The Brainwashing of America

[Guest guest]

Corruption: Ronald Reagan and the Mob

 

Gary W. Potter, Professor, Criminal Justice and Police Studies, Eastern Kentucky University

 

In the years since Ronald Reagan left the White House, sufficient time has passed for congressional committees, journalistic exposes, and even criminal prosecutions to reveal a pattern of high-level corruption in Reagan's administration. Indeed, in his first term, forty-five presidential appointees resigned as a result of criminal or ethics investigations (Simon and Eitzen, 1986: 6-7). Revelations surrounding the arming of U.S.- backed guerrillas in Nicaragua, drug trafficking by these same "contras," arms shipments to the Middle East, government collusion with money laundering entities such as the Bank of Credit and Commerce and International (BCCI), and foreign policy decisions benefitting countries facilitating drug trafficking, particularly Panama and the Bahamas, heightened the perception of a "sleaze factor" in the Reagan administration. But, while the Reagan White House was clearly scandal-ridden, the underlying malignancy of that presidency has not been as clearly articulated. Information which has been developed in the many investigations of unethical and criminal activities in the Reagan presidency has with the passage of time and distance revealed a most disturbing fact. Ronald Reagan, the law and order, get-tough-with-criminals President, was from the inception of his Presidency in bed with organized crime.

 

Strong indicators surfaced in 1980 when Ronald Reagan received the endorsement of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. That endorsement put organized crime's stamp of approval on the Reagan campaign and was quickly followed by additional support from other sources which played a major role in putting Ronald Reagan in the White House. Not only did he receive support from organized crime, but also his administration reciprocated that support and gave organized crime's representatives seats on the highest councils of American government. Individuals with clear and compelling connections to organized crime were appointed to important governmental positions. And Reagan's closest advisor and his best Washington-based friend throughout his Presidency was a man who Las Vegas FBI agents had called "a tool of organized crime" - Senator Paul Laxalt.

 

Senator Paul Laxalt: Paul Laxalt, the former Governor and Senator from Nevada, was Ronald Reagan's "closest friend and most trusted advisor" (Wall Street Journal, June 20, 1983: 1). Laxalt, who met with Reagan two or three times a week, was described in the press as the "first friend," and Reagan's "eyes and ears" in the United States Senate (Friedman, 1984; Condon, 1983; Waas, 1984). Senator Laxalt had served as Reagan's campaign manager in 1976, 1980, and 1984 and had delivered the nominating speeches for Reagan at the Republican National Conventions in those years (Friedman, 1984: 34; Hamill, 1984: 13).

 

While Laxalt's White House connections gave the impression of great respectability and power, his other associations were less than savory. Particularly troubling was Laxalt's long-time friendship and political association with Allen Dorfman, the man who had supervised the use of the Teamsters Union's Central States Pension Fund as a private bank for organized crime figures (Moldea, 1978: 7; Time, August 8, 1977: 28; Brill, 1978: chapter 6; Washington Post, January 21, 1983: 1). Laxalt made no secret of his association with Dorfman and his actions on Dorfman's behalf, as the following letter sent to Richard Nixon asking that the incarcerated former Teamster Union president, Jimmy Hoffa, be pardoned indicates:

 

"Dear President Dick:

 

The other day I had an extended discussion with Al Dorfman of the Teamsters, with whom I've worked closely for the past few years ... This discussion, which described in detail the personal vendetta that Bobby Kennedy had against Hoffa, together with other information provided me over the years, leads me to the inevitable conclusion that Jim is a victim of Kennedy's revenge" (Moldea, 1986: 260).

 

Laxalt went on to describe Hoffa as a "political prisoner" and asked Nixon to pardon him on his jury tampering conviction. At several other points in the letter, Laxalt called attention to his friendship with Dorfman, the man who had been named by the Justice Department's Organized Crime Strike Force as the person "most responsible for turning the Teamster pension fund into a series of mob loans" (Walsh, 1983: A9): "While I don't know Mr. Hoffa personally, I have had the occasion to have a great deal of contact with Mr. Dorfman ..." (Moldea, 1987: 260). Dorfman's role in organized crime was immortalized for all eternity when he was shot down by ski-masked killers in a Chicago parking lot in 1983 (Washington, Post, January 21, 1983: 1). Accompanying Dorfman at the time of his murder was major Chicago organized crime figure Irwin Weiner, who escaped unscathed from the attack (Ibid.).

 

But Allen Dorfman was not the only organized crime figure who was close to Senator Laxalt. Another major political supporter of Laxalt was the late Moe Dalitz, famous as the head of the notorious Cleveland Four during Prohibition and one of the leading organized crime figures in Las Vegas. When Laxalt was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1974, Dalitz boasted that, "Laxalt is my boy, I put him there" (Friedman, 1984: 36). In his two campaigns for the Senate, Laxalt received $50,000 in direct campaign contributions from Dalitz and several of Dalitz's associates who were named by Department of Justice organized crime investigators as organized criminals (Wall Street Journal, June 20, 1983: 1). When the Wall Street Journal investigated Laxalt's ties to Moe Dalitz, Laxalt said, "He's been so decent to me over the years, there's no way - I don't care what the political considerations would be - I would turn my back on him" (Ibid.: 18). Further probing of Laxalt's organized crime connections turns up close relations with still other major organized crime figures:

 

Rudy Kolod, a felon who had been convicted of fraud and extortion in 1965 and a man with illicit business dealings involving the Teamsters Union, Meyer Lansky, the Chicago Outfit, and other organized crime groups, was a key fundraiser for Laxalt's 1966 gubernatorial campaign in Nevada (Hamill, 1984: 10). When pressed on his relationship with Kolod, Laxalt said that he "did help us tremendously" (Ibid.; Friedman, 1984: 36).

