Gordon Willis, “Photographing All the President’s Men,” American Cinematographer, Feb 4, 2019 (1976)
As the yellow journalism of Pulitzer and Hearst suggests, misinformation has long circulated. In a letter from the 19th century, President Thomas Jefferson conveyed exasperation with the press, characterizing it as a vehicle of malevolence and deceit in which “political enemies torture every sentence from me into meanings imagined by their own wickedness.”1 Jefferson lamented, “The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.” A longer excerpt scorns deception:
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world.
Despite its shortcomings, framers of the American Constitution endowed as primary among all rights the right of press freedom, citing the fiduciary responsibility of the Fourth Estate, so-called for its mission to hold governmental power and corruption to public account.2
Remarkably, in response to political attacks to undermine the Union war effort, Abraham Lincoln violated the Bill of Rights, censoring anti-war and Confederate sentiment: “Authorities banned pro-peace newspapers from the U.S. mails, shut down newspaper offices and confiscated printing materials. They intimidated and sometimes imprisoned reporters, editors and publishers who sympathized with the South.”3
During the Great Depression, the Rockefeller Foundation supported research on media-communications strategies. A study entitled, “The Radio Research Project,” sought methods to inculcate and manipulate the masses through public messaging. It was held at Princeton University and overseen by Frank Stanton who went on to become President of C.B.S. and later Chairman of the Rand Corporation, a military think-tank. During McCarthyism, Stanton established an internal affairs agency at C.B.S. to spy on his own journalists who—as left-leaning liberals—were suspected by J. Edgar Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation of harboring communist affinity. Under Stanton’s watch, blacklists and purges became routine.
Committee on Public Misinformation
Edward Bernays was a 20th century American theorist credited with cultivating public relations, a field bridging media-communications, advertising, and promotion. A nephew of Sigmund Freud, his family emigrated from Vienna at the turn-of-the-century. Drawing from psychology and sociology, his expertise lay in social engineering, what he deemed, “engineering consent.”
Social engineering Any act that influences a person to take an action that may or may not be in their best interest.* Governments employ social engineering methods on a regular basis in efforts to sway public opinion to support government actions. Psyop operations are often created by governments for formalized social engineering tactics.4
Intrigued by group–think and mass-mobilization, Bernays viewed people as interdependent actors within a social network. He understood man as a herd animal; motivation as contingent upon reconciliation of primal instincts to mores (chief among instincts: desire, fear, anger). Bernays considered the psyche to be less receptive to enticement or external pressure than vulnerable to internal triggers. He deployed subliminal messaging in advertising that produced unconscious responses. Among his lasting contributions to American culture are the bad habits of smoking and eating bacon and eggs for breakfast.
Bernays consulted with President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee of Public Information (C.P.I.) which was stewarded by the secretaries of State and Defense and a representative of the Navy. C.P.I. was the first U.S. propaganda bureau, established to enlist support for American intervention in World War I. In addition to promotion of war, the C.P.I. produced news reels that reported on the war through a biased lens. The New York Times derided it as the “Committee on Public Misinformation.”5
C.P.I. launched a PR campaign with posters and cartoons depicting savage German soldiers engaged in barbarous acts, including rape and slaughter. A particularly effective meme was “Babies on Bayonets.” The campaign enlisted celebrities—such as the founders of United Artists motion picture studios—to help sell bonds in support of the war effort. A contemporary account, “Death of the Liberal Class,” (2010), by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, Chris Hedges describes the C.P.I.’s operation as “a relentless campaign of manipulation of public opinion thinly disguised as journalism.”
Propaganda and mass-formation
In his seminal text, “Propaganda,” (1928), Bernays discussed how the “psychological warfare,” that he developed for the C.P.I. might be utilized against civilians in peace time:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons… who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
The publication of “Propaganda,” during the financial crisis and collapse of the Weimar Republic provided a timely manual for Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler as they rose to power in the 1930s. The Nazi’s preyed upon the discipline, organization, and herd instinct engrained in German culture to produce a demented group–think that like a cultic orthodoxy, cast out dissidents as heretical. Apart from the A.B.C. newscaster, Whoopi Goldberg, most Americans are aware that the Nazi’s were obsessed with race; the Holocaust being a genocide that targeted Jews and Gypsies with the intention of purifying Aryan bloodlines. The Nazi’s also killed their own –Germans with inherited disabilities and homosexuals disinclined to procreate. What may be less familiar, is that the demented pseudo-science of eugenics was an American import via The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.6
As Mattias Desmet explains in “The Psychology of Totalitarianism,” (2021, the English translation arrives to the U.S. today), Hitler was not a dictator imposing top–down rule; he was a tyrant held up by a self–deluded populace –intoxicated less by ideology than by the gratification of membership in a group. Desmet argues that isolation, anxiety, and lack of purposeful life were among the prerequisite social ills that permitted the group–think to evolve. The Nazi’s were hypnotized into ‘mass–formation,’ (also called, crowd formation), one that had historical parallels in The Spanish Inquisition. In addition to the persecution of others (which included reporting on family, friends, and neighbors –sacrifice demonstrating fidelity to the collective) the Nazi’s themselves fell victim to their own abuse.
