A Case Study in the Creation of False News

Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts

For many weeks we have witnessed the extraordinary attack by the CIA and its assets in Congress and the media on Donald Trump’s election. In an unprecedented effort to delegitimize Trump’s election as the product of Russian interference in the election, the CIA, media, senators and representatives have consistently made wild accusations for which they have no evidence. The CIA’s message to Trump is clear: Get in line with our agenda, or we are going to mess you over.

It is clear that the CIA is warring against Trump. But the CIA’s media assets have turned the facts on their head and are blaming Trump for having a negative view of the CIA.

Consider the January 4 Wall Street Journal article by Damian Paletta and Julian E. Barnes, which begins: “President-elect Donald Trump, a harsh critic of U.S. intelligence agencies . . .” The two presstitutes set up their false news story by putting the shoe on the other foot. It is Trump who is the harsh critic rather than the victim of the CIA’s harsh accusations. Set up this way, the story continues:

“White House officials have been increasingly frustrated by Mr. Trump’s confrontations with intelligence officials. ‘It’s appalling,” the official said. “No president has ever taken on the CIA and come out looking good.’”

Now that the story is Trump taking on the CIA and not the CIA taking on Trump, the case can be built against Trump:

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Analysts accustomed to more cohesion with the White House are “jarred” by Trump’s skepticism of the CIA’s assessment that Putin got him elected. Trump is supposed to respond to the allegation by saying: I am not legitimate. Here take back the presidency.

WikiLeaks’ Assange has stated unequivocally that there was no hack. The information came to WikiLeaks as a leak, which suggests that it came from inside the Democratic National Committee. That Trump sees it this way means, according to one unidentified official that “It’s pretty horrifying to me that he’s siding with Assange over the intelligence agencies.” You see, Trump is supposed to side with the CIA which is trying to destroy him.

Has the CIA shot itself in both feet? How can the agency control policy by manipulating the information fed to the President when the President does not trust the agency?

Well, there is the media which can be used to control explanations and to box in the President. In his just published book, The CIA As Organized Crime, Douglas Valentine reports that by the early 1950s the success of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird delivered into CIA hands respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS, other communication organizations plus stringers, coming to four to six hundred human media assets. And it didn’t end there.

“The CIA established a strategic intelligence network of magazines and publishing houses, as well as student and cultural organizations, and used them as front organizations for covert operations, including political and psychological warfare operations directed against American citizens. In other nations, the program was aimed at what Cord Meyer called the Compatible Left, which in America translates into liberals and pseudo-intellectual status seekers who are easily influenced.

“All of that is ongoing, despite being exposed in the late 1960s. Various technological advances, including the internet, have spread the network around the world, and many people don’t even realize they are part of it, and they’re promoting the CIA line. ‘Assad’s a butcher,’ they say, or ‘Putin kills journalists,’ or ‘China is repressive.’ They have no idea what they’re talking about, but they spout all this propaganda.”

And there is Udo Ulfkotte, who drawing on his experience as an editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote a book in which he reports that the CIA has a hand on every significant journalist in Europe.

Some who champion truth hope that the shrinking influence of the CIA controlled print and TV media will impair the Deep State’s ability to control explanations. However, the CIA, State Department, and apparently the Pentagon as well, are already operating in social media, and they use trolls in comment sections to discredit truth-tellers.

The New York Times’ editors have revealed themselves as complete tools of the CIA, endorsing every absurd claim about Russian hacking despite the total absence of any proof or indeed of any evidence of hacking, and denouncing Trump for not believing the unsupported allegations of US intelligence agencies. In the face of John Brennan and James Clapper’s efforts to delegitimize the presidency of Donald Trump, the NYTimes asks: “What plausible reason could Donald Trump have for trying so hard to discredit America’s intelligence agencies and their finding that Russia interfered in the presidential election?” http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/opinion/donald-trump-casts-intelligence-aside.html?_r=0

That question prompts a question of its own: “What plausible reason could the NYTimes have for trying so hard to discredit the presidency of Donald Trump on the basis of wild unsupported allegations?”

The fake news is proliferating. Today (January 6) Reuters reported: “The CIA has identified Russian officials who fed material hacked from the Democratic National Committee and party leaders to WikiLeaks at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin through third parties, according to a new US intelligence report, (unnamed) senior US officials said on Thursday.” http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-cyber-celebrate-idUSKBN14P2NI

Perhaps what Reuters meant to say but did not is this: “Officials who spoke on condition of anonymity claimed that the CIA has identified the Russian officials who fed the hacked emails to WikiLeaks, but the official did not tell Reuters who the Russian officials are or how they identified them.”

In other words, the Reuters story is just another CIA planted story—a favor from a media asset. As Udo Ulfkotte told us, this is how it works.

Next Reuters tells us that the report is Top Secret, which, of course, means that we will never see any evidence in behalf of the CIA’s allegation. We are supposed to trust that the CIA has the information but can’t tell us. The Reuters report doesn’t see anything unusual in this. Another favor by an asset.

In Reuters’ favor-laden news report, Reuters tell us that the hacked material reached WikiLeaks from Russia’s military intelligence agency via “a circuitous route” so that Assange did not know the origin of the material and thus could say that it was not given to him by a state agency.

What could be going on here? Several things come to mind. Perhaps there is an effort to force Assange to reveal his source (which could be that DNC staffer who was mysteriously shot down in the street) as this would be a surefire way of getting rid of WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has never revealed a source. Once it does, no further leaks will flow to WikiLeaks.

Another possibility is that by persistently making wild unsupported accusations that Trump was elected by Putin, the CIA is making it clear to Trump that they are playing for keeps. Trump is a strong man, but don’t be surprised if he comes out of the briefing with the CIA accepting their story as he might be brought to the realization that the alternative to compliance with the CIA could be death.