How the Washington Post Censors the News
[Note the highlighted paragraph]

How the Washington Post Censors the News

A Letter to the Washington Post
by Julian C. Holmes
_________________________________________________________________

April 25, 1992
Richard Harwood, Ombudsman
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street NW
Washington, DC 20071

Dear Mr. Harwood,

Though the Washington Post does not over-extend itself in the pursuit
of hard news, just let drop the faintest rumor of a government
"conspiracy", and a klaxon horn goes off in the news room. Aroused
from apathy in the daily routine of reporting assignations and various
other political and social sports events, editors and reporters
scramble to the phones. The klaxon screams its warning: the greatest
single threat to herd-journalism, corporate profits, and government
stability -- the dreaded "CONSPIRACY THEORY"!!

It is not known whether anyone has actually been hassled or accosted
by any of these frightful spectres, but their presence is announced to
Post readers with a salvo of warnings to avoid the tricky, sticky webs
spun by the wacko "CONSPIRACY THEORISTS".

Recall how the Post saved us from the truth about Iran-Contra.

Professional conspiracy exorcist Mark Hosenball was hired to ridicule
the idea that Oliver North and his CIA-associated gangsters had
conspired to do wrong (*1). And when, in their syndicated column, Jack
Anderson and Dale Van Atta discussed some of the conspirators, the
Post sprang to protect its readers, and the conspirators, by censoring
the Anderson column before printing it (*2).

But for some time the lid had been coming off the Iran-Contra
conspiracy. In 1986, the Christic Institute, an interfaith center for
law and public policy, had filed a lawsuit alleging a U.S.
arms-for-drugs trade that helped keep weapons flowing to the
CIA-Contra army in Nicaragua, and cocaine flowing to U.S. markets
(*3). In 1988 Leslie Cockburn published Out of Control, a seminal work
on our bizarre, illegal war against Nicaragua (*4). The Post
contributed to this discovery process by disparaging the charges of
conspiracy and by publishing false information about the
drug-smuggling evidence presented to the House Subcommittee on
Narcotics Abuse and Control. When accused by Committee Chairman
Charles Rangel (D-NY). of misleading reporting, the Post printed only
a partial correction and declined to print a letter of complaint from
Rangel (*5).

Sworn testimony before Senator John Kerry's Subcommittee on Terrorism,
Narcotics, and International Operations confirmed U.S. Government
complicity in the drug trade (*6). With its coverup of the arms/drug
conspiracy evaporating, the ever-accommodating Post shifted gears and
retained Hosenball to exorcise from our minds a newly emerging threat
to domestic tranquility, the "October Surprise" conspiracy (*7). But
close on the heels of Hosenball and the Post came Barbara Honegger and
then Gary Sick who authored independently, two years apart, books with
the same title, "October Surprise" (*8). Honegger was a member of the
Reagan/Bush campaign and transition teams in 1980. Gary Sick,
professor of Middle East Politics at Columbia University, was on the
staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter,
and Reagan. In 1989 and 1991 respectively, Honegger and Sick published
their evidence of how the Republicans made a deal to supply arms to
Iran if Iran would delay release of the 52 United States hostages
until after the November 1980 election. The purpose of this deal was
to quash the possibility of a pre-election release(an October
surprise). which would have bolstered the reelection prospects for
President Carter.

Others published details of this alleged Reagan-Bush conspiracy. In
October 1988, Playboy Magazine ran an expose "An Election Held
Hostage"; FRONTLINE did another in April 1991 (*9). In June, 1991 a
conference of distinguished journalists, joined by 8 of the former
hostages, challenged the Congress to "make a full, impartial
investigation" of the election/hostage allegations. The Post reported
the statement of the hostages, but not a word of the conference itself
which was held in the Dirksen Senate Office Building Auditorium (*10).
On February 5, 1992 a gun-shy, uninspired House of Representatives
begrudgingly authorized an "October Surprise" investigation by a task
force of 13 congressmen headed by Lee Hamilton (D-IN). who had chaired
the House of Representatives Iran-Contra Committee. Hamilton has named
as chief team counsel Larry Barcella, a lawyer who represented BCCI
when the Bank was indicted in 1988 (*11).

