Seeds of Propaganda
The
seeds of this private/public collaboration can be found in the 84-page
draft Iran-Contra chapter, entitled “Launching the Private Network.”
[There appear to have been several versions of this “lost chapter.”
This one I found in congressional files.]
The chapter traces the
origins of the propaganda network to President Reagan’s “National
Security Decision Directive 77” in January 1983 as his administration
sought to promote its foreign policy, especially its desire to oust
Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.
In a Jan. 13, 1983,
memo, then-National Security Advisor William Clark foresaw the need for
non-governmental money to advance this cause. “We will develop a
scenario for obtaining private funding,” Clark wrote.
As
administration officials began reaching out to wealthy supporters,
lines against domestic propaganda soon were crossed as the operation
took aim at not only at foreign audiences but at U.S. public opinion,
the press and congressional Democrats who opposed funding Nicaraguan
rebels, known as contras.
At the time, the contras were earning
a gruesome reputation as human rights violators and terrorists. To
change this negative perception of the contras, the Reagan
administration created a full-blown, clandestine propaganda operation.
- “An
elaborate system of inter-agency committees was eventually formed and
charged with the task of working closely with private groups and
individuals involved in fundraising, lobbying campaigns and
propagandistic activities aimed at influencing public opinion and
governmental action,” the draft chapter said.
Heading this
operation was a veteran CIA officer named Walter Raymond Jr., who was
recruited by another CIA officer, Donald Gregg, before Gregg shifted
from his job as chief of the NSC’s Intelligence Directorate to become
national security adviser to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush.
[The
draft chapter doesn’t use Raymond’s name in its opening pages,
apparently because some of the information came from classified
depositions. However, Raymond’s name is used later in the chapter and
the earlier citations match Raymond’s role.]
According to the
draft report, the CIA officer recruited for the NSC job had served as
Director of the Covert Action Staff at the CIA from 1978 to 1982 and
was a “specialist in propaganda and disinformation.”
- “The CIA
official [Raymond] discussed the transfer with [CIA Director William]
Casey and NSC Advisor William Clark that he be assigned to the NSC as
Gregg’s successor [in June 1982] and received approval for his
involvement in setting up the public diplomacy program along with his
intelligence responsibilities,” the chapter said.
- “In the early
part of 1983, documents obtained by the Select [Iran-Contra] Committees
indicate that the Director of the Intelligence Staff of the NSC
[Raymond] successfully recommended the establishment of an
inter-governmental network to promote and manage a public diplomacy
plan designed to create support for Reagan Administration policies at
home and abroad.”
Raymond “helped to set up an elaborate system of inter-agency committees,” the draft chapter said, adding:
- “In
the Spring of 1983, the network began to turn its attention toward
beefing up the Administration’s capacity to promote American support
for the Democratic Resistance in Nicaragua [the contras] and the
fledgling democracy in El Salvador.
- “his effort resulted in the
creation of the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the
Caribbean in the Department of State (S/LPD), headed by Otto Reich,” a
right-wing Cuban exile from Miami.
Though Secretary of State
George Shultz wanted the office under his control, President Reagan
insisted that Reich “report directly to the NSC,” where Raymond oversaw
the operations as a special assistant to the President and the NSC’s
director of international communications, the chapter said.
“At
least for several months after he assumed this position, Raymond also
worked on intelligence matters at the NSC, including drafting a
Presidential Finding for Covert Action in Nicaragua in mid-September”
1983, the chapter said.
In other words, although Raymond was
shifted to the NSC staff in part to evade prohibitions on the CIA
influencing U.S. public opinion, his intelligence and propaganda duties
overlapped for a time as he was retiring from the spy agency.
Key Player
Despite
Raymond’s formal separation from the CIA, he acted toward the U.S.
public much like a CIA officer would in directing a propaganda
operation in a hostile foreign country. He was the go-to guy to keep
the operation on track.
- “Reich relied heavily on Raymond to
secure personnel transfers from other government agencies to beef up
the limited resources made available to S/LPD by the Department of
State,” the chapter said.
