Story 1: Rupert Murdoch and Michael Wolff Push President Trump’s Buttons and Trump Reacts As Predicted By Attacking Steven Bannon — White House of Con Games or Junk Journalism or Progressive Propaganda or Tabloid Trash? — Updated — Wolff Taped His Conversations With White House Employees — Trump Tries To Stop Publication of Book with Cease and Desist Letter Making Fire and Fury An Instant Best Seller! — Available Friday at 9 A.M. — Videos — Updated January 4 and 5, 2018
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Michael Wolff, The Man Who Owns The News: Inside the Secret World Of Rupert Murdoch author, discusses his interview with Trump’s campaign CEO, Steve Bannon. Wolff also discusses the problem of fake news. » Subscribe to CNBC: http://cnb.cx/SubscribeCNBC About CNBC: From ‘Wall Street’ to ‘Main Street’ to award winning original documentaries and Reality TV series, CNBC has you covered. Experience special sneak peeks of your favorite shows, exclusive video and more.
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The author of the explosive new Trump book says he can’t be sure if parts of it are true
Kieran Corcoran
Michael Wolff, the author of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
“Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” has set the political world ablaze.
It contains vivid, detailed, and embarrassing accounts of President Donald Trump and those around him.
But the book’s author, Michael Wolff, says he can’t be sure that all of it is true.
The author of the explosive new book about Donald Trump’s presidency acknowledged in an author’s note that he wasn’t certain all of its content was true.
Michael Wolff, the author of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” included a note at the start that casts significant doubt on the reliability of the specifics contained in the rest of its pages.
Several of his sources, he says, were definitely lying to him, while some offered accounts that flatly contradicted those of others.
But some were nonetheless included in the vivid account of the West Wing’s workings, in a process Wolff describes as “allowing the reader to judge” whether the sources’ claims are true.
Donald Trump, seen at a meeting in the White House the day after elements of Wolff’s book began to be reported.AP
In other cases, the media columnist said, he did use his journalistic judgment and research to arrive at what he describes “a version of events I believe to be true.”
Here is the relevant part of the note, from the 10th page of the book’s prologue:
“Many of the accounts of what has happened in the Trump White House are in conflict with one another; many, in Trumpian fashion, are baldly untrue. These conflicts, and that looseness with the truth, if not with reality itself, are an elemental thread of the book.
“Sometimes I have let the players offer their versions, in turn allowing the reader to judge them. In other instances I have, through a consistency in the accounts and through sources I have come to trust, settled on a version of events I believe to be true.”
The book itself, reviewed by Business Insider from a copy acquired prior to its Friday publication, is not always clear about what level of confidence the author has in any particular assertion.
Lengthy, private conversations are reported verbatim, as are difficult-to-ascertain details like what somebody was thinking or how the person felt.
Wolff attributes his book to “more than two hundred interviews” with people including Trump and “most members of his senior staff.” According to the news website Axios, Wolff has dozens of hours of tapes to back up what he said.
Claims contained in the book have been widely reported by the media in the US and further afield.
They include assertions that Trump never wanted to be president, that all of his senior staff considered him an idiot, that he tried to lock the Secret Service out of his room, and that he ate at McDonald’s to avoid being poisoned.
Business Insider rounded up some more of the most eye-catching claims in this article.
Trump, who sought to block publication of the book but was too late, tweeted Thursday that it was “full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist.”
I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist. Look at this guy’s past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!
The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, described the book as “complete fantasy.”
Asked to rebut specific points, she said: “I’m not going to waste my time or the country’s time going page by page and talking about a book that is complete fantasy and just full of tabloid gossip.”
Other people mentioned in the book have also disputed claims made about them.
Host Savannah Guthrie asked him: “You stand by everything in the book? Nothing made up?”
He responded: “Absolutely everything in the book.”
Shortly after, he expanded, saying: “I am certainly and absolutely, in every way, comfortable with everything I’ve reported in this book.”
This isn’t necessarily at odds with what he said in the author’s note, as it allows for the possibility that he was told something untrue and repeated it without realising, or reached a wrong conclusion when presenting a version of contested events.
Trump legal team blasts explosive Michael Wolff book in cease-and-desist letter
By JOHN SANTUCCI
Jan 4, 2018, 9:47 AM ET
President Donald Trump’s lawyer, Charles Harder, has demanded on behalf of his client that author Michael Wolff and his publisher immediately “cease and desist from any further publication, release or dissemination” of a forthcoming book, “Fire and Fury, according to a letter obtained by ABC News.
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The lengthy letter to Wolff and Henry Holt and Co. Inc. goes on to accuse the author of actual malice.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images, FILE
Senior Advisor Jared Kusher, White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and President Donald Trump arrive at the start of a meeting, in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in this file photo, Feb. 2, 2017, in Washington.more +
It states, “Actual malice (reckless disregard for the truth) can be proven by the fact that the Book admits in the Introduction that it contains untrue statements. Moreover, the Book appears to cite to no sources for many of its most damaging statements about Mr. Trump. Also, many of your so-called ‘sources’ have stated publicly that they never spoke to Mr. Wolff and/or never made the statements that are being attributed to them. Other alleged ‘sources’ of statements about Mr. Trump are believed to have no personal knowledge of the facts upon which they are making statements or are known to be unreliable and/or strongly biased against Mr. Trump.”