Like the Washington Post, Hamilton had not shown interest in pursuing
the U.S. arms-for-drugs operation (*12). He had accepted Oliver
North's lies,and as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee he
derailed House Resolution 485 which had asked President Reagan to
answer questions about Contra support activities of government
officials and others (*13). After CIA operative John

Hull (from Hamilton's home state). was charged in Costa Rica with
"international drug trafficking and hostile acts against the nation's
security", Hamilton and 18 fellow members of Congress tried to
intimidate Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez into handling
Hull's case "in a manner that will not complicate U.S.-Costa Rican
relations" (*14). The Post did not report the Hamilton letter or the
Costa Rican response that declared Hull's case to be "in as good hands
as our 100 year old uninterrupted democracy can provide to all
citizens" (*15).

Though the Post does its best to guide our thinking away from conspiracy
theories, it is difficult to avoid the fact that so much wrongdoing involves
government or corporate conspiracies:

In its COINTELPRO operation, the FBI used disinformation, forgery,
surveillance, false arrests, and violence to illegally harass
U.S.citizens in the 60's (*16).

The CIA's Operation MONGOOSE illegally sabotaged Cuba by "destroying
crops, brutalizing citizens, destabilizing the society, and
conspiring with the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro and other
leaders" (*17).

"Standard Oil of New Jersey was found by the Antitrust Division of
the Department of Justice to be conspiring with I.G.Farben...of
Germany. ...By its cartel agreements with Standard Oil, the
United States was effectively prevented from developing or
producing [fo rWorld War-II] any substantial amount of
synthetic rubber," said Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin
(*18).

U.S. Government agencies knowingly withheld information about
dosages of radiation "almost certain to produce thyroid
abnormalities or cancer" that contaminated people residing near
the nuclear weapons factory at Hanford, Washington (*19).

Various branches of Government deliberately drag their feet in
getting around to cleaning up the Nation's dangerous nuclear
weapons sites (*20). State and local governments back the
nuclear industry's secret public relations strategy (*21).

"The National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society and some
twenty comprehensive cancer centers, have misled and confused
the public and Congress by repeated claims that we are winning
the war against cancer. In fact, the cancer establishment has
continually minimized the evidence for increasing cancer rates
which it has largely attributed to smoking and dietary fat,
while discounting or ignoring the causal role of avoidable
eposures to industrial carcinogens in the air, food, water, and
the workplace." (*22).

The Bush Administration coverup of its pre-Gulf-War support of Iraq
"is yet another example of the President's people conspiring to
keep both Congress and the American people in the dark" (*23).

If you think about it, conspiracy is a fundamental aspect of
doing business in this country.

Take the systematic and cooperative censorship of the Persian Gulf
War by the Pentagon and much of the news media (*24).

Or the widespread plans of business and government groups to spend
$100 million in taxes to promote a distorted and truncated
history of Columbus in America (*25). along the lines of the
Smithsonian Institution's "fusion of the two worlds", (*26).
rather than examining more realistic aspects of the Spanish
invasion, like "anger, cruelty, gold, terror, and death" (*27).

Or circumstances surrounding the U.S. Justice Department theft from
the INSLAW company of sophisticated, law-enforcement computer
software which "now point to a widespread conspiracy
implicating lesser Government officials in the theft of
INSLAW's technology", says former U.S. Attorney General Elliot
Richardson (*28).

Or Watergate.

Or the "largest bank fraud in world financial history" (*29), where
the White House knew of the criminal activities at "the Bank of
Crooks and Criminals International" (BCCI) (*30), where U.S.
intelligence agencies did their secret banking (*31), and where
bribery of prominent American public officials "was a way of
doing business" (*32).

Or the 1949 conviction of "GM [General Motors], Standard Oil of
California, Firestone, and E. Roy Fitzgerald, among others, for
criminally conspiring to replace electric transportation with
gas- and diesel-powered buses and to monopolize the sale of
buses and related products to transportation companies
throughout the country" [in, among others, the cities of New
York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, Oakland, Salt Lake
City, and Los Angeles] (*33).

Or the collusion in 1973 between Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-CT).
and the U.S. Department of Transportation to overlook safety
defects in the 1.2 million Corvair automobiles manufactured by
General Motors in the early 60's (*34).

