Bob Woodward steps in for the Kill

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 4:31 am

I'm going to paste this whole thing in because it is important to understanding who Woodward really is and what Watergate really was. There is a box linked off the main article which goes into the problems with Woodward's account of how he would meet Deep Throat. When Mark Felt was being waved around as Deep Throat Woodward wrote a WPost article which seemed to me to be refuting this article directly, almost point by point. He doth protest too much. I think Felt was encouraged to come out just so that Woodward could recharge his watchdog-journalist cover identity first forged during Watergate because more of us know he is part of Operation Mockingbird, state-controlled press. <a href="http://www.ctka.net/pr196-woodward.html">www.ctka.net/pr196-woodward.html</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr> *PROBE* From the January-February, 1996 issue (Vol. 3 No. 2) Bob Woodward By Lisa Pease Robert Upshur Woodward rose from obscure reporter working for the Washington Post to become one of the most famous journalists of recent times for his role, with that of Carl Bernstein, in "breaking" the Watergate story. Together, "Woodstein" broke one of the biggest news stories of all time: a chain of abuse by the Executive office of the Presidency that led to calls for impeachment, and the eventual resignation, of President Richard Nixon. Immortalized by Robert Redford in the movie based on the book All the President's Men, the real Woodward is quite an enigma. Adrian Havill, in his recent book Deep Truth, presents the most comprehensive biography to date of both Woodward and Bernstein. He also details some of the fabrications that passed for nonfiction in the book from which the film was based. Most importantly, he gives us a great wealth of background on who Woodward really is, where he comes from, and what his connections are. A Yalie and a Secret Society Member The staunchly conservative Bob Woodward grew up in Wheaton, Illinois. A good student at Yale, he was ultimately one of fifteen seniors "tapped" for one of that university's secret societies, Book and Snake, a cut below the more infamous Skull and Bones, but the top of the second-tier fraternities. Woodward had his first journalistic experience working for the Banner, a Yale publication. In his 1965 yearbook he was referred to as a "Banner mogul." Havill writes, Certainly, with the CIA encouraged to recruit on the Yale campus, particularly among history majors and secret societies, it is more than reasonable to assume Bob may have been one of those approached by the agency, or by a military intelligence unit, especially after four years of naval ROTC training. Although it would answer a lot of questions that have been raised about Bob Woodward, at this point one can only speculate as to whether he was offered the chance to become a "double-wallet guy," as CIA agents who have two identities are dubbed. It would certainly be understandable if he decided not to adhere to the straight and accepted the submerged patriotic glamour and extra funds that such a relationship would provide. It would also explain the comments of Pulitzer Prize-winning author J. Anthony Lukas, when he wrote in 1989 that Bob Woodward was "temperamentally secretive, loathe to volunteer information about himself," or the Washingtonian's remarks in 1987: "He is secretive about everything." As Esquire magazine put it, summing up in its 1992 article on Bob, "What is he hiding?" The "Floating Pentagon" Assignment Three days after graduating from Yale, Woodward was sent by the U.S. Navy to Norfolk, Virginia, where he was commissioned as an ensign by none other than U.S. Senator George Smathers from Florida. Bob's assignment was to a very special ship, called a "floating Pentagon," the U.S.S. Wright. The ship was a National Emergency Command Ship-a place where a President and cabinet could preside from in the event of a nuclear war. It had elaborate and sophisticated communications and data processing capabilities. It had a smaller replica of the war room at the Pentagon. It ran under what was called SIOP-Single Integrated Operation Plan. For example, in the event of nuclear war, the Wright was third in line to take full command if the two ahead of it, the Strategic Air Command in Omaha (SAC) and NORAD, were rendered incommunicado. Woodward-straightfacedly-told authors Colodny and Gettlin (Silent Coup) that he guessed he was picked for the ship because he had been a radio ham as a kid. Aboard the Wright, Woodward had top secret "crypto" clearance-the same clearance researcher Harold Weisberg found had been assigned to Lee Harvey Oswald when he was himself in the Marines. Such clearance in Woodward's case gave him full access to nearly all classified materials and codes on the ship. Woodward also ran the ship's newspaper. Woodward has insisted that possessing a high security clearance is not necessarily indicative of intelligence work. The Wright carried men from each of the military services, as well as CIA personnel. One of Havill's government sources reported that the CIA would likely have had additional informants on a ship of such sensitivity, adding that "the rivalry between the services was intense." After a two and a half year stint on the Wright, Woodward was assigned to go to Vietnam. Woodward wrote the Pentagon asking to serve on a destroyer. The wish was granted. One naval captain told Havill that it seemed reasonable Woodward would have a little pull from his previous duty to avoid getting assigned to Vietnam. Another former naval officer disputed that, saying "Nobody got out of going to Vietnam in 1968." But Woodward did. He was stationed aboard the U.S.S. Fox, based in Southern California. The personnel on board the Fox included an intelligence team, many of whom