Chapter Four

Colloquy

1. For books critiquing the media, see for example, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York: Pantheon, 1988; Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Boston: Beacon, Fifth Edition, 1997 (original 1983); Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media, New York: St. Martin's, 1986 (updated edition 1993); Mark Hertsgaard, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, New York: Schocken Books, 1989; Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990; Edward S. Herman, Beyond Hypocrisy: Decoding the News in an Age of Propaganda, Montreal: Black Rose, 1992. See also, John C. Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You!: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995, especially ch. 11.

2. Chomsky's article discussing the U.S. reaction to the 1990 election in Nicaragua is reprinted in Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, New York: Hill and Wang, 1991 (expanded edition 1992), ch. 10.

3. For an example of the "liberal" reaction to the 1990 Nicaraguan elections, see Anthony Lewis, "Out of this Nettle," New York Times, March 2, 1990, p. A33 (at the dissident extreme within the mainstream media, Lewis noted that the U.S. policies produced "misery, death and shame," and that "the economic distress that no doubt moved some Nicaraguans to vote for Mrs. Chamorro was caused in part, after all, by U.S. sanctions" -- then stated that the result of Washington's "experiment in peace and democracy" gave "fresh testimony to the power of Jefferson's idea: government with the consent of the governed. . . . To say so seems romantic, but then we live in a romantic age").

For another example, see Michael Kinsley, "Taking Responsibility: Effect of 80's U.S. Nicaragua Policy on Chamorro Victory," New Republic, March 19, 1990, p. 4 (noting that "the contra war managed to kill more than 30,000 Nicaraguans," that "Impoverishing the people of Nicaragua was precisely the point of the contra war and the parallel policy of economic boycott and veto of international development loans," and that "the economic disaster was probably the victorious opposition's best election issue" -- then hailing the "free election" as a "triumph of democracy" that "turned out to be pleasanter than anyone would have dared to predict").

For a third example, see Tom Wicker, "Bush and Managua," New York Times, March 1, 1990, p. A27 (noting that the Sandinistas lost the election "because the Nicaraguan people were tired of war and sick of economic deprivation" -- but nonetheless calling the elections "free and fair").

For another typical reaction by a U.S. commentator, see Johanna McGreary, "But Will It Work?," Time, March 12, 1990, p. 12. This article acknowledges that U.S. policy was to:

wreck the economy and prosecute a long and deadly proxy war until the exhausted natives overthrow the unwanted government themselves. . . . Since 1985 Washington has strangled Nicaraguan trade with an embargo. It has cut off Nicaragua's credit at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The contra war cost Managua tens of millions and left the country with wrecked bridges, sabotaged power stations and ruined farms. The impoverishment of the people of Nicaragua was a harrowing way to give the National Opposition Union (U.N.O.) a winning issue. . . . Nicaragua had been devastated by a 40% drop in G.N.P., an inflation rate running at 1,700% a year and constant shortages of food and basic necessities. At least 30,000 people had been killed in the war, and 500,000 more had fled.

Nevertheless, McGreary states that, with the victory of U.N.O.,

democracy burst forth where everyone least expected it. Given the chance to vote in an honest and secret election, Nicaraguans decisively repudiated the Sandinista government, which the U.S. had been struggling to overthrow for a decade.

4. For the New York Times article, see David Shipler, "Victory for U.S. Fair Play," Op-Ed, New York Times, March 1, 1990, p. A27. An excerpt:

It is true that partly because of the confrontation with the U.S., Nicaragua's economy suffered terribly, setting the stage for the widespread public discontent with the Sandinistas reflected in Sunday's balloting. But few governments become moderate during a war; the contra war strengthened Sandinista hard-liners and probably contributed to their oppressive policies. The way to resolution opened only when Congress suspended the war, in effect, to give the Sandinistas a chance to proceed democratically. . . . Thus, Nicaragua's election has vindicated Washington's fledgling program of providing public, above-board funding to help democratic procedures take root in countries with authoritarian regimes.

5. For the Boston Globe's article, see Editorial, "Rallying to Chamorro," Boston Globe, February 27, 1990, p. 12. An excerpt:

[H]aving supported the election of Chamorro, the U.S. must, to shore up the Chamorro regime, match the millions it spent trying to overthrow Ortega. Ortega's defenders in the U.S., if they love Nicaraguans and not just Sandinistas, must now rally to Chamorro. . . . The Sandinista revolution, still potent as an opposition force, is now, like so many Marxist-Leninist phenomena, consigned to the dustbin of history. Another blessing of democracy is that outside theories mean little. At long last, Nicaragua itself has spoken.

6. For Sciolino's article, see Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, February 27, 1990, p. A14 (the headline "Americans United In Joy, But Divided over Policy" appeared in the "News Summary" section on p. A2).

