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Did the National Security Act of 1947 destroy
freedom of the press? The red pill... Historical and Investigative Research - 3 Jan 2006 The National Security Act (passed in 1947) allows US
Intelligence to begin any action, at any time, without asking anybody.
In addition, US Intelligence may postpone indefinitely any
report of such activity simply by claiming that making the report would harm
the "national security" of the United States. This is a recipe for
absolute power. It follows that the National Security Act of 1947 gave US
Intelligence the power -- if not the explicit authority -- to corrupt the
press in secret. This article will argue, and document, that this is
precisely what US Intelligence has done. Naturally, this raises the sharpest
possible questions about the integrity of US democracy. Table of Contents █ Introduction █ The secrecy provisions of the National Security Act █ Covert Action █ The ethics of US Intelligence: the CIA was created by absorbing in
secret lots of Nazi war criminals █ So did the National Security Act destroy freedom of the press in the
United States? █ The power of US Intelligence █ Final Remarks ___________________________________________________________ Introduction Even in democracies, the business of government is
run by a tiny group of people, and the decisions are taken by an even tinier
group: let us call these few decision makers ‘the ruling elite.’ In the
United States, this tiny ruling elite at the top is composed
disproportionately of members of the (very) wealthy classes, and their
retainers. It may include people who do not have an official government
position. Now, since a person’s interests are largely
determined by his or her position in the socio-economic structure, it follows
that the ruling elite will tend to have interests quite at variance with
those of the majority of the population. In fact, their ideology may be
completely different -- even opposite. Is this a problem? Not if the majority has
sufficient oversight over what the ruling elite is doing, for in this case
government officials who violate the wishes of the majority can be
democratically replaced with others who do respect what the people
want. What can produce the sufficient level of oversight? A
free and competitive news market. Any free and competitive market will have certain
basic properties. For example, if you and I both have competing taco stands,
but my tacos -- going for a comparable price -- are cleaner and tastier, then
people will flock to my taco stand and will abandon yours. Economics 101: obvious
stuff. If we are running advertisements, I will point out how much better my
tacos are than yours, the better to gain a larger market share. This will
force you and other competitors of mine to improve the quality of your tacos
without increasing the price too much, or else you will have to get out of
the taco market. This is what we expect will happen in any free and
competitive market, so markets for other products will behave similarly, if
they are free. When the product is news, in a free and competitive
market we should see better-quality news services exposing the biases,
inaccuracies, or lies in inferior news services. Why? Because deviations from
the truth are synonymous with a lower-quality news product; if more reliable
alternatives are known to be available, consumers will flock to those. In a
free news market, therefore, the different media services will savagely
attack each other.[1] As a result,
untruths will have poor stability. But in order to have such a free market of
information -- what is called a ‘free press’ -- the companies producing news
must not be controlled by the local government or a foreign one, and they
must be independent of each other, so that they indeed compete to
inform news consumers. Without a free press, democracy is impossible. In political theory the ‘free press’ is often
referred to as the ‘fourth estate’ because an ‘estate’ is something like a
main building block of political structure. In the United States, for
example, the political structure is formally divided into: 1) the
executive: the president and ‘the cabinet’ (a term for the president’s own
employees, whom he hires and fires); 2) the
legislative: the two houses of Congress; and 3) the
judiciary: the courts. Though not formally part of ‘government,’ a free
press will act as a ‘fourth estate’ because, by investigating and reporting
what the government does, it will effectively check that government.