- “Personnel made available to the new
office included intelligence specialists from the U.S. Air Force and
the U.S. Army. On one occasion, five intelligence experts from the
Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group at Fort Bragg, North
Carolina, were assigned to work with Reich’s fast-growing operation. …
- “White
House documents also indicate that CIA Director Casey had more than a
passing interest in the Central American public diplomacy campaign.”
The
chapter cited an Aug. 9, 1983, memo written by Raymond describing
Casey’s participation in a meeting with public relations specialists to
brainstorm how “to sell a ‘new product’ – Central America – by
generating interest across-the-spectrum.”
In an Aug. 29, 1983,
memo, Raymond recounted a call from Casey pushing his P.R. ideas.
Alarmed at a CIA director participating so brazenly in domestic
propaganda, Raymond wrote that “I philosophized a bit with Bill Casey
(in an effort to get him out of the loop)” but with little success.
The
chapter added: “Casey’s involvement in the public diplomacy effort
apparently continued throughout the period under investigation by the
Committees,” including a 1985 role in pressuring Congress to renew
contra aid and a 1986 hand in further shielding S/LPD from the
oversight of Secretary Shultz.
A Raymond-authored memo to Casey
in August 1986 described the shift of S/LPD – then run by
neoconservative theorist Bob Kagan who had replaced Reich – to the
control of the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, which was headed by
Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, another prominent
neoconservative.
Another important figure in the pro-contra
propaganda was NSC staffer Oliver North, who spent a great deal of his
time on the Nicaraguan public diplomacy operation even though he is
better known for arranging secret arms shipments to the contras and to
Iran’s radical Islamic government, leading to the Iran-Contra scandal.
The
draft chapter cited a March 10, 1985, memo from North describing his
assistance to CIA Director Casey in timing disclosures of pro-contra
news “aimed at securing Congressional approval for renewed support to
the Nicaraguan Resistance Forces.”
North’s Operatives
The
Iran-Contra “lost” chapter depicts a sometimes Byzantine network of
contract and private operatives who handled details of the domestic
propaganda while concealing the hand of the White House and the CIA.
- “Richard
R. Miller, former head of public affairs at AID, and Francis D. Gomez,
former public affairs specialist at the State Department and USIA, were
hired by S/LPD through sole-source, no-bid contracts to carry out a
variety of activities on behalf of the Reagan administration policies
in Central America,” the chapter said.
- “Supported by the State
Department and White House, Miller and Gomez became the outside
managers of [North operative] Spitz Channel’s fundraising and lobbying
activities.
- “They also served as the managers of Central
American political figures, defectors, Nicaraguan opposition leaders
and Sandinista atrocity victims who were made available to the press,
the Congress and private groups, to tell the story of the Contra cause.”
Miller
and Gomez facilitated transfers of money to Swiss and offshore banks at
North’s direction, as they “became the key link between the State
Department and the Reagan White House with the private groups and
individuals engaged in a myriad of endeavors aimed at influencing the
Congress, the media and public opinion,” the chapter said.
In its conclusion, the draft chapter read:
- “The
State Department was used to run a prohibited, domestic, covert
propaganda operation. Established despite resistance from the Secretary
of State, and reporting directly to the NSC, the [S/LPD] attempted to
mask many of its activities from the Congress and the American people.”
However,
the American people never got to read a detailed explanation of this
finding nor see the evidence. In October 1987, as the congressional
Iran-Contra committees wrote their final report, Republicans protested
the inclusion of this explosive information.
Though the
Democrats held the majority, the GOP had leverage because Rep. Lee
Hamilton, D-Indiana, the House chairman, wanted some bipartisanship in
the final report, especially since senior Republicans, including Rep.
Dick Cheney, R-Wyoming, were preparing a strongly worded minority
report.
Hamilton and the Democrats hoped that three moderate
Republicans – William Cohen of Maine, Warren Rudman of New Hampshire
and Paul Trible of Virginia – would break ranks and sign the majority
report. However, the Republicans objected to the draft chapter about
Ronald Reagan’s covert propaganda campaign.
