To: Victor Lazlo who wrote (447162 ) 8/24/2003 10:03:50 PM From: Raymond Duray Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 769667 Speaking of vast right wing conspiracies.... We might want to call them what they really are, since they are largely out in the open. They are vast right wing cabals and organizations, some governmental, mostly corporate and some religious based. *************** Here's a good article on the nature of government subversion of the media: cpj.org Subverting Journalism: Reporters and the CIA by Kate Houghton Extract The committee's final report strongly condemned this practice and unequivocally called on the intelligence community to "permit American journalists and news organizations to pursue their work without jeopardizing their credibility in the eyes of the world through covert use of them." In fact, during the subsequent two decades, the CIA merely curtailed the practice. The issue was spotlighted anew in the spring of 1996 by the release of a Council on Foreign Relations task force report on U.S. intelligence-gathering policies and practices-which in turn inadvertently prompted the passage of the first U.S. law explicitly permitting the practice. Ironically, many of the members of Congress who supported the new statute thought they were effectively prohibiting the covert use of journalists by the CIA. The episode could be written off as yet another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences-were the consequences not so potentially calamitous. The perception that American journalists are agents of the U.S. government compromises their professional integrity, impedes their ability to function in many parts of the world, and often puts their lives in jeopardy. Yet the CIA's endorsement of the new law, coupled with the agency's admission that it reserves the right to use this practice as an avenue for clandestine information-gathering, can only magnify these suspicions.