So long as there is a free press, then, it will be difficult for the government
to betray the people, because a treasonous government stands a good chance of
being exposed. Of course, if the same ruling elite that runs the
government also runs the press, then there is no oversight of
government, and the press instead becomes an organ of the ruling elite’s
power, distributing not news but propaganda that will help members of the
ruling elite to employ government as a tool to advance their own interests
over everybody else’s. Since control over the press would give the ruling
elite such tremendous power, it is obvious that the ruling elite has a motive
to corrupt the press. But do they have opportunity? In other words,
can they, in practical terms, do this? That depends. If the government is not allowed to
keep secrets, and if every dollar spent by the government has to be publicly
accounted for, the ruling elite running the government will not find it so
easy to corrupt the press. If, on the contrary, at least a few
branches of government are given a relatively large budget with which to
operate in complete secrecy, giving no account to the citizenry of how the
monies are spent, there will be plenty of opportunity to corrupt the press. With the power to use the taxpayer’s money in
secret, the ruling elite can give publishers and editors (a small group of
individuals) a choice between lucrative corruption or secret persecution
(even death, at the limit). If publishers and editors happen already to come
disproportionately from the same circles as the ruling elite, the choice will
not be especially difficult: they will tend to choose corruption. This top layer of the press decides what ordinary
people get to see in print, on the radio, or on TV. Thus, control over this
top layer in an apparently free press will result in tremendous power,
because the appearance of a competitive market (produced by the proliferation
of brands) will make the public terribly gullible. Instead of using coercion
to force people to do what the ruling elite wants (which invariably produces
a reaction), the controlled yet apparently free media can be used to manufacture
realities such that ordinary people will ‘democratically’ demand the
very things the ruling elite wants to do. For example, a war of aggression
which the citizenry would never approve (since it is ordinary citizens who
must die fighting) could be falsely represented as a defensive war by using
the media to create the impression of a threat that in reality did not exist.
Once scared, the citizenry would demand the very war that the ruling
elite wanted to launch. This sort of thing would be scary. But that doesn't
mean it cannot happen. It has happened before. For example, in August 1939,
Adolf Hitler, who had complete control over the press in Nazi Germany,
complained that the Polish government was supposedly terrorizing the German
minority in Poland, as follows:
This became Adolf Hitler's publicly given reason to
attack the Polish state (which attack, we are told, precipitated World War
II). But the Polish government had not been oppressing the German minority in
Poland, and the trigger-excuse that the German Nazi government used to
set in motion the invasion of Poland was a series of simulated attacks on
Germany along the Polish-German border, carried out by the Nazis themselves,
and blamed on the Poles (the most famous is the 'Gleiwitz incident').[1b] Given that such things are possible, concerned US
citizens should ask themselves the question: Have members of the US ruling
elite had the opportunity to corrupt the press? In this piece, I will argue that, unfortunately,
such opportunity was formally given by the US Congress to the executive a
long time ago, when it passed the National Security Act in 1947, creating
branches of government that may do essentially anything they please in
secret, and which have at their disposal a large budget. In other words, by
law, since 1947, US taxpayers have not been told how their presidents have
been spending a very big chunk of their taxes.
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US foreign policy towards the Jewish state has also
been perfectly consistent: it has been consistently and radically anti-Israel
regardless of who is president, as another HIR investigation has
demonstrated:
“IS THE US AN ALLY OF ISRAEL?: A chronological look at the evidence”; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/ihrally.htm
This again agrees nicely with the fact that the CIA
was created out of tens of thousands of Nazis.
Final Remarks
_____________
There has been a lot of noise in the media
concerning the powers granted to the executive branch in the Patriot Act,
which was signed into law in the wake of 9-11. I would submit that the entire
debate is a propagandistic distraction. The executive branch of the United
States was already given something very close to absolute power in the
National Security Act of 1947. It has been able to do anything it wants since
then. Once that sinks in, the noise around the Patriot Act begins to look
like a decoy: its purpose is merely to generate a debate around it, there to
create a theater of democracy. But democracy, I would submit, died some time
ago, when the free press was abolished by US Intelligence.
_____________________________________________________
Footnotes and Further Reading
_____________________________________________________
[1] Suppose that
someone defended the hypothesis that this website, HIR, is free and
independent. What could work as evidence in favor of this hypothesis?
Certainly, the fact that it spends so much time demonstrating that the major
media are not telling the truth. That such attempted demonstrations should be
so rare should make you wonder about the rest of the media.
[1a] Hitler,
August 23, 1939, from letters sent to the UK and French governments
(Reprinted in the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor, April
2003).
http://www.swt.org/share/ancientciv.htm
[1b] Gleiwitz
incident | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident
[2] Either link
will work just fine:
http://www.intelligence.gov/0-natsecact_1947.shtml
or
http://www.hirhome.com/nat_sec_act.htm
[3] National Security
Act of 1947; US Department of State.