7. For Cranston's statement, see U.S. Senate, Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Policy Toward Nicaragua: Aid to Nicaraguan Resistance Proposal, 99th Congress, 2nd Session, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, February 27 and March 4, 1986 (C.I.S. #S381-20), p. 5 (Cranston stated: "So how do we deal with a government which we deplore, like the government of Nicaragua? I believe we should isolate it, leave it to fester in its own juices"). On the methods used in El Salvador and Guatemala, see chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 13; and chapter 2 of U.P. and its footnote 15.

8. For Cockburn's and Ryan's articles, see Alexander Cockburn, "U.S.-Backed Terrorism Won in Nicaragua, Not Democracy," Wall Street Journal, March 1, 1990, p. A17; Randolph Ryan, "In Nicaragua, a win but not a victory," Boston Globe, February 28, 1990, p. 11.

For a chilling review of Nicaragua's fate since the elections, see for example, Noam Chomsky, World Orders Old and New, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, pp. 131-135; Kevin Baxter, "Under the Volcano: Neoliberalism Finds Nicaragua," Nation, April 6, 1998, p. 21; Hugh O'Shaughnessy, "Nicaragua vies with Haiti as West's nightmare," Observer (London), September 12, 1993, p. 15. An excerpt:

Nicaragua is now challenging Haiti for the unwanted distinction of being the most destitute country in the Western Hemisphere. . . . Retinues of tiny, hungry children wait at every set of traffic lights [in Managua], eager to wipe your car or simply begging. Infant mortality is the highest in the continent and, according to the U.N., a quarter of Nicaraguan children are malnourished. Diseases such as cholera and dengue fever are rampant. Only four in 10 people have jobs. Begging, theft, robbery and prostitution are on the increase.

People will do anything for a meal. There are soup kitchens on virtually every street corner. Women boil up fish heads in large cauldrons or cook bitter-tasting but nutritious soya biscuits in order to save tens of thousands of youngsters from starvation. . . . The country's leaders seem to care little. Finance Minister Emilio Pereira boasts that Nicaragua has the lowest inflation in the western hemisphere -- never mind that its four million people are starving. Most Nicaraguans say life was much better under the Sandinistas, who ruled in the Eighties. Their health, nutrition, literacy and agrarian programmes have been scrapped by a government pressed by the International Monetary Fund and Washington to privatise and cut public spending.

9. On U.S. propaganda in rural Nicaragua, see for example, Howard Frederick, "Electronic Penetration," in Thomas Walker, ed., Reagan versus the Sandinistas: the Undeclared War on Nicaragua, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987, pp. 123-142. For comparison of media conditions in Sandinista Nicaragua and those in the United States during wartime -- as well as in the leading U.S. client-state, Israel -- see Noam Chomsky, "U.S. Polity and Society: The Lessons of Nicaragua," in Thomas Walker, ed., Reagan versus the Sandinistas: the Undeclared War on Nicaragua, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987, pp. 285-310. See also, John Spicer Nichols, "The Media," in Thomas Walker, ed., Nicaragua: The First Five Years, New York: Praeger, 1985, pp. 183-199; Michael Linfied, Freedom Under Fire: U.S. Civil Liberties in Times of War, Boston: South End, 1990 (reviewing censorship and other civil liberties violations in the United States during wartime). And see chapter 8 of U.P. and its footnotes 4, 6 and 7.

10. On the contras' mission to attack "soft targets," see for example, Fred Kaplan, "U.S. general says contra chances improving," Boston Globe, May 20, 1987, p. 9. An excerpt:

Gen. John Galvin, leader of the U.S. southern command, told a House subcommittee yesterday that the contra rebels fighting to overthrow the Nicaraguan government have a better chance of winning than they did just a few months ago and attributed his growing optimism to the contras' new strategy of attacking civilian targets instead of soldiers.

Testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Western Hemisphere subcommittee, Galvin said, "The contras have a fighting chance if we sustain them" with continued military aid. "It's getting better. In the past few months, I'm more hopeful than I was before." Asked after the hearing what the contras have achieved the past few months, Galvin replied, "Lots of victories. They're going after soft targets. They're not trying to duke it out with the Sandinistas directly."

Julia Preston, "Rebels Still Seeking a Win," Washington Post, September 8, 1987, p. A1 (quoting a U.S. military analyst that the contras are "'still going after small, soft targets,' like farmers' cooperatives"); Editorial, "America's Guilt -- Or Default," New York Times, July 1, 1986, p. A22 (noting that the World Court ruled unanimously "that the C.I.A.'s manual encouraging 'contra' attacks on civilians breached humanitarian principles"); Julia Preston, "Contras Burn Clinic During Raid on Village," Washington Post, March 7, 1987, p. A25 (reporting that the contras, "reportedly in high spirits and outfitted by the C.I.A.," among other things "burned down a church-sponsored health clinic that had been the pride of the community" in the isolated Nicaraguan village of Tapasle); Ellen V.P. Wells, "Letter," New York Times, December 31, 1988, section 1, p. 22 (describing a contra attack on a coffee-harvesting cooperative, in which two people were killed, the coffee equipment was ruined, and ten houses and a health clinic were destroyed).

