Eric Zuesse

On Wednesday, December 14th, the front page of The New York Times featured four news-reports, each of which displays how the employees (editors and reporters), who have been hired by the publisher, convey — by means of selective reporting and hiding of facts — the very same partisan political viewpoint, which the readers who subscribe to the publication will falsely believe to be ‘objective’ and ‘non-partisan’ (since otherwise they wouldn’t even be subscribers to that publication). A ‘journalist’ in such an organization is thus little different from any other public-relations or PR professional, except that the recipients of the PR that a journalist delivers, believe the PR to be honest, and a ‘free press’, not mere puffery for some product or political viewpoint. The following analysis of the NYT’s December 14th front page will show that whether or not such journalism is honest depends upon whether or not a person considers to have been honest such things as (to cite examples here that are trivial by comparison, and so are more simple, and famous) Bill Clinton’s statements, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”, or “It depends upon what the meaning of is is”.

Is selective hiding of crucial facts ‘honest’, or really a ‘free press’? You’ll be the judge of that, here.

The journalists’ names won’t be mentioned, because they’re all agents of the same publisher and reflect the same required viewpoint, regardless of the personal identities of any particular employee. Here the four frontpage stories will be excerpted or discussed, starting with each story’s opening:

“The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S.”

When Special Agent Adrian Hawkins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation called the Democratic National Committee in September 2015 to pass along some troubling news about its computer network, he was transferred, naturally, to the help desk.
His message was brief, if alarming. At least one computer system belonging to the D.N.C. had been compromised by hackers federal investigators had named “the Dukes,” a cyberespionage team linked to the Russian government.
The F.B.I. knew it well: The bureau had spent the last few years trying to kick the Dukes out of the unclassified email systems of the White House, the State Department and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one of the government’s best-protected networks.
Yared Tamene, the tech-support contractor at the D.N.C. who fielded the call, was no expert in cyberattacks. His first moves were to check Google for “the Dukes” and conduct a cursory search of the D.N.C. computer system logs to look for hints of such a cyberintrusion. By his own account, he did not look too hard even after Special Agent Hawkins called back repeatedly over the next several weeks — in part because he wasn’t certain the caller was a real F.B.I. agent and not an impostor.
RELATED COVERAGE
Democratic House Candidates Were Also Targets of Russian Hacking DEC. 13, 2016
Continue reading the main story
“I had no way of differentiating the call I just received from a prank call,” Mr. Tamene wrote in an internal memo, obtained by The New York Times, that detailed his contact with the F.B.I.
It was the cryptic first sign of a cyberespionage and information-warfare campaign devised to disrupt the 2016 presidential election, the first such attempt by a foreign power in American history. What started as an information-gathering operation, intelligence officials believe, ultimately morphed into an effort to harm one candidate, Hillary Clinton, and tip the election to her opponent, Donald J. Trump.

What’s not discussed in this news-report is whether providing the American public with information about Hillary Clinton, which she had wanted to hide from the public, was a good or bad thing to do. Of course, every major political campaign entails “opposition research,” which aims to discover and expose to the public, facts about the opponent that will reduce the opponent’s vote. The New York Times might think that opposition research is bad, and that every candidate (or at least every candidate whose election they endorse) should be able to hide from the public whatever he or she doesn’t want the public to know about himself/herself. However, cooperation by the press in such efforts, support of the effort to hide such things from the public, is said to be an attribute of the ‘news’ media in dictatorships, not in democracies.

This article goes on to say:

What started as an information-gathering operation, intelligence officials believe, ultimately morphed into an effort to harm one candidate, Hillary Clinton, and tip the election to her opponent, Donald J. Trump.

The United States government itself routinely engages in “information-gathering” operations; that’s what the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc., do. Every country does likewise.

The United States government also routinely engages in efforts to overthrow or even kill foreign leaders who have already been democratically elected, but whom the U.S. government dislikes, such as Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran in 1953 (where we installed a fascist dictatorship), and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 (where we installed a fascist dictatorship), and Salvatore Allende in Chile in 1976 (where we installed a fascist dictatorship), and Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 (where we installed a fascist dictatorship, which was followed by a breakup of that country, and ethnic-cleansing).

