The Massacre of the Afghan 17 and the Obama Cover-Up

by James Petras - Posting #207

The latest massacre of innocent Afghan civilians and Obama’s personal involvement in the convoluted cover-up reveal the widening cracks in his global war doctrine of which ’Special Forces’ have become the mainstay. With the approaching retreat of US troops and the rising tide of assertive Afghan nationalism, Petras explains why Washington needs the cover-up to hide the true nature of the occupation, now left in the hands of re-cycled killers who pursue their career in ‘Special Forces’ rollicking in ‘kill and destroy’ operations.

the March 11 Massacre of the 17 Afghan citizens, including at least nine children and four women, raises many fundamental issues about the nature of a colonial war, the practices of a colonial army engaged in a prolonged (eleven-year) occupation and the character of an imperial state as it commits war crimes and increasingly relies on arbitrary dictatorial measures to secure public compliance and suppress dissent.

After the cold-blooded murder of the 17 Afghan villagers in Kandahar Province the US military and the ever-complicit Obama regime constructed an elaborate cover-up, exposing the Administration up to charges of conspiracy to suppress the essential facts, falsify data and obstruct justice: All are grounds for criminal prosecution and impeachment.

This massacre is just one of several hundred committed by US armed forces according to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. It could ruin the Obama presidency, by putting him on trial for conspiracy to obstruct justice and arguably send him to jail for war crimes.

Obama’s deliberate lies about the events surrounding the massacre and the fundamental responsibility of the high military command for the crimes committed by its troops underscores the breakdown of the occupation of Afghanistan, the very centerpiece of Obama’s war policy. The President of the United States has personally played a major role in the cover-up. From a political vantage point, the executive conspiracy charge has wider and deeper implications than the massacre itself, as horrible as it is.

The Massacre, the ‘Official’ Story (1st version) and the Cover-Up

According to the US military command in Afghanistan and the Obama regime, at 3am on March 11, 2012 a deranged soldier walked off a Special Forces Base in rural Kandahar Province and without command authority entered two villages (two miles apart), shot and killed 17 unarmed civilians, mostly women and children and wounded an unspecified number of villagers; then he doused their bodies with gasoline, set them on fire and hiked back to base to surrender himself to his commanders. This ‘surrender’, the Pentagon claims, was recorded on video and no less than the President of the United States, Barack Obama, vouched for its authenticity as conclusive proof for the story of a lone, unbalanced mass murderer. The military command quickly whisked the initially unnamed murderer out of the Afghanistan to the maximum security federal prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and only then identified the madman as a 38-year old, multi-decorated, 11-year army veteran, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales. The US has rejected all attempts by the Afghan President, the Afghan Army Chief and members of the Afghan Parliament to interview Sgt Bales, gather testimony and bring the suspect to trial in Afghanistan.

According to an independent Afghan parliamentary investigation led by Sayed Ishaq Gillami, and initial investigations by General Sher Mohammed Karimi of the Afghan Army, who interviewed residents of the two villages, there are significant contradictions in the US military’s and President Obama’s “official story”. Eye witnesses have testified that up to 20 soldiers were involved, aided by a helicopter. What they described was typical of a US Special Forces’ night time raid, which involved the systematic breaking down of doors, rousing the sleeping families and shooting Afghan victims.

Gordon Duff, senior editor of Veterans Today, finds the villagers version of events quite plausible for the following reasons: The villages, where the murders occurred, were two miles apart, making it highly unlikely that a lone, fully armed solder could haul a multi-gallon jerry can of gasoline from his base to the first sleeping village, break down the doors of one or more homes, commit the murders, douse and burn his victims and then proceed on foot two miles further on to the second village, shoot, kill and burn the next set of unarmed villagers and then walk back to his base and surrender.

It makes far more sense that a heavily armed group of Special Forces troops, engaged in village ‘pacification’ operations, left their base in military vehicles, passed through the gate in the wee hours of the morning, on a routine official operation, authorized by the bases military command and something went wrong. What was supposed to have been a typical midnight assault on a “pacified” village in search of Taliban supporters, turned into the mass murder of children and their mothers in bed with virtually no adult males (husbands, fathers, uncles or brothers) present to protect them.

Typically, all Afghan farmers keep weapons in their homes, but these villages had been disarmed by the Special Forces and the adult men had either been detained in earlier sweeps or were in hiding from just such brutal operations in the expectation that their wives and children would not be attacked.

Whatever triggered the mass murder of mothers and children in their nightclothes in those villages in Kandahar, one thing is clear: the President of the United States conspired with the US military command to obstruct justice in the cover-up of a heinous war crime, a felony punishable with impeachment.

When the implausibility first ‘official’ story became embarrassingly evident to the most superficial observer, the Obama ‘cover-up’ crew released a new version on March 26: According to the revised version of events, the lone, deranged Sgt. Bales committed the first massacre in the early morning hours of March 11, walked back to base for breakfast and lunch and then walked out again to a second village for another round of mass murder – before returning and turning himself in to his commander posing for the video.

