During the Soviet regime, the citizens were fed a constant stream of misinformation about the United States. Racial problems in particular were played up to make it seem like America was a hell on earth for blacks and other minorities. While Russian might have accepted that things weren't wonderful for everyone in America, they didn't buy into the propaganda completely. They couldn't wait to get their hands on American jeans and American rock n'roll, officially banned, was readily available to party members and the elite.
In Moscow in the 1970s, I walked passed a wedding celebration at the Intourist Hotel near Red Square. Out of the room came Simon and Garfunkel "Ah...southern California..." To me, this shows how propaganda can in many cases be self defeating if it goes on too long and goes against ordinary reality. The USA might not be loved everywhere around the world, but the influence of American popular culture and the energy and inventiveness of our society can be found in virtually every nation on earth.
When the US tried to feed information into the Soviet Union to undermine the communist regime, we were in the middle of a very long war that was called "cold" simply because the battles were indirect, like in Vietnam and elsewhere. Regardless of Putin's memories of that time, that war is over. Putin is trying to weaken the United States in order build himself and his weakened nation up into something they are not, a significant player on the world stage.
20
Who needs the Communist conspiracy boogeyman? These days, every right wing Tom, left wing Dick and libertarian Sally have their own private Idaho of conspiracy theories to keep them up late at night typing comments from their computer. Thanks to Mssrs Trump (Miller/Bannon) and Sanders giving us clever, if divisive language like the "deep state" and "the 1%", each of us, from neo-Nazi to anarchist and everyone in between, in the privacy of our own home can wage our own Radio Free Whatever.
10
So I shouldn't be angry that the other team helped elect someone who doesn't care? Someone who will be remembered for being the most illprepared individual to hold the office? Someone who be remembered for being the worst ever to even hold the office? Someone who appeals to an illinformed and angry and likely racist base? Someone who has no idea how to solve the complex problems facing our country? Someone who has no idea how to bring the country together?
Your analysis provides no consolation.
15
I'm sure the Greeks were saying terrible, dishonest things about each other two thousand years ago. And the Neanderthals before that. Even Adam and Eve and the snake were lying to each other, placing blame, protesting innocence. So what?
If we know that propaganda, or "fake news" is an effective tool, then why do we not learn how to combat it? Trump is a degenerate, pathological liar. I know it. You know it. The New York Times most certainly knows it. So the job is not to complain about it and shake our heads in dismay, the job is to expose it and counter it at, loudly and forcefully at every opportunity. It's difficult, relentless and exhausting work, but if we care about our country and the world, it's work that must be done.
15
I remember this it was called "svobodnayo radio" and people depended on it to hear the "real" news. Sad that it was a manipulation.
3
As if this would somehow make a difference. I bring you Fox News, the propaganda arm of the Big Religion and Big Business. Clearly stated, tell people something often enough and even if it will decimate their lives they believe it. No one at Fox News is pretending to be anything they are not yet millions swallow their swill hook, line and sinker.
We have no moral high ground on any side of this issue. The Government of all countries propagandize their citizens on a regular basis. Take a moment to research how the Pledge of Allegiance came to include the phrase "one nation under god" and you'll see this is SOP for even such "enlightened" republics as the one we presume to share.
14
At the time of darkness and oppression in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union, which the author, obviously, normalizes, Free Europe, German Wave, BBC, Voice of America were the sources of real news about the world and what was going in the countries of the "Socialist" block along with "Samizdat" books and articles.
And yes, KGB hated it. Because 10 minutes of truth overcame years of lies of the KGB propaganda.
The Truth was the real weapon in the Cold War, not lies.
17
The problem with these problems is that you have to reteach every generation that their peculiar problems are not new against their intrinsic urge to feel that every one of their problems is not only new, but the greatest problem of all time. It's a sort of a perfect storm of love of personal outrage and ignorance of history.
Noam Chomsky has educated people about corporate mind control of the vote for many decades. See, "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky."
Look up "Mohawk Valley formula": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula
9
It’s worth knowing that the United States has engaged in much more than propaganda to achieve our political ends. Three examples: We helped push aside a democratically elected leader in Iran, who we feared would tilt to the Soviets, and installed the brutal regime of the Shah. We launched the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. We illegally funded the Contras in Nicaragua. All this makes me wonder why some are shocked, shocked that Russia tried to influence our election. It’s akin to the sneaky calling the deceptive dishonest.
12
I cannot believe reading this article. This was a Cold WAR. A genuine FIGHT against a genuine murderous Soviet system. What you will publish next - "discovery" that - surprise - American military of the era was supplied with true lethal ammunition, not blanks?!?
I happen to had lived in Eastern Block (Poland), born in 1961. Nobody had a shade of doubt we had been occupied (OK, softly occupied, as long as we kept heads low) by Soviet Union. I personally know many people who tried to fight that, ending up in prisons, lives seriously mangled. I know many names and stories of people who had died trying, 1944-56.
It were us who had been born into, and had to live in a sea of lies, fake news, cynical manipulations of total media of a totalitarian state. Should I lecture you about us, as children, taught to lie in schools, taught to never say truth about some things in public, taught to loudly applaud obvious lies proclaimed at mass meetings?
Radio Free Europe clearly belonged, in our eyes, to the army of those who fought our occupiers. As the metaphor goes, RFE was "the sound of guns of the front". We wanted to hear those guns, we wanted to know someone is fighting the evil we knew, seen, every day. We did not want missionaries, we wanted fighters. We had seen enough missionaries getting their heads cut off.
Yes, RFE was fighting, not delivering "on one side this, on another side that" academic lectures. It was not the time for that.
65
The United States does the same thing to other nations, including Russia. Does anyone think that it's only Russia?
8
Perhaps the first time the CIA intervened in a foreign election through an information campaign was a couple of years after World War II to keep the Communists from winning elections in Italy. Most people, including me, would believe that was, on balance, a good thing.
We now know that a fake news campaign was run out of the White House (with ex-CIA leadership) during the 1972 campaign and continuing into the Watergate affair. This is described very well in Ben Bradlee's memoir, A Good Life.
The moral of these stories is that governments will generally try to use disinformation or biased information aimed at their own and other people. Some do it more dishonestly and with worse motives (Putin, Nixon, and Trump) and others perhaps with better motives and lies not quite so blatant (Truman, Eisenhower). Everybody needs to do as much fact checking and be as appropriately skeptical as they can and support good journalism.
6
Yawn. We all know. And we know more. America has disrupted free elections and the democratic process around the world since emerging as a world power. A more interesting, and timely, topic would have been an examination of the complicity of those who ascended to power as a result. Did they know how they were being empowered by American wealth and power? Were the repressive leaders participants in the charade aiding the CIA with essential intelligence targeting their opponents. Did the beneficiaries of US perversion of free idea exchange and free elections collude? And if so, how?
Now there's a topic worth ink. There's a lesson America must learn. Teach us some history that will help us through the coming storm.
3
The propaganda against Russia from the 1950s through the end of the cold war still shapes most Americans' views, often to our detriment. George W. Bush and his National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, were focused on battling Russia and did not have time to heed warnings about Osama bin Laden. We deem Russia a "hostile foreign power" while we allow China to miltarize and occupy international waters in the Pacific, by building islands with military bases. China, by the way, also passed us this year as the largest economy on earth, while Russia remains mired in stagnation. If we want to know who to fear, it is the nation with economic muscle -- that's what helped us to victory in WWII. The American people have been propagandized and it will take a long time for us to become more objective.
5
That Radio Free Europe was a CIA front was an open secret throughout the Cold War era. We don't need Prof. Osgood to tell us that. Its purpose was, of course, propaganda not accurate, unbiassed news. That was supposed to be the job of our official international radio station, Voice of America. Bu its job too, like every other county's radio voice (e.g., Voice of Moscow), was primarily propaganda not just news.
But examples of false or baseless claims by RFE are conspicuous by their absence from Prof. Osgood's article. I'm sure there were some, but where are they? On the other hand, we've been told that Russia has been using
social media to spread lies and "meddle" in our election but specific examples are also conspicuous by their absence.
Yes, of course Russia tried to help Trump beat Hillary, but I have yet to see any real evidence that it succeeded. Instead, all the evidence shows that voter suppression in Republican controlled states, not Russian meddling, was responsible for that disaster.
5
I don't think there is any doubt that the anti-Communist hysteria in this country was a destructive force, and led to a CIA effort to use propaganda at home and abroad as a kind of weapon. Fear drives this sort of stupidity, and in this case it was overblown fear that the U.S system might be replaced by a Soviet gulag.
But it is a false equivalency to compare Radio Free Europe to the recent campaign of bots and trolls etc. that sought to inject weird lies into the public discourse to confuse people and make them more likely to gravitate to simple-minded authoritarian leadership; or to compare broadcasts that everyone knew were issued by the U.S. government to covert efforts to hack into websites, email, and most horrifying, computerized voting systems. For that kind of fun, you would have to compare Putingate to the kinds of CIA crimes that led to the overthrow of governments in Chile, Iran, and Guatemala, to name a few.
I agree that it is good to push back against our own efforts at manipulating foreign governments, if not for moral reasons (which seem to elude so many) than to avoid the kind of blowback that the U.S. is experiencing now. But let's push back against the evil of a foreign government that is sponsoring authoritarianism in this country as well.
7
Fake news--agitation-propaganda--has a well-documented core principle of the communism since Lenin. Does no one remember the relentless propaganda portrayed in the novel "1984" by George Orwell, written in 1948? Orwell was recognized the horror the Soviet Union was perpetrating on Eastern Europe. Radio Free Europe was a late attempt to counter Soviet propaganda. To suggest that Putin--a proud one-time Soviet KGB man--is justified in meddling now because of Radio Free Europe seems tunnel vision, if not disingenuous.
6
Of all the nasty propaganda efforts the CIA may have used to destabilize other countries (I am not an expert but Chile comes to mind) I don't believe RFE deserves to be mentioned in the same breadth as what the Russians did/are doing to us. The CIA, (like any government agency) is not a monolith:it has good and bad (torture!) people driving initiatives and even good people can make mistakes. I would classify RFE as one of their good initiatives.
I spent time in the Soviet Union before its dissolution and have a fairly good grasp of post WW II history. As refugees from the communist block can attest, it was an "Evil Empire" as Reagan described. This is not to say the Russian people are evil--quite the contrary. But their leaders from Lenin, Stalin and on (Gorbachev being the exception) were. With all our myriad flaws, Freedom and the United States was inspiring compared to the Soviet system. In a historical irony, while we have managed (thus far) not to blow each other up, both the Russian and American people are suffering under evil leadership (which of course includes not just the disgraceful and amoral Putin and Trump--but their enablers.)
11
"Its impact outlived the campaign itself. Even though the pleas for donations ended in 1971, when the C.I.A. was exposed and stopped funding the station, they cemented anti-Communist hostility that animated conservative opposition to détente in the 1970s. It provided the leitmotif for Reagan’s denunciations of the “evil empire” in the 1980s. One can even hear echoes in Donald Trump’s recent speech to the United Nations: His long digression on the evils of socialism seems drawn from the heated rhetoric of ads gone by."
Cemented anti-Communist hostility that animated conservative opposition to détente... Well, apparently the anti-Totalitarian cement has been busted up, as Don Trump and Alt-Right conservatives, when not chanting blood & soil, seem to hold Vlad Putin in high esteem for domination of Russia. Indeed, the only sentiment that is "anti" anymore, is the anti Democratic one, in favor of plutocratic rule.
Interesting, thanks. I always found the anti communist hysteria overdone and manipulative.
Kennedy was right. We should "break the CIA into a thousand pieces". That statement got him killed.