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/cwr/17603.htm
[4] National
Security Act; SEC. 507. (d)(3)(A):
“The date for the submittal of a report whose submittal is postponed under paragraph (1) or (2) may be postponed beyond the time provided for the submittal of such report under such paragraph if the official required to submit such report submits to the congressional intelligence committees a written certification that preparation and submittal of such report at such time will impede the work of officers or employees of the intelligence community in a manner that will be detrimental to the national security of the United States.”
[5] National Security
Act; SEC. 501. [50 U.S.C. 413] (d):
“The House of Representatives and the Senate shall each establish, by rule or resolution of such House, procedures to protect from unauthorized disclosure all classified information, and all information relating to intelligence sources and methods, that is furnished to the congressional intelligence committees or to Members of Congress under this title. Such procedures shall be established in consultation with the Director of Central Intelligence. In accordance with such procedures, each of the congressional intelligence committees shall promptly call to the attention of its respective House, or to any appropriate committee or committees of its respective House, any matter relating to intelligence activities requiring the attention of such House or such committee or committees.”
[6] Official
Reveals Budget for U.S. Intelligence, The New York Times, November 8,
2005 Tuesday, Late Edition - Final, Section A; Column 1; National Desk;
Pg. 18, 691 words, By SCOTT SHANE, WASHINGTON, Nov. 7.
“In an apparent slip, a top American intelligence official has revealed at a public conference what has long been secret: the amount of money the United States spends on its spy agencies.
At an intelligence conference in San Antonio last week, Mary Margaret Graham, a 27-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency and now the deputy director of national intelligence for collection, said the annual intelligence budget was $44 billion.
The number was reported Monday in U.S. News and World Report, whose national security reporter, Kevin Whitelaw, was among the hundreds of people in attendance during Ms. Graham’s talk.
‘I thought, “I can’t believe she said that,”’ Mr. Whitelaw said on Monday. ‘The government has spent so much time and energy arguing that it needs to remain classified.’
The figure itself comes as no great shock; most news reports in the last couple of years have estimated the budget at $40 billion. But the fact that Ms. Graham would say it in public is a surprise, because the government has repeatedly gone to court to keep the current intelligence budget and even past budgets as far back as the 1940’s from being disclosed.
Carl Kropf, a spokesman for the office of the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, said Ms. Graham would not comment. Mr. Kropf declined to say whether the figure, which Ms. Graham gave last Monday at an annual conference on intelligence gathered from satellite and other photographs, was accurate, or whether her revelation was accidental.
Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, expressed amused satisfaction that the budget figure had slipped out.
‘It is ironic,’ Mr. Aftergood said. ‘We sued the C.I.A. four times for this kind of information and lost. You can’t get it through legal channels.’
Only for a few past years has the budget been disclosed. After Mr. Aftergood’s group first sued for the budget figure under the Freedom of Information Act in 1997, George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, decided to make public that year’s budget, $26.6 billion. The next year Mr. Tenet did the same, revealing that the 1998 fiscal year budget was $26.7 billion.”
[7] Uncle Sam's
Nazi's, The Washington Post, April 24, 1988, Sunday, Final Edition, BOOK
WORLD; PAGE X11, 905 words, Peter Grose, REVIEW
[ Washington Post Text begins here ]
BLOWBACK America's Recruitment Of Nazis and Its Effects On the Cold War
By Christopher Simpson Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 398 pp. $ 19.95HERE IS the beginning of serious research into a policy venture that today's Americans have more difficulty admitting out loud than almost anything else the United States did after the victory of World War II. It is no longer necessary -- or possible -- to deny the fact: the U.S. government systematically and deliberately recruited active Nazis by the thousands, rescued them, hired them and relied upon them to serve American interests and purposes in postwar Europe.
The operations went on over many years, for reasons that seemed quite good at the time -- except that the American public was told that U.S. policy was to round up and punish (not entice and reward) those who had been instrumental in Hitler's crimes against humanity. The archival sleuthing of Christopher Simpson shows us how the very dossiers collated by one American agency to track down and arrest Nazis were simultaneously used by another American agency to find the men they wanted, accept them as colleagues in the Cold War and protect them from prosecution, in some cases for decades.
This was no sleazy covert operation managed from the basement of the West Wing; it was a series of officially authorized missions, known to thousands of Americans, who assumed it was the way things had to be done, who have no apologies. In recent times, as the notion of "hiring Nazis" became more repugnant than it was in the euphemistic years, these retired officers have just found it more comfortable not to reminisce too specifically about their activities in the late 1940s.
