PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR
Modern Psychological Operations (Psy-Ops) were significantly
advanced in the Second World War 25
and were brought to bear on the American public during the 1950s with the
formation of a widespread network of social scientists, journalists,
politicians, military specialists and intelligence operatives.
Psy-Ops were used to promote a
variety of programs in cooperation with the Industrial Military Complex.
Their key piece of information
warfare was the Communist Red Menace.26
25 See William
E. Daugherty and Morris Janowitz, A Psychological Warfare Casebook, Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1958. In particular, see Daugherty’s
article on “US Psychological Warfare Organizations in World War II,” pp.
126-136.
26 For a current view of these kinds of
operations and how they are outsourced see James Bamford’s article in the
Rolling Stone, The Man Who Sold the War Meet John Rendon, Bush’s General In The
Propaganda War, November 17, 2005. For more information on CIA control of the
media refer to Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media—How America’s Most
Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency
and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up”, Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977,
p.63 - the title of the original operation was “Mockingbird” influence
was global in scope, counting among his close friends Henry Luce, publisher of
Newsweek.
One of the opening salvos in this war of deception was fired by George
Kennan, the American ambassador to Moscow, describing the Soviet threat in
a “long cable” sent to Washington in 1946.
Kennan spent decades studying the Russian political scene. He became convinced
that there would be little chance of cooperation with the Soviets and
recommended a number of actions, most notably the institution of “political
war” through the newly formed CIA - a decision he later regretted, even arguing
for the elimination of the CIA in 1997.27
In the late 1950s, a right-wing
cadre of men within the new CIA was busy building secret armies, planning
assassinations, and generally devising plans for world domination that still
play out today.
Operation Gladio was one example, well documented and international in
scope, in which right-wing members of the US intelligence community created
“stay-behind” armies in many of the nations of Europe. Those armies managed to
infiltrate the highest levels of politics (most notably in Italy where the term
“Gladio” refers to a double-edged sword) and have been held responsible for
numerous false-flag terrorist acts through the 1980s and 1990s. Terror and
propaganda often go hand-in-hand in the extremist elements within our
military and intelligence communities.28
To counter the divisions within the intelligence community, a greater voice was
given to organizations formal and informal. In the 1950s, one such group, the
first Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), promulgated a series of
“gap crises.” The Bomber Gap, the Missile Gap, the Space Gap, and the
Brainwashing and Psychotronic Gap were used to justify increased military
technology spending.
Congress was led to believe that
the Soviets were a much greater threat than they actually were, and that a
terrifying new weapon was being developed that threatened America. They were
thus convinced to vote for virtually any black budget proposal that came their
way. The CPD ran a series of broadcasts to the public through the Mutual
Broadcasting Network that spread fear in the minds of the public.
Under the first civilian CIA Director, Allen Welsh Dulles, the Company
began to push forward with its agenda of manufacturing consent from the
American people for a new state of perpetual war industrialization. Dulles was
a well-connected individual, a successful spy for the OSS in Switzerland during
the war, related to three secretaries of state, and the chief advisor to Dewey
when he ran for President in 1948.
Dulles had access to the highest
echelons of policy making and his influence was global in scope, counting among
his close friends Henry Luce, publisher of Newsweek.
27 George F.
Kennan. “Spy and Counterspy.” The New York Times, May 18, 1997. For a sympathetic
biography see George F. Kennan and The Making of American Foreign Policy,
1947-1950, Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C, 1993 Princeton University Press. George
F. Kennan. “Policy Planning Staff memorandum on the inauguration of organized
political warfare,“ May 4, 1948. Published in Foreign Relations of the United
States, 1945-1950: Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment. Discusses the
need for political warfare: that is, measures short of war, such as propaganda
and covert operations.
28 History News Network, USA 13 June 2005,
Terrorism in Western Europe: An Approach to NATO’s Secret Stay-Behind Armies,
by Daniele Ganser, The Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International
Relations 1 June 2005, Kennan published his analysis anonymously in Foreign Affairs,
the official magazine of the Council for Foreign Relations (CFR). [Mr. X (Alias
‘George C. Kennan): “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” in Foreign Affairs, July
1947.]
(http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/documents/collection_gladio/Terrorism_Western_Europe.pdf)
Relying heavily upon established circles of contacts within the nation’s media
elites, Dulles recruited key members of the media to work directly for the CIA
under Operation Mockingbird. Mockingbird was a psychological information
campaign against the American people.
In a campaign that would lead to acceptance of blanket secrecy for “national
security”, “the Red Scare” became the excuse for spending vast sums of money on
weapon systems and an increase in covert operations both in foreign countries
and within the United States.
In the 1950s and 1960s, movies,
news articles, books, radio and television programs were carefully laced with
anti-Communist messages and images designed to produce an acceptance of the
policies being promoted by the defense elite’s propaganda machine.29
“Among the executives who lent
their cooperation to the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting
System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times,
Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal and James Copley of the
Copley News Service.