My dad, a retired Army Colonel, hated them too. He considered them to be a rogue organization, often involved with shady business deals such as heroin trafficking in Southeast Asia, and convinced that their agents were a bunch of James Bonds. That included predation of women at their stations, as well as drinking and strip clubs when they showed up in the Bay Area.
They barely have a function now, but still have that giant building in Virginia, and their budgets are always robust.
Maybe they should turn their attention on the damage that the oil and timber companies are doing to our political system, including heating the planet. Oh, I forgot, the CIA is embedded with those people too.
7
I’ve been watching Burn’s doc on Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh wrote a letter to Truman in Feb 1946 imploring him have America help to stop the French from thwarting Vietnam’s ( an ally of America’s in WWII) independence declared in 1945 by Ho in a speech before thousands in Hanoi with a quote from the Declaration of Independence:
“All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain in alienable rights, among them are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.”
Ho’s letter was given to the OSS (precursor to the CIA) which did not pass it along to Truman.
And the rest is history.
CIA passing bad info to the President and suppressing good. It’s the American way, just ask Dubya.
14
First of all, shaping the minds of its citizens is an essential part of government. A society for example needs to train enough engineers to keep its complicated infra structure going, enough teachers and good schools, who teach children to avoid the pitfalls of history where a society might enter a thousand years of darkness. A society needs to have direction, young minds have to be focused on the goals and aspirations, so they become useful citizens. Otherwise we end up with a generation that does not know how to pull up their pants.
1
There's a reason Washington hasn't gone to the ICC or other international bodies charging Russia with election interference...
...the get laughed out of the court.
By the time my daughter was eight or nine, she had the ability to understand the moral principle involved in criticizing others for doing the exact same thing you yourself do.
8
when has the press been above partisan politics in this country? this is how the system has been since, at least 1800 when jefferson’s attack dogs savaged hamilton and so the federalists and set off a chain of events that ended, in among other things, an editorial by burr in weehawken in 1804...this is just one more instance of editors, editorial boards, and the instincts of "better men" for the preservation of their prerogatives engineering electoral results that favor their interests...delve into some joseph shumpeter if you want electoral analysis contemporary with the cold war and i would direct to si sheppard's book "the partisan press: a history of media bias in the united states...there is nothing new here.
2
There's a difference between propaganda and "fake news." When you conflate the two, you're doing the President's work for him.
9
So, what is the difference between propaganda and fake news? I think this is a really important point and deserves to be clarified. Is it because propaganda comes from the state and fake news from the media? Don't both just boil down to a highly biased, selective, and sometimes fabricated information meant to influence public opinion?
3
This article is fair commentary. We don't have a 'right' to free elections, free of foreign influence, any more than other nations have a right to free elections, uninfluenced by the United States. Geopolitical power is what you can take, and we're rapidly losing the ability to freely take what we want, other than by military force. It'll only grow worse, as we trash our own soft power.
5
There was never any Russian interference in our election. In fact such interference is nothing bu a CIA fabrication. What is true is that the CIA and its controlled media have spent the last seventy years drowning the American people in anti-Communist and now anti-Russian propaganda. The CIA is the threat to American democracy, not Communism and not Russia. It's more than a threat, it has already succeeded in subverting our Republic and destroying our constitutional liberties.
3
Sometime in the 1960's and beyond, a Russian woman would make comments to a call-in show on Wisconsin Public Radio. She would say how wonderful the Soviet Union was and how terrible the United States was.
2
My father worked for Radio Free Europe. Nothing made up here. Propaganda weapons have gotten better. And judging by the comments here more effective.
2
Governments have been meddling with other governments for centuries. And communism weakens when reality sets in - they don't have the food and necessities they promise to all. Never will. Communism doesn't work and never has, despite with progressives would like to believe.
Putin is an enemy of the people - his people, those in Eastern and Western Europe, and the US.
4
The only small thing still missing in the Russian hacking of the US elections is the slightest grain of any evidence, or even a pixel of proof.
These are the key, and never-quoted, sentences of the "assessments" of Russian interference in the American election in the rambling CIA report which has fed the media fires and launched Congressional investigations that started with conclusions:
"Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collective information which is often incomplete or fragments as well as logic, argumentation and precedent."
And that is straight from the Central Intelligence Agency, and two other agencies, of the United States of America.
5
This is a good article. I trust it in spite of having doubts about many news articles. It gives a clear motive for Putin to engage in election meddling. What is less clear is whether Donald Trump was smart enough to even think of colluding with the Russians.
But I watched a video on Putin's presidency which may have been produced by state media. He appeared almost god-like having rescued Russia from chaos of his predecessor Boris Yeltsin.
And if reports can be believed, the Chinese government is active in censorship, making certain that the government position gets the attention.
Is that bad? Well if I actually believed in democracy the answer would be a clear yes. But the last US election sheds doubt on whether democracy will survive in the US.
Suppose you were Chinese. You would look back on 4000 years of history with good and bad emperors, but never any form of democracy. When Xi Jinping wants to "make China great again," he might be referring to the Tang dynasty, centered in Xi'an, the most civilized city in the world when Europe was going through its dark ages.
Putin could look back to the age of the Romanov's.
They have no heroes like Washington or Jefferson, whose statues might topple because they both owned slaves.
Putin and Jinping both send a single message. Twitter and Facebook have allowed two competing versions of group-think to emerge, each group claiming the other is based on fake news.
The members do not recognize that both are often wrong.
3
The plight of Eastern Europe brought moral clarity to the Cold War, and it cemented the region as a vital national interest in American domestic politics.
+++
Mr. Obama campaigned brilliantly in ’08 & ’12, using both social media AND crisscrossing the nation making stops in key areas around the country leaving no stone unturned; in ’16, Mr. Trump took several chapters from that same playbook and did the same thing; Mrs. Clinton did NOT.
No matter how much meddling and outside influence another country wields on an election there is still going to be someone who wins and someone who loses. Go back and look at the playbook while, we, as a country try to better secure our future elections from outside influence.
2
My objection isn't to Putin having tried, apparently successfully, to influence our presidential election. My objection is that our politicians and political apparatus, especially on the Democratic side, was so utterly unprepared to deal with such an operation. That's beyond disgraceful.
To add to the awful situation, however, is that we don't, as a country, seem to be doing anything to prevent similar interference in our next election. This isn't totally surprising, however, as the Republicans are completely in power and want to remain so.
If Putin is tilting our elections towards people like Trump, and to the Republicans in general, it is because he perceives those people and that party as being bad for the United States and good for Russia.
I don't imagine Trump's base would believe that, and even if it did, I don't imagine it would care.
5
If we're making a gesture towards transparency about the US also being guilty of surreptitiously manipulating other countries' politics through social media, we should choose more relevant and more recent examples--after all, who's going to see hypocrisy in a morally black-and-white tussle between the US and Soviet Russia over the hearts and minds of Eastern Europeans?
One small example: In 2011, the UK's Guardian published a story about "a US spy operation that manipulates social media." It said, "The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda... up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations 'without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries'." The article also noted that "the US military ... developing false online personalities ... could also encourage other governments ... to do the same." Indeed.
It seems very naive to believe the US Government hasn't been manipulating social media against governments it doesn't like. Given all the overt ways the US throws its weight around--up to and including manipulating foreign elections, invasion under false pretenses and financing, arming and training of foreign insurgents--what's the likelihood that Washington somehow overlooked, or refrains from on principle, more subtle manipulation of social media in other countries?
3
Seems to me that Facebook is getting a big pass in all of this. I deactivated my Facebook account.
3
Terms like "fake news" get thrown around without careful definition by our president, the propagator-in-chief. There need to be sharp distinctions about the sources, types, directions, quality, and presentations of propaganda. It doesn't trouble me to say that there is little bias-free information. We even need to be skeptical of scientific data. We should critically examine others attempts at influence, but not ignore our own government's and corporations' attempts to influence and sway the beliefs of other countries and our own. Right now, our democracy is being tested by the propagandists in power, who, though it may be difficult to prove, very well could be in league with the meddling Russian authorities.
1
At this moment it is also appropriate to investigate and report on the United States' disinformation campaigns in other countries through intelligence services and behind benign seeming institutional fronts, and as part of "psychological operations". A look at manuals on this subject is a point of entry. Much FOIA exposure has already been done. How many democracies we seek and have sought to skew, how much psychological preparation to secure tolerance for future military interventions? This ought not to be missed, lest we continue in our famed, civic and educational Ameri-myopia, a profound malady in democracy, when our country intervenes so heavily throughout the world. It is the responsibility of the polity and the press to know.
1
But then Radio Free Europe wasn't basically wrong in its characterization of the Soviet regime was it? It was one of the most vile systems in history that murdered, oppressed and imposed economic and human misery on millions in Russia and it's satellites. A perhaps more legitimate criticism is the over emphasis on the size of the Soviet threat to the US when it was clear by the late 70's that the Soviet Empire was moribund.
8
'It was one of the most vile systems in history that murdered, oppressed and imposed economic and human misery on millions in Russia and it's satellites."
You do not know much about the Soviet system in the USSR.
There was no oppression and massacres, as you say. Those who opposed
the state were persecuted. Is it not so in the USA? Is it In the USA you can freely
oppose the authorities and call for the overthrow of the government? I do not believe in that.
Life was better. There was no this capitalism, where all competitors and try to "sink" each other.
The USSR was weaker economically, it is true. But the fault of 2 World War (in Russia it is called the Great Patriotic War). If it were not for this war ...
The USSR would be different ...
1
"Russia has long tried to claim Eastern Europe as its sphere of influence."
So has Germany. So did Austria-Hungary, with the most success until it imploded. So does the EU. And so does NATO, not the same as the EU, military rather than economic and political.
It has been a contest over who will control them. It is not and never has been just Russia preying upon an independent collection of sound little states.
It has always been thus in that part of Europe. If we go back far enough, it was a larger Sweden and a Lithuania going down almost to the Black Sea contesting it.
It is geography, a flat, weak, indefensible place in the middle, surrounded by more powerful places that all fear each other getting an advantage and position for more.
Right now as Russia seeks influence, Germany has it economically, and NATO has it politically, both recent takings.
8
Lets be clear, upper income white suburbanites elected Donald Trump. It wasn't the Russians, it wasn't uneducated low income white men. Those are media stories. While the media claims its filter adds value to information, in truth it does the opposite. It leaves people uninformed, misinformed and emotionally invested in an invented world view that holds their attention for advertisers. They rely on people being angry at anyone who challenges that world view.
We should understand that the only real evidence that Russia had any involvement in the election is that anonymous people at the CIA and NSA say so. Neither we nor the media have any way to verify that, we just have to take it on faith. That faith is almost always misplaced as our intelligence agencies have always been tremendously skilled in the use of propaganda, as this story demonstrates.
5
What could you possibly mean by "upper income?"
Russia may not have been the only target of CIA fake news. The Times also reported that the CIA was active in Chile in an effort to undermine the Allende regime. It is reported here: http://www.nytimes.com/1974/09/08/archives/cia-chief-tells-house-of-8mil.... The effort included support of newspapers. "Some of these funds, Mr. Colby testified were provided to an unidentified influential anti‐Allende newspaper in Santiago." This does not confirm that the CIA-supported newspaper published "fake news," but no doubt the news reported was favorable to Allende's opposition, and was intended to weaken Allende. This was much like the role of Radio Free Europe. Given that the US is rightfully alarmed at Russia for spreading fake news here to disrupt our election process, we should be equally alarmed if the CIA or any US agency is acting similarly in other countries.