 

The late Sydney Wyman, who contributed heavily to Laxalt's Senatorial campaigns, was a large-scale illegal gambling operator and former business partner of Bugsy Siegel (Walsh, 1983: A8).

 

Allen Glick, a Pittsburgh attorney who served as a Las Vegas frontman for both the Chicago Outfit and Meyer Lansky, was also a major Laxalt fundraiser (Ibid.).

 

Organized crime operative Al Sachs, who has been identified by Justice Department sources as a major participant in organized crime's illegal casino profiteering and skimming operations, also was a most generous contributor to Laxalt's campaigns (Friedman, 1984: 32-39).

 

Campaign funds also came to Laxalt from Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, one the most important organized crime figures in Chicago and a man generally acknowledged as one of the largest "layoff bankers" in the Midwest (Ibid.).

 

Morris Shenker, who provided legal representation for the Central States Pension Fund, was a business partner of Meyer Lansky, and according to informants cited by the FBI worked closely with Kansas City organized crime figures, also raised campaign funds for Laxalt (Ibid.).

 

Former Texas organized crime figure and entrenched Las Vegas gambling magnate, Benny Binion, also was one of Laxalt's strongest and most charitable supporters (Ibid.).

 

But it is not just the depth of organized crime's political support for Laxalt that is disturbing about the Senator from Nevada. Laxalt's personal business dealings also reek of organized crime associations. In 1970 Paul Laxalt and his brother Peter built a gambling casino called the Ormsby House, in Carson City, Nevada (Ibid.: A8). Their partner in the Ormsby House and source of most of the capital needed to build the casino was Bernard Nemerov, another organized crime figure who, by the time Laxalt entered this business partnership, was recognized as having "a long, documented history of association with some of the most notorious members of the national crime syndicate" (Ibid.: A1, A9). An IRS investigation revealed that organized crime had been the beneficiary of a major skimming operation at the Ormsby House in the early 1970s (Ibid.: A1). The IRS charged that about $2 million a year were being skimmed from the gambling proceeds at the casino and were being funneled to organized crime (Ibid.).

 

In 1987 Laxalt briefly entertained the idea of running for President himself. Despite Laxalt's well-publicized organized crime connections, Ronald Reagan put his personal stamp of approval on the Laxalt candidacy, saying at a March, 1986, fundraising dinner for Laxalt, "Look to the son of the high mountains and peasant herders ... to a friend, to an American who gave himself so that others might live in freedom" (Washington Post, 1986: A2).

 

Jackie Presser: Ronald Reagan's close relationship with Paul Laxalt only begins the task of cataloguing Reagan's organized crime-associated advisors. One of the most blatant of these relationships was Reagan's choice of Teamster Union president Jackie Presser as a member of his presidential transition team. Jackie Presser was a long-time official of the Teamsters Union who became president of the union in 1983, even though Presser had never driven a truck in his life. Presser dropped out of school in the eighth grade and rose to prominence and power as what the Justice Department described as "a well known corrupt union leader" whose "fingers are out to pick whatever pockets he can" (Moldea, 1983: 732; Washington Post, 1981: B13). Jackie Presser had learned the business of labor racketeering at his father's knee. William Presser had been Teamsters Union vice-president and had been convicted on extortion charges, obstruction of justice charges, and contempt of Congress (Brill, 1978: 328-330).

 

The Organized Crime Strike Force file in the Justice Department details Jackie Presser's links to organized crime figures in Cleveland, including Moe Dalitz; and the President's Commission on Organized Crime listed a series of kickbacks, payoffs, bribes, and other instances of racketeering in Presser's organized crime resume. Despite Presser's impeccable mob credentials and even though President Reagan was made aware of those credentials by law enforcement officials, Jackie Presser was appointed as a "senior economic advisor" on Reagan's transition team in 1980 (Moldea, 1986: 299). Presser's appointment was arranged by Senator Laxalt and several senior Reagan advisors, including Attorney General Edwin Meese and Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins. Even the President himself maintained frequent contact and friendly relations with Presser during the Reagan administration (Friedman, 1984: 38; Moldea, 1986: 343, 346-347; Washington Post, September 17, 1987: A17; Washington Post, November 14, 1985: A5; New York Times, August 18, 1983: A21). Presser's qualifications for being named as "senior economic advisor" appear to revolve around his ability to divert millions of dollars from his union treasury to various organized crime enterprises in Florida, Arizona, California, and Nevada (Moldea, 1986: 732-733). In fact, just prior to Reagan's appointment of Presser to his transition team, hearings in New Jersey had discovered that Presser was the contact man for organized crime groups in that state who were trying to arrange loans from the Central States Pension Fund (Ibid.: 734). Subsequent to his service on the Reagan transition team, Jackie Presser was indicted in Ohio on charges that he misappropriated $700,000 from the union treasury (Washington Post, June 10, 1983: A4). With that indictment, Jackie Presser became one of more than 100 Teamster Union officials who had been indicted for fraud, racketeering or embezzlement in just a five year period (Ibid.).

 

Roy Williams: President Reagan's friendships with Teamster Union officials extended beyond Jackie Presser to Roy Williams. Reagan began his pursuit of the presidency in 1980 with a speech to the Teamsters in Ohio, following a private meeting with William Presser, Jackie Presser, and the man who was then president of the IBT, Roy Williams (Moldea, 1983: 732). Williams had been described by a Senate investigating committee as "an organized crime mole operating at senior levels of the Teamster Union" (Ibid.: 734). In fact, the day before his private meeting with Reagan, Williams had taken the Fifth Amendment repeatedly when interrogated by a Senate Committee by his relationships with various organized criminals (Ibid.: 732). None of this seemed to bother Reagan, however. His very first stop in Washington after winning the election in November, 1980, was Teamsters Union headquarters, where he met in a closed session with Presser, Williams, and other members of the IBT board of directors (Moldea, 1982: 7).