Or the A. H. Robins Company, which manufactured the Dalkon Shield
intrauterine contraceptive, and which ignored repeated warnings
of the Shield's hazards and which "stonewalled, deceived,
covered up, and

covered up the coverups...[thus inflicting] on women a
worldwide epidemic of pelvic infections." (*35).

Or that cooperation between McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Company and
the FAA resulted in failure to enforce regulations regarding
the unsafe DC-10 cargo door which failed in flight killing all
364 passengers on Turkish Airlines Flight 981 on March 3, 1974
(*36).

Or the now-banned, cancer-producing pregnancy drug
Diethylstilbestrol (DES). that was sold by manufacturers who
ignored tests which showed DES to be carcinogenic; and who
acted "in concert with each other in the testing and marketing
of DES for miscarriage purposes" (*37).

Or the conspiracies among bankers and speculators, with the
cooperation of a corrupted Congress, to relieve depositors of
their savings. This "arrogant disregard from the White House,
Congress and corporate world for the interests and rights of
the American people" will cost U.S. tapayers many hundreds of
billions of dollars (*38).

Or the Westinghouse, Allis Chalmers,Federal Pacific, and General
Electric executives who met surreptitiously in hotel rooms to
fix prices and eliminate competition on heavy industrial
equipment (*39).

Or the convictions of Industrial Biotest Laboratories (IBT).
officers for fabricating safety tests on prescription drugs
(*40).

Or the conspiracy by the asbestos industry to suppress knowledge of
medical problemsrelating to asbestos (*41).

Or the 1928 Achnacarry Agreement through which oil companies "agreed
not to engage in any effective price competition" (*42).

Or the conspiracy among U.S. Government agencies and the Congress to
cover up the nature of our decades-old war against the people
of Nicaragua

a covert war that continues in 1992 with the U.S. Government
applying pressure for the Nicaraguan police to reorganize into
a more repressive force (*43).

Or the conspiracy by the CIA and the U.S. Government to interfere in
the Chilean election process with military aid, covert actions,
and an economic boycott which culminated in the overthrow of
the legitimately elected government and the assassination of
President Salvador Allende in 1973 (*44).

Or the conspiracy among U.S. officials including Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger and CIA Director William Colby to finance
terrorism in Angola for the purpose of disrupting Angola's
plans for peaceful elections in October 1975, and to lie about
these actions to the Congress and the news media (*45). And CIA
Director George Bush's subsequent cover up of this
U.S.-sponsored terrorism (*46).

Or President George Bush's consorting with the Pentagon to invade
Panama in 1989 and thereby violate the Constitution of the
United States, the U.N. Charter, the O.A.S. Charter, and the
Panama Canal Treaties (*47).

Or the "gross antitrust violations" (*48) and the conspiracy of
American oil companies and the British and U.S. governments to
strangle Iran economically after Iran nationalized the
British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. And the
subsequent overthrow by the CIA in 1953 of Iranian Prime
Minister Muhammed Mossadegh (*49).

Or the CIA-planned assassination of Congo head-of-state Patrice
Lumumba (*50).

Or the deliberate and wilful efforts of President George Bush,
Senator Robert Dole, Senator George Mitchell, various U.S.
Government agencies, and members of both Houses of the Congress
to buy the 1990 Nicaraguan national elections for the
presidential candidate supported by President Bush (*51).

Or the collective approval by 64 U.S. Senators of Robert Gates to
head the CIA, in the face of "unmistakable evidence that Gates
lied about his role in the Iran-Contra scandal" (*52).

Or "How Reagan and the Pope Conspired to Assist Poland's Solidarity
Movement and Hasten the Demise of Communism" (*53).

Or how the Reagan Administration connived with the Vatican to ban
the use of USAID funds by any country "for the promotion of
birth control or abortion" (*54).

Or "the way the Vatican and Washington colluded to achieve common
purpose in Central America" (*55).

Or the collaboration of Guatemalan strong-man and mass murderer
Hector Gramajo with the U.S. Army to design "programs to build
civilian-military cooperation" at the U.S. Army School of the
Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Georgia; five of the nine
soldiers accused in the 1989 Jesuit massacre in El Salvador are
graduates of SOA which trains Latin/American military personnel
(*56).

