise to forces and tendencies which, if unchecked by some outside agency, will eventually lead to the undermining of democracy. This was, of course, a central theme in de Toqueville's forebodings about democracy; it reappeared in the writings of Schumpeter and Lippmann; it is a key element in the current pessimism about the future of democracy. . . .

Al Smith once remarked that "the only cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy." Our analysis suggests that applying that cure at the present time could well be adding fuel to the flames. Instead, some of the problems of governance in the United States stem from an excess of democracy -- an "excess of democracy" in much the same sense in which David Donald used the term to refer to the consequences of the Jacksonian revolution which helped to precipitate the Civil War. Needed, instead, is a greater degree of moderation in democracy.

The Trilateral Commission's study also addresses the role of the intelligentsia, who come in two varieties: (1) the "technocratic and policy-oriented intellectuals," responsible, serious, and constructive, and (2) the "value-oriented intellectuals," a group who pose a danger to democracy as they "devote themselves to the derogation of leadership, the challenging of authority, and the unmasking and delegitimation of established institutions," in part through the indoctrination of the young.

For a survey of the thinking that has underpinned the development of public relations-based democracy, see Stuart Ewen, PR! A Social History of Spin, New York: Basic Books, 1996. See also chapter 10 of U.P. and its footnotes 74 to 80.

42. On the public's views of the media, see for example, Thomas B. Rosenstiel, "'Serious Reservations' On Fairness Are Cited," Los Angeles Times, January 16, 1986, p. 1. An excerpt:

53% of those surveyed thought the press was one-sided when presenting political and social issues. . . . Contrary to the familiar charge that Americans consider the news media increasingly powerful and even arrogant, "a majority (53%) sees the press as often influenced by powerful people and organizations, not as independent," the study said. Heavy majorities see the press as influenced by the federal government (73%), corporations (70%), advertisers (65%) and labor unions (62%). . . .

[O]nly about one in five believes that the news product itself is liberally biased. . . . "[T]he public thinks powerful groups and institutions push the press around. . . . We find almost no evidence that the public regards the news media as too adversarial."

Barry Sussman, "Public Has Sharp Complaints About News Media, Poll Says," Washington Post, August 16, 1981, p. A1. An excerpt:

Media critics say the press tries to tear down the government in Washington. About one-quarter of the public feels that way, but four in every 10 people have exactly the opposite complaint: They feel the national news organizations are not critical enough of the government. . . .

Among the most stinging citizen complaints is a widely held belief that the news media hold back important news from the public, a sentiment that is apparently shared by more than half the people. Another is an even more pervasive perception that reporters and editors for T.V. network news operations and large newspapers such as The Washington Post, The New York Times and others have little or no concern for the average person.

See also, "Is this how you see the press?" [this title is above a drawing of a sheep in a wolf costume], New York Times, January 14, 1986, p. A26 (full page advertisement for the 1985 study "The People and the Press," conducted for Times Mirror by the Gallup Organization, called "the most comprehensive study ever conducted of public attitudes toward the press," which concludes that public views the media as "a sheep in wolf's clothing"). And see the text following this footnote in U.P., and footnote 46 of this chapter.

43. These detailed studies of closely paired examples can be found in, among other books, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York: Pantheon, 1988; Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism -- The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume I, Boston: South End, 1979; and Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology -- The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume II, Boston: South End, 1979. Chomsky summarizes the studies' outcome (Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, Boston: South End, 1989, p. 137):

The study of paired examples reveals a consistent pattern of radically dichotomous treatment, in the predicted direction. In the case of enemy crimes, we find outrage; allegations based on the flimsiest evidence, often simply invented, and uncorrectable, even when conceded to be fabrication; careful filtering of testimony to exclude contrary evidence while allowing what may be useful; reliance on official U.S. sources, unless they provide the wrong picture, in which case they are avoided (Cambodia under Pol Pot is a case in point); vivid detail; insistence that the crimes originate at the highest level of planning, even in the absence of evidence or credible argument; and so on. Where the locus of responsibility is at home, we find precisely the opposite: silence or apologetics; avoidance of personal testimony and specific detail; world-weary wisdom about the complexities of history and foreign cultures that we do not understand; narrowing of focus to the lowest level of planning or understandable error in confusing circumstances; and other forms of evasion.

44. The rare mainstream reviews in the United States of Manufacturing Consent and other works employing similar analysis provide a revealing study in themselves of the media. See for example, Nicholas Lemann, "Book Reviews," New Republic, January 9, 1989, p. 34 (stating that Chomsky and Herman want "more state control" over the media, along with other falsehoods; compare, for instance, Manufacturing Consent's p. 252 with the way that passage is quoted in the review); Michael Pollan, "Capitalist Crusaders," New York Times, April 6, 1986, section 7, p. 26 (criticizing Michael Parenti's analysis of the media in his book Inventing Reality -- which argues that the same groups, the "corporate class," control the state and the media -- on the ground that it "overlooks a key feature of American journalism," namely that "the press generally defines the news as what politicians say").

Willingness even to recognize the bare possibility of analysis of the media in terms of a "Propaganda Model" is so uncommon in the press that the few existing cases that do so, even when clearly failing to understand, are notable by this fact alone. One of the very rare attempts to evaluate the "Propaganda Model" with actual argument, instead of mere invective, was by the outstanding and independent-minded historian Walter LaFeber. See Walter LaFeber, "Whose News?," New York Times, November 6, 1988, section 7, p. 27 (see also the ensuing exchange of letters with Edward Herman in the New York Times, December 11, 1988, section 7, p. 46; and Chomsky's discussion of how the cases that LaFeber cites as criticisms in fact closely fit the "Propaganda Model," in Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, Boston: South End, 1989, pp. 148-151). See also, Edward S. Herman, "The Propaganda Model Revisited," Monthly Review, Vol. 48, No. 3, July/August 1996, pp. 115-128 (discussing and refuting the few critiques of the "Propaganda Model" that appeared in the decade after Manufacturing Consent). And see chapter 9 of U.P. and its footnote 4.

Some other studies providing examples which support the "Propaganda Model" include: Edward S. Herman, The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda, Boston: South End, 1982, especially ch. 4, pp. 151-199; Edward S. Herman, Beyond Hypocrisy: Decoding the News in an Age of Propaganda, Montreal: Black Rose, 1992; Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990; Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media, New York: St. Martin's, 1986; James Aronson, The Press and the Cold War, Boston: Beacon, 1970 (expanded edition, New York: Monthly Review, 1990).

45. On support for welfare state programs, see footnote 7 of this chapter; and chapter 10 of U.P. and its footnote 50 (and for related information, its footnotes 18 and 74).

On opposition to Central America policies, see the text above this footnote in U.P., and footnotes 4, 5, 49 and 52 of this chapter; the text of chapter 4 of U.P.; and chapter 7 of U.P. and its footnote 54.

On public attitudes towards the Vietnam War, see chapter 7 of U.P. and its footnote 57; see also the text following this footnote in U.P., and footnotes 72, 73 and 77 of this chapter.

46. On the public's views of media coverage of Carter, see for example, Mark Hertsgaard, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, New York: Schocken Books, 1989, pp. 84-85; Barry Sussman, "Public Has Sharp Complaints About News Media, Poll Says," Washington Post, August 16, 1981, p. A1 ("42 percent say the major news media were too critical of Jimmy Carter while he was president -- a striking indictment" of the media; roughly the same number of Republicans and Democrats expressed this opinion). On the public's views of media coverage of Reagan in 1985 before the Iran-contra scandal broke, see for example, Michael J. Robinson, "Pressing Opinion," Public Opinion (American Enterprise Institute), Vol. 9, No. 3, September/October 1986, pp. 56-59 at p. 58 ("nearly eight in ten say the press is fair to Reagan"). On the public's views of Reagan at the time of the Iran-contra scandal in contrast to the media's coverage of it, see for example, On Bended Knee, p. 334 and ch. 14.