 

The International Longshoremen's Association: Ronald Reagan's friendship with the Teamsters Union was not his only labor union alliance. In a way this is quite surprising. Reagan was no friend of organized labor. He crushed the Air Traffic Controller's Union, and he battled the AFL-CIO throughout his presidency. But when a union had strong organized crime connections, Ronald Reagan was able to overcome his anti-labor bias.

 

In 1983 Ronald Reagan became the first U.S. president to ever address the national convention of the International Longshoremen's Association (Washington Post, August 17, 1983: A4). Most politicians kept a significant distance between themselves and the ILA for very good reasons. Like the Teamsters Union, the ILA had been expelled from the AFL-CIO for its organized crime connections. In fact, it was expelled because the AFL-CIO charged that the ILA was run by New York organized crime groups (Hutchinson, 1970: 197). The President's Commission on Organized Crime, after its investigation of the International Longshoremen's Association, concluded that the ILA is "virtually a synonym for organized crime in the labor movement" (Ibid.). In a journalistic investigation of the ILA, NBC reported that as a result of a massive systematic hijacking operations, "organized crime and the Longshoremen's Union have been able to put their tax on every item moving in or out of the ports they control" (NBC Evening News, September 6, 7, 1977). More than 30 of the ILA's officials have been convicted on a wide variety of criminal charges (Washington Post, August 17, 1983: A4).

 

Former ILA president Thomas Gleason typified the union's leadership when he took the Fifth Amendment in answer to a subpoena to appear in front of grand jury investigating corruption in the union (Ibid.). Gleason, in a long-standing partnership with Connie Noonan, the acknowledged boss of organized crime's gambling rackets on the New York waterfront, engaged in a series of highly questionable business deals, including selling warplanes to the Dominican Republic (Hutchinson, 1970: 107). When President Reagan addressed the International Longshoremen's Union on July 18, 1983, he portrayed Gleason with the same kind of flowery language he usually reserved for his friend Paul Laxalt and his drug-running Contra "freedom-fighters." Gleason "sticks by his friends and he sticks by his country," Reagan said, "that kind of integrity and loyalty is hard to come by today" (Ibid.). The President had neglected to mention a high-level briefing he had been given just before the speech from Justice Department lawyers attempting to dissuade him from giving the address, which detailed corruption within the ILA (Ibid.).

 

Raymond Donovan: In December, 1980, Ronald Reagan appointed Raymond Donovan, the vice president and labor liaison for the Schiavone Construction Company, as his Secretary of Labor. Donovan's name had been forwarded to the President by the Teamsters' leadership as their first choice of the job of Labor Secretary even though he was virtually unknown to every prominent national labor leader (Moldea, 1983: 733; Washington Post, December 17, 1980: A2).

 

Within a month the FBI presented the results of background investigation of Donovan to the Senate Labor Committee (Moldea, 1982: 9). In its report the FBI charged that Schiavone Construction was "mobbed-up" and that Donovan had extensive "social and business ties with organized crime figures" (Washington Post, January 28, 1981: A3). One of the FBI informants had charged that Donovan had personally made a series of payoffs guaranteeing labor peace to an organized crime hit man (Washington Post, February 18, 1981: A2). In addition, the FBI's New York office submitted a second, secret report which charged that Donovan's construction company had granted "preferential treatment on subcontracting projects" to William "Billy the Butcher" Masselli, a New Jersey organized crime figure (Washington Post, May 30, 1985: A3). In addition the FBI memo charged that Donovan and his associates had conspired with Masselli in "numerous, possibly fraudulent schemes" (Ibid.).

 

At his confirmation hearings, Donovan testified that he had only met Masselli three times, "totally on a business basis" even though in a newspaper interview Masselli had recounted several social events and football games he had attended with Donovan (Time, September 13, 1982: 17; Moldea, 1982: 8). Donovan's denial rang hollow when the FBI revealed that in 892 wire taps of Masselli's phone conversations, Donovan had been mentioned 351 times (Washington Post, May 26, 1987: A7). The investigation of Donovan's appointment as Labor Secretary bogged down when two key witnesses against him were murdered in 1982 (Time, September 13, 1982: 17-18; Moldea, 1986: 323; New York Times, October 6, 1983: B7; Washington Post, October 6, 1983: D2; Washington Post, May 26, 1987: A7). Donovan was eventually indicted on charges of larceny and fraud (Washington Post, October 2, 1984: 1). The Justice Department charged that Schiavone construction attempted to defraud the New York City Transit Authority out of $7.4 million (Washington Post, April 4, 1986: A11).

 

Other Reagan Administration Ties to Organized Crime: Ronald Reagan's relationships with Paul Laxalt, labor racketeers, and Raymond Donovan were not the only cases of close associations between administration officials and organized crime. While we may never know with certainty the true extent of organized crime's infiltration of the Reagan White House, these additional cases reveal the probable depth of that association:

 

Reagan's first National Security Advisor, Richard V. Allen had a series of business deals going with organized crime figures, including Howard Cerny, who had been intimately involved in Robert Vesco's far-flung financial scams and who had also served as a liaison for the CIA with European organized crime groups (Sklar and Lawrence, 1981: 1).

 

Former CIA-director William Casey was a partner of Carl Biehl in Multiponics, an agribusiness firm. Biehl was well-known in the New Orleans underworld, where federal wiretaps had recorded him in illicit ventures as long ago as the early 1950s. Multiponics went bankrupt in 1971 after deceiving its investors (Moldea, 1982: 10).

 

Max Hugel, the deputy director of the CIA, was forced to resign after his connections to organized crime became known. Hugel had been executive vice-president of Centronics Data Computer Corporation. Part of Centronics was owned by Caesar's World, the casino company, which at that time was under federal investigation for hidden organized crime ownership related to Meyer Lansky's massive underworld empire. In addition, Centronics had a consultancy relationship with Moe Dalitz and his Las vegas casinos (Ibid.: 10-11).