For additional accounts of contra atrocities, see Reed Brody [Assistant Attorney General of New York State], Contra Terror in Nicaragua -- Report of a Fact-finding Mission: September 1984-January 1985, Boston: South End, 1985. This book reprints 150 affidavits and 140 pages of testimony gathered in a fact-finding mission conducted in the early 1980s, the results of which were independently corroborated by the Washington Office on Latin America, a private church-supported human rights organization, and other human rights organizations. In the affidavits, a mother of two from the Nicaraguan village of Esteli reports (p. 120):

[F]ive of them [i.e. contras] raped me at about five in the evening . . . they had gang-raped me every day. When my vagina couldn't take it anymore, they raped me through my rectum. I calculate that in 5 days they raped me 60 times.

A man describes a contra attack on his cooperative in April 1984 (p. 71):

They had already destroyed all that was the cooperative; a coffee drying machine, the two dormitories for the coffee cutters, the electricity generators, 7 cows, the plant, the food warehouse. There was one boy, about 15 years old, who was retarded and suffered from epilepsy. We had left him in a bomb shelter. When we returned . . . we saw . . . that they had cut his throat, then they cut open his stomach and left his intestines hanging out on the ground like a string. They did the same to Juan Corrales who had already died from a bullet in the fighting. They opened him up and took out his intestines and cut off his testicles.

See also, Thomas Carothers, "The Reagan Years: The 1980s," in Abraham F. Lowenthal, ed., Exporting Democracy: The United States and Latin America, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991, pp. 90-122 at p. 104 ("Over thirty thousand Nicaraguans were killed in the contra war and tens of thousands wounded, which in per capita terms was significantly higher than the number of U.S. persons killed in the U.S. Civil War and all the wars of the twentieth century combined"). And see footnote 12 of chapter 1 of U.P.

11. On U.S. economic warfare against Nicaragua, see for example, Michael Conroy, "Economic Aggression as an Instrument of Low-Intensity Warfare," in Thomas Walker, ed., Reagan versus the Sandinistas: the Undeclared War on Nicaragua, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987, pp. 57-79, especially pp. 67f.

12. On Nicaragua's economic devastation by the late 1980s, see for example, Richard Boudreaux, "Poor Pay, Inflation Spur Exodus; Nicaraguans Leaving in Droves as Economy Sinks," Los Angeles Times, November 20, 1988, part 1, p. 1 (quoting economic advisor Francisco Mayorga that: "We are watching Nicaragua become a land of peasants, a place so poor that it resembles Haiti or the northeast of Brazil. The country is disintegrating"); Mark Uhlig, "A Sandinista Promise Gone Sour Alienates Nicaragua's Working Class," New York Times, November 7, 1989, p. A10. An excerpt:

Battered by galloping inflation, Nicaraguan workers have seen their real wages fall by more than 90 percent since 1981. . . . Over the last two years, the Sandinista government has taken tough measures to halt the economy's rapid deterioration, which Government officials ascribe to the heavy burden of the eight-year war against American-backed rebels. . . . Economists [point out that] it was compounded by an American embargo on trade with Nicaragua, poor Government management and uncontrolled inflation caused by high military expenditures. . . . [O]fficial figures show that per capita private consumption has fallen by at least 70 percent under Sandinista rule.

The article also notes the connection drawn by Nicaraguans between the election result and ending the embargo:

Several [Managua workers] said that if relations with the United States were the answer to the economic crisis the opposition was better suited for the job. Well-publicized foreign donations to the opposition parties here have been interpreted by many Nicaraguans as proof that the opposition, not the Sandinistas, has better access to the foreign money necessary to relieve Nicaragua's crisis.

13. On the White House's announcement that the embargo against Nicaragua would continue unless Chamorro won, see for example, A.P., "Bush Vows To End Embargo If Chamorro Wins," Washington Post, November 9, 1989, p. A56. The opening paragraphs:

President Bush promised Wednesday to lift the trade embargo against Nicaragua if the U.S.-backed presidential candidate, Violeta Chamorro, defeats leftist President Daniel Ortega in the February election. The statement came after a meeting in which Chamorro asked Bush for aid to help with economic reconstruction after the election. . . .