47. On public views of the media, see footnote 42 of this chapter.

48. On public support for the nuclear freeze movement, see chapter 6 of U.P. and its footnote 3.

49. On public attitudes towards U.S. Nicaragua policies in the 1980s, see for example, David K. Shipler, "Poll Shows Confusion on Aid to Contras," New York Times, April 15, 1986, p. A6 (reporting a New York Times/C.B.S. News Poll showing 62 percent of Americans were opposed to giving further aid to the contra rebels, with only 25 percent supporting President Reagan's request for an additional $100 million in funding; strikingly, 52 percent of those who approved of Reagan's handling of the Presidency also opposed increased aid. "Opposition to aid for the contras crossed all political, ethnic and regional and socio-economic lines. No demographic group favored it. . . . The higher the education and income, the less the opposition." The same poll revealed that only 38 percent of the population knew that the U.S. was supporting the contras and not the Nicaraguan government); W. Lance Bennett, "Marginalizing the Majority: Conditioning Public Opinion to Accept Managerial Democracy," in Michael Margolis and Gary A. Mauser, eds., Manipulating Public Opinion: Essays on Public Opinion as a Dependent Variable, Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1989, pp. 321-361 (careful study of New York Times coverage of the contra issue, demonstrating that the Times's inclusion of opposition voices tracked Congressional opposition, plummeting during periods of Congressional red-baiting even though public opposition throughout the period remained constant and overwhelming); Adam Clymer, "Most Americans in Survey Oppose Aid for Overthrow of Sandinistas," New York Times, June 5, 1985, p. A8 (reporting the results of a heavily loaded poll question which nonetheless found that 53 percent of the public opposed U.S. assistance to the contras; notably, the loaded poll question asked: "Ronald Reagan says the U.S. should help the people in Nicaragua who are trying to overthrow the pro-Soviet Government there. Other people say that even if our country does not like the Government in Nicaragua, we should not help overthrow it. Do you think we should help the people trying to overthrow the Government of Nicaragua, or should we not help them?" Only 32 percent of respondents said that the U.S. should help overthrow the Nicaraguan government; approximately 62 percent of those who expressed an opinion opposed the Reagan administration's policies. Furthermore, only 24 percent of those polled said that they favored sending military weapons and supplies to the contras).

50. For the Nicaraguan Ambassador's letter, see Carlos Tunnerman, "Nicaragua's Peace Aims," Op-Ed, New York Times, March 19, 1987, p. A27.

51. For Cahill's letter, see Kevin Cahill, "Respect, Please, for Nicaraguans' Rights," Op-Ed, New York Times, February 14, 1987, section 1, p. 27.

52. On the defection of Latin America scholars from the "acceptable" range of debate on the issue, see for example, Lars Schoultz, National Security and United States Policy toward Latin America, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987, pp. 22-23; Noam Chomsky, The Culture of Terrorism, Boston: South End, 1988, pp. 205f.

53. Bonner was dispatched to the Financial desk, where he labored for one year before taking a leave of absence to write a book about El Salvador. Upon returning to the Times, he first was sent back to the Financial desk, then later to the Metropolitan desk, a clear demotion. He resigned from the New York Times on July 3, 1984. Asked in an interview with Mark Hertsgaard why he had recalled Bonner from El Salvador in the first place, Abe Rosenthal, then-Managing Editor of the New York Times, explained:

The general impression among me and some others was that Bonner was first-rate, but we were really screwing this guy, because he wasn't getting what you really need to be a reporter. You don't have to get it necessarily at the Times, but you have to have some background in reporting non-foreign affairs in order to be a foreign affairs reporter. You have to know how a paper runs, what a paper considers its standards, and so on.

See Mark Hertsgaard, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, New York: Schocken Books, 1989, p. 199.

For another account of Bonner's firing, see Mark Danner, "The Truth of El Mazote," New Yorker, December 6, 1993, pp. 50f. An excerpt (pp. 122-123):

According to Rosenthal, Bonner was removed because he had never been fully trained in the Times' particular methods. Bonner, he said, "didn't know the techniques of weaving a story together. . . . I brought him back because it seemed terribly unfair to leave him there without training. . . ." But "training" was not the only issue -- for that matter, as Bonner pointed out to me, he had spent a good part of 1981 on the Metro desk -- and, at least in Rosenthal's case, the question of Bonner's "journalistic technique" seems to have been inextricably bound up with what the executive editor came to perceive as the reporter's left-wing sympathies. . . . Several current and former Times employees (none of whom would speak for attribution) pointed to a scene in a Georgetown restaurant a few weeks after the El Mozote [massacre] story ran -- it was the evening of the annual Gridiron dinner -- in which Rosenthal criticized Bonner and angrily described the sufferings that Communist regimes inflict on their people.

Note that Rosenthal's most angry denial, which follows, conveniently sidetracks the central issue. Rosenthal declared (pp. 121-122):

"At no time did anybody in the United States government suggest to me, directly or indirectly, that I remove Mr. Bonner. . . . [A]nyone who would approach the New York Times and suggest to me that I remove or punish a correspondent would have to be an idiot. To imply that a man who devoted himself to journalism would remove a reporter because of the U.S. government or the C.I.A., or whatever, is ridiculous, naïve, cruel, and slanderous."

See also, Editorial, "On Credulity," Wall Street Journal, March 19, 1993, p. A10; A.M. Rosenthal, "Let's Set the Record Straight," Letter, Wall Street Journal, April 6, 1993, p. A15; Robert Parry and Peter Kornbluh, "Iran-Contra's Untold Story," Foreign Policy, Fall 1988, pp. 3-30 at p. 6 ("U.S. embassy officials boasted in 1982 that they had forced the New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner out of the country because of his unfavorable reporting on the Salvadoran government"); Robert Parry, Fooling America: How Washington Insiders Twist the Truth and Manufacture the Conventional Wisdom, New York: Morrow, 1992, pp. 207-211.

On the impact of Bonner's removal on press coverage of El Salvador -- including documentation of how the New York Times's coverage took on the Reagan administration's perspective thereafter -- see Michael Massing, "About-face on El Salvador," Columbia Journalism Review, November/December 1983, pp. 42-49; JoAnn Wypijewski, "Shirley Christian and the Times on Chile," Lies of Our Times, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 14-15 (profile of a Latin America reporter hired by Rosenthal in the wake of the Bonner departure).

Similar pressures exist in far more mundane contexts than that of the Bonner case. See for example, Mark Hertsgaard, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, New York: Schocken Books, 1989, pp. 186-203. An excerpt (pp. 159, 163):

When the First Lady [Nancy Reagan] made a photo opportunity visit to Phoenix House, a drug rehabilitation center in New York City, for example, one New York Times reporter had the temerity to write a story lead noting the irony of Mrs. Reagan posing with impoverished junkies while wearing a designer dress worth thousands of dollars. The lead enraged one of the paper's senior editors. He stormed into the middle of the newsroom and, in front of numerous other reporters, loudly berated the reporter, warning that the reference to Mrs. Reagan's dress was injurious both to the Times and to the reporter's career and ordering the lead changed immediately. Likewise Lee Lescaze, who was transferred from the White House beat to The Washington Post's "Style" section in 1982, remembered how "it suddenly became clear we were not to take swipes at Nancy Reagan. . . ."

When asked to grant an interview [for Hertsgaard's book] to discuss colleagues' claims that her scripts had frequently been altered and her story proposals rejected by superiors in New York in order to make her coverage less critical of Reagan, [C.B.S. reporter] Lesley Stahl [denied Hertsgaard's request to go on the record about the matter but] quickly replied, "Well, all that happened, I can't deny it."

Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990, pp. 21-22 (on Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Sydney Schanberg's departure from the New York Times). An excerpt:

On August 20, 1985, page 18 of the [New York Times] carried a cryptic announcement: "After four years of writing his twice-weekly 'New York' column on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times, Sydney Schanberg has been asked to accept another assignment, which is now under discussion. . . ." What was the problem? Journalist Pete Hamill later described the evolving focus of Schanberg's op-ed pieces: "the homeless, the injured, the casualties of the indifference and greed of big builders, bankers, and other pillars of the Establishment. . . ." His twice-a-week column had been spotlighting the financial beneficiaries of various social ills -- "taking on some of the people and institutions for whom the Times itself was edited. . . ." After the Times terminated his column, Schanberg resigned from the paper. . . .

As Schanberg said in an interview with a small community newspaper, "The closer you may step on toes, the closer the toes get to the headquarters of the journalistic organization, the more loudly are the protests registered and the more loudly are they heard." Replying to hundreds of readers' irate letters about the axing of Schanberg's column, Times vice-chairman Sydney Gruson summarized the whole sequence of events this way: "We have come to conclude after four years that a better column might be produced by another writer."

Carole and Paul Bass, "Censorship American-Style," Index on Censorship (London), June 1985, pp. 6-7 (similar anecdotes about reporters Barbara Koeppel, Jonathan Kwitny, and Seymour Hersh); Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, White-Out: The C.I.A., Drugs and the Press, London: Verso, 1998, chs. 1 and 2 (on the successful campaign to destroy the career of San Jose Mercury-News investigative reporter Gary Webb after his reporting about links between the C.I.A. and crack traffickers); Ramsey Clark [former U.S. Attorney General], The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf, New York: Thunder's Mouth, 1992. An excerpt (p. 139):

Even on the homefront, commentators who voiced the wrong opinion [about the Gulf War] ran into trouble. Warren Hinckle of the San Francisco Examiner was placed on a three-month "vacation" for his known views against the war. Dr. Orlando Garcia, a popular talk show host on New York Spanish-language station WADO, was dismissed for his "unbalanced view of the war." Editor Joe Reedy of the Kutztown (PA) Patriot was fired for writing an editorial "How About a Little Peace?" just before the bombing started. In an editorial explaining why Reedy was fired, two weeks into the bombing, the paper said "the time for debate has passed."

See also, Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Boston: Beacon, Fifth Edition, 1997 (original 1983), especially chs. 2 to 8 (many revealing examples of the pressures on journalists and editors); Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media, New York: St. Martin's, 1986 (updated edition 1993), especially ch. 3 (scores of examples of direct advertiser pressure on media outlets).

54. On the reactions to the slight editorial deviation at the New York Times, see "Behind the Profit Squeeze at the New York Times," Business Week, August 30, 1976, p. 42. An excerpt:

Editorially and politically, the newspaper has also slid precipitously to the left and has become stridently antibusiness in tone, ignoring the fact that the Times itself is a business -- and one with very serious problems.

The article then remarks on the New York Times's editorial supporting a "hefty tax increase for business," commenting as follows: "'Something like that,' muses a Wall Street analyst, 'could put the Times right out of business.'" An accompanying remark reminds that: "Following a Times series on medical incompetence," a magazine run by the parent company "lost $500,000 in pharmaceutical advertising."

On the impact of these warnings, see James Aronson, "The Times is a-changing," In These Times, March 2-8, 1977, p. 24. An excerpt:

Most important of all were changes on the editorial side itself, designed, it would seem, to renew "business confidence." In April 1976, publisher Sulzberger had announced that cousin John B. Oakes, whose supervision of the editorial page had actually induced people to read a heretofore largely unread page, would retire in January 1977 to spend the two years before his mandatory retirement traveling the world in search of fresh insight for the readership. Eyebrows rose over Oakes' eight-month notice, and went even higher with the quick announcement of Oakes' replacement: Max Frankel, Sunday editor and former chief of the Washington Bureau, whom the Sunday staff had affectionately named Attila the Hun. Clearly the "lean to the left" would halt. . . .

Will all this make Business Week happy? First reports indicate that it will. . . . Advertising is up slightly, as is circulation. The battle for the suburbs has been joined.

For another similar example, see "Castor oil or Camelot?," Economist (London), December 5, 1987, p. 101. This article notes that "Projects unsuitable for corporate sponsorship tend to die on the vine" because "stations have learned to be sympathetic to the most delicate sympathies of corporations," citing the case of public T.V. station W.N.E.T. which "lost its corporate underwriting from Gulf + Western as a result of a documentary called 'Hungry for Profit,' about multinationals buying up huge tracts of land in the third world." These actions "had not been those of a friend," Gulf's Chief Executive wrote to the station, adding that the documentary was "virulently anti-business, if not anti-American." Even before the program was shown, in anticipation of negative corporate reaction, station officials "did all we could to get the program sanitized," according to one station source. "Most people believe that W.N.E.T. would not make the same mistake today," the Economist concludes. Chomsky comments: "Nor would others -- the warning need only be implicit."

See also, Felicity Barringer, "Daily News Tries Flattery to Woo Back Grocery Ads," New York Times, June 14, 2001, p. B1 (after the New York Daily News published "a series of articles saying many city supermarkets were too dirty to meet state standards, all but one of the city's major supermarket chains have refused to advertise in the newspaper" and "some also stopped selling the newspaper"; "supermarket industry executives estimate the newspapers' weekly revenue loss at $50,000 to $100,000," leading to prompt "overture[s] by the newspaper's business executives to repair relations with an important group of advertisers").

And see Erik Barnouw, The Sponsor: Notes on a Modern Potentate, New York: Oxford University Press, 1978 (on the influence of advertising upon the growth and direction of U.S. radio and television); Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Boston: Beacon, Fifth Edition, 1997 (original 1983), especially chs. 7 and 9; Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media, New York: St. Martin's, 1986 (updated edition 1993), ch. 9; Pat Aufderheide, "What Makes Public T.V. Public?," Progressive, January 1988, pp. 35-38 (discussing the failure of public television to raise public debate as a result of its reliance on corporate underwriting); James Aronson, Deadline for the Media: Today's Challenges to Press, T.V. and Radio, New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972, pp. 261-263 (discussing a vicious local advertisers' boycott). And see chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnote 36.

55. For an account of how one major newspaper lost money by increasing its readership -- and more on the role of advertising in the media -- see chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnote 36. See also, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York: Pantheon, 1988, p. 14 (elaborating on how, in the present market, major print media cannot support their production and distribution costs based on sales alone).

56. For polls on support for the opposition parties in Nicaragua in the 1980s, see for example, Interamerican's Public Opinion Series, No. 7, June 4-5, 1988, Los Angeles: Interamerican Research Center, and C.I.S.P.E.S. [Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador], Alert!, March 1988 (reporting polls conducted under the auspices of the Centro Interamericano de Investigaciones in Mexico and the Jesuit University in Managua, showing that none of the opposition political groups in Nicaragua had the support of more than 3 percent of the population; combined, they had the support of 9 percent, less than one-third the support for the Sandinistas. As for President Ortega himself, 42 percent ranked him "good/excellent" and 29 percent "fair." For comparison, in a Jesuit University poll in El Salvador that received little notice, 6 percent of the respondents supported Duarte's Christian Democrats and 10 percent supported the ARENA party, while 75 percent stated that no party represented them).

On Kinzer's articles, see Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York: Pantheon, 1988, ch. 3.

57. For Chomsky's article, see Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, "Propaganda Mill: The media churn out the official line," Progressive, June 1988, pp. 14-17.