 

Similarly, William McCann, Reagan's nominee as ambassador to Ireland, had to withdraw his nomination after it was learned that he was a business associate of Louis Oster, a convicted stock fraud and insurance swindler who had engaged in securities violations as part of illicit dealings with Santo Trafficante and Tony Accardo (Ibid.: 11).

 

Reagan also maintained very close political and personal relations with Walter Annenberg. Annenberg's father Moses had a been a partner of major organized crime figures in the Nationwide News Service, which in the 1920s had supplied race results to bookies throughout the country (Haller, 1976: 122- 123). In 1939 both Moses and Walter Annenberg were indicted on charges of tax evasion and on charges of selling pornography illegally through the mails (Ibid.: 123). Walter Annenberg's "reward" for pioneering the wire service and the pornography industry in the United States was his appointment as ambassador to Great Britain by Richard Nixon and his role as a regular host of Reagan's frequent vacation retreats to Palm Springs, California (Scott, 1988: 2).

 

And, last but not least, Ronald Reagan maintained a close relationship with Frank Sinatra. Sinatra was a frequent guest at White House functions and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In addition, Reagan wrote him an absolutely glowing letter of recommendation for his casino license hearing in Nevada. Sinatra's extensive organized crime associations and dealings have been immortalized in a widely distributed 19-page Justice Department report (Moldea, 1982: 7; Washington Post, October 7, 1987: A19; Gage, 1971: 103, 110; Blakely and Billings, 1981: 381).

 

Payback: Of course, the most important payback to organized crime from the office of the U.S. President is an intangible one, the recognition and respectability that come from direct association with the President of the United States. Just as in the days of Prohibition when politicians scrambled to be seen with gangsters, and organized crime came out of the alleyways and gutters into the "upperworld," so it is that shady associations of Nixon, JFK, and Reagan (and no doubt many others) compromised the government's entire posture toward organized crime. We will never know how many investigations and prosecutions have been compromised by these types of White House involvements. We will never know how much insider information organized crime was given and subsequently made use of to enhance its profitability and avoid prosecution. But, with regard to the Reagan presidency we can point with certainty to some very tangible and positive outcomes for the mob:

 

In response to complaints from Paul Laxalt, the Reagan administration reined in federal investigations of organized crime in Las Vegas. Laxalt had complained directly to the President and subsequently met three times with Attorney General William French Smith to protest what he thought were overly aggressive investigations of organized crime by the Justice Department (Moldea, 1986: 319; Waas, 1984: 1). Laxalt charged that these investigations were deleterious to the city's tourism business, and he complained "we have far more bureau agents than we need" (Friedman, 1984: 34). Laxalt used his position on the Senate Appropriations Committee to reduce the number of federal investigations in Nevada (Moldea, 1984: 2).

 

The Reagan administration supported Laxalt's opposition to proposed regulations aimed at reducing the laundering of illicit drug profits through Las Vegas casinos (Moldea, 1984: 31; Washington Post, December 12, 1985: A19).

 

The Reagan administration also supported Laxalt's attempt to divert the focus of federal criminal investigation efforts from organized crime to street crime (Moldea, 1982: 6).

 

Laxalt unsuccessfully attempted to force the FBI to remove its political corruption hotline in Las Vegas. Despite having the support of the Attorney General, Laxalt was unable to get FBI director William Webster to close down the hotline (Friedman, 1984: 39).

 

During Raymond Donovan's tenure as Secretary of Labor, prosecutions of union officials declined by 30 percent (Moldea, 1986).

 

Reagan imposed a 33% cutback of the FBI's investigations of gambling, prostitution, arson-for-hire, pornography, and gangland murders. The president also announced that no new undercover operations would be authorized against organized crime or white-collar crime in his administration (Ibid.).

 

The Reagan administration severely curtailed the investigative and enforcement abilities of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Justice Department's Organized Crime Strike Force (Ibid.).

 

One of the very first legislative proposals to come out of the Reagan White House was a bill that repealed two federal taxes on gambling (Ibid.).

 

Attorney General William French Smith tried to persuade Congress to repeal the Ethics in Government Act and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (Ibid.).

 

In Reagan's first term he received 588 commutation requests. He granted only 10, all of which were to white-collar criminals with organized crime ties (Washington Post, July 27, 1984: A3). For example, in June 1984 Reagan commuted that 18-year sentence of Gilbert Dozier, a former state official in Louisiana who had been convicted of extortion and racketeering. During his trial prosecutors presented evidence of Dozier's organized crime ties and attempts by Dozier to negotiate a murder contract against an individual associated with the case and attempts by Dozier to bribe a juror (Ibid.).

 

Reagan's own Commission on Organized Crime publicly criticized his relationships with Teamster Union officials and suggested that these associations had delayed federal prosecutions of labor racketeers. Reagan's friendship with Laxalt; his appointments of Presser, Donovan, Casey, Hugel, and McCann; and his glowing support of Gleason and the ILA cannot simply be ignored or dismissed as politics as usual. The Reagan administration and its activities reveal the extent to which organized crime has integrated itself into the normal day-to-day workings of the highest levels of the U.S. government and even more shockingly, the extent to which the highest ranking U.S. officials nonchalantly accept organized crime as a partner in the business of government.

 

[Guest guest]

Here's the scoop on your hero:

 

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/v-pfriendly/story/282812p-242380c.html

 

Truth about Malcolm X

 

Monday, February 21st, 2005

 

Forty years ago today, Malcolm X was shot down in front of his family

and an audience of followers at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. When

he died, Malcolm X had been estranged from the Nation of Islam for

about a year and had begun to call Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the

cult, a liar, a fraud and a womanizer.