[Bush] supports Chamorro's candidacy and signed a $9 million election aid package that will in large part boost her campaign. A statement issued by White House spokesman Roman Popadiuk said Chamorro had stressed in a letter to Bush that her administration "would be committed to reconciliation . . . and reconstruction of the economy in peace and democracy." "Should this occur, the president said the United States would be ready to lift the trade embargo and assist in Nicaragua's reconstruction," the statement said. The embargo was imposed in May 1985, banning imports from or exports to Nicaragua.

See also footnote 12 of this chapter.

The "election aid package" mentioned in the above article would be equivalent to a flow of $2 billion into a U.S. election campaign. The United States spent more than $10 per Nicaraguan voter, in a country where the average wage is $20 per month. The U.S. -- as distinct from totalitarian Nicaragua -- does not permit any monetary contributions from abroad for such purposes. See C. Scott Littlehale, "U.S. ignores most candidates in Nicaragua," C.O.H.A.'s [Council On Hemispheric Affairs] Washington Report on the Hemisphere, November 8, 1989, p. 5.

14. For Orwell's introduction, see the fiftieth anniversary edition of Animal Farm, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995 (the introduction also is reprinted in Guardian (U.K.), Features Page, August 26, 1995). An excerpt (pp. 162-163 of the Harcourt Brace edition):

The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.

Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news -- things which on their own merits would get the big headlines -- being kept right out of the British press, not because the government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that "it wouldn't do" to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is "not done" to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was "not done" to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

15. There is a more detailed discussion of the educational system in chapter 7 of U.P.

16. On exposure to media in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, see for example, James R. Miller and Peter Donhowe, "The Classless Society Has a Wide Gap Between Rich and Poor; But poll finds most satisfied with living conditions," Washington Post National Weekly Edition, February 17, 1986, p. 16 (studies of Soviet society based on interviews with former Soviet citizens now living in the United States found that 96 percent of the middle elite and 77 percent of blue-collar workers in the Soviet Union listened to foreign radio broadcasts, while the alternative press reached 45 percent of high-level professionals, 41 percent of political leaders, 27 percent of managers, and 14 percent of blue-collar workers).

17. On Danchev's broadcasts, see for example, "Moscow Radio (Oops!) Calls Soviets 'Invaders,'" New York Times, May 24, 1983, p. A5; Serge Schmemann, "Moscow's Facade on War and Peace Cracks a Bit," New York Times, May 29, 1983, section 1, p. 6.

18. On the U.S. media and the "invasion" of Vietnam, see footnote 10 of chapter 2 of U.P.

19. For LeMoyne's story, see James LeMoyne, "As Salvadoran Vote Nears, Political Killings Increase," New York Times, February 29, 1988, p. A12. The relevant passage:

In addition, there have been rebel killings aimed directly at stopping the elections next month. Villagers say guerrillas publicly executed two peasants in the town of Guatajiagua in Morazan department three weeks ago because they had applied for and received new voter registration cards.

According to the villagers, the guerrillas placed the voting cards of Juan Martin Portillo and Ismael Portillo in their mouths after executing them as a warning to others not to take part in the elections. Rebel units in the area have told all villages not to vote and not to propose candidates for mayor.

20. For Norton's story, see Mark Cooper, L.A. Weekly, May 27-June 2, 1988; Chris Norton, "U.S. Media Promotes Salvadoran Army Disinformation," Extra! [F.A.I.R. journal], Vol. 12, No. 1, July/August 1988, p. 1; Alexander Cockburn, "The Natural History of LeMoyne, Continued," Nation, August 27, 1988, p. 155.

21. For the New York Times's correction, see "Editors' Note," New York Times, September 15, 1988, p. A3. An excerpt:

The article fell short of the Times's reporting and editing standards. It should not have left the impression that it was based on firsthand interviewing, and it should have explained why firsthand confirmation was not available.

LeMoyne later conceded that he was not even in El Salvador at the time. See D.D. Guttenplan, "Perestroika at the Times?," Newsday (Long Island, NY), September 21, 1988, part II, p. 2.

22. On the contras' technological sophistication and support, see for example, James LeMoyne, "In Nicaragua, Forebodings of Warfare Without End," New York Times, June 28, 1987, section 4, p. 3. An excerpt:

The Central Intelligence Agency has equipped the rebels with a computer center that intercepts and decodes hundreds of Sandinista radio messages a day. The intelligence is then sent via portable computers with special encoders to rebel units in the field. The C.I.A. also makes weekly air drops to the units, a highly effective tactic that has allowed the contras to remain inside Nicaragua rather than to have to return to Honduras as they did in the past. "The air operation is the key to the war," said a Western diplomat in Managua who monitors the rebels. "Without it, the contras couldn't make it."