Why the Obama Cover-Up: Military Demoralization and the Iran War

Why would President Obama engage in such a clumsy cover-up further eroding US relations with the Afghan President Karzai, the Afghan military and especially the Afghan people? Why would he risk charges of conspiracy to protect war criminals by insisting on an easily refutable cover-up?

The story of the alleged assassin, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, provides some leads about the larger crisis facing the imperial military. Bales is a ‘decorated’ soldier rewarded for his three tours of combat duty in Iraq and his more recent Afghan assignment where he would have participated in similar types of Special Pacification Operations among civilians in the countryside in Afghanistan. In the days after news of the massacre leaked out, a furious Afghan President Karzai claimed that “hundreds” of similar massacres had been perpetrated by US and NATO forces and had gone unreported in the Western media and unpunished. Karzai has repeatedly called for an end to US Special Forces’ night raids on sleeping villages. But, until now, there had been no need for a US Presidential cover-up up. With the approaching US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the growing expressions of militant Afghan nationalism, the Obama regime must hide the true nature of the occupation. Washington’s Afghan clients can no longer ignore US war crimes against innocent children and women and other non-combatants. This is especially true in the so-called ‘pacified’ villages where the adult Afghani men have already been arrested in sweeps or driven into hiding and with the few remaining, disarmed and ‘under the control’ of the US Special Forces.

Considering even the US official story, why would the Special Forces commanders in charge of the Sgt. Bales base ignore the loud bursts of gunfire and screams of women and children in a village within 100 meters of its perimeter at 3 am? According to their official version, the base command only became aware of the massacres when Sgt. Bales walked back to base, raised his hands high for a video-op and confessed to killing and desecrating the bodies of 17, mostly children and women.

Obama has tried to sell the ‘confession’ video as proof of the ‘official version’ of events to a skeptical Afghan President Karzai who contemptuously demanded the ‘alleged’ video be turned over for a detailed examination for authenticity. Obama’s refusal to release the video tends to confirm his role in the cover-up. Obama’s contention that a ‘lone unbalanced gunman’ committed the crime is completely self-serving and exposes serious and deep structural problems with the war in Afghanistan.

SPECIAL NOTE: 'OTHER' videos presented as evidence of "TRUTH"

* Seven Minutes - The Bush 9/11 Split Screen Video

* Donald Rumsfeld activities after 9/11 attacks

* Surveillance Video of Hasan Before Fort Hood Shootings

* Osama Bin Laden's Compound: New Details Revealed

US combat troops in Afghanistan are demoralized and angry because their military commanders have marched them into a cul de sac – a dead end. They are engaged in a long, losing war where every dead US soldier is accompanied by scores who are maimed, blinded and mentally traumatized.

In Obama’s war, the wounded are patched up and recycled back into the same meat grinder in an increasingly hostile environment, where rape, torture, maiming and murder become their only ‘recreation’. Sgt. Bales was coerced into multiple tours of duty in Iraq and then shipped off to Afghanistan, contrary to his expectations of a promotion and an end to overseas combat assignments.

There is a huge gap between the world of the political warlords in Washington and their accomplices among the warmongering ‘lobbies’ and that of the soldiers who risk their lives in imperial wars of occupation. These dispensable soldiers are repeatedly deployed to brutal colonial wars thousands of miles from their homes to confront an ‘enemy’ they cannot possibly understand. They end up brutalizing the families, friends, neighbors and compatriots of the elusive Afghan anti-colonial fighters – who are everywhere. Back in the Washington none of the political war-mongers ever experience the pain and suffering of a prolonged war, which for any soldier on the battlefield, is ever present, everywhere. Soldiers, like Sgt. Bales, operate in a very hostile environment where, a roadside bomb or a grenade thrown from a motorcycle, or even a ‘trusted’ Afghan ally, who might turn his gun on his US ‘mentors,’ are omnipresent threats to their ever returning home in one piece.

Obama has to conspire with the Pentagon in covering up this mass murder, defending the officers in charge of these ‘pacified’ villages, because there are no alternatives, no back-ups, no new recruits eager to engage in the 12th year of war in Afghanistan. There are only the re-cycled killers, willing to pursue their career in ‘Special Forces’ involving ‘kill and destroy’ operations. Furthermore, Obama cannot rely on the international allies who are rushing to withdraw their own troops from this quagmire. And Obama has a problem with his allied Afghan warlords and kleptocrats, who managed to run off with over $4.5 billion dollars in 2011 (half of the entire state budget) (Financial Times, 3/19/12, p. 1). President Obama cannot allow an entire garrison, including their commanding officer to be put on trial for the war crimes in this massacre. Holding anyone, besides the hapless Sgt. Bales, accountable for the massacre would incite a general rebellion within the armed forces, or, at a minimum, further demoralize the elite Special Forces who are expected to man these long-term engagements after the regulars withdraw, which in the case of Afghanistan could last until 2024.