Those were mighty hot words to direct at the Nation of Islam, which

was feared throughout the black community as a known gathering place

for violent criminals of all sorts who had been converted in prison,

the way Malcolm himself had. Before his ascent in the cult world of

homemade Islam, Malcolm Little had been known as "Big Red," a street

hustler with a big mouth, a cocaine habit and a willingness to get

rowdy and wild if the occasion called for it.

 

Sent to prison for a series of burglaries, Malcolm turned to Islam, or

a version of it, promoted as the "black man's true religion" which

held the secrets to liberation from white domination and black

self-hatred. A convert, he began the liberation by replacing his

"slave name" with an Islamic name or an X.

 

Malcolm X appeared on the national scene in 1959, presented by the

media as the face of what white racism had done to black people. He

was a minister of hate who used fiery rhetoric to teach that the white

man was a devil invented 6,000 years ago by a mad black scientist.

White audiences were appalled or darkly amused by this cartoon version

of Islam, but more than a few black Americans were influenced by the

Nation of Islam and by its dominant mouthpiece - light-skinned,

freckle-faced, red-haired Malcolm X, the voice of black rage

incarnate.

 

Some Negroes left the Christian church, others changed their names. A

number stopped eating pork and demanded beef barbecue, and a good many

eventually stopped frying their hair and became more nationalistic and

hostile to whites, in their own rhetoric and in the rhetoric they

liked to hear.

 

Malcolm X proved how vulnerable Negroes were to hearing another Negro

put some hard talk on the white man. The long heritage of silence,

both in slavery and the redneck South, was so strong that speech

became a much more important act than many realized. Martin Luther

King Jr. recognized this, observing that many of those who went to

hear Malcolm X were less impressed with his ideas than they were with

the contemptuous way he spoke to white power.

 

Since his death, Malcolm X has been elevated from a heckler of the

civil rights moment to a civil rights leader - which he never was -

and many people now think that he was as important to his moment as

King. He was not, and Malcolm X was well aware of this. But in our

country, where liberal contempt for black people is boundless, we

should not be surprised to see a minor figure lacquered with media

"respect" and thrown in the lap of the black community, where he is

passed off as a great hero.

[rand0M aXiS]

[rand0M aXiS]

http://zapatopi.net/afdb.html

 

You're Welcome.

[Guest guest]

How is Malcom X my "hero", I've never mentioned him anywhere. Anyways it's clear you have some strange unknown agenda. Good luck with that.

 

 

Why US Leaders Intervene Everywhere

 

excerpted from the book

 

The Terrorism Trap

 

by Michael Parenti

 

 

 

Washington policymakers claim that US intervention is motivated by a desire to fight terrorism, bring democracy to other peoples, maintain peace and stability in various regions, defend our national security, protect weaker nations from aggressors, oppose tyranny, prevent genocide, and the like. But if US leaders have only the best intentions when they intervene in other lands, why has the United States become the most hated nation in the terrorist's pantheon of demons? And not only Muslim zealots but people from all walks of life around the world denounce the US government as the prime purveyor of violence and imperialist exploitation. Do they see something that most Americans have not been allowed to see?

 

Supporting the Right

 

Since World War II, the US government has given some $240 billion in military aid to build up the military and internal security forces of more than eighty other nations. The purpose of this enormous effort has been not to defend these nations from invasion by foreign aggressors but to protect their various ruling oligarchs and multinational corporate investors from the dangers of domestic anticapitalist insurgency.

 

That is what some of us have been arguing. But how can we determine that? By observing that (a) with few exceptions there is no evidence suggesting that these various regimes have ever been threatened by attack from neighboring countries; (b) just about all these "friendly" regimes have supported economic systems that are integrated into a global system of corporate domination, open to foreign penetration on terms that are singularly favorable to transnational investors; © there is a great deal of evidence that US-supported military and security forces and death squads in these various countries have been repeatedly used to destroy reformist movements, labor unions, peasant organizations, and popular insurgencies that advocate some kind of egalitarian redistributive politics for themselves.

 

For decades we were told that a huge US military establishment was necessary to contain an expansionist world Communist movement with its headquarters in Moscow (or sometimes Beijing). But after the overthrow of the Soviet Union and other Eastern European communist nations in 1989-1991, Washington made no move to dismantle its costly and dangerous global military apparatus. All Cold War weapons programs continued in full force, with new ones being added all the time, including the outer-space National Missile Defense and other projects to militarize outer space.

 

Immediately the White House and Pentagon began issuing jeremiads about a whole host of new enemies-for some unexplained reason previously overlooked-who menace the United States, including "dangerous rogue states" like Libya with its ragtag army of 50,000 and North Korea with its economy on the brink of collapse.

 

 

The real intentions of US national security state leaders can be revealed in part by noting whom they assist and whom they attack. US leaders have consistently supported rightist regimes and organizations and opposed leftist ones.

 

The terms "Right" and "Left" are seldom specifically defined by policymakers or media commentators-and with good reason. To explicate the politico-economic content of leftist governments and movements is to reveal their egalitarian and usually democratic goals, making it much harder to demonize them.

 

The "Left," as I would define it, encompasses those individuals, organizations, and governments that oppose the privileged interests of wealthy propertied classes, while advocating egalitarian redistributive policies and a common development beneficial to the general populace.

 

The Right too is involved in redistributive politics, but the distribution goes the other way, in an upward direction. Rightist governments and groups, including fascist ones, are dedicated to using the land, labor, markets, and natural resources of countries as so much fodder for the enrichment of the owning and investing classes.

 

In almost every country including our own, rightist groups, parties, or governments pursue tax and spending programs, wage and investment practices, methods of police and military control, and deregulation and privatization policies that primarily benefit those who receive the bulk of their income from investments and property, at the expense of those who live off wages, salaries, fees, and pensions. That is what defines and distinguishes the Right from the Left.