As part of a
compromise, some elements of the draft chapter were included in the
Executive Summary but without much detail and shorn of the tough
conclusions. Nevertheless, Cohen protested even that.
- “I
question the inordinate attention devoted in the Executive Summary to
the Office of Public Diplomacy and its activities in support of the
Administration’s polices,” Cohen wrote in his additional views. “The
prominence given to it in the Executive Summary is far more generous
than just.”
Long-Term Consequences
However, the failure
of the Iran-Contra report to fully explain the danger of CIA-style
propaganda intruding into the U.S. political process would have
profound future consequences. Indeed, the evidence suggests that
today’s powerful right-wing media gained momentum as part of the
Casey-Raymond operations of the early 1980s.
According to one
Raymond-authored memo dated Aug. 9, 1983, then-U.S. Information Agency
director Charles Wick “via Murdock [sic] may be able to draw down added
funds” to support pro-Reagan initiatives.
Raymond’s reference to
Rupert Murdoch possibly drawing down “added funds” suggests that the
right-wing media mogul was already part of the covert propaganda
operation.
In line with its clandestine nature, Raymond also
suggested routing the “funding via Freedom House or some other
structure that has credibility in the political center.”
Unification
Church founder Sun Myung Moon, publisher of the Washington Times, also
showed up in the Iran-Contra operations, using his newspaper to raise
contra funds and assigning his CAUSA political group to organize
support for the contras.
In the two decades since the
Iran-Contra scandal, both Murdoch and Moon have continued to pour
billions of dollars into media outlets that have influenced the course
of U.S. history, often through the planting of propaganda and
disinformation much like a CIA covert action might do in a hostile
foreign country.
Further, to soften up the Washington press
corps, Reich’s S/LPD targeted U.S. journalists who reported information
that undermined the pro-contra propaganda. Reich sent his teams out to
lobby news executives to remove or punish out-of-step reporters – with
a disturbing degree of success. [For more, see Parry’s Lost History.]
Some
U.S. officials implicated in the Iran-Contra propaganda operations are
still around, bringing the lessons of the 1980s into the new century.
For
instance, Elliott Abrams. Though convicted of misleading Congress in
the Iran-Contra Affair and later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush
– Abrams is now deputy adviser to George W. Bush’s NSC, where he
directs U.S.-Middle East policy.
Bob Kagan remains another
prominent neocon theorist in Washington, writing op-eds for the
Washington Post. Oliver North was given a news show on Fox.
Otto
Reich now is advising Republican presidential candidate John McCain on
Latin American affairs. Lee Hamilton is a senior national security
adviser to Democratic candidate Barack Obama.
Enduring Skills
Beyond
these individuals, the manipulative techniques that were refined in the
1980s – especially the skill of exaggerating foreign threats – have
proved durable, bringing large segments of the American population into
line behind the Iraq War in 2002-03.
Only now – with more than
4,100 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead – are many
of these Americans realizing that were manipulated by clever
propaganda, that their perceptions had been managed.
For
instance, the New York Times recently pried loose some 8,000 pages of
Pentagon documents revealing how the Bush administration had
manipulated the public debate on the Iraq War by planting friendly
retired military officers on TV news shows.
Retired Green Beret
Robert S. Bevelacqua, a former analyst on Murdoch’s Fox News, said the
Pentagon treated the retired military officers as puppets: “It was them
saying, ‘we need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth
for you.’” [NYT, April 20, 2008, or see Consortiumnews.com’s “US News
Media’s Latest Disgrace.”]
Bush’s former White House press
secretary Scott McClellan described similar use of propaganda tactics
to justify the Iraq War in his book, What Happened: Inside the Bush
White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.
From his
insider vantage point, McClellan cited the White House’s “carefully
orchestrated campaign to shape and manipulate sources of public
approval” – and he called the Washington press corps “complicit
enablers.”
None of this would have been so surprising – indeed
Americans might have been forewarned and forearmed – if Lee Hamilton
and other Democrats on the Iran-Contra committees had held firm and
published the scandal’s “lost chapter” two decades ago.
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