This issue has implications far beyond Afghanistan: Obama has developed his entire new counter-insurgency strategy centered on the easy entry and bloody exits of US Special Forces targeting over seventy-five countries. The Special Forces figure prominently in Obama’s military preparations for Syria and Iran, which have been developed at the behest of his Zionist overlords.

In the final analysis, the entire imperial military apparatus of the Obama regime, while formidable on paper, depends on the ‘Special Operations’ formations. As such, they are the centerpiece of the new imperial warfare, developed as a response to the demands for reduced ground forces, budgetary constraints and growing domestic discontent. Their ‘actions’ are designed to leave no witnesses and no embarrassments. They may be the butchers of children, women and unarmed civilians but they are the White House’s butchers.

Despite all their crimes and cover-ups, the Obama regime’s priority is to defend the empire with whatever personnel is available at his disposal. So while Sgt. Bales is in Leavenworth, the Afghan elite cry injustice, the families in Kandahar mourn their dead and the Taliban plan their revenge.

On the domestic front, Obama faces strong popular opposition to the costly unending wars, which have destroyed the US economy, and growing anger and demoralization in the armed forces. As a result of the massive popular discontent among the American people with politicians of both parties who have recklessly sent troops into anachronistic colonial wars, which serve the interest of foreign powers, the President has issued an executive decree, allowing him to assume dictatorial powers in order to militarize the entire economy, its resources and its work force. On March 16, 2012 Barak Obama issued an Executive Order-National Defense Resource Preparedness in order to sustain the global empire.

Clearly prolonged colonial wars cannot be sustained through the consent of the citizens and such wars cannot be prosecuted according to military manuals and the Geneva Conventions. At this point, only Presidential ‘rule by decree’ can secure compliance of the citizens at home and only massacres and cover-ups can sustain the colonial occupations abroad. But these are desperate and temporary: When the extreme measures have run their course there will be nothing to fall back on and nothing can save the president of a collapsing empire from the revolt of its citizens and soldiers.

WAKE UP AMERICA!!!....Its "OUR" country!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don 　

References: How to handle being IRATE!

Best Practice: Anger Management

Sledgehammer Training

Airforce Perception Warfare

Psychological Operations (United States)

Information Warfare Site IWS

Update On The State of Surveillance - OMG

by Pratap Chatterjee - Posting #205

A German tech company is selling the ability to track "political opponents." An Italian company promises to remotely seize control of smartphones and photograph their owners. A U.S. company allows security services to "see what they [the targets]see." A South African company can store recordings of billions of phone calls, forever.

Welcome to the new covert world of surveillance contractors. Shining a light on this $5 billion (and growing) industry, Wikileaks today released "Spy Files": hundreds of secret sales brochures. The companies involved hand this promotional material only to key contacts -- often government agencies and police forces -- at trade shows that are closed to the public and the press.

“The tools revealed in these brochures demonstrate the previously unfathomable power of mass surveillance. It makes phone-hacking look like a schoolboy's game,” says Eric King of Privacy International. “Some of the most tyrannical regimes in the world are buying the power to monitor the behavior and communications of every single citizen -- and the technology is so effective that they are able to accomplish this with minimal manpower.”

An analysis by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Privacy International of the brochures shows that at least 160 companies in 25 countries from Brazil to Switzerland are selling an array of technologies so sophisticated that they often seem to have come of a Hollywood studio.

But what the “Spy Files” reveal is real. The documents add weight to campaigners’ claim that these proliferating technology companies constitute a new, unregulated arms industry. "What we are seeing is the militarization of cyber-space. It's like having a tank in your front garden," says Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks.

The industry brochures state that they only sell “lawful interception” gear to official authorities: the police, the military and intelligence agencies.

But the sales brochures also boast of vast powers of covert observation using off-the-shelf gear that, activists worry, repressive security forces and corrupt officials can easily abuse.

"Why sample, when you can monitor all network traffic inexpensively?” trumpets a brochure from Endace, a New Zealand-based company. “Total monitoring of all operators to plug any intelligence leakage is critical for government agencies,” offers Indian-based ClearTrail.

China Top Communications, in Beijing, claims to be able to crack passwords of more than 30 email service providers, including Gmail, “in real time by a PASSIVE WAY [sic].” In the obfuscating language of the surveillance industry, “passive” is a euphemism for intercepting data without the targets’ knowledge.

The surveillance technology being offered for sale falls into four broad categories: tracking real-time locations of mobile phones and vehicles, hacking into electronic devices such as computers and phones to monitor every keystroke, recording and storing data traffic of an entire telecommunications network, and analyzing vast streams of data to track individual users.