Marjorie Miller, "Lagging C.I.A.-Run Resupply Called Factor in Slow Progress of Contras," Los Angeles Times, March 1, 1987, part 1, p. 6 (reporting the contras' complaints that they need more pilots and aircraft, and discussing their reliance on U.S. air supply); Peter Grier, "Contras, Awash in U.S. Funds, Buy Weapons," Christian Science Monitor, June 23, 1987, p. 1 (on contra leaders' requests for "more light planes, and small boats for river patrol"); Julia Preston, "Civilians Still Caught in the Cross Fire of Contra War," Washington Post, February 4, 1988, p. A25 (noting that the contras had equipment so modern that all U.S. military units did not yet have it).

23. On the State Department's allegations about an arms flow from Nicaragua to the F.M.L.N. in El Salvador, see for example, Morris Morley and James Petras, The Reagan Administration and Nicaragua: How Washington Constructs Its Case for Counterrevolution in Central America, New York: Institute for Media Analysis, 1987, pp. 40-45 (reviewing the major State Department claims).

24. For David MacMichael's testimony before the International Court of Justice (the World Court) on September 16, 1985, see U.N. General Assembly Record, U.N. A/40/907, S/17639, November 19, 1985, pp. 24-66, especially pp. 29-39.

For the World Court's decision, see International Court of Justice, Reports of Judgments, Advisory Opinions and Orders: 1986, "Case Concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua" (Nicaragua v. United States of America), Judgment of June 27, 1986. An excerpt (paragraph 153):

[E]vidence of military aid from or through Nicaragua remains very weak. This is so despite the deployment by the United States in the region of extensive technical resources for tracking, monitoring and intercepting air, sea and land traffic . . . and its use of a range of intelligence and information sources in a political context where, moreover, the [U.S.] Government had declared and recognized surveillance of Nicaragua as a "high priority." The Court cannot of course conclude from this that no transborder traffic in arms existed, although it does not seem particularly unreasonable to believe that traffic of this kind, had it been persistent and on a significant scale, must inevitably have been discovered, in view of the magnitude of the resources used for that purpose. The Court merely takes note that the allegations of arms-trafficking are not solidly established; it has not, in any event, been able to satisfy itself that any continuing flow on a significant scale took place after the early months of 1981.

The Court also ruled (pp. 126-128, especially paragraphs 249 and 252) that, as a matter of law, even if such an arms supply existed, it would not constitute "armed attack" justifying a U.S. response, as the U.S. government had claimed. See also chapter 3 of U.P. and its footnotes 43, 44 and 45.

25. For a foreign report of Nicaraguans' ability to locate contra arms-supply flights, see for example, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, "Who Helped Oliver North?," Spectator (U.K.), May 16, 1987, p. 13 ("Captain Ricardo Wheelock, the head of the Sandinista military intelligence, was even able to give us fairly precise details of these flights, but nobody bothered to chase the story until Eugene Hasenfus [a C.I.A. pilot] was shot down and captured last October"). See also footnote 27 of this chapter.

26. For LeMoyne's story on arms supplies to El Salvador, see James LeMoyne, "Latin Pact Seen as Helpful to Duarte," New York Times, August 13, 1987, p. A10 ("The rebels deny receiving such support from Nicaragua, but ample evidence shows it exists, and it is questionable how long they could survive without it").

27. On escalating U.S. supply flights after the peace accords, see for example, U.N. General Assembly [Plenary Meetings], A/42/P.V.67, November 16, 1987, p. 7 (report of 275 supply and surveillance flights detected from August 7, 1987 to November 3, 1987). Chomsky clarifies his point about the United States's actions (Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, Boston: South End, 1989, p. 92):

The United States was of course not a signatory, so technically speaking it could not "violate" the accords. An honest accounting, however, would have noted -- indeed, emphasized -- that the United States acted at once to render the accords nugatory. Nothing of the sort is to be found.

28. On Lelyveld's letter, see Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, "LIE: The Sandinistas seek to export their revolution by arming Salvadoran guerrillas," Extra!, October/November 1987, p. 5 (Lelyveld stated that LeMoyne's terminology was "imprecise," but "even our best correspondents -- and James LeMoyne is one of our best -- are not perfect").

29. For repetitions of the arms flow falsehood in the New York Times, see for example, statements and assumptions in George Volsky, "Contras Agree to Attend Truce Talks," New York Times, January 18, 1988, p. A6; Stephen Engelberg, "Salvador Rebel Arms: Noriega Link?," New York Times, December 18, 1987, p. A8; Bernard Trainor, "Contras' Future: Crippled as Warriors," New York Times, April 3, 1988, section 1, p. 16.

30. For the interchange of letters with Lelyveld, see Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, "The New York Times Recants," Extra!, Vol. 2, No. 2, September/October 1988, p. 2.