Gaslighting is a form of abuse that can happen in any relationship in which someone is trying to gain control over someone else. It involves psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time. Eventually, the victim questions the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories. Gaslighting typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one's emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator. A classic technique of gaslighting is telling the victim that others are crazy and lying, and that the gaslighter is the only source for "true" information.7
Hidden in plain sight
In several respects, an enlightened figure destined to uncannily mirror Lincoln, President John F. Kennedy sought to advance civil rights, proposing in the year of his untimely death the Civil Rights Act that his successor would steward towards legislation. A champion of diplomacy and tolerance, he sought peace. He vowed to withdraw troops from conflict in Vietnam and to reduce support of the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.). J.F.K. established the Peace Corps and invoked civil service admonishing, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
After several months in office, Kennedy convened the American Newspaper Publishers Association at the Waldorf–Astoria hotel for a “sober” speech, “The President and the Press,” April 27, 1961 during which he respectfully alerted the media to a “clear and present danger,” and the urgency for accountability in all levels of government.8 He enlisted support of the “free and independent” press to help inform and educate the American people in what he characterized as an unprecedented era of “peace and peril.” Unlike Lincoln who silenced dissent, Kennedy insisted on debate asserting, “Without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed—and no republic can survive.”
No President should fear public scrutiny of his program. For from that scrutiny comes understanding; and from that understanding comes support or opposition. And both are necessary. I am not asking your newspapers to support the Administration, but I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people. For I have complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed.
A lengthy excerpt:
Today no war has been declared —and however fierce the struggle may be, it may never be declared in the traditional fashion. Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe. The survival of our friends is in danger. And yet no war has been declared, no borders have been crossed by marching troops, no missiles have been fired. If the press is awaiting a declaration of war before it imposes the self-discipline of combat conditions, then I can only say that no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of "clear and present danger," then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent.
It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions —by the government, by the people, by every businessman or labor leader, and by every newspaper. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence —on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.
Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.
Captured on film, John and Robert Kennedy’s assassinations were heinous public executions, taking place before the eyes of an adoring public. The psychic trauma of these horrors haunts the American imagination. No matter how many times we review the footage we are left wondering what really happened. Autopsies determine J.F.K. was shot twice from multiple directions, first struck to the front of the neck, then to the back of the head. Yet, the government reported its special investigation confirmed a sole gunman. R.F.K. was shot from behind, to the back of the head. Yet, his attacker approached from the front. Eye witnesses reported seeing an armed security guard behind R.F.K. Why was this not investigated? It is as though the truth were hidden in plain sight.
A recent revelatory publication results from a 25-year investigation into the R.F.K. assassination, “A Lie Too Big To Fail,” by Lisa Pease. It debunks the official narrative, switching focus to an F.B.I. agent with C.I.A. ties. Last January, California governor, Gavin Newsom denied the parole of R.F.K.’s assassin despite pleas from Kennedy’s sons, Robert and Douglas who consider Sirhan Sirhan to have been a hypnotized patsy.9
Based on the bogus attribution of J.F.K.’s assassination to Lee Harvey Oswald, the government repealed the people’s right to purchase arms via magazines. Last December, the National Archives released previously secreted documents pertaining to the J.F.K. assassination.10 Filmmaker, Oliver Stone has produced a chilling documentary that unpacks the evidence to lift the veil of the long suspected C.I.A. cover–up. The film, “J.F.K. Revisited: Through the Looking Glass,” is not to be missed except by children for whom it is not age–appropriate.
J.F.K. Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, a documentary by Oliver Stone, 2021
Last November, two of the three men imprisoned for killing Malcolm X had their convictions overturned. One didn’t live to see vindication. Astonishingly, there was never an investigation into the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. How can we be reassured that James Earl Ray wasn’t framed? How is it fathomable that our beloved heroes should be denied justice? As Pease asserts, “A government cannot be relied upon to investigate itself.”
Ben Bradlee, longtime Editor–in–Chief of The Washington Post, was an intimate friend of J.F.K. During the conspiracy of Watergate, he had the support of publisher, Katharine Graham to go after the Nixon administration with a team of investigative journalists, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. In subsequent years, Graham was less inclined to expose covert operations, turning a blind eye to C.I.A. sponsored coups including the deposition of the Shah; and the ensuing hostage crisis in Tehran leveraged to favor Reagan in the 1980 presidential election. By the time of Iran–Contra—a scandal of the Reagan administration that would have made Watergate pale by comparison—The Post reneged on their civic duty, deceiving themselves into justifying their lapse as concern for the American people approaching a psychological brink . In 2017, The Post’s new publisher, retail magnate Jeff Bezos, adopted a phrase penned by Woodward as the paper’s new slogan. Fittingly, it admonishes, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
All the President’s Men,” 1976; Alan J. Pakula, direction; Gordon Willis cinematography. Original Trailer.
Julia Roberts and Sean Pean in, “Gaslit,” Official trailer, STARZ, 2022
This essay is dedicated to Julian Assange who dared to expose the nefarious secret operations of the American military industrial complex. The decision regarding his extradition from Belmarsh prison is anticipated to be announced tomorrow.
Love and Peace,
Poppy
Comments are most welcome (please scroll past the notes).
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Norvell, June 11, 1807.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.038_0592_0594/?sp=3&st=text
The Bill of Rights
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights/what-does-it-say
Harold Holzer, “After Bull Run, Abraham Lincoln Fought a New Battle in the Civil War: Home-Front Journalism,” Historynet, April 21, 2020
https://www.historynet.com/stop-the-presses-lincoln-suppresses-journalism/
Thomas Fleming, “The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I,” New York: Basic Books, 2003
Edwin Black, “The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics,” George Washington University, History News Network, Sept 2003
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gaslighting
The President and the Press: John F. Kennedy, Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association, April 27, 1961
Tom Jackman, CIA May Have Used Contractor Who Inspired ‘Mission–Impossible’ to Kill RFK, new book alleges, The Washington Post, Feb 9, 2019
National Archives Release of top secret J.F.K. assassination documents, Dec 2021
Addendum 7/5/22
https://21stcenturywire.com/2022/07/05/mexican-president-to-us-free-assange-or-tear-down-your-statue-of-liberty/
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-uks-decision-to-extradite-assange?r=dypvk&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email