58. On the funding of Accuracy In Media, see for example, Louis Wolf, "Accuracy in Media Rewrites News and History," Covert Action Information Bulletin, Spring 1984, pp. 24-38 (giving a list of major donors to A.I.M. and their contributions, and describing the organization's hierarchy and origins); Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York: Pantheon, 1988, pp. 27, 343 n.105 (summarizing A.I.M.'s influence and funding base).

On overt corporate flak and pressures on the media, see footnote 75 of chapter 10 of U.P.; and footnote 54 of this chapter. On similar pressures in the education system, see footnote 8 of chapter 7 of U.P.

59. On the U.S. recruiting Nazis after World War II, see chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 80.

60. Leslie Cockburn's story was aired on the program West 57th on April 6, 1987, and is described in Tom Shales, "'West 57th,' Back With a Flash," Washington Post, April 6, 1987, p. C1. See also, Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control: The Story of the Reagan Administration's Secret War in Nicaragua, The Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra Drug Connection, New York: Atlantic Monthly, 1987.

For documentation of U.S. government involvement in drug-running, and on the media's treatment of this issue, see chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 79.

61. For the New York Times's reporting of the U.N.I.T.A. bombing, see A.P., "Pro-West Angola Rebels Say They Downed Plane," New York Times, November 11, 1983, p. A5 (one hundred-word report of U.N.I.T.A.'s downing of an Angolan airliner with all 126 passengers killed).

On the contrast in coverage with the K.A.L. 007 downing, see Edward S. Herman, "Gatekeeper versus Propaganda Models: A Critical American Perspective," in Peter Golding, Graham Murdock, and Philip Schlesinger, eds., Communicating Politics: Mass communications and the political process, New York: Holmes & Meier, 1986, pp. 181-195 at pp. 189, 184 (noting that "Newsweek and Time magazines never mentioned [the U.N.I.T.A. bombing]; the New York Times had three tiny wire services notices aggregating ten inches of space." In contrast, "The New York Times had 147 news items on the [K.A.L. 007 downing] in September 1983 alone, covering 2,789 column inches of space. For ten consecutive days, a special section of the newspaper was devoted to the case. C.B.S. evening News attended to the event on 26 separate evenings from 31 August to 30 September. Time and Newsweek each had three long and emotional articles on the subject in September, occupying a remarkable total of 1,490 column inches between them").

On the deficiencies of the Reagan administration's explanation of the K.A.L. 007 downing and its outright falsifications concerning the incident, see for example, R.W. Johnson, Shootdown: Flight 007 and the American Connection, New York: Viking, 1986; Seymour M. Hersh, "The Target Is Destroyed": What Really Happened to Flight 007 and What America Knew About It, New York: Random House, 1986. See also, Editorial, "The Lie That Wasn't Shot Down," New York Times, January 18, 1988, p. A18 (eventual acknowledgment that the Reagan administration knew that the Soviets did not know that K.A.L. 007 was a civilian aircraft, as proven by Freedom of Information Act discoveries made by Congressional Representative Lee Hamilton).

62. On the October 1976 bombing of the Cuban airliner, see for example, A.P., "78 Are Believed Killed as Cuban Jetliner Crashes in Sea After Blast," New York Times, October 7, 1976, p. 8 (fourteen-paragraph story); David Binder, "Havana Steps Up Airliner Security After Bombing Fatal to 73 and Seeks to Place the Blame on the C.I.A.," New York Times, November 1, 1976, p. 9 (another fourteen-paragraph report, noting the Cuban government's allegation that the C.I.A. was involved in the bombing); William Schapp, "New Spate of Terrorism: Key Leaders Unleashed," Covert Action Information Bulletin, December 1980, pp. 4-8 (on the rise of Orlando Bosch, the C.I.A.-trained terrorist who confessed to the bombing of the Cuban airliner, with the assistance of another C.I.A.-trained terrorist, Luis Posada); Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990, pp. 283-284 (on Luis Posada, the reported mastermind of the 1976 bombing); "United Nations: Cuba Cites More Evidence In Charges Against U.S.," Inter Press Service, May 27, 1992 (available on Nexis database)(on Cuba's continuing efforts to have the U.N. condemn the United States for the C.I.A.'s role in aiding and abetting the bombers; this wire-service article was not published by U.S. newspapers).

For a rare article in the U.S. press mentioning the Cuban airliner bombing years later, see Editorial, "A terrorist test for Bush," Boston Globe, August 18, 1989, p. 12. An excerpt:

President Bush is fending off an embarrassing bid by some in Miami's Cuban-American community to prevent the deportation of the godfather of anti-Castro terrorism, Orlando Bosch. . . . The June deportation order describes Bosch as "having repeatedly expressed and demonstrated a willingness to cause indiscriminate injury and death." The 62-year-old Cuban-born political fanatic barely bothers to deny the charge. . . .

Bosch is in a class with terrorists such as Abu Nidal. There is overwhelming evidence that he masterminded the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner taking off from Barbados that killed 73. He spent 11 years in jail in Venezuela for that atrocity. Bosch's partner in the airliner bombing was Luis Posada Carriles, freed from jail in Venezuela to become a logistics officer in the support team supplying the C.I.A.-backed contras in San Salvador in 1986.

63. For the New York Times's treatment of the Israeli airplane atrocity, see Editorial, "After Sinai," New York Times, March 1, 1973, p. 40 ("No useful purpose is served by an acrimonious debate over the assignment of blame for the downing of a Libyan airliner in the Sinai peninsula last week"); Editorial, "Tragic Blunder," New York Times, February 23, 1973, p. A32 ("there simply was a series of dreadful blunders"); Terence Smith, "Israelis Down A Libyan Airliner In The Sinai, Killing At Least 74; Say It Ignored Warnings To Land," New York Times, February 22, 1973, p. A1. An excerpt:

The Israeli Cabinet in a communiqué said that the jetliner had been intercepted as a "last resort. . . ." The Cairo radio . . . [said] the pilot reported that he had been having radio difficulty and had lost his way because of bad weather. Shortly afterward, the radio said, the pilot radioed that the Israelis were demanding that he land. . . .

Official reaction was guarded. Premier Golda Meir expressed it in a statement issued last night that said: "The government of Israel expresses its deep sorrow at the loss of life resulting from the crash of the Libyan plane in Sinai and regrets that the Libyan [sic; the pilot was a Frenchman subcontracted from Air France] pilot did not respond to the repeated warnings that were given in accordance with international procedure."

64. On Prime Minister Meir's smooth visit to the U.S. after the airplane bombing, see for example, John W, Finney, "Mrs. Meir In U.S. For 10-Day Visit," New York Times, February 27, 1973, p. A1; John W. Finney, "Ms. Meir Says Israel Feared a Suicide-Bombing by Airliner," New York Times, March 2, 1973, p. A4 ("Mr. Nixon gave assurance to Mrs. Meir, who is seeking $515-million in new credits and aid from the United States for additional weapons, 'of continuing United States support'").

After numerous lies -- including that the French pilot was not authorized to fly the jet plane -- Israel confirmed that there had been an "error of judgment" and agreed to make ex gratia payments (which were paid by the United States) to the families of victims "in deference to humanitarian considerations," while denying any "guilt" or Israeli responsibility. See for example, Terence Smith, "Israel Erred in Judgment On Libyan Jet, Dayan Says," New York Times, February 25, 1973, p. A1 ("'we erred -- under the most difficult of circumstances -- but that does not put us on the guilty side'"); Terence Smith, "Israel Decides To Pay Families of Crash Victims; Government Move Avoids Any Implication of Guilt," New York Times, February 26, 1973, p. A1; "Israelis Announce Payments In Crash," New York Times, March 7, 1973, p. A8 ("Israeli officials have not accepted full blame although they have stated that several mistakes were made, including some by the French pilot of the airliner"). For false claims by apologists that Israel "immediately accepted responsibility" and "paid reparations," see for example, Michael Curtis, "Flight 7: Faulty Analogy," New York Times, October 2, 1983, p. E18; Martin Peretz, "Washington Diarist," New Republic, October 24, 1983, p. 50.