4
I am less than impressed. Radio Moscow broadcast to the West. Shortwave listeners tuned in for the classical music (good) and ignored the propaganda (pathetic, except for the electrifying announcement, October 1957, of the launch of Sputnik). East Europe listened to VoA, RFE, etc. for the jazz. So did shortwave listeners in the West. Does anyone remember Willis Conover? I was told that East Europeans and Soviet citizens ignored the propaganda (pathetic). The CIA manipulate Soviet "elections"? Don't make me laugh when my lips are chapped. The KGB manipulate US elections? The technology wasn't there, but I'm sure they would have tried if it had been.
3
Too bad you confined your comments about the C.I.A.'s involvement in foreign affairs about Russia (some may call it 'meddling in the internal affairs of other countries, if American companies may 'suffer' by sensible measures taken to defend their own heritage and treasure), and Iran's puppet the Shah, and Chile's Pinochet dictatorship were but a sample of the harm inflicted (for more info, just read Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine", among others). It just happens, the U.S. became the victim this time ("in their own flesh", so to speak). And the result, awful as usual, the current misrule of an ugly mentally deranged demagogue named Trump. We humans remain Machiavellian (the ends justifies the means), unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. Are we ever going to learn, play fair for a change?
2
When we dropped all those leaflets over Vietnam, I’m sure it wasn’t done to sway people’s feelings in a direction we wanted. Unlike hacking, someone was left to pick up all that trash we left all over the jungles.
With all this talk of Russian hacking right now, I’d be curious to know what our own NSA is busy doing right now.
do you remember the black out of the Bombing in Cambodia? The Cambodians and Vietnamese certainly knew what was going on.
1
If anyone has a short wave radio- deep in the dials at certain times during the night one can hear cryptic messages broadcast from presumably Langley, VA to its deep cover spies stationed abroad. "Onward Joe" and "5-25 alive" are some of the blurbs I've heard. The reality is the Cold War never ended- it's just been on hiatus.
When they write the history of the 100 years from 1950-2050, it will be about how the US and the USSR rose to be twin superpowers, then both descended into mediocrity. And each one did its best to lead the other to failure.
Here's the exact point that we went wrong. It wasn't Trump...he is putting the final nails in our coffin, so that no country will ever respect us or trust our negotiations. But he didn't begin it.
The long-ago point where we could have changed history was under Reagan. We gloated about the failure of the USSR, but did nothing to encourage their democracy. We let them degenerate into a oligarchy, not realizing we (with Reagan's ideology) were on exactly the same path.
Had Reagan/Bush/Baker started a massive Marshall plan for all former Soviet Republics, including Russia...not only might Putin never have come to power, but we might be a different democracy ourselves as a result. Our CIA war on communism not only led to the miserable failure of Viet-Nam, but after that led to our failure to see how our fate would be intertwined with Russia's.
5
Viet Nam was a failure the second we and the rest of the Allied powers allowed the French to reoccupy a nation that had done it's utmost to free itself from the Japanese, who by way of their success (the Japanese) managed to destroy the Western Colonial legitimacy, (another subject).
Radio Free Europe's message was transparent, if not its funding sources, but I find it hard to see it as the equivalent to the insidious Russian election hacking on social media. Yes, the conclusion that "it is payback time" is undoubtedly true, but Putin has made his goals of restoring Russia's borders and "greatness," which sounds disturbingly familiar, quite clear so there is no mystery now that the belated acknowledgment by Facebook, Twitter, etc. has been forced by journalists. What is striking is that the former and current administrations have not brought the propaganda efforts of Putin to the fore, or for that matter Trump's implicit denial (or his campaign statements urging Russia to release Clinton's emails) that Russians influenced the election with their social media subterfuge.
Putin is right with his assertion that those who control opinions through cyber channels will dominate. AI and deep learning technology, which is almost certainly well beyond the grasp of Trump or his back to the future cohorts, is very probably part of his strategy to influence people. Maybe the American advertising and social media titans who understand this should counter it aggressively since the administration wants to ignore it for reasons at which we can only guess until and unless the Special Counsel discovers clear evidence of unlawful acts perpetrated by Trump and his cohorts with Russians.
33
As usual the Russians found the fatal flaw in the Capitalists model of how to run a technological online business. That flaw is the automation that makes them so much money also allows smart people who want to manipulate it to do so. Isn't that fact part of what many consulting businesses are engaged in when they "consult" for others who seek to improve their "rankings" on search engines etc?
The real problem is the greed of Google, FB, Apple, Microsoft and whomever and just how much of the money they make is generated by what they falsely call AI but is actually an automated program with a finite number of possible results.
Russia was used as a convenient dump for the post Trump victory hysteria which gripped the news media and Trump's political foes who are in both political parties. Hillary Clinton's attempts to tie Trump to Putin were incendiary. The phony Russia stole the election meme has morphed into a 24/7 news media feeding frenzy of conspiracy theories which disappear after an amazingly short shelf life. The neo cons and liberal interventionists mutinied against Obama's laid back approach to punishing the Russians. Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton came out in 2014 just before the midterm elections castigating Obama for not having attacked Syria after the al Qaeda false flag chemical weapons attack against civilians. So Russia stands in the way to the regime change politics of the CIA and neo cons. The Ukraine intervention by the US in the illegal coup by right wing nationalists that drove out a legally elected gov't has been turned into another example of Russian aggression. Russia responded by taking Crimea which is a critical national security asset. Now the US Congress has drummed up the notion that the Russians are everywhere under every bed with a unstoppable cyber assault on the US. Liberal Hollywood types are openly stating the US is at war with Russia.
3
The 1st sentence here is the biggest fake news since McCartheism's insinuations about evils of socialism and the New Deal. Where is there an article, like here, with facts and details about "Russia's crafty campaign ..."? Where is there an article about Hillary's campaigns to make war with Putin?
2
Yes, and having just finished reading all of the comments , one thing strikes my thoughts. In the couple of hundred commentors, almost all American, practically everyone accepts as fact that Russia made a real effort to influence this election. That's the CIA's story, and Hillary's.
No proof of that assumption has yet been shown to the public as real news. Not anywhere. We assume that Putin and his top officials sat down and said, "Let's sink Hillary and get Trump elected."
Are we nuts? Until the electoral college votes were counted, NO ONE imagined for a second that the other incompetent would win. (Yes, I found both unfit as the leader of this nation and the world.) Do you think Putin bought the Electoral College?
That may be what the ads that have neither been seen nor sourced were for. The fake news that could have come from Russian intelligence with their government's knowledge, from private individuals in Russia or from the CIA.
We don't know. Buying the propaganda before it's more than real news is less than intelligent.
When in a country of some 330 million there are only two party and gazillions of different voting rules it can't be that hard to manipulate an election, especially if one does not need the majority of the votes in order to win period. Sad.
7
What also has to be discussed is how the CIA's acolytes used their money to advance US abstract expressionism ie to capture the up scale, more intellectual elements of society.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-157880...
Very clever argument, but only just that. A clever argument. Equating current Russian actions with those of Western Europe to help dismantle the self serving and people choking communist regimes is exactly like Trump's equivalency of the White Supremacist groups in Charlottesville with those to chose to protest the presence of such groups.
Yes, tit for tat is indeed a normal human and societal reaction. It might even be biological - who knows? So let us do this then. Since Russia is meddling with us, why don't we concertedly push our politicians to develop a plan to dismantle that entire state. Fair dinkum ?
3
Read the article again. It was not about Russia.
It was about CIA aiming propaganda at American Citizens, which is illegal.
1
The history recounted here is a good start at examining the US/CIA role in fake news in elections, but does not begin to cover US actions in elections from Italy to Chile, from Iran to South Vietnam, from France to Africa. Much of this took place from 1945 to 1975, and was a key part of our covert anti-communist cold war campaign. The Russians in 2016 beat us at our own game.
Or perhaps it was a game the Soviet-led International and KGB had played rather poorly since 1920, and we played better after WWII. Until now.
4
I happen to enjoy this article mainly due to it's willingness to call out U.S foreign policy & U.S propaganda. I knew for awhile that the United States did many of the same covert actions to spread fake news and propaganda as the Soviet Union, because we were both in a massive information war & both sides were fighting for world dominance. Both sides helped to put in dictators, supported them, backed terrorist groups that would be loyal to their regimes, committed human rights abuses on their citizens & had loyal citizens that would not dare to question the powers that be.
However, the problem is that many people who otherwise agree with me, will paint a false equivalence between that & Russian propaganda which pretended to be American. You can have issues with the C.I.A & it's propaganda machine, as well as U.S foreign policy backing people like Augusto Pinochet, Jorge Rafael Fidella & the Shah in Iran, as well as Saudi Arabia & still recognize the U.S.S.R as a totalitarian Russified, Communist regime and acknowledge Russia's role in interfering with Western elections in the past few years.
I, too, was disappointed that nothing was said about any disinformation used in Iran in 1953, in Chile in 1970-73, Brazil in 1964, etc. Those days, with no internet, this would have been radio (internal or external), television, newspapers, and "influencers" (either internal or external). Plus, there were the lies told the public in the US and told Congress and perhaps even some in the various administrations.
Of course, this doesn't excuse any meddling by other states in the 2016 US presidential campaign, but perhaps it is past time to begin to look at what our own policies have been and likely still are. People I talk with here rarely have considered that the Iranian Revolution and the US Embassy seizure in 1979 might have had something to do with the 1953 coup, that perhaps Iranians had good reason to suspect the motives of the US in promising the Shah medical treatment in the US.
A lot of good people who opposed the Shah died in Iran or went into exile following the revolution of 1979 - leftists, liberals, trade unionists, secularists, etc. Once again, an example of the unintended consequences of cold war policies.
Reading the comments to this article makes it clear that a more useful article would have also included how much our country has interfered with elections in many other countries, and how we have also stooped to murder (e.g. Allende) and attempted murder (e.g. Castro) when we don’t get our way. Eastern European oppression does not make something like our own history of domestic and international (e.g. the Philippines) oppression into something good. RFE was selling half-truths, and its real purpose was not liberation of oppressed peoples, but to further our profit way of economics no matter how oppressive the resulting right wing governments that might come to power. We may love democracy but our leaders have loved the dollar more.
4
Certainly, I agree with you. I even admit to acknowledging that the U.S.S.R did do some good things. Whether it be improvements in social welfare, women's rights or even some inventions that we take for granted today, the Soviet Union did do some good. But let me ask everyone this question: @ what cost?
Also, please falsely equate R.F.E & Russia's ongoing mass disinformation campaign which pretends to be American.
There's nothing either new or unexpected in the article. Most of us know that almost all governments spy, manipulate the views of their own citizens and exercise disinformation on a regular basis.
The real danger lies in the ability and success of foreign governments to manipulate allies to act against their own interests, as do Israel and Saudi Arabia.
5
"Russia was aggressive; Communism was awful. The enemy couldn’t be trusted. Typical ads conveyed a brutalized vision of life behind the Iron Curtain: “a strip of Communist-controlled hell-on-earth,” one read. "
If it's propaganda, does that mean it's necessarily false? After several years of firsthand experience in Eastern Europe before and after der Mauer came down, I can vouch for the "hell-on-earth" description. This was no "brutalized version": Vast stretches of cement buildings full of tiny apartments housing several generations; waiting ten years for a telephone that worked sometimes; walking outside with colleagues to avoid the listening devices in buildings; rivers thick and glistening with industrial pollution and human waste; Hungary's first "alternative" May Day parade, where we were not confident that Russian tanks wouldn't attack us; people disappeared for having a smuggled-in fax machine. Not as brutal as developing world poverty, true; but brutal nonetheless. Was this state of affairs not worth resisting?
22
I was in the FSU in 1995. I can vouch for the horror of Communism and all that you witnessed and more, i,e.’ Lack of food everywhere to start, working phones, spymasters everywhere. I kissed the U.S. soil upon return. I question the judgment of this opinion piece.
1
The piece is about CIA propaganda aimed at US citizens! Read it again!