Or the conspiracy of the Comanche Peak Nuclear Plant administration
to harass and cause bodily harm to whistleblower Linda Porter
who uncovered dangerous working conditions at the facility
(*57).

Or the conspiracy of President Richard Nxion and the Government of
South Vietnam to delay the Paris Peace Talks until after the
1968 U.S. presidential election (*58).

Or the pandemic coverups of police violence (*59).

Or the always safe-to-cite worldwide communist conspiracy (*60).

Or maybe the socially responsible, secret consortium to publish The
Satanic Verses in paperback (*61).

Conspiracies are obviously a way to get things done, and the Washington Post
offers little comment unless conspiracy theorizing threatens to expose a
really important conspiracy that, let's say, benefits big business or big
government.

Such a conspiracy would be like our benevolent CIA's 1953 overthrow of
the Iranian government to help out U.S. oil companies; or like our
illegal war against Panama to tighten U.S. control over Panama and the
Canal; or like monopoly control of broadcasting that facilitates
corporate censorship on issues of public importance (*62). When the
camouflage of such conspiracies is stripped away, public confidence in
the conspiring officials can erode -- depending on how seriously the
citizenry perceives the conspiracy to have violated the public trust.
Erosion of public trust in the status quo is what the Post seems to
see as a real threat to its corporate security.

Currently, the Post has mounted vituperative, frenzied attacks on
Oliver Stone's movie "JFK", which reexamines the U.S. Government's
official (Warren Commission. finding that a single gunman, acting
alone, killed President John F. Kennedy. The movie also is the story
of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's unsuccessful
prosecution of Clay Shaw, the only person ever tried in connection
with the assassination. And the movie proposes that the Kennedy
assassination was the work of conspirators whose interests would not
be served by a president who, had he lived, might have disengaged us
from our war against Vietnam.

The Post ridicules a reexamination of the Kennedy assassination along
lines suggested by "JFK". Senior Post journalists like Charles
Krauthammer, Ken Ringle, George Will, Phil McCombs, and Michael
Isikoff, have been called up to man the bulwarks against public
sentiment which has never supported the government's
non-conspiratorial assassination thesis. In spite of the facts that
the Senate Intelligence Committee of 1975 and 1976 found that "both
the FBI and CIA had repeatedly lied to the Warren Commission" (*63)
and that the 1979 Report of the House Select Committee on
Assassinations found that President Kennedy was probably killed "as a
result of a conspiracy" (*64), a truly astounding number of Post
stories have been used as vehicles to discredit "JFK" as just another
conspiracy (*65).

Some of the more vicious attacks on the movie are by editor Stephen
Rosenfeld, and journalists Richard Cohen, George Will, and George
Lardner Jr (*66). They ridicule the idea that Kennedy could have had
second thoughts about escalating the Vietnam War and declaim that
there is no historical justification for this idea. Seasoned
journalist Peter Dale Scott, former Pentagon/CIA liaison chief L.
Fletcher Prouty, and investigators David Scheim and John Newman have
each authored defense of the "JFK" thesis that Kennedy was not
enthusiastic about staying in Vietnam (*67). But the Post team just
continues ranting against the possibility of a high-level
assassination conspiracy while offering little justification for its
arguments.

An example of particularly shabby scholarship and unacceptable
behavior is George Lardner Jr's contribution to the Post's campaign
against the movie. Lardner wrote three articles, two before the movie
was completed, and the third upon its release. In May, six months
before the movie came out, Lardner obtained a copy of the first draft
of the script and, contrary to accepted standards, revealed in the
Post the contents of this copyrighted movie (*68). Also in this
article, (*69). Lardner discredits Jim Garrison with hostile
statements from a former Garrison associate Pershing Gervais. Lardner
does not tell the reader that subsequent to the Clay Shaw trial, in a
U.S. Government criminal action brought against Garrison, Government
witness Gervais, who helped set up Garrison for prosecution, admitted
under oath that in a May 1972 interview with a New Orleans television
reporter, he, Gervais, had said that the U.S. Government's case
against Garrison was a fraud (*70). The Post's 1973 account of the
Garrison acquittal mentions this controversy, but when I recently
asked Lardner about this, he was not clear as to whether he remembered
it (*71).