65. On the Bandung plane bombing, see for example, "11 Reds in Air Crash On Way to Parley," New York Times, April 12, 1955, p. 1 (ten-paragraph article reporting the Air India plane's "crash in flames" in the South China Sea, with all of its passengers killed, including 8 Chinese officials flying from Hong Kong to the Bandung Conference); Brian Urquhart, Hammarskjold, New York: Knopf, 1972. An excerpt (pp. 121-122 n. "**"):

On November 21, 1967, John Discoe Smith, an American defector in Moscow, charged in an article in the weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta that the C.I.A. was involved in sabotaging the Air India plane on which Chou En-lai himself had been scheduled to travel to Bandung. Chou had changed his plans at the last minute, but all fifteen passengers had been killed when the plane crashed in the South China Sea off Sarawak. Smith claimed that he had delivered a suitcase containing the explosive mechanism to a Chinese Nationalist in Hong Kong. This mechanism was later recovered from the wreckage, and the Hong Kong police had called the incident a case of "carefully planned mass murder."

66. For U.S. media coverage of the Vincennes's attack, see for example, Richard Halloran, "The Downing of Flight 655: U.S. Downs Iran Airliner Mistaken For F-14; 290 Reported Dead; A Tragedy, Reagan Says; Action Is Defended," New York Times, July 4, 1988, p. A1 (the original press report); Editorial, "A Verdict on the Vincennes," New York Times, August 4, 1988, p. A24 ("the shootdown still seems the type of mishap almost impossible to avoid in the context. . . . From what is now known . . . the incident still must be seen not as a crime but as a blunder, and a tragedy").

For the eyewitness Navy Commander's revelations, see David R. Carlson [Commanding Officer of the U.S.S. Sides], "The Vincennes Incident," Proceedings: U.S. Naval Institute, Vol. 115, No. 9, Issue 1039, September 1989, pp. 87-92. The Commander of a U.S. escort frigate in the vicinity of the Vincennes at the time of the attack denounced the official apologias as founded on lies, remarking:

When the decision was made to shoot down the Airbus, the airliner was climbing, not diving; it was showing the proper identification friend or foe -- I.F.F. (Mode III); and it was in the correct flight corridor from Bandar Abbas to Dubai. . . . My experience was that the conduct of Iranian military forces in the month preceding the incident was pointedly nonthreatening. . . .

Having watched the performance of the Vincennes for a month before the incident, my impression was clearly that an atmosphere of restraint was not her long suit. Her actions appeared to be consistently aggressive, and had become a topic of wardroom conversation. "Who's driving the problem in Vincennes?" was a question asked on numerous occasions prior to 3 July. "Robo Cruiser" was the unamusing nickname that someone jokingly came up with for her, and it stuck. My guess was that the crew of the Vincennes felt a need to prove the viability of Aegis [its missile system] in the Persian Gulf, and that they hankered for an opportunity to show their stuff. . . . During the incident, the Sides was less than 20 nautical miles from the Vincennes and under the Vincennes's tactical command. . . . The Vincennes announced her intentions to take TN 4131 [the Iran Air plane] with missiles at 20 miles. I wondered aloud in disbelief.

David R. Carlson, "'Fog of War' Was a Cop-Out for Vincennes," Op-Ed, Los Angeles Times, September 3, 1989, part V, p. 5 (Carlson notes that the Commander of the Vincennes and the officer in charge of anti-air warfare were given the Legion of Merit award for the "calm and professional atmosphere" under their command during the period of the destruction of the Iranian airliner, and the air-warfare coordinator was given the Navy's Commendation Medal for "heroic achievement" and "ability to maintain his poise and confidence under fire," which enabled him to "quickly and precisely complete the firing procedure").

See also, Jane Fritsch and Ralph Frammolino, "Vincennes Crew Gets Upbeat Welcome Home," Los Angeles Times, October 25, 1988, p. 1. An excerpt:

The officers and crew of the Vincennes, the U.S. warship that mistakenly shot down an Iranian airliner in the Persian Gulf last July, got a boisterous, flag-waving welcome Monday. . . .

As the Vincennes pulled into a pier at the 32nd Street Naval Station on Monday morning, its loudspeakers blared the theme from the movie "Chariots of Fire" and nearby Navy ships saluted with gunfire. The reception, complete with balloons and a Navy band playing upbeat songs, was organized by Navy officials who did not want the Vincennes "to sneak into port," a public affairs officer said.

"U.S. disputes court's authority in Iran case," Chicago Tribune, March 6, 1991, zone C, p. 10 (noting that Washington rejected the World Court's jurisdiction when Iran called on the Court to order reparations); John Barry and Roger Charles, "Sea of Lies," Newsweek, July 13, 1992, p. 29 (four years after the incident, Newsweek, which had previously parroted the government line, broke ranks and reported the long-known facts).

67. Chomsky and Herman stress that this is the crucial point of the "Propaganda Model" -- and the observation should be underscored here, given our extensive citation in these footnotes to material that has been reported in the mainstream media. As Chomsky and Herman emphasize in Manufacturing Consent (pp. xiv-xv n.14):

In criticizing media priorities and biases we often draw on the media themselves for at least some of the facts. This affords the opportunity for a classic non sequitur, in which the citations of facts from the mainstream press by a critic of the press is offered as a triumphant "proof" that the criticism is self-refuting, and that media coverage of disputed issues is indeed adequate. That the media provide some facts about an issue, however, proves absolutely nothing about the adequacy or accuracy of that coverage. The mass media do, in fact, literally suppress a great deal, as we will describe in the chapters that follow. But even more important in this context is the question of the attention given to a fact -- its placement, tone, and repetitions, the framework of analysis within which it is presented, and the related facts that accompany it and give it meaning (or preclude understanding).

That a careful reader looking for a fact can sometimes find it with diligence and a skeptical eye tells us nothing about whether that fact received the attention and context it deserved, whether it was intelligible to the reader or effectively distorted or suppressed. What level of attention it deserved may be debatable, but there is no merit to the pretense that because certain facts may be found in the media by a diligent and skeptical researcher, the absence of radical bias and de facto suppression is thereby demonstrated. A careful reader of the Soviet press could learn facts about the war in Afghanistan that controvert the government line -- but these inconvenient facts would not be considered in the West to demonstrate the objectivity of the Soviet press and the adequacy of its coverage of this issue.

68. For the Freedom House study, see Peter Braestrup, Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington, Boulder, CO: Westview, and New York: Praeger, 1977 (2 volumes)(published in cooperation with Freedom House); abridged edition, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. On the role of Freedom House as a virtual propaganda arm of the international right wing and conservative elements of the government, see Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, Demonstration Elections: U.S.-Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador, Boston: South End, 1984, Appendix I.

69. For the enthusiastic media reaction to the Freedom House study, see for example, Townsend Hoopes, "In the Press of Battle," Washington Post Book World, August 7, 1977, p. G7 (lauding Big Story as a "massive, impressive analysis," "a landmark work of high quality and fascination" that is "unlikely to receive the wide study and reflection it deserves"); Edwin Diamond, "The Tet Media Test," New York Times Book Review, November 27, 1977, p. 30 (calling Big Story "conscientious," "painstakingly thorough" and "meticulous," and praising "its valuable lessons on how press performance can be improved").