31. For LeMoyne's final story on the topic, see James LeMoyne, "Salvador Rebels: Where Do They Get the Arms?," New York Times, November 24, 1988, p. A14. An excerpt:

The charges are extremely difficult to prove. Evidence of Sandinista support for the rebels is largely circumstantial and is open to differing interpretations. It includes accounts of deserters who could lie or exaggerate.

32. For discussion of the media as a propaganda organ, see chapter 1 of U.P.

33. For the Congressional report on COINTELPRO, see U.S. Senate, Final Report of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations, Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, 94th Congress, 2nd Session, Report No. 94-755, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976, Books II and III, especially Book III, p. 223. This report extensively reviews the F.B.I.'s COINTELPRO program; provides reprints of F.B.I. memoranda and fake letters sent to disrupt and promote violence within activist groups; and also documents the Bureau's role in the killing of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969.

The extensive literature on COINTELPRO includes the following studies: James Kirkpatrick Davis, Spying On America: The F.B.I.'s Domestic Counterintelligence Program, New York: Praeger, 1992; Ross Gelbspan, Break-ins, Death Threats, and the F.B.I.: The Covert War Against the Central America Movement, Boston: South End, 1991; Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the F.B.I.'s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States, Boston: South End, 1990 (includes dozens of photographically-reproduced COINTELPRO documents, mostly stolen from top secret F.B.I. files); Brian Glick, War at Home: Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It, Boston: South End, 1989; Ward Churchill and James Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The F.B.I.'s Secret Wars on the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, Boston: South End, 1988; Robert J. Goldstein, Political Repression in Modern America, From 1870 to the Present, Cambridge: Schenkman, 1978; Morton H. Halpern et al., The Lawless State: The Crimes of U.S. Intelligence Agencies, New York: Penguin, 1976; Nelson Blackstock, ed., COINTELPRO: The F.B.I.'s Secret War on Political Freedom, New York: Random House, 1976 (includes dozens of reproduced documents). See also, John C. Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You!: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995, especially ch. 5 (on COINTELPRO-style tactics that are being carried out by corporations, with the assistance of P.R. firms).

On the scale of the COINTELPRO program, see for example, Frank J. Donner, The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System, New York: Knopf, 1980. An excerpt (pp. 127, 131, 137):

Despite widespread criticism of over-targeting, as late as 1975 the [F.B.I.] was conducting surveillance of 1100 organizations and their subdivisions. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Thousands of individuals fall under intelligence scrutiny, either as primary targets or as the subject of an "investigative matter" as a result of their suspected or confirmed involvement in group activities. Thus, the G.A.O. [Congress's General Accounting Office] . . . concludes that in 1974, out of a sample of some 19,659 domestic intelligence case files, about 90 percent (17,528) involved individual targets investigated because of a suspected relationship (membership, support) to a target group or, in a relatively small number of cases, because of a suspected personal involvement in an activity, such as a demonstration. This concentration on individuals accounts for the enormous number, 930,000 in all, of investigations conducted by the Bureau from 1955 to 1978. In a single year, 1972, the Bureau opened some 65,000 domestic files with an internal or national security classification. . . .

While Do Not File procedures for destroying records of burglaries as well as cover-ups of field data preclude an accurate compilation, a more realistic estimate of burglaries to steal information and forcible entries to install microphones from the early forties until the early seventies against domestic targets is close to 7500. . . . [T]he relative prominence of informers as a surveillance tool [is] corroborated by subsequent government submissions in the course of litigation: from 1940 until April 1978, the F.B.I. deployed some 37,000 informers -- 29,166 in classification 134 (security) and 7893 in 170 (racial and extremist). . . . Even as late as 1976, in the face of mounting criticism, the F.B.I. fiscal year budget allocated $7,401,000 for its political informer programs, more than twice the budget for organized crime informers.

See also, William M. Kunstler, "Writers of the Purple Page," Nation, December 30, 1978, pp. 721f (presenting stories of F.B.I. anonymous mailings to employers, loved ones, and organizations to help destroy activists' lives and thereby help neutralize them, and to fragment and divert activist groups); John Kifner, "F.B.I., Before Raid, Gave Police Plan of Chicago Panther's Flat," New York Times, May 25, 1974, p. A14 (on the Fred Hampton assassination).