It was the discovery of one of the American protégés, Klaus Barbie, in his Bolivian hideout in 1983 that finally splintered the defense mechanisms. An earnest lawyer at the Department of Justice declared that the official five-month investigation of the Barbie case "uncovered no evidence [that] there was any other former Nazi that the U.S. shielded from justice." Perhaps not, in the literal meaning of his words; but the assurance was deceptive, and thousands knew it.
Simpson, energetic and enthusiastic, talked with surviving participants in the various rescue missions, though retrospective oral history is of limited value where there are things to hide. The real value of his research is in the surviving contemporary documents, those declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, which then allowed a more sensitive and revealing reading of other materials already available but ignored.
Specific parts of the story have long been known, of course. General Reinhard Gehlen and his émigré intelligence networks, the rocket scientists, Operation Paperclip -- these have all been written up, but as isolated, atypical cold-war incidents, that required of their American perpetrators only a knowing wink at official policy, not a wholesale hypocrisy.
But at a higher policy level were those, like George F. Kennan, who were in a position to know full well that the discrete intelligence missions were part of a comprehensive pattern. "Whether we like it or not," Kennan had argued even before the war ended, "nine-tenths of what is strong, able and respected in Germany has been poured into those very categories which we have in mind [to be purged]. If others wish, in the face of this situation, to pursue the illumination of those sinister recesses in which the brutalities of this war find their record, they may do so," Kennan concluded. "The degree of relative guilt which such inquiries may bring to light is something of which I, as an American, prefer to remain ignorant." If this was the mood of policymakers, no wonder a petty Austrian clerk named [Kurt] Waldheim [twice elected UN Secretary General] managed to be so careless about remembering or revealing his wartime record for the Nazis.
Simpson writes as an investigative reporter, not a disciplined historian, yet he is faithful to researchers' need for specific and precise references to documentary sources. His 88 pages of source notes and archival descriptions are, in themselves, a valuable resource to help guide further inquiry.
The title, Blowback, comes from spy slang for unexpected and undesired domestic effects of foreign covert actions. Simpson argues that, once hired, the former Nazis generated an anti-Soviet hysteria, including at the highest policymaking levels, that was hardly warranted by the evidence available through less tainted sources. The evidence on this point is not fully convincing. While Gehlen's illusory network may indeed have led to exaggeration of Soviet capabilities and intents at various times, Simpson may be overreaching in blaming "some of the most reactionary trends in American political life" on the motley bands of Nazi hit men who managed to ingratiate themselves with their American conquerors and then fade into obscure working-class suburbs.
Any writing on this topic -- and the inquiry is only begun -- has to find a subtle balance between moral condemnation and pragmatic vindication. Both have their places; indeed, both are necessary if the story is to be understood. Simpson does not hide his outrage, but he fairly offers the evidence to help a later generation comprehend well-intentioned actions that suffer in the scrutiny of history.
Peter Grose, a former foreign correspondent, is the managing editor of Foreign Affairs.
[ Washington Post Text ends here ]
[7a] To see an
example of how the CIA was used not for the interests of US citizens, but
merely to enhance the economic and political power fo the US ruling elite,
read:
“HOW THE UNITED STATES DESTROYED DEMOCRACY IN IRAN IN 1953: Re-print of 16 April 2000 New York Times article, with an introduction by Francisco Gil-White; Historical and Investigative Research; 31 December 2005;
http://www.hirhome.com/iraqiran/iran-coup.htm
[8] Republican
party home to racists, fascists, The Toronto Star, January 2, 1989, Monday,
HOME DELIVERY TWO, NEWS; Pg. A13, 843 words, By Gerald Caplan
[9] “We can
forgive Mr. Simpson some heat in denouncing ‘the extent of the corruption of
American ideals that has taken place in the name of fighting communism.’ But
he damages his own case by blurring the distinction between the means and the
end.”
SOURCE: GIVE US YOUR TIRED, YOUR POOR, YOUR NAZIS
SCIENTISTS, The New York Times, May 8, 1988, Sunday, Late City Final Edition,
Section 7; Page 8, Column 1; Book Review Desk, 972 words, By SERGE SCHEMANN;
Serge Schmemann is the Bonn bureau chief for The New York Times and was
previously a Times correspondent in Moscow.