had studied Russian and Asian languages at the famous armed services language school in Monterey, California. By 1968, Woodward ran the ship's radio team. In 1969, Woodward was awarded the Navy Commendation Medal for his communications work. From there, Woodward moved on to a Pentagon assignment, a job that included briefing top officers in the government. Admiral Thomas Moorer and former secretary of defense Melvin Laird are both on record noting that Woodward briefed Al Haig at the White House during this period. What is suspicious is Woodward's semi-admittance to Hougan that he had done some briefing, and his complete denial to Colodny and Gettlin that he had ever briefed anyone at the White House. Havill notes: Considering the evidence, Bob Woodward's denial more strongly suggests intelligence than it does his uninvolvement in White House briefings. Woodward's secrecy about his past, his choice of associates, and what is known of his activities caused Havill to write: The question, then, begs itself once more. Was Bob Woodward ever a free-lance or retained Central Intelligence Agency liaison officer, informant or operative . . . ? This author got various forms of affirmative opinions from intelligence experts. It would explain his assignment to the Wright and his misleading statements to interviewers. It would make understandable his being able to get out of going to Vietnam in 1968, his extension for an additional year at the Pentagon, his being chosen to brief at the White House and his denials as well. It would also help explain his subsequent high-level friendships with leaders of the U.S. military and the CIA. It would also explain the role Woodward and Bernstein wittingly or unwittingly played in keeping the CIA's nose clean while making sure the world saw the President's nose was dirty. The Legacy of Deep Throat Whatever his background, whatever his connections, one cannot trust what Woodward says as fact. Take, for instance, his account in Veil of his last interview with dying CIA Director William Casey. Havill tracked down Casey's family, friends, hospital security staff and CIA guardians and found that the visit Woodward described was impossible. First of all, Casey was under 24 hour guard by several layers of security: CIA members, hospital security, and Casey's family. And Woodward had already been stopped once while trying to see Casey. According to one of Havill's sources, Woodward was not merely asked to leave, as Woodward reported in his book, but was forcibly shoved into the elevator. And Woodward's story kept shifting. Woodward told a Knight-Ridder reporter that he had gotten in by flashing his press pass. To Larry King, Woodward claimed he just "walked in." But even assuming he somehow managed to get by all of that security, Woodward would still have been the only person to claim that Casey had uttered intelligible words in those last hours. The only other person to make such a claim was Robert Gates, who himself became CIA Director. The family, doctor and medical staff said Casey could not make words at this point, only noises. At least Gates questioned whether he might have been imagining he heard words. Woodward has never retracted his "conversation." In addition, Woodward once said that Casey sat bolt upright, which would seem highly implausible given his rapidly deteriorating state. Onetime CIA Director Stansfield Turner, a friend of Woodward's since 1966, said Woodward told him he'd walked by Casey's room and Casey had waved to him. Casey's bed was positioned in such a way in the room as to make that impossible too. Likewise, Woodward does not seem to demand authenticity from subordinates. Under his watch as Assistant Managing Editor of the Metro desk, the Post suffered a humiliation of the highest proportions at the hands of one of his hires, Janet Cooke. It was this incident that knocked the Post from its perch as "America's leading newspaper," as it had been called in the wake of its Watergate reporting. Janet Cooke was a gifted writer with a knack for capturing the essence of the streets of D.C. She went to the Post for a job, and Woodward hired her. More illustrator than reporter, she painted vivid images, if not entirely accurate ones. The latter trait soon brought her trouble. Cooke's crowning glory-and worst disaster-was a story called "Jimmy's World," about an eight year old heroin addict. The story brought both praise and outrage: praise for the vivid writing, outrage that a reporter could just stand by and watch a kid taking drugs. The controversial story managed to earn a Pulitzer, but only after some arm twisting by the committee head, who overruled the committee's first choice for the prizewinner to pick "Jimmy's World." Some of the committee members hadn't even read the story, but not wanting to appear divisive, they stood together, for better or for worse. Made bold by the award, Janet Cooke's fabrications grew even larger and more personal. She started making up a history for herself that she didn't possess, including training in languages she couldn't speak. Several at the Post, including Woodward, were worried that her story of Jimmy may not be true. They pressured Cooke to produce "Jimmy." Losing the battle to protect her source, it rapidly became clear that she had no source. There was no Jimmy. And for the first time ever, a Pulitzer was returned. The Post was thoroughly embarrassed by a woman under Woodward's direct supervision at the paper. But Woodward's most stunning deceptions come from the work that launched his career, his tracking of the Watergate story as retold in the supposedly nonfiction work All the President's Men. Adrian Havill found curious discrepancies between accountings of incidents as reported in the book, and the rest of the available facts (see sidebar at right).  