 

In just about every instance, rightist forces are deemed by US opinion makers to be "friendly to the West," a coded term for "pro-capitalist." Conversely, leftist ones are labeled as "anti-democratic,anti-American" and "anti-West," when actually what they are against is global capitalism.

 

While claiming to be motivated by a dedication to human rights and democracy, US leaders have supported some of the most notorious rightwing autocracies in history, governments that have tortured, killed or otherwise maltreated large numbers of their citizens because of their dissenting political views, as in Turkey, Zaire, Chad, Pakistan, Morocco, Indonesia, Honduras, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, the Philippines, Cuba (under Batista), Nicaragua (under Somoza), Iran (under the Shah), and Portugal (under Salazar).

 

Washington also assists counterrevolutionary groups that have perpetrated some of the most brutal bloodletting against civilian populations in leftist countries: Unita in Angola, Renamo in Mozambique, the contras in Nicaragua, the Khmer Rouge (during the 1980s) in Cambodia, the mujahideen and then the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the rightwing drug-dealing KLA terrorists in Kosovo. All this is a matter of public record although seldom if ever treated in the US media.

 

Washington's support has extended to the extreme rightist reaches of the political spectrum. Thus, after World War 11 US leaders and their Western capitalist allies did nothing to eradicate fascism from Europe, except for prosecuting some top Nazi leaders at Nuremberg. In short time, former Nazis and their collaborators were back in the saddle in Germany. Hundreds of Nazi war criminals found a haven in the United States and Latin America, either living in comfortable anonymity or employed by US intelligence agencies during the Cold War.

 

In France, very few Vichy collaborators were purged. "No one of any rank was seriously punished for his or her role in the roundup and deportation of Jews to Nazi camps." US military authorities also restored fascist collaborators to power in various Far East nations. In South Korea, police trained by the fascist Japanese occupation force were used after the war to suppress left democratic forces. The South Korean Army was commanded by officers who had served in the Imperial Japanese Army, some of whom had been guilty of horrid war crimes in the Philippines and China.

 

ln Italy, within a year after the war, almost all Italian fascists were released from prison while hundreds of communists and other leftist partisans who had been valiantly fighting the Nazi occupation were jailed. Allied authorities initiated most of these measures. In the three decades after the war, US government agencies gave an estimated $75 million to right-wing organizations in Italy. From 1969 to 1974, high-ranking elements in Italian military and civilian intelligence agencies, along with various secret and highly placed neofascist groups embarked upon a campaign of terror and sabotage known as the "strategy of tension," involving a series of kidnappings, assassinations, and bombing massacres directed against the growing popularity of the democratic parliamentary Left.

 

In 1995, a deeply implicated CIA, refused to cooperate with an Italian parliamentary commission investigating this terrorist campaign.

 

In the 1980s, scores of people were murdered in Germany, Belgium, and elsewhere in Western Europe by rightwing terrorists in the service of state security agencies. As with the earlier "strategy of tension" in Italy, the attacks attempted to create enough popular fear and uncertainty to undermine the existing social democracies. The US corporate-owned media largely ignored these events.

 

Attacking the Left

 

We can grasp the real intentions of US leaders by looking at who they target for attack, specifically just about all leftist governments, movements, and popular insurgencies. The methods used include (a) financing, infiltrating, and co-opting their military, and their internal security units and intelligence agencies, providing them with police-state technology including instruments of torture; (b) imposing crippling economic sanctions and IMF austerity programs; © bribing political leaders, military leaders, and other key players; (d) inciting retrograde ethnic separatists and supremacists within the country; (e) subverting their democratic and popular organizations; (f) rigging their elections; and (g) financing collaborationist political parties, labor unions, academic researchers, journalists, religious groups, nongovernmental organizations, and various media.

 

US leaders profess a dedication to democracy. Yet over the past five decades, democratically elected reformist governments-"guilty" of introducing egalitarian redistributive economic programs in Guatemala, Guyana, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Syria, Indonesia (under Sukarno), Greece, Cyprus, Argentina, Bolivia, Haiti, the Congo, and numerous other nations-were overthrown by their respective military forces funded and advised by the US national security state. The intent behind Washington's policy is seen in what the US-sponsored military rulers do when they come to power. They roll back any reforms and open their countries all the wider to foreign corporate investors on terms completely favorable to the investors.

 

The US national security state has participated in covert actions or proxy mercenary wars against reformist or revolutionary governments in Cuba, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Portugal, Nicaragua, Cambodia, East Timor, Western Sahara, Egypt, Cambodia, Lebanon, Peru, Iran, Syria, Jamaica, South Yemen, the Fiji Islands, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. In many cases the attacks were terroristic in kind, directed at "soft targets" such as schools, farm cooperatives, health clinics, and whole villages. These wars of attrition extracted a grisly toll on human life and frequently forced the reformist or revolutionary government to discard its programs and submit to IMF dictates, after which the US-propelled terrorist attacks ceased.

 

Since World War 11, US forces have invaded or launched aerial assaults against Vietnam, Laos, the Dominican Republic, North Korea, Cambodia, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Yugoslavia, and most recently Afghanistan-a record of direct military aggression unmatched by any communist government in history.

 

US/NATO forces delivered round-the-clock terror bombings on Yugoslavia for two and a half months in 1999, targeting housing projects, private homes, hospitals, schools, state-owned factories, radio and television stations, government owned hotels, municipal power stations, water supply systems, and bridges, along with hundreds of other nonmilitary targets at great loss to civilian life.

 

In some instances, neoimperialism has been replaced with an old-fashioned direct colonialist occupation, as in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia where US troops are stationed, and more recently in Afghanistan.

