CIA desperate to stay in Syria, use Russia hysteria vs Trump so he won't allow peace. CIA “friendly takeover” of Democrat Party is unprecedented in US history, incredible power of military-intel agencies over entire government expresses breakdown of US democracy-Patrick Martin, WWSW

“The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of resentment over the disruption of its operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that score.…The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an expression of the breakdown of American democracy.”...30 military-intel Democrats won their primaries, 9/21/18, “The CIA Democrats: A balance sheet of the primaries.”…Eleven won House seats. 

3/13/18, “The CIA takeover of the Democratic Party,“ Patrick Martin, Worldwide Socialist Website

“In a three-part series published last week, the World Socialist Web Site documented an unprecedented influx of intelligence and military operatives into the Democratic Party. More than 50 such military-intelligence candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination in the 102 districts identified by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as its targets for 2018. These include both vacant seats and those with Republican incumbents considered vulnerable in the event of a significant swing to the Democrats.

If on November 6 the Democratic Party makes the net gain of 24 seats needed to win control of the House of Representatives, former CIA agents, military commanders, and State Department officials will provide the margin of victory and hold the balance of power in Congress. The presence of so many representatives of the military-intelligence apparatus in the legislature is a situation without precedent in the history of the United States.

Since its establishment in 1947—under the administration of Democratic President Harry Truman—the CIA has been legally barred from carrying out within the United States the activities which were its mission overseas: spying, infiltration, political provocation, assassination. These prohibitions were given official lip service but ignored in practice.

In the wake of the Watergate crisis and the forced resignation of President Richard Nixon, reporter Seymour Hersh published the first devastating exposure of the CIA domestic spying, in an investigative report for the New York Times on December 22, 1974. 

This report triggered the establishment of the Rockefeller Commission, a White House effort at damage control, and Senate and House select committees, named after their chairmen, Senator Frank Church and Representative Otis Pike, which conducted hearings and made serious attempts to investigate and expose the crimes of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.

The Church Committee in particular featured the exposure of CIA assassination plots against foreign leaders like Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, General Rene Schneider in Chile, and many others. More horrors were uncovered: MK-Ultra, in which the CIA secretly subjected unwitting victims to experimentation with drugs like LSD; Operation Mockingbird, in which the CIA recruited journalists to plant stories and smear opponents; Operation Chaos, an effort to spy on the antiwar movement and sow disruption; Operation Shamrock, under which the telecommunications companies shared traffic with the NSA for more than a quarter century.

The Church and Pike committee exposures, despite their limitations, had a devastating political effect. The CIA and its allied intelligence organizations in the Pentagon and NSA became political lepers, reviled as the enemies of democratic rights. The CIA in particular was widely viewed as “Murder Incorporated.” [“President Johnson privately complained that the C.I.A. had been running “a goddamn Murder Inc. in the Caribbean.””] 

In that period, it would have been unthinkable either for dozens of “former” military-intelligence operatives to participate openly in electoral politics, or for them to be welcomed and even recruited by the two corporate-controlled parties. The Democrats and Republicans sought to distance themselves, at least for public relations purposes, from the spy apparatus, while the CIA publicly declared that it would no longer recruit or pay American journalists to publish material originating in Langley, Virginia. Even in the 1980s, the Iran-Contra scandal involved the exposure of the illegal operations of the Reagan administration’s CIA director, William Casey.

How times have changed. One of the main functions of the “war on terror,” launched in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, has been to rehabilitate the US spy apparatus and give it a public relations makeover as the supposed protector of the American people against terrorism.

This meant disregarding the well-known connections between Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders and the CIA, which recruited them for the anti-Soviet guerrilla war in Afghanistan, waged from 1979 to 1989, as well as the still unexplained role of the US intelligence agencies in facilitating the 9/11 attacks themselves.

The last 15 years have seen a massive expansion of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, backed by an avalanche of media propaganda, with endless television programs and movies glorifying American spies and assassins (24, Homeland, Zero Dark Thirty, etc.)

The American media has been directly recruited to this effort. Judith Miller of the New York Times, with her reports on “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, is only the most notorious of the stable of “plugged-in” intelligence-connected journalists at the Times, the Washington Post, and the major television networks. 

More recently, the [NY] Times has installed as its editorial page editor James Bennet, brother of a Democratic senator [Michael Bennet of Colorado] and son [in law] of the former administrator of the Agency for International Development, which has been accused of working as a front for the operations of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid “experts” and “analysts” for the television networks.