In recent months, news has filtered out on how repressive governments are using these technologies to crack down on dissent. In October, for example, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Privacy International revealed that Syria, despite US export ban, is deploying web filtering equipment from California-based Blue Coat Systems to censor internet traffic. The company later explained the equipment had been diverted from an importer based in the United Arab Emirates.

The Italian company, Area SPA, also aided Syrian government’s repressive policies by installing a surveillance system, an investigation by Bloomberg recently uncovered. The news emerged as Syria was convulsed by mass protests that have left 3,500 dead at the hands of state security forces. Area's lawyers announced last Monday that the company had cancelled the project.

The speed at which this technology is advancing, and the way it is being used raise serious concerns. As technological capacity expands, "the dominant use of surveillance technologies is increasingly the wholesale spying on entire populations, rather than targeted monitoring of a few individuals," says Dr. Steven Murdoch, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University. "As communication becomes ever more critical to civil society, the abuse of surveillance is a rapidly increasing, and already substantial, threat to democracy, freedom of expression, and human rights in general." Special Note: See NBIC Report

Phone Tracking

One popular mobile-phone tracking technology is an IMSI catcher. This highly portable device poses as a mini mobile phone tower that can capture all the mobile phones signals in an area, effectively identifying all phone users in a particular place. Today, dozens of companies sell IMSI catchers. Some can fit into a briefcase; others are as small as a mobile phone.

Once up, the IMSI catcher tricks phones into wirelessly sending it data. By setting up several IMSI catchers and measuring the speed of the responses or 'pings' from a phone, the surveiller can follow on a computer screen the location and movement of anyone with turned-on mobile, anywhere within the parameters of the IMSI catchers -- even when they are not using their phones.

Companies that offer this equipment include Ability in Israel, Rohde & Schwarz in Germany, and Harris Corporation in the US.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which uses these devices to track suspects, claims it can do so without a court order. Many police forces around the world have also bought, or are considering buying, IMSI catchers.

Other companies offer passive surveillance devices that can be installed at phone exchanges, or even stand-alone equipment that can covertly vacuum up all the mobile phone signals in an area.

Specialized gadgets attached to a vehicle can track where it goes. (to include factory installed black boxes) While logistics and trucking companies have long used these devices to ensure on-time delivery of goods, UK-based Cobham sells Orion Guardian covert devices that can be secretly attached to the bottom of a car. Hidden Technology, another British company, sells similar devices.

“For years, there has been a gentleman's agreement on how these technologies are used,” says Chris Soghoian, a Washington DC-based fellow at the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research. “The US and the UK know that the Chinese and the Russians are using IMSI catchers -- but so are we. Each government believes that the benefit of being able to use it abroad outweighs the risk to their own citizens.

"But today, anyone -- a stalker or a private company- - can show up in Chelsea or Tottenham Court Road [London] and listen to everyone else,” adds Soghoian. “It is time to switch to more encrypted systems that keep everyone safe.”

Hacking

Several companies offer “Trojan” software and phone “malware” that allow the user to take control of a target's computer or phone.

The software can be installed from a USB drive, or delivered remotely by disguising itself as an email attachment or software update. Once in place, a surveiller can riffle through a target's files, log every keystroke, and even remotely turn on phone and computer microphones and cameras to spy on the target in real-time.

Hacking Team of Italy, Vupen Security in France, Gamma Group in the UK, and SS8 in the US, each offer such products, which they variously claim can hack the Apple iPhone, BlackBerry, Skype, and the Microsoft operating system.

Hacking Team is probably the most public of these companies, advertising on a public website that its “Remote Control System” can “monitor a hundred thousand targets.”

SS8 of Milpitas, California, claims that its Intellego product allows security forces to “see what they [the targets] see, in real time” including a “draft-only emails, attached files, pictures and videos.”

These technologies often rely on software vulnerabilities. While major software manufacturers claim to fix these flaws as soon as they are discovered, at least one company, Vupen, boasts dedicated researchers in its “Offensive Solutions” division who are constantly looking to exploit new security holes in popular software.

Hacking systems have recently surfaced in countries with repressive governments. In March when Egyptian democracy activists raided the intelligence headquarters of Hosni Mubarak's regime, they uncovered contract documents for a hacking program called FinFisher that is marketed by Gamma Group, a UK company. Governments can use this product to “identify an individual's location, their associates and members of a group, such as political opponents,” according to a brochure from Elaman, a German company with close links to Gamma which also sells FinFisher.

Massive Surveillance

While hacking software targets individuals, other technologies on the market can monitor and censor an entire data or telecommunications network. Massive surveillance works by capturing everyone's activities -- whether they are a suspect or not -- and then sifting it for valuable information. For example, US companies Blue Coat Systems and Cisco Systems offer corporate and government buyers technology that can filter web access based on commercial, political, religious or cultural criteria.