Given his role in the Watergate cover-up, and the misrepresentations in his own work, it remains to us a huge mystery why this man is treated with the reverence he is. Considering his behavior, his background, his credibility, and his connections, we now feel compelled to join Adrian Havill in asking who is Bob Woodward? Whom does he serve? Is his career sustained for the purposes of those with a "secret agenda"?<hr></blockquote> >sidebar on right of this page< <blockquote>Quote:<hr>The Deceptions of All the President's Men Had the book been presented as fiction, readers could not complain. However, the book sits on non-fiction shelves around the world. Maybe it shouldn't. In his book Deep Truth, author Adrian Havill presents several events in All the President's Men that are, to put it generously, highly suspect. One example is the scene in which Woodward and Bernstein have made their first egregious mistake. They sourced Hugh Sloan's grand jury testimony for a story that Sloan had never told the Grand Jury, showing that Haldeman was one of the inner group at CREEP controlling the mysterious slush fund. In the book, the dejected Woodward and Bernstein walk home in the rain, beaten both physically and symbolically by the elements, with only newspapers over their head to keep them dry. Havill did some checking. It never rained that day. That might seem an inconsequential detail to some, but others will understand that it was a device created to bring drama. How many other "events" were merely fictional devices? Havill found several. For instance, at one point, Carl Bernstein is about to be subpoenaed by CREEP, and Ben Bradlee advised Carl to go hang out at a movie until after 5:00 p.m., then to call into the office. According to the book, Carl went to see Deep Throat, hence the reason for the name "Deep Throat" having been given to Woodward's secret source. But there was no Deep Throat playing anywhere in D.C. at that time. In fact, the theaters were being very cautious, having recently been raided by law enforcement authorities. Not one theater in town was showing Deep Throat. And speaking of "Deep Throat" . . . One of the most astonishingly bald-faced inventions was the process by which Woodward and "Deep Throat" allegedly made contact when they needed to speak to one another. In the book, much is made of the spooky, clandestine meetings between "Deep Throat" and Woodward. When Woodward needed to ask "Deep Throat" something, he was to put a flower pot with a red flag in it on his sixth floor balcony, which, we are supposed to believe, this high level source checked daily. When "Deep Throat" wanted to speak to Woodward, a clock would supposedly be drawn in his copy of the New York Times designating the meeting time. But neither of these scenarios fits the reality of where Woodward lived. Woodward, who could remember the exact room number (710) where he met Martha Mitchell just once, evidently had trouble remembering the address at which he had lived. In an interview he once said it was "606 or 608 or 612, something like that." However, Havill found that Woodward's actual address was 617. This is important, because the balcony attached to 617 faced an interior courtyard. Havill poked around and found that the only way to view a flower pot on the balcony was to walk into the center of the complex, with eighty units viewing you, crane your neck and look up to the sixth floor. Even then, a pot would have been barely visible. There was an alley that ran behind the building that allowed a glimpse of the apartment and balcony, but at an equally difficult angle. And in both cases, we are to believe that this source, who strove hard to protect his identify, would walk up in plain view of the eighty apartments facing the inner courtyard or the alley on a daily basis, on the chance that there might be a sign from Woodward. When Havill tried to poke around, just to look at the place, residents of the building stopped him and inquired who he was and what he was looking for. Unless "Deep Throat" was well known to the residents of the building, his daily visits seem to preclude being able to keep his identity a secret. As for the clock-in-the-paper, the New York Times papers were delivered not to each door, but left stacked and unmarked in a common reception area. There was no way "Deep Throat" could have known which paper Woodward would end up with each morning. Havill, in fact, believes that "Deep Throat" is no more real than the movie episode or the rain, but rather, a dramatic device. It certainly worked well. And Woodward's and Bernstein's editor at Simon and Schuster, Alice Mayhew, urged them to "build up the Deep Throat character and make him interesting." While it is now clearly known that at least one of Woodward's informants was, in fact, Robert Bennett, the suggestions from Colodny and Gettlin in Silent Coup about Al Haig and Deborah Davis's suggestions in Katherine the Great about Richard Ober may not be contradictory. Other names that have been suggested have included Walter Sheridan (Jim Hougan in Spooks) and Bobby Ray Inman (also in Spooks). If Havill is correct and there is no "person" who was known as "Deep Throat", it is possible that any or all of the above were passing along information, explicitly not to be sourced or credited to them in any way, on deep background. Havill asks, and then answers, his own questions as to the dishonesty in All the President's Men: Why would Bob and Carl invent or embellish such seemingly incidental details of their book? Why would they make up meetings with a character named Deep Throat? The answer is Bob was consumed by naked ambition, anxious to prove that he could succeed at his newly chosen profession. There was money and fame at stake. . . And maybe a cover story to protect as well. <hr></blockquote> Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=hughmanateewins>Hugh Manatee Wins</A> at: 9/30/06 2:34 am