Furthermore, in 1937, top executives of pro-Hitler U.S. corporations who were major donors to the Republican Party, plus two members of the U.S. Congress, secretly sought funds from Hitler’s Nazi government to assist their Party to elect in 1940 a different President, who — unlike FDR — would either join with Hitler or else keep America neutral in the coming war. Whether the initiative in that case, to overthrow the existing President, came from a foreign country — Germany — or from those leading Americans, isn’t clear, but no one was prosecuted for it (and the German participants soon thereafter rose to higher positions in Hitler’s government).

On 13 July 1942 (during the war!), investigative journalist George Seldes published, in his newsletter, In Fact, a memorandum from this secret meeting which had taken place in the U.S., on 23 November 1937, between two German Barons (Kurt von Tippleskirch and Manfred von Killinger) who were consuls at the German Embassy, one U.S. Senator, one other member of Congress (unidentified as to Senate or House), and five executives of DuPont and GM (identified only as “heads of General Motors” and “heads of the Du Pont interests”). (Only the two Germans permitted themselves to be identified in the Memorandum by name. However, none of the statements made in the transcript identified by name any of the American speakers.) Headlining “Nazis Made Fifth Column Pact With Seven Leading Americans,” Seldes reported von Killinger as having said, “It is time to think seriously of the centralization of all forces of American nationalism and traditionalism. ... Above all, we believe in cooperating with the economic leaders.” One of the Americans emphasized, “That is possible but by no means easy. The people must become aware of the disastrous economic effects of the policies of the present Administration first. ... Technically, it remains a question as to whether this drive may center around the Republican National Committee.”

No records survive as to whether any German money may have been funneled into Republican political coffers as a consequence of this meeting. However, the German diplomats condemned “The Roosevelt administration” for being like “Germany of the republican period,” the Weimar Republic, which was headed by Germany’s democratic party, the Social Democrats – the Nazis’ chief enemy in their own elections. In fact, von Killinger said, “Today’s America presents a very close picture of Social-Democratic Germany.” He especially lambasted FDR’s “welfare legislation,” and FDR’s support for labor unions and workers’ collective-bargaining rights in general, and he criticized “the lack of unity and clear-sighted leadership in the scattered national camp” in the United States.

So, the Germans hinted at a likely willingness of Hitler to help the Republicans financially. Von Tippleskirch said, “Germany is therefore willing to undertake everything humanly possible in order to approach directly the financial and industrial leaders of the United States. ... The new presidential elections must bring the United States on the side of the powers fighting for the reorganization of world markets [to favor the international cartels – dominated by German and American corporations]. ... This support does not only include the swinging of the German-American vote, ... but ... all possible cooperation with truly national forces.” One of the Americans present said, “We will be grateful for any service our German friends may give us.”

If financial assistance did result from this meeting, the likeliest method would have been in the already ongoing extensive business payments between, on the one side, companies such as DuPont, GM, U.S. Steel, Ford Motor Company, and other pro-fascist U.S. internationals; and, on the other, their German suppliers and bankers; so as to free up additional cash on the U.S. side to enable those U.S. firms to increase their contributions to the Republican Party. “Discounts” provided by German firms could thus easily have been laundered into political donations “by” American ones.