Businesses routinely these web-filtering products to catch employees surfing the web when they should be working. But the same technologies can also be used to block social networking websites such as Facebook, multimedia services including Flickr and YouTube, and internet phone services like Skype in countries ranging from China to the United Arab Emirates.

An extension of this technology, “deep packet inspection,” allows the user to scan web and email traffic, and to read through huge volumes of web searches and emails searching for keywords:

--Companies including ipoque in Germany and Qosmos in France offer the ability to peer inside email traffic and block specific users such as dissidents.

--Datakom, a German company, sells a product called Poseidon that can “'search and reconstruct... web, mail, instant messaging etc.” The company also claims Poseidon “collects, records and analyses VoIP calls,” such as Skype conversations.

--Datakom, which offers “monitoring of a complete country,” says it has sold two “large IP monitoring'” systems to unnamed buyers in the Middle East and North Africa region.

--South African VASTech sells Zebra, a product that gives governments the ability to compress and store billions of hours of phone calls and petabytes (a billion megabytes) of information for future analysis. In August, the Wall Street Journal reported that VASTech devices had been installed at the country's international phone exchanges.

Data Analysis

Needless to say, the sheer volume of data form internet traffic, the locations of individuals and their phone conversations could overwhelm. But a parallel analytical technology is providing intelligence agencies, the military, and the police with sophisticated tools that compile and sift information for use in criminal investigations and even in the battlefield.

For example, Speech Technology Center, based in Russia, offers a product called STC Grid ID that it claims provides “reliable identification [of a] nation-wide database of speakers.”

Czech Republic-based Phonexia, with the help of the Czech military, claims to have developed a similar voice-recognition program. Italian-based Loquendo uses 'voice-prints' -- the unique signature of the human voice -- to identify targets and flag up their calls in real-time. And yet another company, Massachusetts-based Intelligent Integration Systems (IISi), sells Geospatial Toolkit, a “location-based analytics' program.”

But legal documents filed in the US show that these technologies do not always work as promised.

Another Massachusetts company, Netezza, allegedly bought a copy of Geospatial Toolkit, reverse-engineered the code, and then sold a hacked version to the CIA for use in remotely piloted drone aircraft. IISi, which says that the software could be wrong by a distance of up to 40 feet, sued Netezza to prevent the use of this software. Company founder Rich Zimmerman stated in court that his “reaction was one of stunned amazement that they (CIA) want to kill people with my software that doesn't work.”

The two companies settled out of court in November 2010. The CIA has refused to comment.

Digital Past, Dystopian Future

Wikileaks warns that the surveillance contractors revealed in the Spy Files are selling the ability to irrevocably alter our lives with their ability to delve into the digital past.

"We all aware of traditional spy stories of intelligence agencies like MI5 bugging the phone of one or two people," says Julian Assange. “In the last ten years, something else has happened. We now see mass surveillance, where computer systems of an entire country are infected by surveillance programs, where the entire phone calls of a nation can be and are recorded by a company.”

"Previously we had all thought, why would the government be interested in me, my brother? My business is not interesting, I am not a criminal,” Assange told the Bureau earlier this week. “Now these companies sell to state intelligence agencies the ability to spy on the entire population at once and keep that information permanently. In five or six years’ time, if your brother or someone becomes of interest to that company or the government, they can go back in time and look to see what you said or what you emailed."

WAKE UP AMERICA!!!....Its "OUR" country!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don 　

References: In 1976, NSA Was Tasked to Help Secure Private Communications LOL LOL LOL

IMSI Catcher

STC Grid ID

The Spy Files :o

ADSL Interception

Privacy International

State of Surveillance - TBOIJ

Intelligent Integration Systems (IISi)

State of Surveillance: The Data - TBOIJ

LEST WE FORGET - The Science of World Domination

By Denis Boneau - Posting #204 - Excellent :)

Communication sciences, whose development have been monitored by the CIA since the 50s, have been a key instrument in the “psychological warfare” waged against pro-Soviet governments and the countries that could follow the socialist block.

Texas A&M University, the army and the secret services gathered information on “the enemy,” drew up NATO’s propaganda, prevented the emergence of liberation movements opposed to Washington and even served as torture advisers. Out of this “alliance between science and politics” a mechanism still used by the U.S. was created.

Since 1945, Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower institutionalized the propaganda agencies founded during WWII and gave them their new mission: to fight the Soviet Union and the socialist republics, labeled as satellites. “Containment”, the general strategy designed by Truman and his advisers, consisted in blocking the expansion of communism through the control of the national emancipation movements that could give the power to pro-Soviet or pro-socialist leaders. This ambitious project demanded the collaboration of experts capable of providing geographical, economic, cultural, psychological and sociological data useful to the army and the secret services. In this context, certain behavioral “scientists”, some of which had already worked against the Third Reich, were included in the new Cold War propaganda services.