1995? where did you find Communism then? it was a total liberalism
1
This essay implies that the CIA efforts were somehow the moral equivalency of Russia's blatant actions in interfering with our system of government. "The message was simple: Russia was aggressive; Communism was awful. The enemy couldn’t be trusted. Typical ads conveyed a brutalized vision of life behind the Iron Curtain: “a strip of Communist-controlled hell-on-earth.” "The crusade blasted all information from enemy sources as lies and deceit — fake news, we could say." This "equivalency" suggestion is hogwash. Indeed, if there was but one difference between these two nuclear powers, i.e., the power that belongs to the people of our nation because of the rights of freedom of speech, expression, religion, (not to mention the other fundamental rights guaranteed by our Constitution) and the utter lack of same in Russia strips the moral equivalency inference to its very core. The writer of this essay and many others in our country appear to have forgotten this essential difference. Trump's efforts to emasculate freedom of the press is, perhaps, the best example of the current steady erosion of this major distinction. There is a line in the sand and the writer has crossed it.
2
The author doesn't even state a position. He is a historian giving you a little lesson on how the CIA aimed propaganda at US citizens, which is illegal.
It is not about Russia or Radio Free Europe.
You seem to be saying that the U.S. vilified the Soviet government for nefarious purposes, and equate that with what the Russians have done under Putin. What goes around comes around, dontcha know. When Radio Free Europe began in 1950, Stalin was still in power. He wasn't a fake monster, he was a real monster. There is no doubt that our hands aren't clean, but to pretend there is some moral equivalency here is pathetic. I question your judgment. I question your motives.
12
It seems like ten percent of the commenters actually read the article. Its not about Russia.
This essay compares apples and oranges. If the Russians has paid for a newspaper or website to disseminate their point of view, that would be free speech under the first amendment. But they did not. Rather they surreptitiously infiltrated social media in support of a particular candidate in an election. That's not what Radio Free Europe did.
1
You have to appreciate the irony here: this opinion piece is one of the more blatant examples of anti-western propaganda I've seen recently, proffered by a leftist academic with an ax to grind. The author jumps on the "fake news" narrative, yet fails to highlight anything untrue. Russia was aggressive; it still is, just ask the Ukrainians. Communism is awful; the North Koreans understand this well. As do Venezuelans at this point.
6
This article is not about Russia. It is about the CIA aiming propaganda at US citizens. Read it!
The thing that was untrue was that donations were financing Radio Free Europe, when actually it was CIA.
I think future historians will marvel at America's three quarters of a century of Hatred of Communism. The big sin preached to us school children in the 1950's was that Communism was "Godless." Not that Communists wanted the state to own everything and workers to share profits, or that there should be equality of income. Those ideals might have evoked some sympathy. Nope. We were to hate Communists because they didn't believe in God. To defeat Godless Communism, --yes, yes, and to defend democracy in Eastern Europe... (i.e. not let Russia or China get too strong,) it seemed sensible to build tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, which could destroy Earth several times over. Future historians may conclude that our leaders then were and today's leaders are still -- insane.
5
This is a logical fallacy called Argumentum Ad Hominem Tu Quoque. The US has misused its power many times, as has the old Soviet Union & today's Russia - along with many other countries. But, the answer isn't to justify this Russian war (cyberwar is still war) against our country by saying we did it, too. The column should not be saying this was just tit-for-tat, but making the point that we, too, have committed covert acts of war against other countries & their political processes. Too many of the commenters are taking the line that Russia was just giving us just what we deserve. The fact that we were wrong in meddling in other governments is something that ALL Americans should be educated about. But, if I murder your son, it doesn't make it just desserts for you to murder mine. We should hold America to blame for its foreign meddling (which continues to this day). We should also hold Russia to blame for IT'S foreign meddling. The answer is for Americans to demand that we mend our corrupting ways - not to excuse Russia (and its American collaborators) for its own.
6
I didn't read the column as justifying current Russian fake news campaigns, but simply as looking at them in a long historical context of propaganda warfare.
But you are right, the author should have done more to make that clear: if the Putin regime didn't invent informational warfare, neither did the CIA. I think it was Churchill, talking about British propaganda efforts, who said the the truth needs a bodyguard of lies. And it goes back a lot further than that.
In our case, we can say that some egregious CIA programs of domestic propaganda were shut down, but the heavy clouds of deception still drift around Washington. And as always, except in certain cases of military intelligence operations, it's meaningless to try to separate propaganda we aim abroad, from domestic propaganda. It's the same with the Russians, they are propagandizing their own citizens as much as they are targeting America.
Among the goals of US funded broadcasting outlets such as RFE and VOA is to shape and influence the perception of the US as a true participatory democracy and its political institutions as a political system that other countries, especially unfriendly countries, should adopt. As such, it attempts to sow discontent and inspires dissidents in those countries. The goal is to destabilize and regime-change. From this perspective, the Congressional investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election is a show for the consumption of the gullible American public.
1
If Russia was trying to destabilize us we need to know. Since there is a mountain of circumstantial evidence suggesting that Trump welcomed interference from a foreign government in our election, much of it supplied by him on TV for all to see, our government and our press needs to figure out if our president is indeed the traitor he seems to be.
1
The difference that Kenneth Osgood & most of the commenters miss here is a crucial one. Radio Free Europe was definitely a propaganda tool & the CIA was definitely involved. But, unlike the Putin attacks on our elections, Radio Free Europe never pretended to be Russian or Soviet. Everybody who listened to it knew it was coming from America, & it was obviously anti-Soviet propaganda.
The Russian campaigns against this country masquerade as American. They are stealthy attempts to corrupt our democracy by pretending to portray the thoughts & opinions of American citizens. RFE never pretended to be anything it wasn't, an American alternative to Soviet news. People could judge whether it was biased or not knowing its origination & purposes. When I lived in the Florida Keys in the 70's, we could pick up Radio Havana. It was the mirror image of RFE, talking about what was "good" about Communism & "bad" about Capitalism. It even included shows directly from Moscow. But, we all knew what it was & could take that into consideration when deciding how to treat its propaganda. It never pretended to be Radio Miami or Radio New York.
I don't excuse or approve of RFE's CIA-backed distortions, but it never worked as a secret weapon of American presidents pretending to be a domestic Russian effort to make war against their government. And, it never aided or had the secret support of the string of Russian dictators who beat out rivals each time power changed hands.
15
Yes it is important to realize that our government has aimed propaganda at our own people.
The lead up to the War in Iraq is a recent example. The head of British Intelligence visited the Bush administration nine months before the war, and reported back to the Prime Minister that the decision had already been made to go to war, and that "the intelligence was being fixed around this decision." Google the Downing Street Memo to read it yourself.
It was the political leadership that was taking intelligence from various agencies and twisting it and putting it out through global corporate mass media, with more pushback from those agencies than from the media.
One thing we should learn from our own meddling in the internal Affairs of other countries, is that it was almost always done in the interest of global corporations, not the interests of the people in those countries. Hence the monicker, Banana Republic, named after the fruit corporations, and the fact that we changed Iraq's laws to give away their oil to global oil corporations, including Russian and Chinese companies.
Anyone that thinks the Russians are trying to help the people of the United States is delusional. Either they are promoting their own geo-political interests, or they are promoting the interests of global billionaires, starting with the Russian oligarchs.
The Russians are helping both extremes of the US political spectrum in order to divide and weaken the People.
Don't accept help from foreign powers.
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Of course, Russians are acting in their interest, as Americans did and do, but the process could sometimes help Americans by highlighting problems of the American societies (the bias of DNC in this election, division in the society).
Are you aware, McGloin, that Franklin Roosevelt had decided that the United States was going to war against Germany by October 1939?
He did a great number of things o influence the mood of the country to support his decision, but he needed an excuse.
The Japanese gave him that in December 1941.
And, as I recall, the mood of The People when Bush went after Saddam Hussein, fully supported that thinking...
And so did both the House and the Senate, overwhelmingly, including Senate Democratic Leader Schumer, and House Minority Leader Pelosi.
If you don't like what our democracy turns out as leaders, it is your obligation to vote for those who believe as you do, and to work for a political manifesto that both expresses your concerns and that can garner sufficient votes as to govern.
At this point, you have yet to accomplish what you have set out to do, and in the absence of a coherent platform on which to stand, you are unlikely to be successful in the near and middle-term future.
Yes the Russians can highlight our problems, but Americans should not welcome foreign interventions in our politics. The help comes with strings.
Truth was the best weapon against Soviet oppression. All Radio Free Europe had to do was report the news. Putin has to tell outrageous lies and foment division and hatred to distract his subjects from the misery he has brought them. Putin has destroyed the Russian economy and sown the fields with salt. He has to lie to save his own life from the judgement of the Russian people. He certainly does not want a prosperous and united West as a neighbor; he was in East Germany to see the result of that dynamic.
False equivalency on this order is more suited to RT than the NYT.
7
Putin destroyed Russian economy? The economy was destroyed well before him by the Russian Government that was friendly to America and that was relied on the advises of the American economists. Putin, if anything, stabilized Russian economy and increased the living standards. That's why he is popular and the West-friendly opposition is not.
2
Yulia is right about American economists destroying the Russian economy. Bush One and Clinton helped give away the Soviet economy to the Russian Oligarchs, doubling poverty to over 50% and decreasing the life expectancy by ten years.
Of course Putin was Yeltsin's deputy and came to power while Clinton was president. I cannot tell from NYC whether Putin is allied with the Russia Oligarchs, and global billionaires in general, but I don't have to trust the leader of a hostile intelligence service.
Of course, you can 'not trust' Putin as much as you want. I don't think it is really matter to him. After all he is the President of Russia not a mayor of NYC. But I hope you understand that Russians have exactly the same right not to trust the American Presidents.
“Russia’s crafty campaign to hack the election may seem unprecedented.”
Many Americans believe this. It’s not true. America created and perfected cyber spying and hacking. Now it is being used against US.
Americans are brought up to believe Russians are the bad guys – the enemy. Americans are the good guys, setting the high moral standard. America would never overthrow legitimate governments, assassinate elected politicians, run black sites, disseminate fake news, etc. etc.….,
Only a fool believes this. America has tens of millions of fools. They used to say, “my country right or wrong.” Now they chant USA, USA!.
America’s global meddling and fake news efforts has cost US thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. It's money we don’t have and borrow from US Trust Funds and foreigners, including the Russians!
These fools should ask where the Social Security and Medicare money taken from their paychecks is. It's safe to say they all know the name Madoff – not Madoffnov!
We must find a way to hold Elected Politicians and their staffers, from both parties, personally liable, responsible and accountable for the lies they have told us and others, their gross mismanagement of our county, our $20.2 T and growing national debt, and our $100 T in future, unfunded liabilities they forced on US jeopardizing our economic and national security, while benefiting themselves, their staffers, their party and special interest donors.
http://www.usdebtforum.com
4
Maddoff stole almost nothing. The thieves are the people who actually have all the money, the global billionaires.
So is much of the current hysteria in U.S. over Russian "hacking", etc., fake news? Probably, as it serves the goals of certain groups and individuals. Did Russia try to have some influence in the U.S. election? Probably, because the policies of the U.S., e.g. trade, sanctions, etc., have a direct impact on them. Does the U.S. get involved in trying to influence political outcomes in other countries to obtain results that serve its interests? Certainly and the historical record proves it. Just consider the history with another "archenemy" Iran as an example. Why is the foreign policy of much of the world, includng many "Western democracies", determined by idiots? Because we are collectively sheep who believe what we are told by our betters (including the media like the NYT).
3
Its not about Russia. Its about Trump, who has seemingly admitted to taking help from a foreign government to influence the election numerous times on TV.
Russia will do what Russia will do.
The question is whether our president is a traitor. It needs to be answered.