Two weeks after his first "JFK" article, Lardner blustered his way
through a justification for his unauthorized possession of the early
draft ofthe movie (*72). He also defended his reference to Pershing
Gervais by lashing out at Garrison as a writer "of gothic fiction".

When the movie was released in December, Lardner "reviewed" it (*73).
He again ridiculed the film's thesis that following the Kennedy
assassination, President Johnson reversed Kennedy's plans to
de-escalate the Vietnam War. Lardner cited a memorandum issued by
Johnson four days after Kennedy died. Lardner says this memorandum was
written before the assassination, and that it "was a continuation of
Kennedy's policy". In fact, the memorandum was drafted the day before
the assassination by McGeorge Bundy (Kennedy's Assistant for National
Security Affairs) Kennedy was in Texas, and may never have seen it.
Following the assassination, it was rewritten; and the final version
provided for escalating the war against Vietnam (*74) -- facts that
Lardner avoided.

The Post's crusade against exposing conspiracies is blatantly dishonest:

The Warren Commission inquiry into the Kennedy Assassination was for
the most part conducted in secret. This fact is buried in the Post
(*75). Nor do current readers of this newspaper find meaningful
discussion of the Warren Commission's secret doubts about both the FBI
and the CIA (*76). Or of a dispatch from CIA headquarters instructing
co-conspirators at field stations to counteract the "new wave of books
and articles criticizing the [Warren] Commission's findings...[and]
conspiracy theories ...[that] have frequently thrown suspicion on our
organization" and to "discuss the publicity problem with liaison and
friendly elite contacts, especially politicians and editors "and to
"employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the
critics. ...Book reviews and feature articles are particularly
appropriate for this purpose. ...The aim of this dispatch is to
provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the
conspiracy theorists..." (*77).

In 1979, Washington journalist Deborah Davis published Katharine The Great,
the story of Post publisher Katharine Graham and her newspaper's close ties
with Washington's powerful elite, a number of whom were with the CIA.

Particularly irksome to Post editor Benjamin Bradlee was a Davis claim
that Bradlee had "produced CIA material" (*78). Understandably
sensitive about this kind of publicity, Bradlee told Davis' publisher
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich ,"Miss Davis is lying ...I never produced
CIA material ...what I can do is to brand Miss Davis as a fool and to
put your company in that special little group of publishers who don't
give a shit for the truth". The Post bullied HBJ into recalling the
book; HBJ shredded 20,000 copies; Davis sued HBJ for breach of
contract and damage to reputation; HBJ settled out of court; and Davis
published her book elsewhere with an appendix that demonstrated
Bradlee to have been deeply involved with producing cold-war/CIA
propaganda (*79). Bradlee still says the allegations about his
association with people in the CIA are false, but he has apparently
taken no action to contest the xetensive documentation presented by
Deborah Davis in the second and third editions of her book (*80).

And it's not as if the Post were new to conspiracy work.

Former Washington Post publisher Philip Graham "believing that the function of the press was more often than not to mobilize consent for the policies of the government, was one of the architects of what became a widespread practice: the use and manipulation of journalists by the CIA" (*81). This scandal was known by its code name Operation MOCKINGBIRD. Former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein cites a former CIA deputy director as saying, "It was widely known that Phil Graham was someone you could get help from" (*82). More recently the Post provided cover for CIA personality Joseph Fernandez by "refusing to print his name for over a year up until the day his indictment was announced ...for crimes committed in his official capacity as CIA station chief in Costa Rica" (*83).

Of the meetings between Graham and his CIA acquaintances at which the
availability and prices of journalists were discussed, a former CIA
man recalls, "You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call
girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month" (*84). One may wish to
consider Philip Graham's philosophy along with a more recent statement
from his wife Katharine Graham, current Chairman of the Board of the
Washington Post. In a lecture on terrorism and the news media, Mrs.
Graham said: "A second challenge facing the media is how to prevent
terrorists from using the media as a platform fortheir views. ... The
point is that we generally know when we are being manipulated, and
we've learned better how and where to draw the line, though the
decisions are often difficult" (*85).