In November 1945, General John Magruder proposed the military intelligence to be in charge of a “peace time” ambitious propaganda project based on the achievements of human sciences. However, his initiative did not convince American President Truman who decided to dismantle Donovan (Wild Bill)’ OSS [1], Roosevelt protégée. On its side, the Office of War Information (OWI) [2] was dismantled too on the ground of favoring Roosevelt’s 1944 reelection. In January 1946, Truman founded the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) which was renamed several weeks later the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) whose operations were unmentionable and unimaginable: «propaganda, economic war, direct preventive action, sabotage, anti-sabotage, destruction, subversion against hostile States, assistance to clandestine liberation movements, guerrilla, murders, assistance to indigenous groups opposed to the enemy countries of the ’free world’...». The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) [3] was the office in charge of implementing all these activities under the command of OSS veteran, Franck Wisner.

Theoretically speaking, the OPC depended on the CIA. But in real life, Wisner, backed up by George Kennan, had an enormous freedom of action. The OPC was in charge of a considerable part of “psychological warfare” operations. Wisner recruited scientists to guarantee data search, to convince “neutral” intellectuals and, obviously, to draw up NATO’s propaganda.

What is Psychological Warfare?

Psychological warfare includes a number of actions that range from radio propaganda to torture and require comprehensive information on the targeted populations. In a document written in 1948, American ground forces defined “psychological warfare” in the following way: «It is based on moral and physical means different from those upon which orthodox military techniques are based on. Its purpose is:

• To destroy the will and the fighting spirit of the enemy and avoid its allies support.
• To encourage our troops and our allies’ will of being victorious.

The psychological warfare uses every possible weapon to have an influence on the will of the enemy. The weapons are labeled as psychological because of their effect and not because of their own nature. This is the reason why, open propaganda (white), secret (black) or grey propaganda -subversion, sabotage, murders, special operations, guerrilla, espionage, political, economic and racial pressures- are considered as useful weapons [in the psychological warfare] ». To implement this program of “psychological warfare” the secret services recruit specialists on behavioral sciences capable of inventing the “simple, clear and repetitive” white propaganda and the black propaganda aimed at provoking «disorder, confusion and... terror» within the enemy forces.

Projects Troy and Camelot

Project Tory consisted in mobilizing scholars to identify the available means to transmit “Truth” (American propaganda) to the other side of the Iron Curtain [4]. Its objective was to strengthen the Voice of America (VOA), the broadcasting network founded by the International Information Service (IIS) which was an institution established by Truman to replace OWI. The Voice of America was a “white” propaganda operation whose objective was to promote the U.S. (“democracy”, “the American way of life”, “freedom”, were obviously the leitmotiv of the VOA discourse). One of the main leaders of Project Troy was James Webb, adviser to Secretary of State Dean Acheson and a quick follower of “psychological warfare” who suggested university experts and the government to work closer.

The scientists of Project Troy wrote a report in which they affirmed that Voice of America would not be enough to penetrate the Iron Curtain. Therefore, they suggested other means. Project Troy had to focus first on broadcasting and propaganda. Once they analyzed the purposes of their sponsors -the armed forces, the navy and probably the CIA- they decided to go further and proposed other channels to implement their “white” propaganda: university exchanges, publications of books... and affirmed that information could be transmitted by simply using the mail, through professional journals and other commerce or industrial publications. The report included very precise recommendations such as the centralization of propaganda operations and, consequently, Truman founded the Psychological Strategy Board, encouraged the studies on the “Soviet society” [program of interviews with dissidents] and favored the establishment of CENIS [5].

After this first important collaboration, the air force demanded a report on the Korean population in 1950. Wilbur Schramm (considered as the founding father of the mass communication paradigm), John Ridley and Fredericks Williams were given the mission of interviewing anti-communist refugees to draw up a propaganda strategy on Korea. The study produced two kinds of documents: publications in Public Opinion Quarterly (POQ), the official magazine of «psychological warfare» followers, a book titled The Reds Take a City and a secret report for the ground forces.

Another expression of the «psychological warfare», was the Camelot Project during the 60s. It was about defining models of the processes that led to national revolutions in Third World countries to facilitate counter-insurgence operations. Camelot was a real example of the strengthening ties between behavioral scholars and the American secret services. Begun in 1963, this project was aimed at facilitating interventions in Yemen, Cuba and Congo and -theoretically speaking- foreseeing and preventing the risk of revolution. In Chile, some left-wing newspapers denounced the American government involvement which directed Camelot through the Special Operations Research Office (SORO). The “yankee espionage plan” failed partially for, it seemed, the conclusions of the report were used by the American secret services to overthrow Allende and establish General Pinochet junta [6].