by **robertdreed** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:04 pm

Overall, there's too much innuendo and speculation in that article, and not enough hard facts. It's all too easy to take a few facts from the CV of someone and spin them into a dark past as a deep-cover operative. Within the context of Washington, D.C., Woodward's resume is hardly scarily anomalous. "The same level of security clearance as Lee Harvey Oswald..." That's an awfully hyperbolic way to make a case. I read both Jim Hougan's Secret Agenda and Colodny & Gittlin's Silent Coup a long, long time ago. It's clear to me that Bob Woodward has never been the independent maverick investigator of storied lore. The popular media practically enshrined him as a member of the Young Progressive Reform Movement, back in the early 1970s- if not an outright Counterculture Hero. For a while back there, one half-expected a memorial of Woodward and Bernstein helping to plant the flag on the Iwo Jima of the Watergate Affair that defeated the Enemy Within, Richard Nixon. Woodward has always more of a ticket-punching Beltway political careerist than a sleuth. But there's a big difference between acknowledging that fact and tagging him as an operative of Operation Mockingbird, making his bones by working to topple Richard Nixon on orders from his shadowy superiors in "the CIA", and confabulating stories about a nonexistent secret source in order to cover for himself. Requiring a resume like Woodward's produces much the same effect as Project Mockingbird, without having to recruit someone into a conspiracy of conscious manipulation. Woodward strikes me as merely a shnook who's easily fed. I think it's entirely possible- although not a certainty- that elements both within and without the CIA who were ostensibly Nixon's political allies helped to tie a millstone around his neck in order to contain exposure into their legacy of misdeeds. But Richard Nixon and his kitchen cabinet- made up of august personages like frat boys from USC with backgrounds in the advertising industry- weren't nearly as well-wired to the inside as George Bush pere et fils. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 9/30/06 11:51 am

by **sunny** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:30 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Au contraire. I think the Bush-Rumsfeld Doctrine is succeeding quite according to plan in many respects, notwithstanding growing public antipathy. They're setting up the conditions for the militarization of a generation, for theatre-wide conflicts, occupation of foreign nations, and the repression of any prospective draft resistance movement as "providing material support for terrorism."<hr></blockquote> Robert, how right you are.