34. On the bombing of Cambodia being "secret" due to the U.S. media's failure to report what they knew, see for example, U.S. Senate, Hearings Before the Committee on Armed Services, Bombing in Cambodia, 93rd Congress, 2nd Session, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, July/August 1974, pp. 158-160. These hearings confirm that information about the U.S. bombings of Cambodia was publicly available as early as nine days after they began, with a March 27, 1969, Press Release from the Royal Government of Cambodia, distributed through the Foreign Broadcast Information Service. This Press Release stated that "the Cambodian population living in the border regions has been bombed and strafed almost daily by U.S. aircraft, and the number of people killed, as well as material destruction, continues to grow." On April 2, 1969, the same source then distributed excerpts from a press conference held by the reigning monarch of Cambodia, Prince Sihanouk, in which he stated:

[The media] pretend that I would not oppose U.S. bombings of communist targets within my frontiers. But I have never said that I would not oppose this. Nobody, no chief of state in the world placed in the same same [sic] situation as I am, would agree to let foreign aircraft bomb his own country. . . . It is not only the communists who receive U.S. bombs on their heads. Unarmed and innocent people have been victims of U.S. bombs. You know very well that in Cambodia . . . we were very bitter and angry [at] news about the latest bombing, the victims of which were Khmer peasants, women and children in particular. I wish to reaffirm that I have always been opposed to the bombings.

Prince Sihanouk then appealed to the Western press "to publicize abroad this very clear stand of Cambodia -- that is, I will in any case oppose all bombings on Cambodian territory under whatever pretext. I will oppose them under whatever pretext for the simple reason, I repeat, that the victims of U.S. bombings are never the communists but only the peasants and children." Sihanouk's opposition to the American bombing has since been erased from history. See for example, Seth Mydans, "Death of Pol Pot," New York Times, April 17, 1998, p. A14 (claiming that Sihanouk did not oppose the U.S. bombing).

See also, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York: Pantheon, 1988, pp. 274-280 (reviewing the dispatches from Cambodia which actually appeared in the U.S. press); Noam Chomsky, At War With Asia: Essays on Indochina, New York: Pantheon, 1970, pp. 122-125 (referring to numerous publicly available sources on the U.S. bombing of Cambodia, including a Cambodian Government White Paper of January 3, 1970, years before there was coverage of it by the U.S. press); Noam Chomsky, "Nixon's defenders do have a case," More, December 1975, pp. 28-29.

35. On the casualty figures for the U.S. bombing of Cambodia, see chapter 3 of U.P. and its footnotes 61, 62 and 63.

36. On the popularity of the daily labor press in England and its audience's involvement, but its fatal inability to attract capital, see for example, James Curran, "Advertising and the Press," in James Curran, ed., The British Press: a Manifesto, London: MacMillan, 1978, pp. 229-267. An excerpt (pp. 251-253):

The Daily Herald's central problem was not that it appealed to fewer people but that it appealed to the wrong people. . . . [The Daily Herald appealed] overwhelmingly to working-class rather than to middle-class readers. These characteristics had correlates in terms of purchasing behaviour that made the Daily Herald a highly marginal advertising medium. . . . But if the Daily Herald was lacking in appeal to advertisers it did not lack in appeal to a section of the general public. . . . The Daily Herald "idea" may be regarded as misguided, its readers can be dismissed as being of no social consequence. But there were, as it happens, a lot of them -- in fact over five times as many readers as those of The [London] Times. . . . With 4.7 million readers in the last year, the Daily Herald actually had almost double the readership of The Times, the Financial Times and the Guardian combined. Indeed, when it was forced to close, the Daily Herald was probably amongst the twenty largest circulation dailies in the world. It died, not from lack of readers, but because its readers did not constitute a valuable advertising market. Regular Daily Herald readers were also exceptionally devoted to their paper. Unpublished survey research shows that Daily Herald readers thought more highly of [and read more in] their paper than the regular readers of any other popular newspaper. . . .

[T]he Daily Herald was only one of a number of casualties of the advertising licensing system. The News Chronicle, a legatee of the dissenting radical, liberal tradition, was forced to close in 1960 with a circulation six times that of the Guardian, and over double that of The Times and the Guardian combined. It paid a heavy price for appealing to an inferior quality of reader (even though its readers were almost as devoted as Herald readers). . . . The radical Sunday Citizen . . . also finally succumbed in 1967, after being progressively strangulated by lack of advertising support.

Similarly, the study describes how the mainstream London Times lost money in the late 1960s and early 1970s by seeking a wider readership. Although its circulation rose by fully 69 percent through "an aggressive promotion campaign that recruited large numbers of lower-middle and even working-class readers," that change did not create a corresponding increase in advertising to offset the costs, and the paper "was forced to set about shedding part of its new readership as a conscious act of management policy" (p. 258).

See also, Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990, p. 59 ("T.V. and radio get nearly 100 percent of their income from advertisers, newspapers 75 percent, and magazines about 50 percent. . . . Between 60 and 70 percent of newspaper space is reserved for ads, while 22 percent of T.V. time is filled with commercials"); Erik Barnouw, The Sponsor: Notes on a Modern Potentate, New York: Oxford University Press, 1978 (on the constraining influences of advertising on the media); Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Boston: Beacon, Fifth Edition, 1997 (original 1983), especially chs. 6 to 9; James Curran and Jean Seaton, Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain, London: Routledge, 1981, pp. 118-132; Alfred McClung Lee, The Daily Newspaper in America: The Evolution of a Social Instrument, New York: Macmillan, 1937. And see chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 54.