College Involvement: My Posting On This :)

The understanding between a number of university graduates and the ground forces brought about the emergence of a new science used by the secret services. Communication sciences and the paradigm of “mass communication”, financed by the air force, the navy, the CIA, the State Department (...) led to an effective propaganda that was to penetrate the Iron Curtain through different ways: (leaflets, broadcasting...). The discipline’s field of study was wide: persuasion techniques, opinion polls, interviews, military and political mobilizations, dissemination of ideology... In order to satisfy the demand of scientific data, several institutions were financed:

• Paul Lazarsfeld’s Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR), located in Columbia university

• Hadley Cantril’s Institute for International Social Research (IISR) [.pdf]

• Ithiel de Sola Pool’s Center for International Studies (CENIS) (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) whose funds were distributed by the Ford Foundation [7], but were actually provided by the CIA.

• Bureau of Social Science Research (BSSR), directly financed by the CIA which wanted to improve its interrogation techniques.

• Torture was considered a research field in social sciences [8]. During the Korean war, the BSSR (main “black” propaganda research center) was in charge of carrying out studies for the army. It had to identify Eastern Europe population’s “vulnerability targets and factors” while defining different “aspects of psychological violence”. To be precise, BSSR wrote reports on the effects of traditional interrogation techniques -electric shocks, blows, drugs... Financed by the CIA (50% of the center’s social budget), these studies gathered information, especially on the populations of Viet Nam and Africa with the purpose of improving torture effectiveness [9].

A Magazine: Public Opinion Quarterly

In 1937, De Witt Poole, of Princeton University, founded the Public Opinion Quarterly (POQ) magazine. It published articles on “psychological warfare”, mainly written by the people working for the OWI, studies on civil Germans’ morale, essays on troop training, reflections on war propaganda...Certain researches seemed to be directly inspired in the concerns of the secret services and propaganda agencies (opinion polls in France and Italy...) The magazine board of directors comprised specialists working for the psychological project of the CIA: Paul Lazarsfeld, Hadley Cantril, Rensis Likert and De Witt Poole (who later became the president of the National Committee for a Free Europe).

The study on the systems of communication of the countries controlled by the Soviet Union or the countries that could be conquered by the communist groups allowed for information gathering to be used immediately by the ground forces’ strategists and the directions -usually very precise - on the propagation modalities of “white” propaganda and the «black» methods of terror. Communications sciences, considered as means of surveillance and coercion had therefore a purely manipulative nature.

The Sciences of Coercion against Neutralism

The paradigm of mass communication, brought into being due to the financing of the Cold War services, was inserted in a broader intellectual plan consisting in the division of the world map based on the American strategists’ logic. The thesis defended by the patriarch of this discipline, Wilbur Schramm, offered a perspective of this reductionist dimension of communication sciences.

Schramm’s system (as Leo Strauss’) was based on the «good guys/bad guys» antagonism. This moral principle (communism symbolized Evil and America symbolized Good) was shared by the majority of the intellectual and scientists committed to the American government in the fight against the Soviet expansion. In this fight, neutralism was considered treason.

The intellectual struggle went beyond convincing communism followers to involve neutrals. In the Congress for the Freedom of Culture, the New York Intellectuals followed by a bunch of European NATO’s defenders, such as Raymond Aron in France, pointed neutralism as the key target of “their” work. Communication scholars worked on the general plan designed by the CIA and the OPC. In an article published in POQ by Daniel Lemer different aspects of neutralism were questioned and a “model” of the individuals included in this category was designed. Lemer’s response to question: How to identify a neutral? was: «[For a neutral] to choose between the U.S. and the USSR is not the same as choosing between freedom and slavery». Lemer defined several elements of neutralism: “Peace, security, détente of international relations”.

Apart from the similarities between the ideological lines of «psychological warfare» and those of the Congress for the Freedom of Culture which showed the relative coherence of the plan designed by Wisner and CIA leaders, it could also be noted that the specialists of “masses manipulation” were usually reformed Marxists. An example of this was Paul Lazarsfeld’s career who would become one of the main ideologues of “mass communication” and during the late 20s was an active socialist. Special Note: See NBIC Report

In France, he had relations with the SFIO and Leo Lagrange. In 1932, the Rockefeller Foundation offered him a scholarship to study in the U.S. Based on the idea that there was a “methodological relation between the act of buying soap and the socialist vote”, he became famous by writing articles about marketing. The government and the secret services quickly noticed him and asked his collaboration in a research program on the effects of radio broadcasting (the Radio Research Program) financed by the Ford Foundation and founded by BASR whose fundings came from the army and the CIA.

In 1951, he was appointed Ford Foundation’s Social Sciences adviser. Then, he facilitated the foundation of the Institute of Advanced Studies on Social Sciences in Austria and the beginning of an exchange program with Yugoslavia and Poland. During the 60s, he was appointed for expert posts in UNESCO and OCDE [10]. Therefore, Paul Lazarsfeld broke relations with the socialist groups to join the “psychological warfare” scientific teams. But he was not the only one to do this, something commendable by the New York Intellectuals [11]. Leo Lowenthal, one of the main contributors of POQ participated actively too in the drawing up of the “psychological” techniques to fight his former Marxists’ friends.