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 2:09 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>the militarization of a generation<hr></blockquote> Really the RE-militarization of America to Cold War levels. This has been job #1 of controlled media since the resistance against the Vietnam War. The military-industrial-media (MIM) complex learned that the American middle class wouldn't accept overt body-bags-over-TV-dinner wars for capitalism and so MIM 'strategically redeployed' temporarily back to covert wars for a while with a slow ramping up from Grenada to Panama to Gulf War I to get back to "the bombs bursting in air and the rockets red glare" as a cultural norm. But the importance of neutralizing the middle class resistance to fascism was learned and carried out with massive propaganda demonization of 'liberals' and other 'intelligentsia' plus all the economic and psycholocical warfare that could be mustered against us. The MIM's psychological advisors came to the realization that starting a war was again possible but preventing retreat was absolutely necessary to keep advancing around the world to finish the job started 100 years ago when technology made world domination a real possibility. So the quagmire was nurtured to guarantee no quick victories and time for American culture to adapt to the permanently open psychic wound of war.

by **robertdreed** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 2:21 pm

You know what, I largely agree with that last bit of analysis. Although I disagree about the degree to which it's been centrally directed- I think American militarism is to a great extent an "egregore", to borrow a term recently used elsewhere in another RI discussion. It's a group-mind spirit, a purview with its own energy, an enveloping psychological mindset comprised laregly of the first-principle assumption that the USA has the Might because it's so Right- that there's nothing all that wrong about the USA's military expenditures comprising 48% of the world's total, despite the absence of even the pretense of a competing military superpower, because we're so Good; and that there's nothing all that strange about invading and occupying countries halfway around the world in response to a single small-unit terrorist raid, because we're so Virtuous. It's also sadly clear to me that in historical terms, the clinching impetus for massive popular resistance to the Vietnam War was The Draft. The Draft constitutes what William Burroughs once termed Naked Lunch- "that frozen moment when everyone sees what's at the end of the fork"- what they're about to eat, what they've decided to feed themselves, or what they've been fed, or what they're being forced to eat. "Wait a minute- this is a ball of shit." And in the absence of The Draft- thus far- many Americans still apparently haven't yet gotten any chill from that cold, frozen moment of lunching at Bush's Bar&Grill- although I have no doubt that it's an experience that quite a few National Guardsmen have gotten, from their overseas deployment call-up orders, and stop-loss orders. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 9/30/06 12:44 pm

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 2:53 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Although I disagree about the degree to which it's been centrally directed<hr></blockquote> I'm studying the 20th century history of marketing war to the don't-want-to-go-there American public. This has probably been the most institutionalized goal of the US government for the last 60 years, the control of public opinion in matters of national security. But it is a goal best carried out in secret and thus seems to be merely a beaurocratic or systemic result rather than the carefully constructed device that it is, much more like a missile assembled by thousands of compartmentalized workers but following centrally planned blueprints. WWI was scientifically and methodically sold to Americans using the help of people like Edward Bernays, the author of the self-justifying 'Propaganda.' The post-WWI Depression era isolationism was seen as a huge problem to be overcome with new tools of mass psychology deployed through mass media and led to the Office of War Information actually writing the dialogue in Hollywood movies. This led to the careful surveillance - I mean - polling of Americans to see what they believed and why to better herd them towards war. Daniel Ellsberg details in his 1972 book 'Papers On the War' how during the 25 years before his whistleblowing-release of the Pentagon Papers that analysis and information was deliberately kept away from the on-the-ground realities of the Korean and Vietnam wars to guarantee quagmire for social control and profit. Stunning book I highly recommend reading to see how old all our problems are and how institutionalized. Ellsberg details the psychological atmosphere generated by media themes like "who lost China?" and the witch-hunts against Alger Hiss and Hollywood reds and McCarthy's demonizing. Ellsberg concluded that at a certain upper level of the military-industrial-media complex there were people who had learned how to exploit beaurocratic inertia and compartmentalism dysfunctions to get the profitable wars they wanted. That was decades ago including before Vietnam and during. So I'd expect that, just like FEMA's REX-84 plan to keep Americans from affecting their government's wars, this knowledge has been overtly dialed into today's equivalent of the Psychological Strategy Board to ensure that long-term war planning by the National Security Council is unimpeded by not just the American people but by resistance and whistleblowing from within the MIM itself. on edit: RR's point about the 1973 end of the draft being the point of Americans once again forgetting "what is on the end of the fork" is key to redefining it as delicious or atleast all there is to swallow by making it a media-mediated concept again. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=hughmanateewins>Hugh Manatee Wins</A> at: 9/30/06 1:02 pm

