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The John Bolton nomination battle is one of those rare moments when a window has opened onto how the U.S. public was rushed into war with Iraq and, in a larger sense, how conservatives seized control over the flow of information that shapes policy.
Bolton may be – as former State Department intelligence chief Carl Ford Jr. said – “a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down kind of guy” who bullies those below him who come up with inconvenient facts. But Bolton’s abusive tendencies are not just a personality flaw; they are part of a broader political strategy.
Since his early days as a protégé of Sen. Jesse Helms, Bolton was part of a new aggressive breed of conservatives, who came of age during the Vietnam War and who thus understand the importance of keeping a lid on public dissent.
In practical terms, that means influencing or controlling what the public perceives as reality, often exaggerating threats to stampede the people in a desired direction. That need to manage information, in turn, requires discrediting individuals who can effectively challenge the factual constraints….
This concept of directing the national debate by controlling the switching points of information – particularly in the intelligence community and the news media – gained powerful momentum during Ronald Reagan’s presidency…
A key figure in those media operations of the 1980s was Cuban exile Otto Reich, who ran the State Department’s public diplomacy office on Central America. In one memo, Reich said his office “has played a key role in setting out the parameters and defining the terms of the public discussion on Central America policy.”
In another memo, Reich said he was taking “a very aggressive posture vis-à-vis a sometimes hostile press” and his office “did not give the critics of the policy any quarter in the debate.” The attacks on reporters included spreading rumors about their sex lives. [For details on this hardball media strategy, see Parry’s Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & Project Truth.]…
Reich has now reemerged as a figure in Bolton’s alleged bullying of subordinates over an intelligence assessment in 2002.
Bolton, as an undersecretary of state, and Reich, as assistant secretary of state for Latin America, teamed up to pressure WMD intelligence analysts to sharpen – or some might say, hype – accusations that Cuba was developing biological weapons. In the post-Sept. 11 climate, this alarmist intelligence was a sure bet to raise Fidel Castro’s Cuba as a more urgent priority for regime change.
But intelligence analysts objected to what they saw as Bolton’s exaggeration of the evidence, forcing Bolton to tone down his warnings. Furious at the interference, Bolton sought to have one CIA analyst, Fulton T. Armstrong, reassigned, according to Bolton’s Senate testimony. Bolton was joined in that effort by Otto Reich…
As Salon.com columnist Sidney Blumenthal noted, the Bolton hearings have finally given the American people “a glimpse of how the Bush administration’s political leadership has been systematically browbeating and threatening the intelligence community to drive ideological conclusions.” [Salon.com, April 14, 2005]…
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
Bolton may be – as former State Department intelligence chief Carl Ford Jr. said – “a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down kind of guy” who bullies those below him who come up with inconvenient facts. But Bolton’s abusive tendencies are not just a personality flaw; they are part of a broader political strategy.
Since his early days as a protégé of Sen. Jesse Helms, Bolton was part of a new aggressive breed of conservatives, who came of age during the Vietnam War and who thus understand the importance of keeping a lid on public dissent.
In practical terms, that means influencing or controlling what the public perceives as reality, often exaggerating threats to stampede the people in a desired direction. That need to manage information, in turn, requires discrediting individuals who can effectively challenge the factual constraints….
This concept of directing the national debate by controlling the switching points of information – particularly in the intelligence community and the news media – gained powerful momentum during Ronald Reagan’s presidency…
A key figure in those media operations of the 1980s was Cuban exile Otto Reich, who ran the State Department’s public diplomacy office on Central America. In one memo, Reich said his office “has played a key role in setting out the parameters and defining the terms of the public discussion on Central America policy.”
In another memo, Reich said he was taking “a very aggressive posture vis-à-vis a sometimes hostile press” and his office “did not give the critics of the policy any quarter in the debate.” The attacks on reporters included spreading rumors about their sex lives. [For details on this hardball media strategy, see Parry’s Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & Project Truth.]…
Reich has now reemerged as a figure in Bolton’s alleged bullying of subordinates over an intelligence assessment in 2002.
Bolton, as an undersecretary of state, and Reich, as assistant secretary of state for Latin America, teamed up to pressure WMD intelligence analysts to sharpen – or some might say, hype – accusations that Cuba was developing biological weapons. In the post-Sept. 11 climate, this alarmist intelligence was a sure bet to raise Fidel Castro’s Cuba as a more urgent priority for regime change.
But intelligence analysts objected to what they saw as Bolton’s exaggeration of the evidence, forcing Bolton to tone down his warnings. Furious at the interference, Bolton sought to have one CIA analyst, Fulton T. Armstrong, reassigned, according to Bolton’s Senate testimony. Bolton was joined in that effort by Otto Reich…
As Salon.com columnist Sidney Blumenthal noted, the Bolton hearings have finally given the American people “a glimpse of how the Bush administration’s political leadership has been systematically browbeating and threatening the intelligence community to drive ideological conclusions.” [Salon.com, April 14, 2005]…
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com