History...it's a bitch...again
From the book, "When President's Lie"
Enjoying a $935,000 annual budget plus eight professional staffers on loan from State, Defense, U.S. Information Agency, and Agency for International Development, Office of Public Diplomacy--under the direction of Cuban émigré Otto J. Reich—also hired by the Bush Administration--the office worked closely with Elliott Abrams,-- a mainstay of Bush Administration national security policy—offered privileges to favored journalists, placed ghostwritten articles over the signatures of Contra leaders in the nation’s leading opinion magazines and op-ed pages, and generally publicized negative stories about the Sandinistas, whether true or not.
In the first year of its operation alone, it sent attacks on the Sandinistas to 1,600 college libraries, 520 political science faculties, 122 editorial writers, 107 religious organizations, and countless reporters, right-wing lobbyists, and members of Congress, according to its own records. It booked advocates for 1,570 lecture and talk-show engagements; in a single week during March 1985, the OPD officers bragged in a memo of having fooled the editors of The Wall Street Journal into publishing an op-ed allegedly penned by an unknown professor, guided an NBC news story on the Contras, written and edited op-ed articles to be signed by Contra spokesmen, and planted lies in the home media about the experiences of a congressman who visited Nicaragua.
Otto Reich boasted of his ability to convince editors and executives to replace reporters he did not like with those he did and warned those reporters who did not cooperate that he would be watching them in the future, a threat that proved effective against National Public Radio, which Reich termed “Moscow on the Potomac.”
Among the lies peddled by OPD agents and employees were stories that portrayed the Sandinistas as virulent anti-Semites, that reported a Soviet shipment of MIG jets to Managua, and that revealed U.S. reporters in Nicaragua to be receiving sexual favors—both heterosexual and homosexual— from Sandinista agents in exchange for favorable coverage. The latter accusation, published in the July 29, 1985, issue of New York Magazine, came directly from Reich, who denied responsibility. Accuracy in Media, secretly under contract to OPD, soon began naming these journalists, despite the fact that the charges were entirely fictional.
Following the Iran–Contra revelations, a 1987 report by the U.S. comptroller general would later find that Reich’s office had “engaged in prohibited, covert propaganda activities,” and the office was soon shut down.
And now...we see this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6915347/
From the book, "When President's Lie"
Enjoying a $935,000 annual budget plus eight professional staffers on loan from State, Defense, U.S. Information Agency, and Agency for International Development, Office of Public Diplomacy--under the direction of Cuban émigré Otto J. Reich—also hired by the Bush Administration--the office worked closely with Elliott Abrams,-- a mainstay of Bush Administration national security policy—offered privileges to favored journalists, placed ghostwritten articles over the signatures of Contra leaders in the nation’s leading opinion magazines and op-ed pages, and generally publicized negative stories about the Sandinistas, whether true or not.
In the first year of its operation alone, it sent attacks on the Sandinistas to 1,600 college libraries, 520 political science faculties, 122 editorial writers, 107 religious organizations, and countless reporters, right-wing lobbyists, and members of Congress, according to its own records. It booked advocates for 1,570 lecture and talk-show engagements; in a single week during March 1985, the OPD officers bragged in a memo of having fooled the editors of The Wall Street Journal into publishing an op-ed allegedly penned by an unknown professor, guided an NBC news story on the Contras, written and edited op-ed articles to be signed by Contra spokesmen, and planted lies in the home media about the experiences of a congressman who visited Nicaragua.
Otto Reich boasted of his ability to convince editors and executives to replace reporters he did not like with those he did and warned those reporters who did not cooperate that he would be watching them in the future, a threat that proved effective against National Public Radio, which Reich termed “Moscow on the Potomac.”
Among the lies peddled by OPD agents and employees were stories that portrayed the Sandinistas as virulent anti-Semites, that reported a Soviet shipment of MIG jets to Managua, and that revealed U.S. reporters in Nicaragua to be receiving sexual favors—both heterosexual and homosexual— from Sandinista agents in exchange for favorable coverage. The latter accusation, published in the July 29, 1985, issue of New York Magazine, came directly from Reich, who denied responsibility. Accuracy in Media, secretly under contract to OPD, soon began naming these journalists, despite the fact that the charges were entirely fictional.
Following the Iran–Contra revelations, a 1987 report by the U.S. comptroller general would later find that Reich’s office had “engaged in prohibited, covert propaganda activities,” and the office was soon shut down.
And now...we see this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6915347/
posted by Mike at 1:47 PM
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