by **Dreams End** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 3:06 pm

What are you saying, rdr, that the CIA did not overthrow Arbenz on behalf of Dulles and United fruit? You are suggesting that the CIA did not play an integral role in the Pinochet coup? Or are you suggesting they've reformed their ways now? They've stopped their assassinations, their election riggings, their support for coups... How, exactly, would you know this? It takes a pretty long time for stuff to get declassified, which is why we are stuck with 30-year-old material, and even that is just what they choose to declassify. Or are you back to your, "Not everyone in the CIA is involved in assassinations, therefore the CIA is basically a fine institution, if a bit bureaucratic." CIA, of course, is also shorthand for all the covert sides of government. NSA is surely part...as are DIA, ONI, AFI...even freaking NASA sometimes, etc. It is their job to preserve the system as needed. They work for elected officials to a degree (but who do THEY work for?) but also have their own culture as well. In addition, there are probably more earthshaking deals made on golf courses and over martinis than we'll ever know about. I don't think we can underestimate the power of those at the highest levels of the military industrial complex as well as in areas like the oil industry...immense wealth and power concentrated in very few hands. And that is who CIA ultimately works for. And they are not our friends.

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 3:17 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>CIA, of course, is also shorthand for all the covert sides of government. NSA is surely part...as are DIA, ONI, AFI...even freaking NASA sometimes, etc. It is their job to preserve the system as needed.<hr></blockquote> Absolutely. This is how I use the letters 'CIA,' too. This definition is important to perspective. Because not understanding this might be why some scoff at a 'silly grand conspiracy hypothesis' that self-defeatingly 'gives them too much power.' The covert science and black arts of cryptocracy are the new universal Gravitational Force causing the rise and fall of public perceptions just as Newton's gravity is the 'grand conspiracy hypothesis' behind the rise and fall of buildings.

by **robertdreed** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 3:55 pm

I used to resort to that "shorthand", too. But I found that it confused me when attempting to get a realistic appraisal of the facts. It's an easy tactic if you're simply attempting to be polemical, to provide people with ideas that are easy to digest. But ultimately, if you oversimplify something, you pay the price with sloppy and unbelievable interpretations that don't hold up under scrutiny. On the basis of my research and experience, I find the existence of rivalries between agencies like the CIA, FBI, DEA, ONI, State Department, etc. authentic and believable- as well as their frequent lack of cross-communication, compartmentalization, and bungling. What I find to be unbelievable is the hypothesis that they all combine into a disciplined, streamlined monolith to effortlessly outflank all opposition in service to some covert totalitarian agenda to which all of their employees pledge allegiance. "The CIA" didn't overthrow Allende. David Atlee Phillips and the covert ops part of the CIA station in Chile did it, on orders of the Chief Executive, President Richard Nixon, and National Security advisers like Henry Kissinger. Meanwhile on September 11, 1973, there were other CIA people, tasked to do things like reading cryptograms intercepted from the Bulgarian Secret Service, who had no idea what was happening in Chile...is that point so hard to understand? The overwhelming majority of the people drawing a paycheck from the CIA in that era found out about the CIA role in that coup the way the rest of us did, in newspaper stories published years after the fact. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 9/30/06 2:01 pm

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 4:04 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>On the basis of my research and experience, I find the existence of rivalries between agencies like the CIA, FBI, DEA, ONI, State Department, etc. authentic and believable- as well as their frequent lack of cross-communication, compartmentalization, and bungling.<hr></blockquote> Agreed. But they all see themselves as parents trying to get custody of 'the kids' who they don't include in the custody battle except to poison our attitudes against their cometition. None of this is constitutional or moral or humane. It is a battle amongst thieves (however well-intentioned) who've inherited the stolen booty of our government taken from us in 1947. And that is the 'them against us' problem that has some of us pointing at how they manipulate us.