The scientific field of “behavioral scholars” was the study of the systems of communication of the “risky” countries. Consequently, the relationship between the history of this discipline and the conflicts in which the U.S. was involved during the Cold War (Korea, Viet Nam... and secretly, Chile and Angola...) was not surprising.

The Validity of the “Psychological Warfare”

The mechanism founded by Wisner was still in force at the end of the Cold War. While “behavioral scholars” were being recruited, the CIA was financing numerous international research centers or “study areas” with the purpose of gathering information on the “risky” geographical zones. In 1947, the Carnegie Foundation provided the necessary funds for the establishment of the Russian Research Center. Since 1953, one of the main CIA’s fronts, the Ford Foundation, provided funds to 34 universities to carry out international researches.

This project was not only implemented in the U.S. The Rockefeller Foundation financed several «Area studies» in France, once the financed researchers’ political beliefs were carefully verified. The VI Section of the Practical School of Higher Studies, which later became the “Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales” (EHESS), welcomed several research teams that produced works on China, Russia and other regions of interest for the American services. Even today, international studies are still an essential part of the EHESS’ concerns.

On its side, the Voice of America, the American broadcasting network, -the favorite toy of project Troy’s behavioral scholars- is still in effect. The law, passed by the Congress in 1960, and enacted by President Ford stipulated that: «direct radio communication [white propaganda] with the peoples of the world is useful in the long term for the American interests (...) the news of the VOA will be precise, objective and complete (...) The VOA will present the American policy in a clear and effective way!». Today, the VOA programs broadcasted through the transmitter in Greenville (North Carolina), are aimed at African countries and essentially seem to counteract the French influence in the region (the VOA founded its French broadcasting services in 1960). [To include the American public]

By proclaiming its independence, the VOA ended its charter in the following way: «In the world, and especially in Africa, radio is still the main information mean. Today, as in the past (sic), our purpose is to broadcast programs with reliable and unbiased information to our listeners». In general, communications sciences favored the emergence of a new form of war propaganda adapted to the Cold War that was not conceived for a classical confrontation but for the ideological struggle between the East and the West and the low-intensity conflicts that took place in the Third World.

In 2001, the Bush Administration reactivated the Cold War mechanisms not to fight the Soviet Union but to impose a New World Order. Since September 11, 2001, the excuse for this reactivation has been the “war against terror”. In this context, the CIA turns again to universities. The director of scientific researches in the Agency, John Philips, took control of the Rochester Institute of Technology; Michael Crowl, vice director of the joint economic association of CIA in the computer sector, was appointed rector of the University of Arizona whereas Robert Gates (former CIA patron under Bush Senior) has become the director of Texas A&M University.

WAKE UP AMERICA!!!....Its "OUR" country!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don 　

References:

[1] The OSS (Office of Strategic Services) is an intelligence and foreign action secret service founded during WWI. It used personalities of the social sciences such as Herbert Marcuse o Margaret Mead

[2] The Office of War Information was directed by Elmer Davis

[3] The OPC (Office of Policy Coordination) is the executive committee of the “stay-behind” network. See Thierry Meyssan: «Stay-behind, les réseaux d’ingérence américains», Voltaire, August 20, 2001

[4] Alan Needell: «Project Troy and the Cold war annexation», in Universities and Empire, Money and politics in the social sciences during the Cold war, The New Press, 1998

[5] The Center for International Studies (CENIS) is a department within the famous MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) directed by Max Millikan

[6] Ellen Herman: «Project Camelot and the Career of Cold War Psychology», ibid

[7] «La Fondation Ford, paravent philanthropique de la CIA», Voltaire, April 5, 2004

[8] Arthur Lepic: «Les manuels de torture de l’armée des États-Unis», Voltaire, May 26, 2004

[9] Christopher Simpson: Science of Coercion, Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, 1945-1960, Oxford university press, 1994

[10] Michael Pollack: «Paul Lazarsfeld, fondateur d’une multinationale scientifique», in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, n° 25, January, 1979

[11] Denis Boneau: «Les New York Intellectuals et l’invention du néo-conservatisme», Voltaire, November 26, 2004

[12] Boundary Displacement: Area Studies and International Studies after the Cold War

[13] Behavioral and Social Sciences (BSSR)

[14] Bureau of Applied Social Research-War Documentation Project Records, 1950-1956.

[15] Bureau of Applied Social Research Records, 1944-1976

[16] Institute For Social Research ISR

[17] Hadley Cantril

[18] The CIA and the Founding Fathers of Communication Studies

[19] "Worldview Warfare" and The Science of Coercion

[20] New World War

[21] The Ace Menace

[22] Coalition for an Ethical Psychology

[23] The Torture Report Diary