 

In 2000-2001, US leaders were involved in a counterinsurgency war against leftist guerrilla movements in Colombia. They also were preparing the public for moves against Venezuela, whose president, Hugo Chavez, is engaged in developing a popular movement and reforms that favor the poor. Stories appearing in the US press tell us that Chavez is emotionally unstable, autocratic, and bringing his country to ruin, the same kind of media hit pieces that demonized the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the New Jewel Movement in Grenada, Allende in Chile, Noriega in Panama, Qaddafi in Libya, Milosevic in Yugoslavia, and Aristide in Haiti, to name some of the countries that were subsequently attacked by US forces or surrogate mercenary units.

 

Governments that strive for any kind of economic independence, or apply some significant portion of their budgets to not-for-profit public services, are the ones most likely to feel the wrath of US intervention. The designated "enemy" can be (a) a populist military government as in Panama under Omar Torrijos (and even under Manuel Noriega), Egypt under Gamal Abdul Nasser, Peru under Juan Velasco, Portugal under the leftist military officers in the MFA, and Venezuela under Hugo Chavez; (b) a Christian socialist government as in Nicaragua under the Sandinistas; © a social democracy as in Chile under Salvador Allende, Jamaica under Michael Manley, Greece under Andreas Papandreou, Cyprus under Mihail Makarios, and the Dominican Republic under Juan Bosch; (d) an anticolonialist reform government as in the Congo under Patrice Lumumba; (e) a Marxist-Leninist government as in Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea; (f) an Islamic revolutionary order as in Libya under Omar Qaddafi; or even (g) a conservative militarist regime as in Iraq under Saddam Hussein if it should attempt an independent course on oil quotas and national development.

 

The goal of US global policy is the Third Worldization of the entire world including Europe and North America, a world in which capital rules supreme with no labor unions to speak of; no prosperous, literate, well-organized working class with rising expectations; no pension funds or medical plans or environmental, consumer, and occupational protections, or any of the other insufferable things that cut into profits.

 

While described as "anti-West" and "anti-American," just about all leftist governments-from Cuba to Vietnam to the late Soviet Union-have made friendly overtures and shown a willingness to establish normal diplomatic and economic relations with the United States. It was not their hostility toward the United States that caused conflict but Washington's intolerance of the alternative class systems they represented.

 

In the post-World War II era, US policymakers sent assistance to Third World nations, and put forth a Marshall plan, grudgingly accepting reforms that produced marginal benefits for the working classes of Western Europe and elsewhere. They did this because of the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union and the strong showing of Communist parties in Western European countries. But today there is no competing lure; hence, Third World peoples (and working populations everywhere) are given little consideration in the ongoing campaigns to rollback the politico-economic democratic gains won by working people in various countries...

 

 

[Guest guest]

Methods of Media Manipulation

by Michael Parenti

from the book

20 years of Censored News

by Carl Jensen and Project Censored

 

 

 

We are told by people in the media industry that news bias is unavoidable. Whatever distortions and inaccuracies that are found in the news are caused by deadline pressures, human misjudgment, limited print space, scarce air time, budgetary restraints, and the difficulty of reducing a complex story into a concise report. Furthermore, the argument goes, no communication system can hope to report everything. Selectivity is needed, and some members of the public are bound to be dissatisfied.

 

I agree that those kinds of difficulties exist. Still, I would argue that the media's misrepresentations are not merely the result of innocent error and everyday production problems. True, the press has to be selective- but what principle of selectivity is involved? Media bias does not occur in random fashion; rather it moves in the same overall direction again and again, favoring management over labor, corporations over corporate critics, affluent whites over inner-city poor, officialdom over protesters, the two-party monopoly over leftist third parties, privatization and free market "reforms" over public sector development, U.S. dominance of the Third World over revolutionary or populist social change, nation-security policy over critics of that policy, and conservative commentators and columnists like Rush Limbaugh and George Will over progressive or populist ones like Jim Hightower and Ralph Nader (not to mention more radical ones).

 

The built-in biases of the corporate mainstream media faithfully reflect the dominant ideology, seldom straying into territory that might cause discomfort to those who hold political and economic power, including those who own the media or advertise in it. What follows is an incomplete sketch of the methods by which those biases are packaged and presented.

 

Omission and suppression

 

Manipulation often lurks in the things left unmentioned. The most common form of media misrepresentation is omission. Sometimes the omission includes not just vital details of a story but the entire story itself, even ones of major import. As just noted, stories that might reflect poorly upon the powers that be are the least likely to see the light of day. Thus the Tylenol poisoning of several people by a deranged individual was treated as big news but the far more sensational story of the industrial brown-lung poisoning of thousands of factory workers by large manufacturing interests (who themselves own or advertise in the major media) has remained suppressed for decades, despite the best efforts of worker safety groups to bring the issue before the public.

 

We hear plenty about the political repression perpetrated by left-wing governments such as Cuba (though a recent State Department report actually cited only six political prisoners in Cuba), but almost nothing about the far more brutal oppression and mass killings perpetrated by U.S.-supported right-wing client states such as Turkey, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, El Salvador, Guatemala, and others too numerous to mention.

 

Often the media mute or downplay truly sensational (as opposed to sensationalistic) stories. Thus, in 1965 the Indonesian military-advised, equipped, trained, and financed by the U.S. military and the CIA-overthrew President Achmed Sukarno and eradicated the Indonesian Communist Party and its allies, killing half a million people (some estimates are as high as a million) in what was the greatest act of political mass murder since the Nazi Holocaust. The generals also destroyed hundreds of clinics, libraries, schools, and community centers that had been opened by the communists. Here was a sensational story if ever there was one, but it took three months before it received passing mention in Time magazine and yet another month before it was reported in The New York Times (4/5/66), accompanied by an editorial that actually praised the Indonesian military for "rightly playing its part with utmost caution."