In centering its opposition to Trump on the bogus allegations of Russian interference, while essentially ignoring Trump’s attacks on immigrants and democratic rights, his alignment with ultra-right and white supremacist groups, his attacks on social programs like Medicaid and food stamps, and his militarism and threats of nuclear war, the Democratic Party has embraced the agenda of the military-intelligence apparatus and sought to become its main political voice.

This process was well under way in the administration of Barack Obama, which endorsed and expanded the various operations of the intelligence agencies abroad and within the United States. Obama’s endorsed successor, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as the chosen candidate of the Pentagon and CIA, touting her toughness as a future commander-in-chief and pledging to escalate the confrontation with Russia, both in Syria and Ukraine.

The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of resentment over the disruption of its operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that score. A chorus of media backers—Nicholas Kristof and Roger Cohen of the New York Times, the entire editorial board of the Washington Post, most of the television networks—are part of the campaign to pollute public opinion and whip up support on alleged “human rights” grounds for an expansion of the US war in Syria.

The 2018 election campaign marks a new stage: for the first time, military-intelligence operatives are moving in large numbers to take over a political party and seize a major role in Congress. The dozens of CIA and military veterans running in the Democratic Party primaries are “former” agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This “retired” status is, however, purely nominal. Joining the CIA or the Army Rangers or the Navy SEALs is like joining the Mafia: no one ever actually leaves; they just move on to new assignments.

The CIA operation in 2018 is unlike its overseas activities in one major respect: it is not covert. On the contrary, the military-intelligence operatives running in the Democratic primaries boast of their careers as spies and special ops warriors. Those with combat experience invariably feature photographs of themselves in desert fatigues or other uniforms on their websites. And they are welcomed and given preferred positions, with Democratic Party officials frequently clearing the field for their candidacies.

The working class is confronted with an extraordinary political situation. On the one hand, the Republican Trump administration has more military generals in top posts than any other previous government. On the other hand, the Democratic Party has opened its doors to a “friendly takeover” by the intelligence agencies.

The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an expression of the breakdown of American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose interests the state apparatus and its “bodies of armed men” serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working class, the ruling class is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule.

Millions of working people want to fight the Trump administration and its ultra-right policies. But it is impossible to carry out this fight through the “axis of evil” that connects the Democratic Party, the bulk of the corporate media, and the CIA. The influx of military-intelligence candidates puts [an end] to the longstanding myth, peddled by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups, that the Democrats represent a “lesser evil.” On the contrary, working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the corporate-controlled two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils.” Patrick Martin
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Of interest: Pro-war Google and Facebook mute anti-war websites: “Socialist and anti-war news sources such as the World Socialist Web Site have been scrubbed from Google search results and demoted on Facebook.”

Also: WWSW thinks “Democratic Socialist” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is merely an ordinary corporate Democrat: “The political fraud of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal,” Will Morrow, Worldwide Socialist Website, 11/23/18

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Added: Linked above: “One of the primary tasks presently allotted to CIA-connected media personalities and “journalists” is to support the drive to isolate and dismember the Russian Federation by repeating as established and indisputable facts unsubstantiated allegations of Russian meddling made by the intelligence agencies. Russia’s disintegration would spell a bonanza for corporate America and its prospects for expansion throughout Eurasia and the Middle East.”

2/28/18, “Ex-CIA head John Brennan hired as news analyst by NBC,” Julian James, Worldwide Socialist Website

“The further integration of the US corporate-controlled media with the American intelligence apparatus was signaled by the recent announcement that the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), a subsidiary of the cable TV giant Comcast, has hired former CIA Director John Brennan as a news analyst. Brennan will be a paid contributor and “senior national security and intelligence analyst” for NBC News….

Now, using his platform at NBC/MSNBC, Brennan will continue to serve the interests of American imperialism at home and abroad, albeit in a different role. He joins the ranks of CIA, NSA and Pentagon mouthpieces embedded in mainstream news outlets, such as [James Clapper], Michael Morell, deputy director and for a time acting director of the CIA under Obama. Morell, also known for his defense of torture and drone assassinations, appears regularly on CBS News to make hysterical denunciations of Russian “meddling” and agitate for a war of aggression against North Korea. [On Aug. 1, 2017, CNN hired James Clapper, former Director of US National Intelligence, as an analyst. NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden who fled the US was asked: “What was the decisive moment or was there a long period of time or something happening, why did you do this?”