by **robertdreed** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 4:12 pm

"What are you saying, rdr, that the CIA did not overthrow Arbenz on behalf of Dulles and United fruit? You are suggesting that the CIA did not play an integral role in the Pinochet coup?" I'm saying that the people involved didn't simply initiate either of those projects on their own. They had full clearance from the president of the USA in order to do both of them. "Or are you suggesting they've reformed their ways now?" I'm saying that it's overly tenuous to attempt to draw a direct line from Richard Helms, David Atlee Philips and E. Howard Hunt to Bob Woodward- or, for that matter, Ray McGovern- as if all of their actions were consciously coordinated toward a common goal of covert CIA supremacy behind the scenes. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 9/30/06 2:15 pm

by **robertdreed** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 4:32 pm

"It is a battle amongst thieves (however well-intentioned) who've inherited the stolen booty of our government taken from us in 1947. And that is the 'them against us' problem that has some of us pointing at how they manipulate us." See, I don't think that most of the energy of those agencies is involved in covert Subliminal Seduction campaigns to manipulate the American public. I think the manipulations are a lot more out front, found largely in the mechanics of election campaigns, the priorities of the popular mass media, and the educational system. And the reason that so many Americans are uncritical and accepting of a whole packet of unexamined assumptions is because they've been raised in a nation in the midst of an era of unprecedented affluence, and they confuse the staggering array of material choices with "freedom." It would be a lot easier to notice how the military industrial complex impoverishes this country and steals from the future if most of us weren't living comfortable lives, enjoying a host of technological toys, diversions, and entertainments. Even at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, most Americans have it pretty easy. Considered strictly in material terms, sweeping floors in the USA probably beats having a professional position in a lot of countries in the world. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 9/30/06 2:41 pm

by **chiggerbit** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 4:39 pm

I'm surprised you buy that "Woodward is a liberal" mantra, rdr. He may have acquired that reputation for a period of time following Watergate, but I don't think he's really been considered a liberal by libs for a long time. Personally, I've always been suspicious of his role in the Watergate take-down. Well, actually, I've always been suspicious of the official story of Watergate. The take-down has always felt like an inside job to me. Just gut feeling, of course. I wonder if Woodward is setting up Condi and Rummy as the 9/11 "incompetent fall-guys", for some reason. What's that journalist technique called? Foreshadowing? Something like that. Maybe the October Surprise will be a couple of "resignations".

by **sunny** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 4:46 pm

He wrote in "All the Presidents Men" that he was a Republican. He could be that rarest of all creatures, a liberal Republican, but his last two books defy that label. They were both case studies in Bush syncophancy.

by **isachar** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 5:04 pm

Well, having been alive and conscious when the Allende coup occurred (and not affiliated with any government or agency), it was glaringly obvious to me and many others at the time it occurred that the Allende coup was engineered by the U.S. government and had high level CIA/covert involvement. It had all the hallmarks/signature of a US-supported/instigated op, which of course it was. Just as it was immediately obvious to me at the time that Nixon was involved in the most intimate way with the Watergate burglary as soon as the supposedly 'third rate' burglars were caught at the DNC HQ in the Watergate. Again, their signature was all over that one too. So, any CIA employee at the time who didn't know their own agency's signature and loyalties would have been grossly naive, or a very low level functionary/file clerk.

Bob Woodward steps in for the Kill

Re:Woodward's military intelligence career

Re: Re:Woodward's military intelligence career

Re: Re:Woodward's military intelligence career

Re: the long-term goals of 'quagmire syndrome'

Re: the long-term goals of 'quagmire syndrome'

Re: the long history of 'selling' war

Re: the long history of 'selling' war

Re: DE's point about vocabulary shorthand

Re: DE's point about vocabulary shorthand

Re: RR's point about beaurocracy and compartmentalization

Re: DE's point about vocabulary shorthand

Re: DE's point about vocabulary shorthand

Re: DE's point about vocabulary shorthand

Woodward a liberal?

Re: DE's point about vocabulary shorthand

Who is online