Congress voted 500 to 5 to increase sanctions on Russia, which Trump reluctantly signed, giving the president until October 1st to do it.
It is now October 14th and he is not doing it. The president is not allowed to ignore laws, but is anyway.
Just one more piece on the pile of circumstantial evidence that Trump is a Traitor.
The photo of the billboard with "Truth" shooting dramatically through the Iron Curtain is a little amusing when you consider one Russian word for truth: Pravda.
3
Another pun was: "The difference between the Pravda (Truth) and the Izvestia (News) is you may find Izvestia in the Pravda, but you will not find the Pravda in Izvestia."
As an institution, the ways and means of the CIA are slow to change. Ken Burns' recent Vietnam War series barely mentioned the CIA's Phoenix Program. All Americans pay the price.
The Phoenix Program was designed, coordinated, and executed by the CIA with the assistance of US special operations forces and US Army intelligence collection units. The CIA described it as "a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong." The two major components of the program were Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs) and regional interrogation centers. PRUs would kill or capture suspected Viet Cong members and civilians who were thought to have information on Viet Cong activities. Those captured were taken to interrogation centers and tortured in an attempt to gain intelligence on Viet Cong activities. Methods of torture inflicted upon captured women included rape and rape followed by murder [conduct later attributed to the psychopath East Area Rapist-Golden State Killer in California. This serial rapist and killer of 12 people in the 1970's and 1980's has never been identified. Some knowledgeable individuals, such as myself, believe that Law Enforcement is purposely refusing to investigate the possibility that this criminal psychopath was a former member of this CIA operation.] Phoenix Program personnel killed between 26,000 and 41,000 suspected Viet Cong operatives, informants and supporters. (Source: Wikipedia on the Phoenix Program)
6
You were not there.
CIA manipulation / propaganda or not Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, BBC, Voice of America were the lifeline for anyone interested to learn real news, to use a new idiom.
In time you learned to weed out the propaganda stuff from these radio stations also. You already had a sense for that from scanning the internal fake news.
65
Propaganda is needed against propaganda because propaganda is more effective than truth, especially among the ignorant. And America, like all other countries, has far more ignorant people than reasoned people.
Kids these days choose to be mindless and ignorant at even more alarming levels than in the past. Have to believe the 70's were the pinnacle of Liberalism and our Corporate history has successfully brainwashed Americans to think it was the worst of times. The 70's should have been a starting point but the Left is hopeless. The big tent with circular firing squads where you cant be heard or ideas get shot down.
1
I am no fan of the CIA. This intervention by Russia was electoral politics on our soil. There is a huge difference. The election of trump is ten times more serious than anything the CIA did. He is most likely taking his commands from Putin to wreck this country. We have the enemy in the White House. Putin is much better at this than we are. He appears to be winning. Propaganda is propaganda, an old and tired form of international persuasion. Electioneering at the highest forms of technology abroad is criminal in a much more potent manner. Clinton would not have thought of bowing to Russia's power hungry dictator.
89
All the Senators know that Trump is following orders from Moscow but they don't do anything. Is it because they are following orders from Moscow also? Or is it that they have no experience of doing anything which is not for their own good but for the good of the country?
1
It was not on American soil, it was on the Internet which is not American soil but the common place, as radio waves. And I will argue that destruction of the country (USSR) beats the election of Trump
James, you clearly are not aware of other CIA misdeeds. The election of Trump cannot totally be due to propaganda from Russia and the worst of CIA actions include OVERTHROWING elected governments and facilitating the deaths of thousands. Trump is a nightmare but our CIA's actions abroad were/are illegal and immoral.
The RFE story is old news. Wisner and his colleague, Cord Meyer, had hundreds of journalists on the CIA payroll in the USA and elsewhere. But a more relevant story would be the role of US intelligence and propaganda within the USA, where, by their charter, they are not permitted to operate.
1
In America, a Journalist can say whatever he wants. Look at Dan Rather.
Dan Rather made one mistake and was crucified for it.
George Bush lied to invade Iraq at the cost of 45,,000 troops dead or wounded and over a trillion dollars.
Donald Trump contradicts himself all of the time, which proves he is a pathological liar, and is president of the United States.
This piece may be one of the most egregious examples of "whataboutism" yet. Right up there with Trump's defense of Putin's political murder campaign when he said through his adenoidal drip, "What - you think our country's so innocent. There are a lot of killers." This is the moral equivalency sleight of hand you, Trumpistas, and in some cases, the extreme left, have tried to get away with for ages. But it's not even close, Mr. Osgood, not even close. I don't need to do a point by point rebuttal to prove my assertions. All I have to do is look at what is still happening in Russia today next to my own country to know which system, however flawed, promotes free expression and the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. So until you guys manage to actually deprive us of those rights, and turn us into a totalitarian state like Russia, I am happy to stand here in the public square and say, "Shame on you!"
6
A Trumpster would call the meddling in elections by the united states fake news . If a Trumpster was aware of the meddling by the u s a ( not likely ) he would say it was good , righteous , imperative and directed by god .
1
All true, but you didn't even mention the planted articles of actual 'fake news' in foreign and domestic newspapers, especially in the Vietnam war.
1
The Russians are not authentic Communists these days and neither are the Chinese....perhaps Cuba is the last remaining outpost of true Communism...Russia and China are now hybrids of the worst aspects of Communism & Capitalism. Greed and big money rule...so much for the Proletariat and everyone working together. They are more like their feudal lords of the past. So if they have weakened our Democracy I suppose we have infected them w/ our decadent consumer materialism.....the only people winning here are the greed driven criminals on both sides who seem to be running the global economy into the ground.
3
Capitalism without democracy: the holy grail of global billionaires; coming to a country near you.
This underscores the need to address the "fake news" problem, especially on social media, more broadly rather than just focusing on the Russians. Anyone with the resources, including the President, Congress, departments of our federal government, state governments, the NFL, NCAA, FIFA, or a myriad of corporations can create narratives that are misleading or false and dress them up as reliable information that the news media reports as the truth, unless someone happens to uncover the falsehood.
2
See how the protest group, Yes Men, planted fake press releases in the media to shed light on this problem and corporate malfeasance.
Has the author of the article ever heard of Stalin or the violent repression of free speech in Hungary by the Soviet Army. Is the claim that Radio Free Europe is responsible for Vladimir Putin's poorly disguised dictatorship and or the dissidents he has undoubtedly ordered murdered.
There are certainly things to criticize the CIA for particularly in Latin America: Chile for example. And Patrice Lamumba in Africa.
But to write the article that out seems to be all about the mote in our eye and ignores the boulder in Stalin's is too much. The old Left strikes again.
1
The history here is interesting, but the subtext is disturbing. It sounds like you are creating an equivalence, and perhaps even a casual connection, between American Cold War propaganda and today's Russian-authored fake news. You imply if only we hadn't done that, we wouldn't have provoked Russia into retaliation. But Communism really was evil, more people died as a result of dictatorships off the Left than any other twentieth-century evil, and Russia does not limit its interference to its historical antagonists.
1
Part of the legacy of the Cold War being that our nation has to writhe over the role of government and taxation, as though taxes were club dues, and government owed more to "gold circle" members, or longstanding members. We can't sensibly debate the need for socialized health care because we've been so thoroughly indoctrinated to associate socialism with communism and to view communism as evil.
2
By the same measure, you could also accuse the CIA of playing politics in a manner similar to the FBI criticism in 2016. A CIA funded program designed to legitimize a foreign campaign had the effect of further demonizing communism to the American public. Republicans owned the hard line position on communism at the time. Hence, the Radio Free Europe campaigns were free advertising for the Republican party as well. As a matter of fact, I'd argue these sentiments significantly influenced US decisions and conduct regarding the Korean War. I can't believe the CIA was ignorant of the domestic political impact their actions carried. On some level, their choice was deliberate.
Brainwashing has been going on since the beginning of time. Not that I am that old but think about it. When I was a child we started reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in school each day. We also had periodic air raid drills at school where the kids hid under our desks and covered our heads with our hands, just to keep us in a steady state of fear. How about all of those television jingles we sang and still remember?
Psychologists know that beliefs can be tough to change, but are easily manipulated by repeating subtle messages,such as with hypnosis, or invoking the authority of a powerful/respected person, etc. How many people believe something because it is on the Internet? Or spoken by a famous actor like Morgan Freeman, as if he is somehow God?
A liberal arts education used to be prized. College students were taught critical thinking so that they were capable of embarking on an adult life, free to determine their own truth. Now college students go to specialty campuses to learn a trade (I.e. business or computer science). They don’t have to even take English or study the arts or the philosophers who shaped our thinking.
It is a frightening Brave New World we are entering. We are under attack and we don’t even know it.
152
When I went to college in the 1960's, we were expected to take a core Liberal Arts program in Freshman & Sophomore years before narrowing down to a major in our last two years. We graduated with a much wider understanding of our, and the world's, history, cultures, literature, philosophies, etc. Even English majors usually had several job offers when they graduated - well-rounded citizens, not just carefully carved cogs for the market machine. Starting during Nixon (when I was briefly teaching Comparative Religions at a major western university) I noticed a radical change. Students were no longer interested in broadening themselves, but were in a desperate attempt to prepare themselves to compete for future money-making careers. Instead of being seats of learning, producing well-rounded students capable of critical thinking, they were primarily becoming post-high-school technical training schools. You can still study Medieval Literature or Philosophy, but most college Freshmen are already on the narrow treadmill of preparation only for a career, being deprived of the larger context of the world they find themselves adrift in.
1
I have my own pledge of allegiance:
I pledge my allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of American,
And to the Republic, which it defines,
One Nation, indivisible,
With Liberty and Justice for ALL.
1
This kind of activity has been going on for a long time. Remember Citizen Genet? How about the CIA's radio campaign in Honduras back in the 1950s?
1
Radio Free Europe broadcast American propaganda across Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union for decades. It still exists, although the CIA's bloody fingerprints have been cleaned up and sanitized.
It still broadcasts US propaganda across Europe and into Asia in approximately 28 languages. And our media and politicians are on a campaign against the little watched nor listened to RT and Sputnik.
What an irony that the nation that yells the loudest about free speech is so afraid of it.
1
Really interesting piece. I never doubted that Radio Free Europe was a great thing as I lived through the 1960s -- getting the truth to the poor eastern Europeans. Wondered why it disappeared when I happened to think of it (seldom). Thinking back, the signs were there. We live in wiser times. America plays power games, too. We aren't necessarily the good guys.
2
If I am not mistaken, covert operations hurt the team that is on the covert side as much as the team that is target of the operation.
1
In the end, I think it was the access to actual news, music, different viewpoints - and music - which gave VOA it's pull and influence.
And only an educated population has the ability to sort through the barrage of advertising message we receive from all points.
3
and then came FOX NEWS!
2
Have American intelligence agencies tried to interfere in the political processes of other countries? They certainly did, in places like Iran and Chile, although this has lessened as their role became known and backlash was generated. It is useful to know about the CIA support for Radio Free Europe, but there were more direct counterparts to the recent Russian meddling through the internet. If the internet had existed before 1970 (say) the CIA would certainly have tried to use it for interference in other countries' elections.
5
Radio Free Europe, aka Radio Liberty hardly makes headlines nowadays. Last time it did was in 2014 when a top Azerbaijan investigative journalist, Khadija Ismayilova was given a seven-and-a-half year sentence for corruption, prompting international outrage. Her cause was taken up by rights lawyer Amal Clooney.
Although RFE is funded by the US, initially as a Cold War news service, that did the CIA bidding to combat communism, most Americans don't know that it still exists. Its activities are mostly known to an audience in the former republics of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The news services that broadcast across Russia had been largely taken off the air, due to its criticism of Putin's "roll-back of democracy."