[Snowden] “I would say sort of the breaking point is seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress. There’s no saving an intelligence community that believes it can lie to the public and the legislators who need to be able to trust it and regulate its actions. Seeing that really meant for me there was no going back.”...1/26/2014 interview]

The list of retired generals and intelligence agents extends far beyond these two men and includes Jack Keane (Fox News), Mark Hertling (CNN), Montgomery Meigs (NBC/MSNBC) and many others. Very little effort is made to uphold any pretense of impartiality on the part of these representatives of the intelligence/military/industrial complex within the news media.

One particularly blatant case is retired general Barry McCaffrey, a long-time “military analyst” at NBC/MSNBC, who for years has used his platform on national television to call for massive increases in defense spending. In an obvious conflict of interest, McCaffrey is also a paid lobbyist for defense contractors Dyncorp and Defense Solutions.

The infiltration and co-opting of American news outlets by the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies is not a new phenomenon and has been official (though unstated) policy since the late 1940s, when CIA chief Allen Dulles began a program to secure the cooperation of powerful media bosses in advancing the interests of American foreign policy. Dulles developed a personal relationship with a number of network heads, including CBS’s William Paley.

Paley was an eager collaborator, making sure that information deemed unfavorable to the CIA went unreported and providing cover for numerous paid CIA operatives to work as “journalists” and “correspondents” at the network. Arthur Hays Sulzberger, editor of the New York Times in the 1950s, developed a similar relationship with Dulles. Through the CIA’s sustained campaign for influence and editorial control, the mainstream media was made to function to a large degree as an arm of the agency.

These activities were revealed in a 1976 report by the Senate committee headed by Idaho Democrat Frank Church, which found that “approximately 50 [CIA assets] are individual American journalists or employees of US media organizations.” 

The Church committee based its investigation on information supplied by the CIA itself, which no doubt presented only the tip of the iceberg with regard to its involvement in manipulating the mainstream media. It is safe to assume that, aside from the high profile former agents and generals at the various news networks, there remains a legion of unidentified CIA assets providing their services when called upon.

The efforts of the intelligence agencies and the military to co-opt and control the mass media, as successful as they have been, cannot fully account for the near-total integration of these two pillars of American capitalism. There is an organic alignment of interests that leads mainstream networks, themselves massive business interests, to work in lockstep with the intelligence agencies and the military in advancing the interests of American imperialism.

US wars and interventions are, in the final analysis, operations to secure the profit interests of American corporations and the thin layer of owners and stockholders who derive their tremendous wealth from them. In the case of NBC, this relationship is glaringly obvious. General Electric, NBC’s parent company until 2011, makes tens of billions of dollars selling hardware for America’s endless wars and interventions.

One of the primary tasks presently allotted to CIA-connected media personalities and “journalists” is to support the drive to isolate and dismember the Russian Federation by repeating as established and indisputable facts unsubstantiated allegations of Russian meddling made by the intelligence agencies. Russia’s disintegration would spell a bonanza for corporate America and its prospects for expansion throughout Eurasia and the Middle East.

The same can be said for China, a country with a $12 trillion-economy and plans to vastly expand its economic reach, which finds itself in the crosshairs of the Trump administration and the American ruling class. Iran and North Korea are likewise being targeted for dismemberment. The media are virtually silent on the fact that war against any of these nations could easily lead to a nuclear conflict that would result in the annihilation of all life on earth.

As the drive to war escalates, the major Internet conglomerates are also playing a key role in suppressing domestic dissent and limiting the population’s access to information and left-wing perspectives. This is accomplished through blatant acts of censorship.

Socialist and anti-war news sources such as the World Socialist Web Site have been scrubbed from Google search results and demoted on Facebook. Content from “trusted” and “authoritative” news sources such as the New York Times and the Washington Post—both notorious for their record of publishing fabricated stories—is being promoted, driving stock values for the two media outlets to new heights.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also recently announced that the social media giant will begin deprioritizing news and political content. National and international news stories will be demoted in favor of local stories for the benevolent purpose of “building community–both on and offline,” and “making sure that Facebook isn’t just fun but also good for your well-being and for society.”

Meanwhile, the promotion of militarism and state violence in the media is reaching nauseating levels. A recent advertisement for the Marines aired to tens of millions of Americans during Super Bowl LII features warplanes taking off from an aircraft carrier and bombing a Middle Eastern-looking city, while soldiers go door-to-door in tactical teams firing off their assault rifles.”…





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