For example, perhaps the likeliest American to have been at that meeting (other than Jasper Crane, Lammot du Pont, or Irénée du Pont) was GM’s chief, Alfred P. Sloan (who, incidentally, had donated $20,000 to the fascist American Liberty League, which Crane, and the du Ponts led). Historian Edwin Black headlined, for Jewish Telegraph Agency, on 30 November 2006, “Hitler’s Carmaker: The Inside Story of How General Motors Helped Mobilize the Third Reich.” GM’s Opel division, by far Germany’s largest carmaker, “produced some 40 percent of the vehicles in Germany and about 65 percent of its [car] exports.” Thus, “the company ... earned the foreign currency the Reich desperately needed ... for the regime’s crash rearmament program.” Moreover, Sloan “also harbored a political motivation. Sloan despised the emerging American way of life being crafted by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Sloan hated Roosevelt’s New Deal, and admired the strength, irrepressible determination and sheer magnitude of Hitler’s vision.” Sloan wanted Hitler to win the coming war: “At one point, Sloan’s senior officials at GM even threatened to launch a deliberate business slowdown to sabotage the [Roosevelt] administration’s recovery plan.” When David Farber’s biography Sloan Rules was published in 2002, Farber summarized in an interview: “There’s a lot I don’t like about Mr. Sloan. His steady opposition to making safer automobiles, his dismissal of workers’ rights, his inability to see Adolf Hitler and his henchmen as evil, ... and his general disregard for issues of social justice and the common good make him a not very lovable figure.” That was describing a perfect libertarian. Farber’s biography of Sloan was written primarily from the files of the DuPont family, files which were admittedly “culled to some extent,” by the DuPonts, prior to his seeing them. The reason for that was: “Sloan left behind no private papers or correspondence, and GM says it destroyed all his corporate papers.” GM was controlled by the DuPont family from the 1920s until 1963, and Sloan was their ideal CEO. What he did is what they wanted done. Similarly, what a major newsmedium’s executives want done, is what their employees do.

The assumption underlying the Times’s lead story here, on December 14th, is that if Russia was involved in the making-public of that information from John Podesta’s computer, then the U.S. government should retaliate against Russia, and maybe Donald Trump’s election should be thrown out. It’s an outrageous assumption.

The lead-story then says:

While there’s no way to be certain of the ultimate impact of the hack, this much is clear: A low-cost, high-impact weapon that Russia had test-fired in elections from Ukraine to Europe was trained on the United States, with devastating effectiveness. For Russia, with an enfeebled economy and a nuclear arsenal it cannot use short of all-out war, …

But actually, the United States perpetrated a coup (which is shown here) which violently overthrew the elected government of Ukraine and replaced it by a rabidly anti-Russian one on Russia’s very doorstep, so that this statement by the NYT is essentially a vicious lie. And also the statement that Russia “cannot use short of all-out nuclear war” is even more viciously false, because also the United States cannot use its nuclear arsenal short of all-out war. What do you think would happen if the U.S. were to use a ‘small’ nuclear weapon against Russia? Of course, Russia would retaliate nuclearly, and neither side would be willing to be the one doing the less damage to the other — so it would inevitably escalate to global destruction. Also: The New York Times never reported anything of the coup itself, not even the part of the telephone conversation in which Obama’s agent and Hillary’s friend, Victoria Nuland, instructed the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine, on 4 February 2014, precisely whom to place in control of Ukraine’s government after the Moscow-friendly democratically elected President of Ukraine would be overthrown, which happened 18 days later — and it turned out to be the person who was, on February 26th, announced to lead the new government. Never in the NYT was anything from this crucial part of that conversation ever mentioned, nor referred-to in any way — they still keep it secret from their readers, just like they keep the entire coup secret from their readers:

I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience. He's the... what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitsch going in... he's going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, it's just not going to work.

Never having reported that historically crucial information makes the NYT trash as ‘journalism’, because no one can understand Russia’s having accepted Crimeans’ request to rejoin Russia, and Obama’s slapping sanctions against Russia for having accepted it, without knowing that those things had resulted from Obama’s own coup, which had just happened in Kiev and precipitated those events. (On top of this, Obama’s State Department had started planning by no later than 2011 the social-media operation to produce the cover-demonstrations — “Maidan” — behind which the coup was to be hidden and fronted; and readers of the NYT also know nothing about that.)

The second major story was:

“Amid Rain of Shells, Aleppo’s Civilians Offer ‘Final Scream’”

Artillery shelling by pro-government forces resumed early Wednesday on besieged eastern neighborhoods of the Syrian city of Aleppo, delaying the evacuation of thousands of civilians and fighters who had expected to leave under a deal involving Russia and Turkey.
It was the latest, bitter whiplash for those trapped in the shrinking rebel-held districts of the ruined city. Under a supposed deal announced on Tuesday by Turkey, Russia and Syrian rebels, the last remaining fighters were to evacuate to rebel-held territory farther north and civilians were free to join them or to move to government-held areas. The whole city of Aleppo then would be in the hands of forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

“The Syrian government has a clear responsibility to ensure its people are safe and is palpably failing to take this opportunity to do so,” the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said in a statement on Wednesday. He asserted that the resumed bombardment was “a violation of international law and most likely constitutes war crimes.”