Anne Applebaum defended RFE a decade ago, saying it wasn't an American propaganda radio, rather a "surrogate radio" that supplies local, national, and international news - in radio, Internet, and sometimes video form - in countries where other local news is weak or unavailable. Like in the old days, journalists still risk their lives doing their job.
RFE is broadcast in at least 21 countries and in 28 languages, providing often the only source of independent information - Persian for Iran, Arabic for Iraq, Dari and Pashto for Afghanistan, plus Turkmen, Azeri, Belarusian, Georgian, Chechen, Tajik, Albanian, Serbian, and Russian, among others. No doubt Trump's budget cut will take a toll on America's soft power machine abroad.
11
Independent information from whom?
2
Russian meddling in the 2016 US campaign is poetic justice, given all the meddling, suborning (Iran- one of many), overthrowing (Chile - one of many) or plain-out invasion (Mexico - one of many) we've done over the past 200+ years. On the other hand, it's a Hobbesian world, and if we aren't bullying everybody else, they'd all be bullying us. Despicable human race. We deserve each other.
14
What “we’ve done over the past 200 years.” Targets of Russian disruption today, including the nations of the former Soviet sphere and Nordic nations, don’t have the luxury of wallowing in resentment over past misdeeds of America. They have been under heavy cyber assault for years and are already committed to defending themselves. The lesson of past American excesses is not passivity or self-imposed isolation. Better to finally wake up to the threat and work in concert with allies to blunt it.
3
We were supposed to have moved beyond Hobbes.
Half way between bullying and being bullied, is true self defense. We do not have to project military power across the world to protect our shores against invasion. As the many countries that have fought off our military have painfully taught us, it is easier to defend then to attack, and defenders are far more motivated, and know the terrain.
China manages to protect its interests around the world without military force, so even that excuse is suspect.
Instead of taking ground, we need to stand our ground. That is the path of honor. And it would have the added bonus of foreign terrorists not wanting to exact revenge on our citizens.
For example, North Korea is on the other side of the world. They should be China's problem. The Kims are not crazy. They are Machiavellian. They don't want to get nuked by the US. They are trying to stay in power by uniting the country against a common foe, the US. We have been playing right in to their hands; Trump more so.
For less than 10% of what we pay now, we could defend our country, and help our closest allies (if necessary). Being the world's policemen is not doing anyone any good. It is too easy to use that as an excuse for doing the wrong thing, as we did in Iraq. The other 90% could pay for healthcare, education, and infrastructure.
Bullying is wrong. Being bullied is unnecessary. Lets stand our ground.
6
What about Cracker Hacking? The voter suppression that eliminates hundreds of thousands of citizen's votes, giving the election to Trump? Right out there in the open, and we know it to be COMPLETELY UNJUSTIFIED!
18
May I congratulate you Mr Osgood to your "post truth" article. As young person living in the communist country, me and almost everybody around listened to the Radio Free Europe that was ostensibly providing unbiased news about my country and of course Russia. Some of the finest journalists and literary personalities contributed and made know the greatest poets and writers of the time. Radio FE broke a complete darkness about what was happening in my country and in the world. It gave the voice to defectors from the communist secret police that eventually changed the course of the history.
"in fact the agency used it to wage a subversive campaign to weaken Communist governments" - right on, the truth about the nature of the system did it,
You may not like what CIA stands for but please find yourself a different stick, you are being disrespectful to the sufferings of the oppressed people of the Eastern Europe to whom Radio Free Europe brought a piece of normalcy in the environment totally dominated by the state propaganda.
This is light years from a cynical intentional lies and manipulation sponsored by today's Russia talking about Hilary Clinton's pedophile circles, Clinton's murders or E. Macron's homosexuality. Don't you really see a difference, or "shell I draw you a picture" as french say ?
In your article you missed out another incredible CIA corruption campaign, the Voice of America and the Willis Conover "Jazz Hour".
142
This comment highlights an enormous moral distinction between the "fake news" of Radio Free Europe and the "fake news" in recent Russian internet schemes. Whether RFE was "fake news" or not, it was clearly and openly representing itself as the US take on things. Those listening could choose to factor that fact in to what they heard. Whether RFE was a CIA front or a privately funded attempt to broadcast the US view didn't matter from that perspective--it was clearly known to be a US view. The fake news emanating from Russia and its allies over the past couple of years (which, I would guess, was a good deal more "fake" than most of what RFA broadcast) was unattributed and unsourced, with no immediate clues as to who was behind it. There was no way to know that it was "Facebook From Putin."
202
Many citizens in the old Soviet Union tuned in to Radio Free Europe and the BBC because they knew they weren't getting anything of value from state controlled media. Western broadcasts were a small lifeline of hope.
Was RFE pure propaganda or just a westernized view of news and the world? I don't know. The most devastating thing you could do to Soviet Russia was to report plain facts because it was an empire built on lies told to the citizens and to officials of the government by their own propaganda apparatus, lies that eventually caused the collapse of the empire because there were no known facts upon which to based decisions and planning.
1
Oh my God, This is so true. A lot of Europeans already get this and despise our school system for not teaching it. We have to catxh up with world knowledge and not he as bad as the Russian trolls
we are trying to demonize! And own CIA history.
Teuth and Reconciliation in a Lot of things would help but unlikely under anyone but Obama, i.e,
not likely under Trump. Maybe next gen will do!
5
"Catch up with world knowledge"? Don't be silly! We "exceptional" Americans can't learn nuthin' from them durn furriners...
Was the Cold War between Moscow and Washington? Or between
Moscow and the Vatican? Consider that the following CIA directors
were Catholic: William Colby, William Casey, John McCone, John
Brennan. Growing up in the Washington area, I absorbed other hints
that intelligence agencies were overweighted with Catholics, from
having a neighbor who worked for the CIA -- and flew the American
flag from a pole in his yard -- to a history of broadcasting I read.
In the chapter about post-WW II developments, I came upon a
passage that has provided food for thought. In the late 1940s,
as I recall it, the Vatican summoned broadcasting executives. There
could be no peace, they were told, as long as the athiestic
communists were in power in the Soviet Union.
At any rate, we should wonder, given the current asymmetry
between Russian economic strength and our own, whether this
imbalance wasn't always there. Then the notion that the two
superpowers waging cold war were equal in economic and military
strength may have been the most significant falsehood that was
perpetrated.
3
The Catholic church may have supplied the spooks and enforcers of the US, but I think it was more linked to a instruction starting early on to
1) see the world in terms of absolutes of right and wrong, and
2) be inclined to follow dogma, and
3) rarely challenge authority ( once you have bought into its moral superiority).
This was topped off by the Vatican's stance that the Soviet state(s) were not only atheistic, but a threat to the existence of organized religion.
At heart, I think that the quality that we still see - say in Mr COmey - is a highly moral way of looking at their mission. Which can be admirable (refusing to play games with Trump), but also rigid and blind at other times.
But overall it's fascinating . . .
1
This Opinion tells an important story, but I was surprised he did not acknowledge any valid criticisms of USSR society and the domination of eastern Europe.
14
When President Truman authorized the creation of the CIA Dulles machine it clearly worried him, because it could be a force for evil machinations. He was right.
The CIA has started every war we've been in since their formation, usually providing fake "intelligence" to justify our plunging in. The documentation that they were fully involved in the assassination of the Kennedys is becoming incontrovertible.
When ex-Director of the CIA Bush entered the presidency he took his organization to a new level of running the government with the very Mindset this article describes. The CIA has become the steel fist of that Mindset and its voice. It is sometimes referred to as our hidden shadow government, Deep State.
So the question arises: Why were the Clintons so set on reenacting the CIA's Cold War and Hate/Fear Russia? And why was the New York Times such a crucial and almost frenetic supporter of the CIA/Clinton position?
The CIA program obviously worked. Hillary remains completely baffled about why she lost. Could it be that in 2007 the CIA Promised her the presidency when they realized the Bush/Cheney program had been a greater disaster than their Bay Of Pigs and no Republican stood a chance - so they took over the Democrats where any canditate would beat any Republican?
Millions of voters knew the score and didn't vote for Hillary because they saw her Deep State connection and Trump was cool to the CIA. But he's being recovered- dumbness, Twitter, and all.
4
If there is a Deep State, it is run by the global billionaires, and their corporations. There are now Republicans and Democrats who occupy powerful positions in the federal government, while profiting off of the actions of the federal government.
The Revolving Door has been left as a monument to the wall between government and corporations that was ripped out long ago. Both sides of the isle have been privatizing government, while holding shares in the corporations that get the contracts.
Now a global billionaire has named numerous global billionaires to lead the government, all of whom stand to profit greatly from their positions, while they gut the very agencies that regulate their industries. The Deep State has risen to the surface, and we are probably witnessing a battle between various groups of global billionaires over the military might of the United States.
Meanwhile Global Corporate Mass Media, owned by the global billionaires is too busy being distracted by Trump tweets to tell us what his government is actually doing, because the whole point of Mass News is to be distracted from what is really important.
If Mass News was actually doing its job, by informing the people of the most important events, and having real arguments over how to interpret these events, there would not be such a huge market for alternative news sites, some of which are very careful, and some of which are really fake news.
CNN, MSNBC, FOX, the NY TImes, etc, are global corporations.
77
What you are describing here under the rubric "Deep State" is a perfect description of Fascism, a marriage of Corporate & Government power. In a quote often mis-attributed to Mussolini himself, Mussolini's top aide said that it was a mistake to call their movement "Fascism." He said that "Corporatism" would have been a more accurate term. It isn't about left vs right. It's about an authoritarian plutarchy of billionaires, corporate titans, & their government poodles ruling over the rest of a country for its own benefit. It's about top vs bottom.
5
Simplistic but it rings true.
1
Of course, this is absolutely correct. What else would you expect from CIA (or from the Russians, for that matter.)
1
The combination of naïveté, on the part of the decent, and hypocrisy, on the part of official Washington, makes for a caustic stew once the gobsmacked public get their hands on alternative news sources. And the purposeful failings of publications such as this one - be it silence regarding the 1963 coup d'etat, the crimes of LBJ, the spiking of stories detrimental to liberal interests, or the current jeremiad born of a loss of influence - have an exponential effect. So now, we believe nothing you, the government or industry tells us. That pill works? Must have side effects they are not telling us about. You can keep your doctor - we know this lie. Your data is safe - oh sure, we believe that. Now we can believe whatever we care to - to the detriment of journals such as this, where an endorsement is reason for rejection to half the country's voters. Who created these alternatives? Why you did. And like any Frankenstein, the nonplussed are the creators. How does it feel to go from number one to any one of a number of "news" sources?
3
As a second-grader when Radio Free Europe began and later a paperboy, I remember Radio Free Europe very well. I grew up feeling very sorry for those people trapped behind the Iron Curtain.
Coupled with occasional requests from our parish priest that we pray for Cardinal Mindszenty, convicted of treason in Budapest, and learning the duck-and-cover technique at our school desks to fend off incoming atom bombs, Radio Free Europe made it clear in the 1950s to me and to other kids that the Reds were evil incarnate.
As an old unabashed liberal, I still believe that about the aggressive men in the Kremlin.
The fact that the C.I.A. was behind Radio Free Europe did not surprise me. The problem was that the Dulles brothers believed their own propaganda and allowed the French to sell them and Ike a false bill of goods about the Russian menace in Vietnam.
Isn’t the most, perhaps only, important thing about information the question of whether or not it is true? The consumer has a responsibility to do his or her own digging and must never use only a single source for news.
12
Yes. It is not enough to believe your favorite news source.
Knowledge is best served by the scientific method: Ask a question. Make an hypothesis. Gather good and relevant data. Test your hypothesis against that data. Ask more questions.
Go to primary sources as much as possible. Question everything. Dig deeply.
