The CIA's 3-Decade Effort to Mold the World's Views (1977) | Hacker News Reader

The CIA's 3-Decade Effort to Mold the World's Views (1977)

nytimes.com

44 pointsAndrewBissell16 comments

Not to be nihilistic, but this was the case over 40 years ago, and if something similar were still true today, it would mean 70+ years of officially constructed popular perception. (e.g. your grandparents beliefs were manufactured) This rabbit hole goes very deep, where a lot of famous writers and artists were funded by cold war efforts, where writers and editors for magazines were selected and funded to produce narrative for either soviet or american interests. Whether the story is apocryphal or real, former CIA Director William Casey apparently said, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false," - and from a certain perspective, whether it's real or not doesn't actually matter either way.

When you look at what you can really verify as true or evident in the world, it all has a pretty high bar. If it's not made of math or physics, it's a representation made of artifacts of language that reinforce belief. Symbols are comforting, and they provide a means to negotiate some physical security for our organisms to thrive without cannibalizing each other, but I'd ask whether constructing and maintaining a false reality is necessary to that end, or if is it just a kind of low, sadistic pleasure. We can't just write the CIA infiltrating all mass media and culture off as "other humans with jobs doing their best." There are ethical and noble ways to provide stability and order that encourage people grow and for life to thrive.

This article twigged me, as I just don't see converting 70+ years of managed deception into an addictive panopticon as the right thing to do.

Interesting how bad is the USA image after 2003 invasion of Irak. The West supported USA after 9/11, people felt really sorry for what happened. It felt like a betrayal when all that good will was used to steal oil at the cost of destabilizing the region, killing hundreds of thousands and delaying green energy sources. There is a limit on what propaganda can fix.

Russia seems to play the game differently. They just want to cause chaos, maybe because they are playing defense. China is also growing influence and propaganda in the West, and if the USA does not fit it's internal problems it can become the next world power in the minds of most people.

Interesting read. It feels part of a past that is not coming back.

Russia has the economy size of Italy, it’s just chaos for attention.

And is much harder to govern, the biggest reasons being the harsh geography and climate, and how thinly the population is spread outside of western Russia.

Operation Mockingbird:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

CIA influence on public opinion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinio...

Not a single mention of Operation Mockingbird?

Article is from '77 so may be from before that operation was known to the general public. And still, the NYT is one of the most useful publications to the Agency, so there's that.

Google's Ngram Viewer shows no instances of that phrase in print prior to the early 1990s, and even the early hits there look questionable. The project likely was not known, perhaps at all, and at least under that name, in 1977.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Operation+Mock...

The Wikipedia article does not make clear when the term entered the public domain, though the associated reference (Deborah Davis) seems to have been published in 1979.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/i-had-it-all-abc-hos...

I've dug out the other articles (six total) in this series, running between December 25--30, 1977.

This is the sort of coverage which might have produced a book, though I don't find anything authored by John M. Crewdson at Worldcat.

The full series (includes the article linked here):

1. "The CIA's 3-Decade Effort to Mold the World's Views (1977)" (1977-12-25) https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/25/archives/the-cias-3decade...

2. "Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A." (1977-12-26) https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/26/archives/worldwide-propag...

3. "C.I.A. Established Many Links To Journalists in U.S. and Abroad" (1977-12-27) https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/27/archives/cia-established-...

4. "Colby Acknowledges U.S. Press Picked Up Bogus C.I.A. Accounts" (1977-12-28) https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/28/archives/colby-acknowledg...

5. "U.S. Correspondents Give Views on C.I.A." (1977-12-29) https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/29/archives/us-correspondent...

6. "Ex‐Envoy Says Risk of Exposure Negated C.I.A. Propaganda Value" (1977-12-30) https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/30/archives/exenvoy-says-ris...

(Both external and NYT search seem to find this as the complete series. Run largely over the Christmas -- New Years news hole....)

A DDG search of Crewdson's NYT pieces referencing the CIA (there are many): https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anytimes.com+%22John+M.+Crew...

The essential crypto cuttlefish Twitter account put together a very good thread which references this series: https://twitter.com/cuttlefish_btc/status/699689819400708097

I may be blind, but I don't see the NYT / Crawdsen reference there.

Farther down the thread, start here: https://twitter.com/cuttlefish_btc/status/877654793958903808

Got it, thanks.

The first three articles focus on the Times's own research and findings.

The second three focus on the congressional hearings and responses to them.

The detail in the first three articles especially is pretty interesting, and covers many major news organisations: the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, UPI, AP, Reuters, broadcast networks (radio & TV), several individual radio stations, and numerous foreign press organisations either owned by, subsidised by, or influenced by the CIA.

Not all the engagements were necessarily known, and the press organisations often denied knowledge or complicit cooperation, though the fact of influence is well established.

Notably the Times itself, its publisher, and the owner's family (the Sulzbergers) are all conspicuously mentioned, multiple times. The paper claims it wasn't knowlingly cooperating. It did publish a highly critical account, much of it on Page 1.

https://archive.li/wjFaL

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