“The way this deal was dangled in front of this battered and beleaguered population — causing them to hope they might indeed live to see another day — and then snatched away just half a day later is also outrageously cruel,” his statement said.
One Man’s View Into the Last Days in Rebel-Held Aleppo A radiology nurse in Aleppo, Mohamed al-Ahmad, said he hoped the world would hear “our final scream from the last free neighborhoods in Aleppo.”

This gives the impression that the problem in Syria is the barbaric Bashar al-Assad, not the jihadists who are fighting to overthrow him with U.S. help. That’s a lie. The fight against jihadist gangs that the U.S. and Saudi governments hire and arm to overthrow the most secular, non-sectarian, government in the Middle East, cannot be killed short of doing some barbaric things.

It also gives the false impression that it’s Assad and Russia that don’t want a democratic future for Syria, and that it’s the U.S. government that does. That too is a lie: the Obama Administration has been (along with the Sauds) the opponent blocking a democratic future for Syria. Furthermore, even Western polling in Syria shows that the Syrian majority want Assad to remain as their nation’s leader, and loathe what the U.S. has been doing to their country. Furthermore, Aleppo is one of the most pro-jihadist parts of Syria, but, even there, the support for jihadists isn’t a majority. Furthermore, 82% of Syrains blame the U.S. for the jihadists.

The remaining two page-one stories were:

“Rick Perry, Ex-Governor of Texas, Is Trump’s Pick as Energy Secretary”
“Under Rex Tillerson, Exxon Mobil Forged Its Own Path Abroad"

Those articles are also Democratic Party propaganda — definitely anti-Trump — but I myself am an FDR & Bernie Sanders Democrat, who loathes Hillary Clinton so much that because of her nomination, I left the Democratic Party, after having been a Democrat all my life, and I’m not going to criticize those two pieces of propaganda, because on environmental matters I myself am also strongly opposed to the positions that Trump has been advocating.

PS: Also on December 14th appeared the following press release from the U.S. House Intelligence Committee:

Nunes Statement on Cancellation of Cyber-Attack Briefing
Washington, December 14, 2016
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes issued the following statement after Intelligence Community agencies declined a request to brief the House Intelligence Committee tomorrow on cyber-attacks during the presidential campaign:

“It is unacceptable that the Intelligence Community directors would not fulfill the House Intelligence Committee’s request to be briefed tomorrow on the cyber-attacks that occurred during the presidential campaign. The legislative branch is constitutionally vested with oversight responsibility of executive branch agencies, which are obligated to comply with our requests. The Committee is vigorously looking into reports of cyber-attacks during the election campaign, and in particular we want to clarify press reports that the CIA has a new assessment that it has not shared with us. The Committee is deeply concerned that intransigence in sharing intelligence with Congress can enable the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes. The Committee will continue its efforts and will insist that we receive all the necessary cooperation from the relevant leaders of the Intelligence Community.”

On December 16th, Morning Consult reported that they had just then followed up with a request for comment from the CIA, about the CIA’s having refused Congress’s demand to see the evidence on the basis of which the CIA’s statements to the press about this matter had been issued, and reported, “The CIA did not respond to a request for comment.” The Obama Administration was refusing not only Congress’s demand for the evidence, but the press’s request for comment on why the CIA was refusing to supply that evidence to Congress.

—

Further reasons exist to distrust the NYT’s ‘news’ report on that matter and to suspect that the CIA’s alleged allegations in that matter are lies. And here’s how a former British Ambassador tells how he knows that they’re lies. If that’s not enough, try this, keeping in mind this, all showing that the CIA is hardly the public’s friend.

-###-

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.nomic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.