70. For Chomsky's article on the Freedom House study, see Noam Chomsky, "10 Years After Tet: The Big Story That Got Away," More: The Media Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 6, June 1978, pp. 16f. This article also was published in an expanded version as: "The U.S. media and the Tet offensive," Race & Class (London), Vol. 20, No. 1, 1978, pp. 21f. See also, Gareth Porter, "Who Lost Vietnam?," Inquiry, February 20, 1978, pp. 6-9 (another critique of Big Story). The topic also is discussed in detail in Herman's and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York: Pantheon, 1988, ch. 5 and Appendix 3.

71. On the indigenous nature of the opposition to both the U.S.-backed client regime in South Vietnam and the U.S. invasion and attack on South Vietnam, see The Pentagon Papers, Senator Gravel Edition, Boston: Beacon, 1972 (parenthetical citations in this footnote refer to this edition unless otherwise noted).

The Pentagon Papers -- the top-secret official U.S. Defense Department history of American involvement in Indochina -- makes clear the fallacy of claims both that the North Vietnamese government was a Soviet puppet, and that the peasant insurgency in South Vietnam was instigated and led by the North. When the Pentagon Papers was leaked to the press in 1971, one of its most remarkable revelations was that, in an internal planning record of more than two decades, the Defense Department analysts were able to discover only one staff paper "which treats communist reactions [to events in Indochina] primarily in terms of the separate national interests of Hanoi [North Vietnam], Moscow, and Peiping [China], rather than primarily in terms of an overall communist strategy for which Hanoi is acting as an agent" (Vol. II, p. 107, referring to "Special National Intelligence Estimate of November 1961"). Chomsky points out that it is amusing to trace the efforts to establish that Ho Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese leader, was merely a Russian (or Chinese) puppet. In July 1948, the State Department could find "no evidence of direct link between Ho and Moscow" -- but naturally "assumes it exists" (Vol. I, p. 5).

In the Fall of 1948, State Department intelligence found evidence of "Kremlin-directed conspiracy . . . in virtually all countries except Vietnam" -- Indochina appeared "an anomaly" (emphasis added). The most likely explanation for this, according to U.S. intelligence, is that "no rigid directives have been issued by Moscow" or that "a special dispensation for the Vietnam government has been arranged in Moscow" (Vol. I, pp. 5, 34). In September 1948, the State Department noted: "There continues to be no known communication between the U.S.S.R. and Vietnam, although evidence is accumulating that a radio liaison may have been established through the Tass agency in Shanghai." American officials in Saigon added: "No evidence has yet turned up that Ho Chi Minh is receiving current directives either from Moscow, China, or the Soviet Legation in Bangkok" -- "It may be assumed," they conclude from this, "that Moscow feels that Ho and his lieutenants have had sufficient training and experience and are sufficiently loyal to be trusted to determine their day-to-day policy without supervision." By February 1949, the State Department was relieved to discover that "Moscow publications of fairly recent date are frequently seized by the French" [France was the colonial power in Vietnam before the U.S.] -- indicating that "satisfactory communications exist," though their channel still remained a mystery (see U.S. Government Offset Edition of the Pentagon Papers, Department of Defense, United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-67, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971, Book 8, pp. 148, 151, 168 [while censored, this edition includes valuable documents unavailable elsewhere]).

It was the same story with China: for example, in June 1953, a National Intelligence Estimate noted that "there has been surprising[ly] little direct cooperation between local Chinese Communists and the Viet Minh" [i.e. the Vietnamese rebels during the struggle against France] -- "We are unable to determine whether Peiping or Moscow has ultimate responsibility for Viet Minh policy" (Vol. I, p. 396).

Indeed, so marginal was the Soviet interest in Southeast Asia prior to the American escalation of the war in 1964 that the U.S. National Security Council Working Group, in November 1964, expressed the view that "Moscow's role in Vietnam is likely to remain a relatively minor one," noting:

Moscow's ability to influence decisions in Hanoi tends consequently to be proportional to the North Vietnamese regime's fears of American action against it, rising in moments of crisis and diminishing in quieter periods. Moscow's willingness to give overt backing to Hanoi, however, seems to be in inverse proportion to the level of threat to North Vietnam.

The Report also concludes that "Chinese Communist capabilities to augment D.R.V. [North Vietnamese] offensive and defensive capabilities are slight" (Vol. III, p. 215). Following the escalation of the U.S. attack against South Vietnam in 1964, however, the "period of nearly three years of diligent [Soviet] detachment" came to an end, and "the Soviet Union. . . reentered Southeast Asian politics in an active way" with a "reported Soviet pledge in November [1964] to increase economic and military aid to North Vietnam" and subsequent warnings that it would support the D.N.V. in the face of the naval attacks on its coast and U.S. air attacks in Laos (which were then approaching the North Vietnamese border) (Vol. III, pp. 266-267). Furthermore, so far as was known, the only Chinese directly engaged in Indochina were the "few Chinese Nationalists" involved in covert operations against North Vietnam (Vol. III, p. 500).

Similarly unsupported were the U.S. government's claims that the South Vietnamese peasant movement was instigated and controlled by North Vietnam. The Pentagon Papers analyst -- discussing the origins of the 1958 South Vietnamese insurgency against the U.S.-client Diem regime, which was imposed as their government after the 1954 Geneva Accords -- notes that "no direct links" had been established between Hanoi and the Southern Vietnamese insurgents in the 1956-1959 period, though still he tends, rather cautiously, towards the view that "some form of D.R.V. [North Vietnamese] apparatus" may have "originated and controlled the insurgency" during those years (Vol. I, pp. 34, 243).

In the end, the Pentagon Papers analyst limits himself to the conclusion that "whether or not the rebellion against Diem in South Vietnam proceeded independently of, or even contrary to directions from Hanoi through 1958, Hanoi moved thereafter to capture the revolution" -- and the evidence that Hanoi did in fact "capture the revolution" is "the rapid growth of the N.L.F." after 1960, which, the analyst reasoned, "is a further indication that the Hanoi-directed communist party apparatus had been engaged to the fullest in the initial organization and subsequent development of the N.L.F." in South Vietnam [the "N.L.F.," or National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, was the popularly-based anti-colonial indigenous revolutionary movement, the so-called "Viet Cong"] (Vol. I, p. 265). Douglas Pike, a former U.S. foreign service officer and professor, using similar reasoning, offered as proof that Ho Chi Minh must be the N.L.F.'s "master planner" the fact that the N.L.F. "projected a social construction program of such scope and ambition that of necessity it must have been created in Hanoi" -- see Douglas Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1966, p. 76. Chomsky remarks: in the face of such powerful argumentation, one can only lapse into silence.

The Pentagon Papers also demonstrate conclusively that when the United States undertook its major escalation of the war in February 1965, it knew of no regular North Vietnamese military units in South Vietnam. In fact, the first reference in the U.S. government's internal planning record to regular North Vietnamese units being present in South Vietnam is in a C.I.A./D.I.A. [Defense Intelligence Agency] Memorandum of April 21, 1965, which "reflected the acceptance into the enemy order of battle of one regiment [sic] of the 325th P.A.V.N. Division said to be located in Kontum Province." As the Pentagon Papers analyst notes, this was "most ominous . . . a sobering harbinger of things to come" -- not, however, a continuation of what had come before, and what had supposedly been the basis for the U.S. escalation: i.e. the U.S. government's January 1965 allegation that the entire 325th Division had entered South Vietnam, thereby entitling the U.S. to respond under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter to "aggression by means of an armed attack" (Vol. III, p. 438). Moreover, on July 2, 1965, the Assistant Secretary of Defense was still concerned with the possibility that there might be North Vietnamese forces in or near South Vietnam -- as he stated, "I am quite concerned about the increasing probability that there are regular P.A.V.N. forces either in the II Corps area [in South Vietnam] or in Laos directly across the border from II Corps" (Vol. IV, p. 291) -- and on July 14, 1965, the Joint Chiefs of Staff included only one regiment of the 325th P.A.V.N. Division in their estimate of the total of 48,500 "Viet Cong organized combat units" (Vol. IV, p. 295). By comparison, note that the Honolulu Meeting of April 20, 1965, had recommended that American forces be raised to 82,000, supplemented with 7,250 Korean and Australian troops (2,000 Koreans had been dispatched on January 8, 1965, and at the time there were 33,500 U.S. troops in the country) (Vol. III, p. 706). In June, the United States decided "to pour U.S. troops into the country as fast as they could be deployed" (Vol. II, p. 362). And in mid-July, probably by July 17, President Johnson approved the request that the United States troop level be raised to 175,000 (Vol. IV, pp. 297, 299). Chomsky comments: in light of these facts alone, the claim that the United States was defending South Vietnam from an armed attack when it dramatically escalated the war in 1965 is merely ludicrous.