Today, the Post and its world of big business are apparently terrified
that our elite and our high-level public officials may be exposed as
conspirators behind Contra drug-smuggling, October Surprise, or the
assassination of President Kennedy. This fear is truly remarkable in
that, like most of us and like most institutions, the Post runs its
business as a conspiracy of like-minded entrepreneurs -- a conspiracy
"to act or work together toward the same result or goal" (*86). But
where the Post really parts company from just plain people is when it
pretends that conspiracies associated with big business or government
are "coincidence". Post reporter Lardner vents the frustration
inherent in having to maintain this dichotomy. He lashes out at Oliver
Stone and suggests that Stone may actually believe that the Post's
opposition to Stone's movie is a "conspiracy". Lardner assures us that
Stone's complaints are "groundless and paranoid and smack of
McCarthyism" (*87).

So how does the Post justify devoting so much energy to ridiculing those who
investigate conspiracies?

The Post has answers: people revert to conspiracy theories because
they need something "neat and tidy" (*88) that "plugs a gap no other
generally accepted theory fills', (*89. and "coincidence ...is always
the safest and most likely explanation for any conjunction of curious
circumstances ..." (*90).

And what does this response mean? It means that "coincidence theory"
is what the Post espouses when it would prefer not to admit to a
conspiracy. In other words, some things just "happen". And, besides,
conspiracy to do certain things would be a crime; "coincidence" is a
safer bet.

Post Ombudsman Richard Harwood, who, it is rumored, serves as
Executive Director of the Benevolent Protective Order of Coincidence
Theorists, (*91) recently issued a warning about presidential
candidates "who have begun to mutter about a press conspiracy".
Ordinarily, Harwood would simply dismiss these charges as "symptoms of
the media paranoia that quadrennially engulfs members of the American
political class" (*92). But a fatal mistake was made by the mutterers;
they used the "C" word against the PRESS! And Harwood exploded his
off-the-cuff comment into an entire column -- ending it with:"We are
the new journalists, immersed too long, perhaps, in the cleansing
waters of political conformity. But conspirators we ain't".

Distinguished investigative journalist Morton Mintz, a 29-year veteran
of the Washington Post, now chairs the Fund for Investigative
Journalism. In the December issue of The Progressive, Mintz wrote "A
Reporter Looks Back in Anger -- Why the Media Cover Up Corporate
Crime". Therein he discussed the difficulties in convincing editors to
accept important news stories. He illustrated the article with his own
experiences at the Post, where he says he was known as "the biggest
pain in the ass in the office" (*93).

Would Harwood argue that grief endured by journalists at the hands of editors
is a matter of random coincidence?

And that such policy as Mintz described is made independently by
editors without influence from fellow editors or from management?
Would Harwood have us believe that at the countless office "meetings"
in which news people are ever in attendance, there is no discussion of
which stories will run and which ones will find inadequate space? That
there is no advanced planning for stories or that there are no
cooperative efforts among the staff? Or that in the face of our
news-media "grayout" of presidential candidate Larry Agran, (*94) a
Post journalist would be free to give news space to candidate Agran
equal to that the Post lavishes on candidate Clinton? Let's face it:
these possibilities are about as likely as Barbara Bush entertaining
guests at a soup kitchen.

Would Harwood have us believe that media critic and former Post
Ombudsman Ben Bagdikian is telling less than the truth in his account
of wire-service control over news: "The largely anonymous men who
control the syndicate and wire service copy desks and the central wire
photo machines determine at a single decision what millions will see
and hear. ...there seems to be little doubt that these gatekeepers
preside over an operation in which an appalling amount of press
agentry sneaks in the back door of American journalism and marches
untouched out the front door as 'news'" (*95).

When he sat on the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington, Judge
Clarence Thomas violated U.S. law when he failed to remove himself
from a case in which he then proceeded to reverse a $10 million
judgment against the Ralston Purina Company (*96). Ralston Purina, the
animal feed empire, is the family fortune of Thomas' mentor, Senator
John Danforth. The Post limited its coverage of the Thomas malfeasance
to 56 words buried in the middle of a 1200-word article (*97). Would
Harwood have us believe that the almost complete blackout on this
matter by the major news media and the U.S. Senate was a matter of
coincidence? Could a Post reporter have written a story about Ralston
Purina if she had wanted to? Can a brick swim?