Those that "don't have time" to find the truth are helping their enemies destroy our democracy by being easily duped.
As a sovereign human being (under the modern conception of the social contract), who lends your sovereignty to your representatives, you have rights and freedom, but those rights and freedom come from your responsibility to manage your representatives, not just blindly follow them, because they are on your side.
Don't trust, verify. Just because they say the right thing doesn't mean they are doing the right thing. Go talk to some Haitian immigrants about what the Clintons did in Haiti, who will disabuse you of the Clinton lies about "fighting poverty." Take a look at how Trump is blaming Puerto Rico, our colony full of American Citizens to see how he wants to make America Great.
Look at Dubbyas sacrifice of American Troops for global oil corporations, with the full support of both Clinton and Gore (read his 2002 on the necessity of invading Iraq) to see how the establishment "center" betrays you.
True believers on both sides of the isle (and believing their can only be two sides is the first problem) are letting criminals steal our country.
2
That's what Reagan said was an old Russian proverb.
Even now, in our time, the CIA is shaping public opinion in countries of Europe and Eastern Europe and even within Russia. In relation to the government of Russia mainly. With the help of CIA financed media outlets against the government. And it's been done for a long time. Therefore, it is not surprising that Russia applies the same methods in relation to the United States.
Did you think that only the USA this is allowed?
6
No it is not surprising at all.
The only thing that is surprising is that many Americans welcome this meddling from a hostile intelligence agency.
That is self destructive, and treasonous.
And there is a mountain of circumstantial evidence that Trump is one of those treasonous Americans.
2
Is there a friendly intelligence agency? Is there a non-treasonous American? All intelligence agencies stick together. They have more in common with each other than any of the expendables in their countries. Are the New York Yankees from New York? Are they Yankees?
As a young child in Communist Romania I saw my parents listen to Radio Free Europe sotto voce. I was not allowed to be close enough to hear the programs. Even so, I once told my teacher that my father could not help me with a project the night before because he was busy listening to a whispering radio program. Fortunately, the teacher told this to my father and not to the Party headquarters.
My point is, that Radio Free Europe was an identified entity, necessary to those who wanted to hear views other than the Party line, which was the only official voice heard in the Communist sphere. Comparing that with the vicious, pernicious lies and distortions propagated by Russia during our elections is, well, incomparable.
104
Mr Osgood misses the most important point, the Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and Voice of America were not operating under false pretense, it was clear all listeners that these were stations operated by US government (and State Department rather the CIA), Soviet block government propaganda repeat that all the time.
There were also some alternatives, BBC International, Radio France International etc.
Difficult to see anything illegitimate in a state sponsored broadcast in a foreign language targeted at a specific audience.
This is what Russia does today with Russia Today or Sputnik.
BUT today's Russia sponsored toxic news campaign was/is a covert, "false flag" operation, false stories are pumped out of impersonated social media accounts, pretending to be regular Americans or inserted by dubious corrupt, often extreme right news agencies.
There were several dubious actions by CIA/State Department in Western Europe during the Cold War, intended to counter very similar dubious actions by the Soviets, but it's a different story that requires some background knowledge and does lets itself easily to be used in a opportunistic propaganda tit-for-tat.
70
Was the CIA responsible for creating the arms race during the cold war, based on exaggerated and false claims of Russian nuclear weapons? The money wasted on those weapons if spend on developing our country's infrastructure, education, healthcare, etc. would have made a huge difference in our countries and the world.
5
If you follow these things closely, you find it is usually the political appointees at the top end of the agency that are lying the most, and twisting intelligence.
The idea that the Deep State is the bottom ranks of government is just more anti-government propaganda from the right.
The career bureaucrats we have been taught to despise by Global Corporate Mass Media, are our institutional memory; the people that keep the institutions created by the constitution and the laws enacted by our representatives functioning.
It is the rich and powerful who get appointed to head institutions that twist their missions into doing the wrong thing.
If you think that the government is the enemy, then you are against the constitution. If you vote for people that promise to dismantle the government, you are a traitor.
According to the United States Constitution, democracy is the republic is the government. Your representatives are supposed to work for you.
If you want to change the system, then protest and lobby outside of the system, or vote to change amendments and laws within the system, to make it better.
Hiring bomb throwing anti-government activists to shut the government down from the inside, defunding and destaffing the institutions created by our ancestors is undermining your own power. It is anti-constitutional and therefore treason.
It might have been a bit germane to the topic were the author to point out that when the Radio Free Europe began the Soviets were practicing often brutal suppression of individual liberty in their part of Eastern Europe and that Stalin had by then consigned millions of his own citizens to the infamous Gulags. I'm pretty sure countless men and women suffering under communist rule more than welcomed the " propaganda" directed at them from the West.
18
curious that our own powers and influences (congress and media) have been unmindful or deliberately mum about this, a successful propaganda operation that actually did contribute significantly to the take down of its target, the soviet union.
the "payback" is in progress, the dramatization of soviet "repression and stoking fears of a worldwide menace" is now coming our way, democracy's guarantees and protections, the first amendment, academic freedom of inquiry, unity despite differences, etc., are under attack...DISunity BECAUSE of our differences is the top priority, its progress made easier by the denaturing of free speech and the nullification of safe spaces for free inquiry and exchanges, our universities (not to mention the drift away from rigor in studies), the decline of debate in favor of shouted slogans and thrown bricks, erosion of trust in our electoral process, etc.
none of it is accidental, subversion done well seems organic and internal, but its puppets, so many of from "elites," intellectuals who fancy themselves too smart to be fooled, politicals whose proclivities toward personal privilege make them easy marks, the necessary free press, now a for-profit infotainment industry, seem like the proverbial frogs in the stock pot, enjoying the warm water, oblivious to its rising temperature.
imagine, like the tag on politcal ads, (i'm candidate x and i approved this message), the same, not only on facebook but on each brick thrown, "from russia with love."
Most of the bricks are not thrown by Russia. They are thrown by Americans, and by global corporations who finance white supremacists and other proponents of political division and violence. The Bush administration lied to us about Iraq.
Russia is one player. Not the entire problem.
1
true, only one of many now, but the true begetters since the soviet goal of destroying democracy was framed (before the blood of the revolution dried) and pursued by active agents and funding of things like literal and figurative brick throwing...of course its americans tossing bricks and "protecting" students from free exchange, that's how subversion works, would you expect russians in FSB or SVR sweats?
and of course we are not without own own guilt for our troubles, the lies of viet name and bush 2's iraq have eroded our trust in government.
To draw a parallel between the overtly broadcasted propaganda of Radio Free Europe and Russia's surreptitious incursion into the 2016 US election process is completely fallacious. Using public airwaves to influence or counter-influence the Soviet/Russian regime was and is a completely different avenue for influencing public opinion.
However, using technology like Facebook, Google, and even Pokemon Go to identify and influence individual voters in our 2016 election goes far beyond the kind of "meddling" that the use of public airwaves may involve, regardless of the source of its funding.
The basic premise of this article does not acknowledge the critical differences in the effectiveness of this type of 21st Century "meddling," and it completely ignores the damage that Russia now finances and will continue to perpetrate not only here, but across Western democracies as well.
26
That is not the point of the article. The point of the article is that the CIA was aiming propaganda at the American People to cover up for its financing of Radio Free Europe.
This is illegal by the way. There are specific laws against the CIA aiming propaganda at American Citizens.
2
Four legs good. Two legs bad.
We don't have to go back decades to see if our hands are clean. When Russia invaded and took over Crimea Obama imposed sanctions and got other countries to join in. His stated goal was to have the impact on the Russian people so they would turn against Putin in the next election. It didn't work. Putin is still there. Is their any question that Obama tried to influence the people of Israel to not reelect Netanyahu. It didn't work. The new sanctions Congress imposed haven't turned the people against Putin either. The same power ladder is now as it was when Iran took over our Embassy. We recently were exposed listening in on the preside of France. We are just not that good in manipulating other countries' elections.
4
No we are not. And we shouldn't.
And just because we are meddling in other country's elections doesn't mean we should welcome meddling in ours.
This unveils what many already knew; that 'democracy' is a cover.
The political challenge for us now is find and implement a system that honors the will of the people, in spite of the will of the powerful.
And even if we decide it's desirable, it won't be easy if it's even doable..
16
I suspected that this op-ed would offer no material tidbits that I didn’t already know, and in that I was accurate. However, what’s disturbing about it is its subtext of equivalency between the U.S. and Russia. There is no such equivalency, and while Russian efforts to affect global reality are understandable from their perspective, that perspective is an historical dead end while ours is not.
The reason people were willing to contribute to funding Radio Free Europe, regardless of the materiality of those contributions and the clandestine nature of the CIA’s machinations, was that they understood that we were engaged in an existential war with an implacable foe, and that the outcome of that war could determine the direction of social and political evolution for at least a century and possibly far longer. In the end, they were right and the younger, KGB version of Vladimir Putin was wrong. We won that war, and the meaningful debates on social and political evolution in the world today pivot on justifications for why opposed systems DON’T embrace Western values of diversity, meaningful democracy and openness.
Russia today is a sad shadow of the Soviet Union. It doesn’t even present the existential threat that its far more dangerous forbear presented. Our support of Radio Free Europe had an historical purpose and outcome. Putin’s intrusions in our election were merely those of a petulant child with no such historical purpose.
There is no equivalency whatsoever.
37
Why is there no equivalence?
Why is your American view only historically correct?
And the view of other countries on their own evolution - no? Why? This is again your American exeptionalism and exclusivity. Do You think that only you are right and you can dictate the whole world conditions How to live.
But you are mistaken. With all the power of the United States, the policy of suppressing other countries around the world is wrong. Only the USA does so and in this you stand apart from all over the world. No other country (and Russia, too) does not so ...
4
Speaking of petulant children, they rule our sad country, and are destroying it from the inside out. No other countries are real "threats" to us, they are threats to the oligarchical empire. See the front page of today's Times about the steelworker whose job was sent to Mexico. Russia didn't do that. Wall Street did. China is using it's economic might to spread influence, but at least it doesn't have a thousand military baes around the world. There wasn't been a meaningful war since WWII, but Obama took Bush's two wars and turned them into what, seven, eight? Who can keep track anymore.
And the Russia, Russia red herring is a concerted effort by Democrats to not lose their donors, like Weinstein, who surely must be very angry they invested so much influence peddling into the presidential contest loser. Of course, the Dems are reforming, by running Pelosi and Feinstein again. The CIA is an often criminal organization that has committed crimes with impunity around the world since its founding. The US needs a long look in the mirror.
3
Vasily:
It's encouraging to see a NY Times reader from Estonia.
I understand that the historical perspective of an Estonian might be different from mine; but, then, I'm not commenting in Pravda, or even in your own Postimees, but in the preeminent newspaper of my own country. If I thought my audience would extend to Russia, or to Estonia, I would have presented the same arguments more tactfully.
If the United States indeed suppressed countries all over the world, I hardly think the Crimea would have been Russian again, Syria would long ago have been a resolved issue with the countless slaughtered still living, and North Korea, a manifestly failed society, would not be threatening the entire region with nuclear catastrophe for the sole purpose of propping up a dictator's power among a starving people -- among many other outcomes certainly beneficial to the world generally but not part of our shared reality. And a truly ancient Estonia never would have been illegally annexed by Stalin's U.S.S.R. in 1939, its culture and people enslaved until 1991 at the fall of the Soviet Union.
My American point of view is historically correct because, in the end, it is the one that survived.
1
So we are OK losing wars now, because we used to win them ?
I don't even understand this argument, but Republicans seem to love it.
2
It's healthy to get over the indignation about meddling which is normal for empires, but it's also healthy to recall that the US was/is a better empire than the USSR/Russia.