Other organizations, which cooperated with the CIA,
include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company,
the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers,
Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, The Miami
Herald, and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune. By far
the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been
with The New York Times, CBS, and Time Inc.”
30
One of the engineers of this
deception was a former head of the stay-behind network, Edward W. Barrett,
director of the Interdepartmental Psychological Strategy Board (IPSB)
and, not coincidentally an editor at Newsweek.
Barrett was seen as being very
effective in his efforts to manipulate public opinion. At the same time, CPD
was a “non-political group of citizens of the western coast” and launched a
media campaign in favor of the urgent reinforcement of the national defense.
Among the organizers of the Committee were Frank Altschul (Director of
the Council for Foreign Relations), William Donovan (former head of the
OSS during WWII) and General Dwight D. Eisenhower.31
All of this activity was more than enough to stoke the fears of the public and
encourage policy makers to accept the Cold War view of the world.
This allowed Truman to convince
Congress to approve a tripled military budget that provided funding for secret
research and development and turn a blind eye (in the name of National
Security) to “black operations” programs authorized under the new Cold War
rubric of “containment” and aimed at undermining otherwise peaceful nations and
fomenting war, torture and assassination in countries as diverse as Iran,
Guatemala and Indochina.32
29 Victor Marchetti and John D.
Marks, The CIA and The Cult of Intelligence, Dell Books,1975 (as a matter of
general interest this is reportedly the first book the Government went to court
to have censored. There are 168 missing pages as a result of the courts ruling
but the spaces were retained in the first edition.)
30 “The CIA and the Media,” Carl Bernstein
Rolling Stone, Oct. 20, 1977
31 David F. Krugler, Will It Play in Peoria?
The 1950 Campaign of Truth and the Reconstruction of Cold War Propaganda,
British Association of American Studies Annual Conference April 1997 University
of Birmingham, Birmingham, England
Post-war developments in Europe, especially the British withdrawal from Greece,
led Truman to decide it was necessary to have a permanent American presence in
the old continent to counteract the Communist influence.33
General George C. Marshall,
Secretary of State, designed a vast plan that mixed economic assistance and
secret actions aimed at establishing democracies and making sure that voters in
foreign countries made “the right choice.” National Security Council directive
NSC 10/2, essentially written by Kennan, made official the creation of an
anti-Communist interference network.34
The US intelligence community had an ace in the hole, Reinhardt Gehlen,
a Nazi spymaster with an existing network of agents became the front man in
Eastern Europe for American intelligence.
General Reinhardt Gehlen proved to be troublesome for the CIA over the years.
Communist counterspies infiltrated his network, his information was often
incorrect, and he had downplayed his eagerness to serve the Reich. But Gehlen
was only one of thousands of Nazis recruited to assist in the new “Cold War”
through Operation Paperclip.35 In fact, the intelligence assets acquired by
bringing the Gestapo onto the US public payroll was overshadowed by the
acquisition of dozens of brilliant Nazi scientists and researchers.
At this juncture, Truman, through the application of the 1947 National Security
Act and the newly formed National Security Council36, authorized a vast number of secret
projects involving chemical, biological, nuclear and electromagnetic
experiments. Former Nazis were put in charge of many of the most sensitive
programs and facilities. The Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA)
was entrusted to the former SS officer Wernher von Braun. 37 Kurt Debus, another ex-SS
officer, directed Cape Canaveral.
At this time scientists began
working on “black” projects in earnest, including attempts at finally
developing the “lost” theories of Nikola Tesla, the Serbian-born American
physicist, into military and intelligence applications.38
33 Daniele Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies.
Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, Frank Cass Publishers, 2004.
34 See the Federation of American Scientists
Intelligence resource program, National Security Council [NSC] Truman
Administration [1947-1953] at http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsc-hst/index.html.
35 Linda Hunt, Secret Agenda: The United
States Government, Nazi Scientists and Project Paperclip, 1945-1990, St.
Martin’s Press, 1991.
36 The National Security Act of 1947 can be
accessed at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/cwr/17603.htm
37 Biography of Werner VonBraun produced by
NASA: www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/sputnik/braun.htm
and at the Marshall Space Flight Center located at http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/index.html
38 Hunt, L. Secret Agenda. The United States
Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990. New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1991. Simpson, C. “Blowback. The First Full Account of
America’s Recruitment of Nazis, and the Disastrous Effect on Our Domestic and
Foreign Policy.” New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988 - Source: Peter Phillips, Lew Brown and Bridget Thornton, December 2006, Sonoma State University, Project Censored, Media Freedom Foundation, ProjectCensored Website, (READ MORE) #US Electromagnetic Weapons and Human Rights, #electromagneticweapons, #HumanRights, #OSEH, #MindControl, #DEW