 

Lies, bald and repetitive

 

When omission proves to be an insufficient form of suppression, the media resort to outright lies. At one time or another over the course of forty years, the CIA involved itself with drug traffickers in Italy, France, Corsica, Indochina, Afghanistan, and Central and South America. Much of this activity was the object of extended congressional investigations and is a matter of public record. But the media seem not to have heard about it.

 

In August 1996, when the San Jose Mercury News published an in-depth series about the CIA-contra-crack shipments that were flooding East Los Angeles, the major media held true to form and suppressed the story. But after the series was circulated around the world on the Web, the story became too difficult to ignore, and the media began its assault. Articles in the Washington Post and The New York Times and reports on network television and PBS announced that there was "no evidence" of CIA involvement, that the Mercury News series was "bad journalism," and that the public's interest in this subject was the real problem, a matter of gullibility, hysteria, and conspiracy mania.

 

In fact, the Mercury News series, drawing from a year long investigation, cited specific agents and dealers. When placed on the Web, the series was copiously supplemented with pertinent documents and depositions that supported the charge. The mainstream media simply ignored that evidence and repeatedly lied by saying that it did not exist.

 

Labeling

 

Like all propagandists, media people seek to prefigure our perception of a subject with a positive or negative label. Some positive ones are: "stability,the president's firm leadership,a strong defense," and "a healthy economy." Indeed, who would want instability, weak presidential leader ship, a vulnerable defense, and a sick economy? The label defines the subject, and does it without having to deal with actual particulars that might lead us to a different conclusion.

 

Some common negative labels are: "leftist guerrillas,Islamic terrorists", "conspiracy theories,inner-city gangs," and "civil disturbances." These, too, are seldom treated within a larger context of social relations and issues. The press itself is facilely and falsely labeled "the liberal media" by the hundreds of conservative columnists, commentators, and talk-show hosts who crowd the communication universe while claiming to be shut out from it.

 

Face value transmission

 

One way to lie is to accept at face value what are known to be official lies, uncritically passing them on to the public without adequate confirmation. For the better part of four years, in the early 1950s, the press performed this function for Senator Joseph McCarthy, who went largely unchallenged as he brought charge after charge of treason and communist subversion against people whom he could not have victimized without the complicity of the national media.

 

Face-value transmission has characterized the press's performance in almost every area of domestic and foreign policy, so much so that journalists have been referred to as "stenographers of power." (Perhaps some labels are well deserved.) When challenged on this, reporters respond that they cannot inject their own personal ideology into their reports. Actually, no one is asking them to. My criticism is that they already do. Their conventional ideological perceptions usually coincide with those of their bosses and with officialdom in general, making them faithful purveyors of the prevailing orthodoxy. This confluence of bias is perceived as "objectivity."

 

False balancing

 

In accordance with the canons of good journalism, the press is supposed to tap competing sources to get both sides of an issue. In fact, both sides are seldom accorded equal prominence. One study found that on NPR, supposedly the most liberal of the mainstream media, right-wing spokespeople are often interviewed alone, while liberals-on the less frequent occasions they appear-are almost always offset by conservatives. Furthermore, both sides of a story are not necessarily all sides. Left-progressive and radical views are almost completely shut out.

 

During the 1980s, television panel discussions on defense policy pitted "experts" who wanted to maintain the existing high levels of military spending against other "experts" who wanted to increase the military budget even more. Seldom if ever heard were those who advocated drastic reductions in the defense budget.

 

Framing

 

The most effective propaganda is that which relies on framing rather than on falsehood. By bending the truth rather than breaking it, using emphasis and other auxiliary embellishments, communicators can create a desired impression without resorting to explicit advocacy and without departing too far from the appearance of objectivity. Framing is achieved in the way the news is packaged, the amount of exposure, the placement (front page or buried within, lead story or last), the tone of presentation (sympathetic or slighting), the headlines and photographs, and, in the case of broadcast media, the accompanying visual and auditory effects.

 

Newscasters use themselves as auxiliary embellishments.

 

They cultivate a smooth delivery and try to convey an impression of detachment that places them above the rough and tumble of their subject matter. Television commentators and newspaper editorialists and columnists affect a knowing style and tone designed to foster credibility and an aura of certitude or what might be called authoritative ignorance, as expressed in remarks like "How will the situation end? Only time will tell." Or, "No one can say for sure." (Better translated as, "I don't know and if I don't know then nobody does.") Sometimes the aura of authoritative credibility is preserved by palming off trite truisms as penetrating truths. So newscasters learn to fashion sentences like "Unless the strike is settled soon, the two sides will be in for a long and bitter struggle." And "The space launching will take place as scheduled if no unexpected problems arise." And "Because of heightened voter interest, election-day turnout is expected to be heavy." And "Unless Congress acts soon, this bill is not likely to go anywhere."

 

We are not likely to go anywhere as a people and a democracy unless we alert ourselves to the methods of media manipulation that are ingrained in the daily production of news and commentary. The news media regularly fail to provide a range of information and commentary that might help citizens in a democracy develop their own critical perceptions. The job of the corporate media is to make the universe of discourse safe for corporate America, telling us what to think about the world before we have a chance to think about it for ourselves.

 

When we understand that news selectivity is likely to favor those who have power, position, and wealth, we move from a liberal complaint about the press's sloppy performance to a radical analysis of how the media serve the ruling circles all too well with much skill and craft.

 

_________________________

 

Michael Parenti received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University in 1962, and has taught at a number of colleges and universities. He is the author of thirteen books, including Democracy for a Few (6th edition); Power and the Powerless; Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media (2nd edition); The Sword and the Dollar: Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race; Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment; Land of Idols, Political Mythology in America; Against Empire: Dirty Truths; and Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism. Dr. Parenti's articles have appeared in a wide range of scholarly journals and political periodicals. He lives in Berkeley, California, and devotes him self full-time to writing and lecturing around the country.