Re: [Salon] Tucker Carlson on X: "Ep. 75 The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. "What I’m describing is military rule," says Mike Benz. "It’s the inversion of democracy

Graham,

It is indeed a challenge to evaluate what to believe these days (if not always). After listening to Benz accusations against the Atlantic Council, I asked my friend Ken Weisbrod, who used to work there, what his take was. Here is his reply plus a letter to Clinton from Goodpaster and reply that Ken also attached.

*******************************

Fair enough but I left 25 years ago. We never did anything like what he alleges now. Whereas the Council and groups like it, as you say, were always in the influence business. My latest book discusses how they did what they did (or what I remember of it). What I also remember was how contested the line was, even then, between propaganda and 'proper' influence. My boss' view was that you crossed the line if you took too much funding from a single category of funder for any project: foundation, gov't, or corporate. No project could be funded by more than 1/3 of each category; most projects had around 1/2 dozen funders. Maybe that was all a bit arbitrary but we stuck to it, until my boss became the victim of a palace coup and I was sent into British exile. Some time ago I wrote down my memory of that episode. It's attached if you like.

As to what to think generally, I don't know, either. It's very hard to obtain real facts nowadays about anything. I suppose that's the point. I also note that the man who replied to Chas message spent much longer in the agency (and at a higher level) than Warren's friend. You can read his reaction for yourself.

Attachment: enlargementmemories.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

 

Attachment: ajgnatoenlargement copy.pdf
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Warren Coats
1211 S Eads St. #2101
Arlington VA 22202
Mobile 703 608-2975
http://wcoats.blog/  http://works.bepress.com/warren_coats/ https://twitter.com/wcoats2



On Feb 18, 2024, at 4:46 PM, graham <bozorgg@aol.com> wrote:

This is a familiar and cheap shot--dismissing  info that people don't like as "conspiracy theory." Benz has offered a serious and detailed analysis of problems of US government interference in information manipulation – and yes even disinformation--at least abroad. Cannot comment on domestic aspects.

Anybody who has undergone the trials of reading the New York Times every day over the years would have to be blind and deaf to realize the phoney line that our "newspaper of record" has been delivering to us on how to understand the Ukraine conflict. Indeed it is just in the last month or so that the New York Times and other so-called mainstream media are beginning to  backtrack from their enthusiasm for the war that Russia has been "losing" for two years. . But anybody seriously interested in that conflict is wella ware that it takes a real research and work to find informed voices and commentary that reflect the reality of that war.  

Doesnt it say some thing when America's preeminent scholar on international relations, John Mearsheimer, is routinely  banned from the pages of virtually all main stream media and has to find voice in small more niche media?. Especially when he has been right all along? He is far from the only case.

One would think that serious followers of international relations would not find it slightly strange facing the absolute Unity of narrative across the western European media as well – with few exceptions. 

Benz offers at least some credible and highly detailed analysis of why this is the case, and has increasingly been the case  over the last decade or so.

As a former long-term CIA operations officer I can certainly confirm the work of the agency in helping manipulate and influence media abroad through the recruitment of foreign journalists tasked with re-printing material supplied to them by their CIA handlers. I happen to have been involved in some of this myself. The stories that were planted in foreign media were generally  vaguely credible in their style but consistently and pointedly  had strong anti-Soviet slant handcrafted for the Muslim world. Such stories were then sent back to Washington and then sent out again to be replayed elsewhere, this time with the "authentication" that the story had "already appeared" in some other prominent newspaper some where else. Echo chamber of "facts" were produced.

I do not know Benz, no I certainly cannot vouch for the full accuracy of all of his claims. But large elements of his story ring quite true – especially to anyone has had much to do with the Atlantic Council or the "Democratic Party Council for promotion of democracy"-- whose exact name I forget-- which have been hand maidens to many cases of US sponsored regime change abroad.

Readers less familiar with the background of these issues, should not be simply waived off from what is cheaply and casually claimed to be simply  "conspiracy theory"--no more discussion or analysis required, thank you..

graham fuller


On Sunday, February 18, 2024, 12:27:06 PM PST, Warren Coats via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:


More on Carlson Benz interview  Jonathan Rauch offered the comments below.

Warren Coats one might think that the absolute unity a voice across all of western Europe
1211 S Eads St. #2101
Arlington VA 22202
Mobile 703 608-2975
http://wcoats.blog/  http://works.bepress.com/warren_coats/ https://twitter.com/wcoats2



Begin forwarded message:

From: Jonathan Rauch <JRAUCH@brookings.edu>
Subject: RE: [Salon] Tucker Carlson on X: "Ep. 75 The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. "What I’m describing is military rule," says Mike Benz. "It’s the inversion of democracy
Date: February 18, 2024 at 2:58:25 PM EST
To: Warren Coats <wcoats@gmail.com>

Thanks. I probably won’t have time to play this through for a while, but from a skim of the transcript, I’d say it lacks credibility. There’s no government plot to censor the internet, and the government couldn’t do that if it tried. Benz, Shellenberger, et al. have been dishonest in their attacks on Renee DiResta (e.g. that she’s connected to the CIA), the Stanford Internet Observatory (that it’s a cut-out for the USG), etc. The New Yorker had an article a few months ago about this campaign to create a conspiracy narrative about internet censorship. Might be worth a look. Also, this. 
 
Government communication with social media companies is legit but should be done in a transparent, procedurally regular way, instead of via jawboning. So that needs to be fixed. Content moderation (“gatekeeping”) is unavoidable for media companies and unavoidably controversial, and that’s just a hard problem. But there’s no grand conspiracy.
 
FWIW.
 
Jonathan Rauch
Brookings | 202-695-3639
 
From: Warren Coats <wcoats@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2024 10:30 AM
To: Jonathan Rauch <JRAUCH@brookings.edu>
Subject: Fwd: [Salon] Tucker Carlson on X: "Ep. 75 The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. "What I’m describing is military rule," says Mike Benz. "It’s the inversion of democracy
 
Jonathan,
What do you think of this?
 
Warren Coats
1211 S Eads St. Apt 2101
Arlington Va. 22202
(703) 608-2975 


Begin forwarded message:

From: Chas Freeman via Salon <salon@listserve.com>
Date: February 17, 2024 at 9:08:15 PM EST
To: graham <bozorgg@aol.com>
Cc: salon@listserve.com
Subject: Re: [Salon] Tucker Carlson on X: "Ep. 75 The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. "What I’m describing is military rule," says Mike Benz. "It’s the inversion of democracy
Reply-To: Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com>


This is a major story and I think it will have large legs.  It explains so much about what is now wrong with our democracy.  I note that Carlson's interview with Putin appears to have achieved 1 billion views.  This interview will be of far greater interest to Americans than to foreign audiences, many of which now regard us as evil and will, if they bother to view this at all, see it as corroborating their worst evaluations of our manipulation of both our own politics and the politics of other countries.
 
Chas
 
On Sat, Feb 17, 2024 at 8:57 PM graham <bozorgg@aol.com> wrote:
Hi Chas, don't know if you had a chance to listen to this whole thing, but I found it simply extraordinary. Dynamite.  From things I know from here and there over the years both in the agency and later in Washington it rings very true I found very little of the conspiracy mentality in the interviewee, it has huge explanatory power for some of my perplexity at the sweeping scope of US domination of the western narrative on Ukraine and other issues. 
 
Do you yourself take this guys story seriously? Will it have legs, or simply be stifled?
 
Graham

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