24
Disinformation has always been an integral tool of any self-respecting intelligence gathering organisation. So the current "shocking" revelations that Russia hacked the US elections are somewhat disingenuous and serve another agenda so I tend to view the current frenzy as nothing more than 1950's redux.
9
Hello, the shocking part, is that Trump and almost everyone in his campaign and cabinet had relations with the Russians, and lied about it. Trump pretty much admitted he was a Russian agent when he fired the head of the FBI, to stop the Russia investigation, which he bragged about on TV.
Now our very own Yeltsin is giving away our country, and the response of American citizens is not supposed to be "so what?"
The point is not that intelligence agencies meddle in other countries, but that our president may be a traitor.
1
The influence of Radio Free Europe in shaping Putin's thoughts on propaganda is problematic. Add another example to the list of intelligence operations with troubling unintended consequences. That definitely sounds plausible to me, but I would argue Radio Free Europe at the time was more analogous to a station like RT than to the guccifer 2.0 campaign.
Was it not reporting that was frequently (not always) based in fact with slanted, but often true, coverage mixed in with those anachronistic stereotype-based campaigns that dominated the era?
I can see the line of causality that you refer to, but I don't necessary agree with the idea that the two campaigns are anything more than superficially comparable. The Russian influence operation is much more targeted, effective and cynical than anything that's come before it.
8
The article was about CIA propaganda aimed at US Citizens, not Russia.
1
Radio Free Europe when i was a boy i thought it was neat that we were broadcasting there. i bought what the Grownups were peddling. how was i to know any different?
as life commences and we as Americans got and continue to gather intelligence we can connect the dots ourselves. for the older ones of us we remember learning the LIES and how the Youth of America exploded with acrimony between factions being the norm here in America.
The author has concluded with a very apt line. Payback indeed.
5
You were not deceived. The "grown-ups" were peddling a good idea. It was the containment of the spread of a form of government which held all of both police and economic power and was led by the converted not by the people. It tragically hijacked anti-colonialist movements of national liberation (Colonialism was an early manifestation of globalism.) The "Youth of America", now academia, focussed only on the failings of that effort and has left us with implied moral equivalence between us and them. The Youth of America were on the right team, and, in their hearts they know that.
In America the police and the economic power is always in the hands of the people because it is the people who have all the money, all one percent of it.
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Unfortunately, in the panicked mission to keep economic power from being centralized in the hands of government, we have centralized power in the hands of the global billionaires who control half of the world's wealth (literally), and use it to buy our politicians and the controlling shares of the global news stations who tell us which candidates are "viable," and which policies are "serious."
The entire world economy has been centralized in the hands of a few thousand people.
This is not conspiracy theory. It is easy to research and find the data to back this up from the very global institutions they control.
It will take you a few hours at most, if you want to know.
They brag about these things in the open, because they need to feed their egos, and because they know most people are too lazy to stop watching TV, and do the research or do anything about it.
If you want to decentralize economic power, you will need to wrest control of your government from them and use it to tax that power back.
I believe that I understand the point that the author is making, but I see major differences between Russian interference in our national elections and propaganda put out by our own government to aid and abet the government intention to fight off communism. After all, I was around when Nikita Khrushchev stood at the United Nations, took off his shoe, beat it on the table, and screamed "We will bury you!" Also, to try and say that those "bad old days" are over, and it is time to move on are misguided at best. If you think that Vladimir Putin is any less dangerous to American and Western security, and has no designs on a return to a nation resembling the former Soviet Union then I think you are missing the forest for the trees.
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CIA (you don't say "the CIA" just like you don't say "the God") is legally prohibited from aiming propaganda at US citizens. Our representatives are not supposed to lie to us, their bosses.
But no CIA meddling in our democracy does not excuse Russian meddling in our democracy.
My Russian teacher long ago, along with the History Channel, agree that Khrushchev was mistranslated, presumably to increase the shock value. He was not beating his shoe on the table as he made the statement, which according to his son (after becoming a U.S. citizen) was a statement that he expected his system to outlast ours. Back to my Russian teacher, she said it could as well or more fairly been translated as, "We will leave you in the dust."
I realize this is news, but is it news?
At least for Radio Free Europe, there would have been the effort to really persuade by reason and facts. Our elections, on the other hand, were decided by dissing with expensive (but ultimately cheap) sound bytes. There's no point blaming Facebook and Twiter, we installed that cheesy system of tawdry elections by our very own foolish hands.
6
As a country I would rather be hacked and be a victim of "fake news" than be a victim of an assassination , a coup or an invasion which seems to be the preferred ways of consistent US governments to influence foreign affairs.
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If all of this is true,accurate, which needs to be asked and noted during these conflicted times in which fact, fiction and fantasy are "goulashed." Daily.And leaders are proud liars. Who can and do get away with their words and deeds. Undoings.A number of critical issues need to be considered.Where do we formally begin to transmit the necessary tools to youngsters to begin to ask "What do I need to know, and to understand" in order for them-our next generation -to be effective change agents and leaders?In neighborhoods. Communities.For equitable well being for ALL.In formal and informal systems. And to functionally integrate,daily,the difference between knowing and understanding.Saying, promising and doing until IT's done.To enabling and sustaining a culture, and life style,which includes personal responsibility.The CIA didn't do. Actual enabled people,at various levels,did!As contemporary torturers have.Perhaps continue to do.Who paid a personal price?How can an active WE, different from our violating WE-THEY culture,enable a society of mutual respect, made aware of what was done THEN? Perhaps now?How can any of US trust amidst "normed" distrust.Be civil?Mutually help,when and as needed. Kin.Friends.Strangers.Living the norm of equitable sharing of limited human and nonhuman resources; so basic to menschlich daily BEING.To build bridges to daily caring.As today's enabled-mantra-making-fears are again echos of what was THEN.History doesn't teach!People can.Or choose not to.
I don't see a campaign by a Democracy like America to destabilize a Communist country wherein millions disappeared or were sent to forced labor camps and recent Russian activity to disrupt democratic elections in the nation as equivalent at all.
Propaganda and the distortion of "truth" has existed for thousands of years, but communism was really not the government of choice when examining history.
The CIA does run amuck from time to time, but you can be certain that their efforts to protect America are genuine. And their successes are never brought to light in the public forum.
Trump is probably in bed with Putin somehow, perhaps financially and his campaign team did have unusual contacts with Russians before and during the election, but he hasn't made anyone disappear yet. The man is unfit to serve so I voted for Hillary, but in spite of his admiration for Putin he is NOT former KGB and doesn't kill his opposition. Yet. We'll have to keep an eye on that.
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Yet, is the word. Stay tuned.
1
Did anyone read the actual article? It was about CIA propaganda aimed at US citizens!
1
Have you read about the overthrow the democratic elected Chilean government in the 1970 lead by the US government which resulted in putting in a place a ruthless dictator named Pinchot who disappeared hundred of people if not thousands who did not agree with him. Same thing in Iran in 50's and................................................
1
What is the point of this article: that the US' "Radio Free Europe" was an attempt to undermine free elections in the Eastern Block? I thought historically it declared itself a news service from the West with a different orientation. I didn't learn it hid its identity. That is was a form of propaganda, I have no doubt, but I fail to see the connection with espionage, fake Facebook accounts posing as African American support sites, etc. Professor Osgood's point is that Putin's Orwellian world view is directly our fault? I suspect I am left of the professor's politics, but I like good and cogent writing and his article seems quite empty, a sort of "I'm off the hook because I admit everything is our fault" position. Get some focus.
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No the point of the article is that CIA was aiming propaganda at American citizens, which is illegal, by the way. He is an historian teaching you a little history. Read it again.
This article answers some very important questions:
1. Why isn't Bernie Sanders president today? Because to many Americans of the post war "boomer" generation, socialism is a mild form of communism, and supporting it is somewhat akin to dining on infants or selling one's soul to satan.
2. Why do so many Americans support outdated policies in spite of overwhelming evidence of their failure, such as abstinence only sex ed; war on drugs; easy access to guns; for-profit health care, prisons & schools, etc.? Because the emphasis of the propaganda campaign in the US was the war between free market capitalism and collectivism: freedom to do whatever we chose was akin to godliness and moral purity, while any government restrictions were morally suspect if not evidence of Satanic worship.
3. Why would any American support the vile, overtly immoral, mentally unstable, self-centered, childish charlatan we now have in the oval office? Because he's overtly anticommunist, and since we're programmed to believe that is the summit of moral purity, it is enough to cover a multitude of lesser sins.
I recall a Paul Harvey story wherein he explained why Soviet computers often malfunctioned: because they were programmed with lies, and computers operate on facts & logic.
That appears to be exactly the problem with our democracy.
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your simplistic premise doesn't support your elaborate conclusions....
similar, simplistic thinking is among the reasons we're here... and is among the reasons Bernie lost.... and is a loser....
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Excellent comment; well said!
@TM: I disagree with your assertion about how 'anticommunism' is why we're stuck with Donald Trump, because he made supportive statements about Russia and Vladimir Putin during the election. Are you contrasting Trump's modus operandi with Soviet lies? Trump lies all the time. His attacks on the 'fake media' are propaganda tools out of the Stalinist/Putin playbook. Look at how he has since erased his tweets in support of establishment candidate Strange after he lost to Moore in Alabama -- very reminiscent of Stalin airbrushing enemies out of photos.
It was not an anticommunism platform that gave Trump support, it was his harnessing the nativist and racist aggrievement of a lot of anxious and resentful white people who were eager to find scapegoats for their economic stagnation: minorities, immigrants, "political correctness." Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" pitch didn't include a "Fight The Commies" slogan, no, it was "Lock Her Up."
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If the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians this does not excuse them. Still, it is always useful to beware of self-righteous hypocrisy. The hypocritical messenger's words will fall on deaf ears.
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This article is not abut Russian propaganda, it is a about CIA propaganda aimed at the American People, which is illegal.
Read it again.
I am a dutiful American citizen. I vote and have believed in our free democratic system. I fell for the Radio Free Europe propaganda and all the evil communists talk. Now I don't believe my government any more. I don't believe most of mainstream news any more. I don't believe the New York Times. We have been little different from communist Russia with our news filled with government propaganda for one war or another we were instructed and propogandized to fight, from the Spanish American war to 9/11. Now we are in an endless geo political war in the Middle East. Our civil rights are decimated with the Patriot Act. We are frogs in a pot destined to boil and most have no clue what is happening.
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Gratifying, frankly, to read of another awoken to the fact of the created reality we are victims of.
2
Carolyn, there is government propaganda and there is reliable fact-based jouirnalism. As an informed educated citizen it is our responsibility to know the differences.
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You are quite right. During the last election campaign they NYT and most other newspapers in the US kept writing stories about Trump, Sanders, and others basically saying that they were worthless excuses for candidates, their programs were uncosted and wouldn't work anyway, they were dangerous to minorities and women, and Hillary was going to win, so it would be a waste of time to consider anyone else.
It wasn't government propaganda, but it wasn't exactly fact-based journalism either, was it? I read several newspapers daily, as I learnt 50 years ago, at Oxford, that each newspaper is selective in the stories it prints and that their actual content reflects their editorial, or owners', position. You cannot know the truth without paying attention to all the men behind what you read, see, or hear.
This is even worse with TV now, since the Fairness Doctrine went away, and online media have no obligations to 'fact' or 'truth' either.
In this environment it is difficult to be an informed person rather than a manipulated one.
6
Long past time that "spheres of influence" is delegated to history as an obsolete concept.
4
Global billionaires feel themselves and their global corporations above mere nations now, and try to use our countries as tools for their benefit.
I wonder if they have "spheres of influence?" and whether, as billionaires are now our president and cabinet if their battles for spheres of influence are now spilling out in to the open.