Or take the fine report produced last September by Ralph Nader's
Public Citizen. Titled All the Vice President's Men, it documents "How
the Quayle Council on Competitiveness Secretly Undermines Health,
Safety, and Environmental Programs". Three months later, Post
journalists David Broder and Bob Woodward published "The President's
Understudy", a seven-part series on Vice President Quayle. Although
this series does address Quayle's role with the Competitiveness
Council, its handling of the Council's disastrous impact on America is
inadequate. It is 40,000 words of mostly aimless chatter about Quayle
memorabilia: youth, family, college record, Christianity, political
aspirations, intellectual aspirations, wealthy friends, government
associates, golf, travels, wife Marilyn, and net worth -- revealing
little about Quayle's abilities, his understanding of society's
problems, or his thoughts about justice and freedom, and never
mentioning the comprehensive Nader study of Quayle's record in the
Bush Administration (*98).

Now, did Broder or did Woodward forget about the Nader study? Or did
both of them forget? Or did one, or the other, or both decide not to
mention it? Did these two celebrated, seasoned Post reporters ever
discuss together their jointly authored stories? Did they decide to
publish such a barren set of articles because it would enhance their
reputations? How did management feel about the use of precious news
space for such frivolity? Is it possible that so many pages were
dedicated to this twaddle without people "acting or working together
toward the same result or goal"? (*99) Do crocodiles fly?

On March 20, front-page headlines in the Wall Street Journal, the New
York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post read respectively:

TSONGAS DROPPED OUT OF THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE CLEARING CLINTON'S PATH

TSONGAS ABANDONS CAMPAIGN LEAVING CLINTON CLEAR PATH TOWARD SHOWDOWN
WITH BUSH

TSONGAS CLEARS WAY FOR CLINTON

TSONGAS EXIT CLEARS WAY FOR CLINTON

This display of editorial independence should at least raise questions
of whether the news media collective mindset is really different from
that of any other cartel -- like oil, diamond, energy, (*100) or
manufacturing cartels, a cartel being "a combination of independent
commercial enterprises designed to limit competition" (*101).

The Washington Post editorial page carries the heading:

AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER

Is it? Of course not. There probably is no such thing. Does the Post
"conspire" to keep its staff and its newspaper from wandering too far
from the safety of mediocrity? The Post would respond that the
question is absurd. In that I am not privy to the Post's telephone
conversations, I can only speculate on how closely the media elite
must monitor the staff. But we all know how few micro-seconds it takes
a new reporter to learn what subjects are taboo and what are "safe",
and that experienced reporters don't have to ask.

What is more important, however, than speculating about how the Post
communicates within its own corporate structure and with other members
of the cartel, is to document and publicize what the Post does in
public, namely, how it shapes and censors the news.

Sincerely,

Julian C. Holmes

Copies to: Public-spirited citizens, both inside and outside the news
media, And - maybe a few others.

NOTES

A good source on the Washington Post and Katharine Graham's attempt to suppress the Davis book,"Katherine The Great,", which was largely successful, is Carol Felsenthal's, "Power and Privilege at the Post, the Katharine Graham Story."

For more information on Johnny Rosselli and Moses and Walter Annenberg, an excellent source is "All American Mafioso, the Johnny Rosselli Story," by Ed Becker and Charles Rappelye.

An additional good short reference is "The CIA's Greatest Hits" by Mark Zepezauer. There you will find the reference to Carl Bernstein's classic "The CIA and the Media" which appeared in Rolling Stone on Oct. 20, 1977.

Still another recent example of the CIA's control of the media is the spiking of Sally Denton's & Roger Morris' story,"THE CRIMES OF MENA" by Washington Post managing editor Bob Kaiser even though the story had been legally vetted and cleared for publication. Indeed the story, which details the CIA's involvement in drug trafficing, was already typeset and ready to go when it was killed withouty explanation.

An example of media lies can be found in this example of a faked newspaper photograph.