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