37. For the "breed, and bleed, and advertise their misery" statement, see Ruth Wisse [then a Professor at McGill University in Montreal, now a Professor at Harvard and Director of its Center for Jewish Studies], "Israel and the Intellectuals: A Failure of Nerve?," Commentary, May 1988, p. 20. The quotation in the text is exact.

38. For commentary in Israel on Palestinians "raising their heads" and similar degradation, see for example, Gad Lior, Yediot Ahronot (Israel), January 24, 1988; Shulamith Hareven, Yediot Ahronot (Israel), March 25, 1988; Avigdor Feldman, Hadashot (Israel), January 1, 1988; Amnon Denkner, Ha'aretz (Israel), January 9, 1994; Olek Netzer, Davar (Israel), January 20, 1993; Zvi Barel, Ha'aretz (Israel), April 20, 1982; Yedidia Segal, Nekudah (Israel), September 3, 1982.

On the conditions under which the Palestinians have lived since the 1967 Israeli occupation, see for example, Raymonda Hawa Tawil, My Home, My Prison, New York: Holt, Rienhart, 1980; Rafik Halabi, The West Bank Story, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1981; Raja Shehadeh, The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank, London: Quartet, 1982; Norman G. Finkelstein, The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

In a stirring early account -- unfortunately now out of print -- Chomsky described some of these conditions in more detail (Towards A New Cold War: Essays on the Current Crisis and How We Got There, New York: Pantheon, 1982, pp. 275-278):

Occasional reports in the U.S. press of the more sensational incidents (e.g. the terrorist bombings in which two West Bank mayors were severely injured, or the practice of firing on demonstrators) do not give an adequate picture of the real story of systematic degradation, humiliation, and suppression of even the most minimal form of national self-expression. The character of the occupation is revealed more clearly by these regular practices. A few examples will serve to illustrate the general picture.

In a Jerusalem suburb, the army forced hundreds of inhabitants from their homes at midnight, then "concentrating" them outdoors a kilometer away for a two-hour lecture warning against "rioting." A man of sixty-five who was ill was compelled to go by force. Inhabitants of the Daheisha refugee camp south of Bethlehem complain that on the night of December 25, 1979, the camp was surrounded by soldiers and all inhabitants between the ages of fourteen and sixty-five were compelled to stand outside in a driving rain from midnight to noon the next day while soldiers searched the houses; the governor warned of similar punishments if children continued to throw stones at Israeli cars. A man who asked why he was being arrested was beaten up while soldiers broke furniture in his house. On January 29, four hundred males from ages ten to seventy were again dragged from their houses at eight P.M. and made to stand outside in a cold winter rain for thirteen hours. The same thing happened at the refugee camp of Jalazoun, where inhabitants were compelled to spend an entire night out of doors in a snowstorm: "Children had probably thrown stones at Israeli cars after the chemistry laboratory of the school was destroyed by settlers, who did this in retaliation for stones being thrown, probably following cars being sabotaged in the camp by settlers, after children threw stones, etc., etc., etc." Refugees report that "the new method, actually not so new, but much more sophisticated, is humiliation. The soldiers and the settlers want first of all to humiliate us. But they don't understand that we have lost everything and the only thing we have left is our honor and that they will never be able to take that away from us." Shortly after, thousands of dunams of cultivated land were sprayed by planes with herbicides in villages near Hebron, partly within the Green Line and partly within the occupied West Bank; several weeks earlier the same punishment had been meted out by the Green patrol, under the command of Minister of Agriculture (now Minister of Defense) Ariel Sharon, in the area of Kafr Kassem.

"Residents of Silwad village, north of Ramallah, complain that during a curfew that was imposed last weekend on the village by the military government, soldiers broke into their homes, and that some of them beat up youths, humiliated adults and old people, stole vast sums of Israeli and foreign currency, and destroyed large quantities of food." The reporter, Yehuda Litani, writes that "at first I could not believe what I heard, but the details (which were also told to other reporters) were repeated again and again in all versions by different people in the village. Only one woman lodged a complaint, the others felt that it was useless to complain." Soldiers terrorized the village, beating old people and children with their hands and rifle butts. An eleven-month-old baby was taken out of a cradle and thrown on the floor. Schoolbooks and children's notebooks were destroyed. "Their whole aim was to take revenge on us and to humiliate us," one villager reported. Brutal treatment continued when some were taken away for questioning. It was later announced that investigators "had verified some o