Recall, for example, that April 1965 -- the date of the first mention in the internal record of a lone North Vietnamese regiment, not a "Division," in South Vietnam -- was two months after the initiation of regular and intensive U.S. bombing of North and South Vietnam; it was eight months after the U.S. bombed strategic targets in North Vietnam in "retaliation" for the Tonkin Gulf incident [in which the Johnson administration falsely claimed that two U.S. destroyers were fired upon by North Vietnamese torpedo boats]; and it was fourteen months after the earlier escalation of U.S. military pressure against North Vietnam on February 1, 1964. Furthermore, by the end of 1964, the U.S. troop level had reached 23,000, and the U.S. military by that point had been directly engaged in combat operations in Vietnam for three full years (Vol. II, p. 160). Moreover, the Johnson administration's "aggression from the North" thesis quickly was devastated by analyses of its White Paper of 1965 -- see for example, Editorial, "White Paper on Vietnam," New Republic, March 13, 1965, p. 5 (noting that the White Paper only names six North Vietnamese infiltrators, and pointing out that most "infiltrators" from the North were actually Southerners returning to their homes); I.F. Stone, "A Reply to the White Paper," I.F. Stone's Weekly, March 8, 1965, p. 1 (reporting, among other things, that less than two and one-half percent of weapons captured by the U.S. were of Communist origin).

Thus, the fundamental problem in establishing the United States' case was that American military intervention preceded and was always far more extensive than the North Vietnamese involvement -- leaving aside the question of the relative rights of North Vietnamese and Americans to be fighting in South Vietnam after the unification provisions of the Geneva Agreements were subverted. In general, the U.S. leadership knew that "The basic elements of Communist strength in South Vietnam remain indigenous," with a corresponding "ability to recruit locally"; and it also recognized that the N.L.F. "enjoys some status as a nationalist movement," whereas the U.S.-backed military government of South Vietnam "is composed primarily of technicians and has about it a caretaker aura." As the National Security Council Working Group on Vietnam concluded: the Saigon government's "success so far in avoiding open mass opposition is encouraging, but even if the government can avoid a direct public confrontation, the lack of positive support from various key segments of the populace seems certain to hamper its effectiveness" (Vol. III, pp. 651-656, N.S.C. Working Group on Vietnam, Sec. 1: "Intelligence Assessment: The Situation in Vietnam," November 24, 1964, Document 240).

By February 1966, the American force level passed 200,000, and it was alleged that 11,000 North Vietnamese troops were in South Vietnam. By December 1967, the American force level was approaching half a million, and it was alleged that 50,000 to 60,000 North Vietnamese troops were in the South (about the same number as the force of South Koreans that were fighting for the United States). There also were Chinese forces -- namely, mercenaries from Chiang Kai-Shek's army introduced by Kennedy and Johnson to fight on the U.S. side, six companies of combat infantry by April 1965. Furthermore, North Vietnamese regular units, estimated by the Pentagon at about 50,000 by 1968, were largely in peripheral areas; in contrast, U.S. mercenary forces were rampaging in the heartland of South Vietnam, as was the U.S. military itself. Korean mercenaries reached 50,000 by 1969, along with another 20,000 "Free World," and over a half-million U.S. troops by that point. See George Kahin, Intervention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam, New York: Knopf, 1986, pp. 207-208, 307-308, 333-336; Douglas Kinnard, The War Managers, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1977, pp. 37-38; Chester Cooper, The Lost Crusade: America in Vietnam, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1970, pp. 266-267, 277; Theodore Draper, Abuse of Power, New York: Viking, 1966, pp. 73-80.

Chomsky notes that none of these exposures made a dent on the typical mainstream editorial, news article, column, or presentation of administration handouts. Even after the Pentagon Papers was leaked -- vindicating the hardest of hard-line dove analyses of the real source of the aggression, locating it firmly in Washington -- the mythical truth about North Vietnamese aggression held firm in the U.S. press. Chomsky adds that some have been misled in their analysis of the media in the period by the fact that one journal, the New York Review of Books, was open to dissident opinion during the peak years of popular protest in the late 1960s: those doors closed in the early 1970s, and there were few other examples.

72. On U.S. intelligence's pessimistic assessment after the Tet Offensive, see for example, Document #132, "General Wheeler's [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] Report to President Johnson After the Tet Offensive," in the New York Times edition of the Pentagon Papers, New York: Bantam, 1971. An excerpt (pp. 615-617):

The enemy is operating with relative freedom in the countryside, probably recruiting heavily and no doubt infiltrating N.V.A. [North Vietnamese army] units and personnel. His recovery is likely to be rapid. . . . R.V.N.A.F. [the U.S.-client South Vietnamese army] is now in a defensive posture around towns and cities and there is concern about how well they will bear up under sustained pressure.

The initial attack [in the Tet Offensive] nearly succeeded in a dozen places, and defeat in those places was only averted by the timely reaction of U.S. forces. In short, it was a very near thing. There is no doubt that the R.D. Program [the so-called civilian "pacification" program] has suffered a severe set back. . . . To a large extent the V.C. now control the countryside. . . . Under these circumstances, we must be prepared to accept some reverses.

Note that at the time of the Tet Offensive, the Boston Globe surveyed 39 major American newspapers -- with a combined circulation of 22 million people -- and found that not a single one of them had called for U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. See Min S. Yee, "Vietnam: The U.S. press and its agony of appraisal," Boston Globe, February 18, 1968, p. 2A.

73. At the left-liberal end of the mainstream spectrum, attitudes towards the Vietnam War have ranged from those expressed by Anthony Lewis [the argument against the war "was that the United States had misunderstood the cultural and political forces at work in Indochina -- that it was in a position where it could not impose a solution except at a price too costly to itself"; see "Ghosts," New York Times, December 27, 1979, p. A23] to those of Irving Howe ["We opposed the war because we believed, as Stanley Hoffman has written, that 'Washington could "save" the people of South Vietnam and Cambodia from communism only at a cost that made a mockery of the word "save"'"; see "The Crucifixion of Cambodia," Dissent, Fall 1979, pp. 391f at p. 394]. In short, the argument against the war was either the cost to us or the cost to them -- as we determine it. In contrast, Chomsky notes, we opposed the Russian invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan because aggression is wrong, whatever its costs to either party.

74. For Sheehan's book, see Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, New York: Random House, 1988.

75. For discussion of Vann's unpublished and untitled memorandum, which was circulated within the military in 1965 and given personally by Vann to Professor Alex Carey of the University of New South Wales in Australia, see Noam Chomsky, For Reasons of State, New York: Pantheon, 1973, pp. 232-233. Vann's premises were that a social revolution was in process in South Vietnam, "primarily identified with the National Liberation Front," and that "a popular political base for the [U.S. client] Government of South Vietnam does not now exist." "The dissatisfaction of the agrarian population . . . today is largely expressed through alliance with the N.L.F." "The existing government is oriented toward the exploitation of the rural and lower class urban populations." Therefore, since it is "naive" to expect that "an unsophisticated, relatively illiterate, rural population [will] recognize and oppose the evils of Communism," Vann called for the United States to institute "effective political indoctrination of the population" under an American-maintained "autocratic government."