[9a] AFTER 1945, THE
US CREATED US INTELLIGENCE BY RECRUITING TENS OF THOUSANDS OF NAZI WAR
CRIMINALS; from “Is the US an Ally of Israel?: A Chronological Look at the
Evidence”; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/ihrally.htm#1945
[9b] IN 1947-48,
FORCED BY EXTERNAL CIRCUMSTANCES, THE US GOVERNMENT GAVE LUKEWARM SUPPORT TO
THE CREATION OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL. BUT THEN IT REVERSED ITSELF AND
IMPLEMENTED ANTI-ISRAEL POLICIES; from "Is the US an Ally of Israel?: A
Chronological Look at the Evidence"; Historical and Investigative
Research; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/ihrally.htm#1947
[9c] One prominent
case was the destruction of Mohammed Mossadeq's progressive and democratic
government in Iran, which was replaced with a repressive, right-wing
dictatorship that was a puppet of the US:
“HOW THE UNITED STATES DESTROYED DEMOCRACY IN IRAN IN 1953: Re-print of 16 April 2000 New York Times article, with an introduction by Francisco Gil-White; Historical and Investigative Research; 31 December 2005;
http://www.hirhome.com/iraqiran/iran-coup.htm
[10] Gleijeses, P.
1995. Ships in the Night: The CIA, the White House and the Bay of Pigs. Journal
of Latin American Studies 27:1-42. (p.15)
[10a] Simpson,
Christopher. 1988. Blowback: America's recruitment of Nazis and its
effects on the Cold War, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, New York.
(pp.138-155)
[10b] “C.I.A.:
Maker of Policy, or Tool?”; Special to The New York Times; Apr 25, 1966; The
New York Times; pg. 1.
[10c] http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/letter.html
[11] Brenner, P. 1990.
Cuba and the Missile Crisis. Journal of Latin American Studies
22:115-142. (p.119)
[12] Brenner (1990:120)
[12a] Chairman,
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba
[includes cover memoranda], March 13, 1962, TOP SECRET, 15 pp.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf
[13] Campbell, B.
1994. The Roman army, 31 BC - AD: A sourcebook. London and New York: Routledge.
(p.38)
[14]
“…‘speculatores of Caesar’ the central corps bearing this name belonged to
the praetorian guard…This arrangement no doubt began with Augustus. He is
recorded as having stayed in the country home of one of his speculatores.
These men were chosen for their impressive physique and their main task was
to guard the emperor from assassination.”
SOURCE: Sheldon, R. M. 1987. Tinker, tailor,
caesar, spy: Espionage in ancient Rome. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Michigan.
(p.155)
[15] Praetorian Guard |
from GlobalSecurity.org
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/intro/praetorian.htm
[16] Campbell, B.
1994. The Roman army, 31 BC - AD: A sourcebook. London and New York:
Routledge. (p.184-185)
[17] To see an
examination of the ideology of one prominent Islamist, read:
“WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN BOSNIA?: Were the Serbs the criminal aggressors, as the official story claims, or were they the victims?”; Historical and Investigative Research; 19 August 2005; by Francisco Gil-White with an introduction by Jared Israel.
PART 1: Who was Alija Izetbegovic: Moderate democrat or radical Islamist?
www.ihrhome.com/yugo/ihralija1.htm
[18] To
read about the NCFE, visit:
“A SKEPTICAL LOOK AT THE FORD FOUNDATION: Does its Nazi past matter?”; Historical and Investigative Research; 18 September 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/ford.htm#congress
[The
link above takes you to the section of the article dealing with the NCFE.]
[19]
SOURCE: Simpson, Christopher. 1988. Blowback: America's recruitment of
Nazis and its effects on the Cold War, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, New
York. (p.126-127)
[20]
The quote comes from a New York Times article from 2000 that, amazingly,
explains how the same New York Times cooperated with the CIA to lie to the US
public in 1953. To read more about this, visit:
“HOW THE NEW YORK TIMES LIED TO THE PUBLIC IN '53, AS IT DOES NOW: Re-print of 16 April 2000 New York Times article, with commentary by Francisco Gil-White; Historical and Investigative Research; 31 December 2005;
http://www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/iran-coup.htm
[Scroll to the
right after clicking on the above link.]
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