How U.S. Intelligence Services Control Public Opinion With Fake News

 image:  realizethelies.com

By:   Nick Russo        TheAnimatingContest.com         March 15, 2015

Although explicitly illegal, the United States government has admittedly been engaged in Propaganda efforts WITHIN our borders since at least the 1950’s.  By propaganda, I mean the conscious dissemination of information (written, broadcast, or otherwise) intended to influence the minds (i.e. the opinions and ideas) of the American People for the stated purpose of supporting the foreign policy initiatives of the United States government.

This domestic propaganda activity by the government was made explicitly ILLEGAL with the passage of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948.  Congress was admittedly concerned with authorizing the State Department to disseminate propaganda for fear of tainting the United States’ objective media institutions which are necessary to a free republic.  Due to these domestic concerns, Congress consciously restrained the propaganda activity to foreign media outlets ONLY. Consequently,  The State Department was expressly forbidden from propagandizing domestically and a structural firewall was put into place protecting domestic information from being influenced by the foreign activities of the U.S. government.

According to Wikipedia:  “The US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (Public Law 80-402), popularly referred to as the Smith–Mundt Act, was passed by the 80th Congress and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman on January 27, 1948..  The original legislation authorizes the U.S. State Department to communicate to audiences outside of the borders of the United States through broadcasting, face-to-face contacts, exchanges (including educational, cultural, and technical), online activities, the publishing of books, magazines, and other media of communication and engagement.”

“The shift from wartime to peacetime “propaganda” operations was not taken lightly by Congress, especially with fresh memories of President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee for Public Information (CPI), President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Office of War Information (OWI), and the Nazi propaganda machine.”

Shortly after the authorization of the foreign propaganda activities, Congressional concerns over tainting the domestic news and information institutions were realized when covert propaganda activities began being deployed on the American Public–ILLEGALLY-through the CIA’s admitted program:  Operation Mockingbird.

According to Wikipedia: “ Operation Mockingbird was a secret campaign by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to influence media. Begun in the 1950s.., the organization recruited leading American journalists into a network to help present the CIA’s views, and funded some student and cultural organizations, and magazines as fronts. As it developed, it also worked to influence foreign media and political campaigns, in addition to activities by other operating units of the CIA.”

“..in the 1950s, some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts. …(the program) was able to constrain newspapers from reporting about certain events, including the CIA plots to overthrow the governments of Iran (see: Operation Ajax) and Guatemala (see: Operation PBSUCCESS)”

This admitted CIA program is spoken of casually as if it were not in direct violation of United States Law.  It is as if the government’s influencing of the objective media with the intent of directly affecting the minds of American citizens is not IMMORAL manipulation and a threat to our open society and free republic.  The free flow of truthful information is a foundational pillar of a free and open society.

In the 1970’s Sen. Frank Church headed a Congressional Committee (the Church Committee) that investigated the CIA’s infiltration of the United States domestic media.  In this short video, Congressman Church directly asks the head of the CIA questions regarding the agency’s employing of agents within the domestic media industry.  The head of the CIA reluctantly acknowledges that paid agents are employed within the media.

In February 1976, George H. W. Bush, the recently appointed Director of the CIA, announced a new policy: “Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.”  This new policy of course implies that there was an “old policy” of doing exactly what the new policy is forbidding. 

As the following video of President George W. Bush in 2005 demonstrates, instead of having “paid relationships with news correspondents” the State Dept. now has BECOME the media.  The government now actually PRODUCES NEWS and distributes it to the news agencies.  Video Below

Recently, in an effort to retroactively make ILLEGAL activities legal, the United States government passed the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012.

This law takes away the firewall put into place in 1948, although never adhered to, and makes it legal for the State Department, CIA, and any other agency to influence the media domestically.  According to the author of the law its purpose is:

“to authorize the domestic dissemination of information and material about the United States intended primarily for foreign audiences”.

Welcome to 1984.