76. On the main tradition of "democratic" thought in the West, see the text above this footnote in U.P., and footnotes 39, 40 and 41 of this chapter.

77. For the American military leadership's statements of concern about a domestic crisis in the U.S., see the Pentagon Papers [the top-secret official U.S. Defense Department history of American involvement in Indochina, leaked to the press in 1971], Senator Gravel Edition, Boston: Beacon, 1972 (parenthetical citations in this footnote refer to this edition).

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, considering additional U.S. troop deployments to Vietnam after the Tet Offensive in 1968, noted that they had to make sure that "sufficient forces would still be available for civil disorder control" (Vol. IV, p. 541). Similarly, a Pentagon Working Group warned in a top secret Defense Department memorandum in March 1968 that increased force levels in Vietnam would lead to "growing disaffection accompanied, as it certainly will be, by increased defiance of the draft and growing unrest in the cities," and ran "great risks of provoking a domestic crisis of unprecedented proportions" (Vol. IV, p. 564). A classified internal document acknowledged that "[t]he massive anti-war demonstration organized in Washington on October 21 [1967]" and the "massive march on the Pentagon" were a serious problem for the administration, commenting: "the sight of thousands of peaceful demonstrators being confronted by troops in battle gear cannot have been reassuring to the country as a whole nor to the President in particular" (Vol. IV, pp. 217, 197). The Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, John McNaughton, noted in secret that escalation of the land war beyond South Vietnam might lead to massive civil disobedience within the United States, particularly in view of opposition to the war among young people, the underprivileged, the intelligentsia, and women (Vol. IV, pp. 481-482, 478). He added (Vol. IV, p. 484):

[A]n important but hard-to-measure cost is domestic and world opinion: There may be a limit beyond which many Americans and much of the world will not permit the United States to go. The picture of the world's greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1000 non-combatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one. It could conceivably produce a distortion in the American national consciousness and in the world image of the United States -- especially if the damage to North Vietnam is complete enough to be "successful."

Note that here McNaughton is referring only to casualties from the U.S. attack on North Vietnam -- not to the much larger attack on the South.

See also, for example, Thomas Oliphant, "Harrington says admiral discussed N. Viet invasion," Boston Globe, April 15, 1972, p. 1 (reporting the testimony of Admiral Thomas Moorer before the House Armed Services Committee that "if domestic restraints were relaxed the U.S. would have the option of bombing Haiphong harbor in North Vietnam and launching amphibious assaults behind North Vietnamese lines," and quoting Congressman Michael Harrington that the "restraints" Moorer had in mind were "the activities of the peace movement and of the press"); David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, New York: Random House, 1969. An excerpt (p. 653):

In late March, Johnson summoned his Senior Advisory Group on Vietnam, a blue-chip Establishment group. These were the great names of the Cold War: McCloy, Acheson, Arthur Dean, Mac Bundy, Douglas Dillon, Robert Murphy. And over a period of two days they quietly let him know that the Establishment -- yes, Wall Street -- had turned on the war; it was hurting us more than it was helping us, it had all gotten out of hand, and it was time to bring it back to proportion. It was hurting the economy, dividing the country, turning the youth against the country's best traditions. Great universities, their universities, were being destroyed. It was time to turn it around, to restore some balance. At one of the briefings of the Wise Men it was Arthur Goldberg, much mocked by some of the others, who almost single-handedly destroyed the military demand for 205,000 more troops.

78. On the developments within the American army, see for example, David Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt: The American Military Today, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975.

79. On the commonplace nature of My Lai-type massacres, see for example, Krista Maeots, "Vietnam has many My Lais -- Canadian M.D.," Ottawa Citizen, January 12, 1970, p. 13. Dr. Alje Vennema, director of a Canadian anti-tuberculosis hospital in Quang Ngai Province near My Lai until August 1968 -- he left because he felt that he could do nothing useful there anymore, since "My service was futile" -- reported that he knew of the My Lai slayings at once, but did nothing "because it was nothing new." He explained:

There was a massacre at Son-Tra in February of 1968, and another incident during the summer in the Mo-Duc district. . . . I had heard this type of story many times before, however, and had spoken to U.S. and Canadian officials about the senseless killings of civilians that were going on. . . . They were being talked about among the Vietnamese people, but no more than other incidents. . . . [T]here were 600 foreign correspondents in the country at that time. The story was effectively suppressed at the time.

For similar reports, see for example, U.P.I., "Colonel Says Every Large Combat Unit in Vietnam Has a Mylai," New York Times, May 25, 1971, p. 13 (Colonel Oran K. Henderson, the highest-ranking officer to have faced court-martial charges for the My Lai massacre, explained that "every unit of brigade size has its Mylai hidden some place," although such incidents remained undisclosed because "every unit doesn't have a Ridenhour [the Vietnam veteran who went public with the My Lai massacre more than a year after it occurred]"); "A Doctor Reports from South Vietnam -- Testimony by Erich Wulff," in John Duffett, ed., Against the Crime of Silence: Proceedings of the Russell International War Crimes Tribunal, New York: O'Hare, 1968, pp. 522-536 (testimony of Erich Wulff before Bertrand Russell's Tribunal on War Crimes in Vietnam in 1967, with descriptions of torturing of prisoners, creation of "free fire zones," and the destruction of the village of Phu Loc); Bertrand Russell, War Crimes in Vietnam, London: Allen and Unwin, 1967 (recounting almost unbearable narratives of torture and violence); Jonathan Schell, The Military Half: An Account of Destruction in Quang Ngai and Quang Tin, New York: Knopf, 1968 (describing the war in Quang Ngai and Quang Tin Provinces in unforgettable detail); Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program, New York: Morrow, 1990 (one of the best histories of what really happened in Vietnam).

80. For Life magazine's story on My Lai, see Hal Wingo, "The Massacre at Mylai," Life, December 5, 1969, pp. 36f. See also, Seymour Hersh, My Lai 4: a report on the massacre and its aftermath, New York: Random House, 1970; Seymour M. Hersh, Cover-up: The Army's Secret Investigation of the Massacre at My Lai 4, New York: Random House, 1972; Richard L. Strout, "Tragic human costs of war," Christian Science Monitor, November 24, 1969, p. 1. An excerpt:

American press self-censorship thwarted Mr. Ridenhour's disclosures [about My Lai] for a year. "No one wanted to go into it," his agent said of telegrams sent to Life, Look, and Newsweek magazines outlining allegations. . . . Except for the recent antiwar march in Washington the event might not have been publicized. In connection with the march a news offshoot (Dispatch News Service) of the left-wing Institute of Policy Studies of this city aggressively told and marketed the story to approximately 30 United States and Canadian newspapers.

81. On the Piers Commission's findings, see for example, Seymour Hersh, "The Army's Secret Inquiry Describes a 2nd Massacre, Involving 90 Civilians," New York Times, June 5, 1972, p. 10.

Few winced when the New York Times published a think-piece from My Lai on the fifth anniversary of the massacre, and noted that the village and region remained "silent and unsafe," though the Americans were still "trying to make it safe" by relentless bombardment and shelling. The reporter then quoted villagers who accused the U.S. of killing many people, adding philosophically: "They are in no position to appreciate what the name My Lai means to Americans." See A.P., "Five years later, My Lai is a no man's town, silent and unsafe," New York Times, March 16, 1974, p. 2.

82. On South Africa's black soldiers, see for example, Kurt Campbell, "Marching for Pretoria" [cover title: "The Warriors of Apartheid: Inside South Africa's Military Establishment"], Boston Globe Magazine, March 1, 1987, pp. 16f.