Harder sent a similar letter to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon Wednesday night demanding he cease and desist from making allegedly false statements against the president and his family.
Bannon has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment.
Henry Holt and Company the publisher of “Fire and Fury” told ABC News on Thursday, “We can confirm we received the Cease and Desist letter.”
Earlier Wednesday, Trump hit back at Bannon in scathing comments, saying that when Bannon was fired “he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
President Donald Trump delivers remarks on America’s military involvement in Afghanistan at the Fort Myer military base, Aug. 21, 2017, in Arlington, Virginia.more +
President Trump’s comments, which came in the form of a written statement from the White House, were in response to Bannon’s strident criticism of Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushnerand Paul Manafort for sitting down with a group of Russians who promised damaging information against Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election in excerpts from Wolff’s new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House”.
“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party,” the president said in a statement. “Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans. Steve doesn’t represent my base — he’s only in it for himself.”
Scoop: Wolff taped interviews with Bannon, top officials
Mike Allen
Michael Wolff interviews Kellyanne Conway at the Newseum in April. (AP’s Carolyn Kaster)
Michael Wolff has tapes to back up quotes in his incendiary book — dozens of hours of them.
Among the sources he taped, I’m told, are Steve Bannon and former White House deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh.
So that’s going to make it harder for officials to deny embarrassing or revealing quotes attributed to them in “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” out Tuesday.
In some cases, the officials thought they were talking off the record. But what are they going to do now?
Although the White House yesterday portrayed Wolff as a poseur, he spent hours at a time in private areas of the West Wing, including the office of Reince Priebus when he was chief of staff.
The White House says Wolff was cleared for access to the West Wing fewer than 20 times.
Wolff, a New Yorker, stayed at the Hay Adams Hotel when he came down to D.C., and White House sources frequently crossed Lafayette Park to meet him there.
Part of Wolff’s lengthy index entry for Bannon:
Some reporters and officials are calling the book sloppy, and challenging specific passages.
How could Wolff possibly know for sure what Steve Bannon and the late Roger Ailes said at a private dinner?
It turns out Wolff hosted the dinner for six at his Manhattan townhouse.
Get more stories like this by signing up for our daily morning newsletter, Axios AM.
“You Can’t Make This S— Up”: My Year Inside Trump’s Insane White House
4:00 AM PST 1/4/2018 by Michael Wolff
Author and columnist Michael Wolff was given extraordinary access to the Trump administration and now details the feuds, the fights and the alarming chaos he witnessed while reporting what turned into a new book.
Editor’s Note: Author and Hollywood Reporter columnist Michael Wolff’s new book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (Henry Holt & Co.), is a detailed account of the 45th president’s election and first year in office based on extensive access to the White House and more than 200 interviews with Trump and senior staff over a period of 18 months. In advance of the Jan. 9 publication of the book, which Trump is already attacking, Wolff has written this extracted column about his time in the White House based on the reporting included in Fire and Fury.
I interviewed Donald Trump for The Hollywood Reporter in June 2016, and he seemed to have liked — or not disliked — the piece I wrote. “Great cover!” his press assistant, Hope Hicks, emailed me after it came out (it was a picture of a belligerent Trump in mirrored sunglasses). After the election, I proposed to him that I come to the White House and report an inside story for later publication — journalistically, as a fly on the wall — which he seemed to misconstrue as a request for a job. No, I said. I’d like to just watch and write a book. “A book?” he responded, losing interest. “I hear a lot of people want to write books,” he added, clearly not understanding why anybody would. “Do you know Ed Klein?”— author of several virulently anti-Hillary books. “Great guy. I think he should write a book about me.” But sure, Trump seemed to say, knock yourself out.
Since the new White House was often uncertain about what the president meant or did not mean in any given utterance, his non-disapproval became a kind of passport for me to hang around — checking in each week at the Hay-Adams hotel, making appointments with various senior staffers who put my name in the “system,” and then wandering across the street to the White House and plunking myself down, day after day, on a West Wing couch.
The West Wing is configured in such a way that the anteroom is quite a thoroughfare — everybody passes by. Assistants — young women in the Trump uniform of short skirts, high boots, long and loose hair — as well as, in situation-comedy proximity, all the new stars of the show: Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, Jared Kushner, Mike Pence, Gary Cohn, Michael Flynn (and after Flynn’s abrupt departure less than a month into the job for his involvement in the Russia affair, his replacement, H.R. McMaster), all neatly accessible.
The nature of the comedy, it was soon clear, was that here was a group of ambitious men and women who had reached the pinnacle of power, a high-ranking White House appointment — with the punchline that Donald Trump was president. Their estimable accomplishment of getting to the West Wing risked at any moment becoming farce.
A new president typically surrounds himself with a small group of committed insiders and loyalists. But few on the Trump team knew him very well — most of his advisors had been with him only since the fall. Even his family, now closely gathered around him, seemed nonplussed. “You know, we never saw that much of him until he got the nomination,” Eric Trump’s wife, Lara, told one senior staffer. If much of the country was incredulous, his staff, trying to cement their poker faces, were at least as confused.
Their initial response was to hawkishly defend him — he demanded it — and by defending him they seemed to be defending themselves. Politics is a game, of course, of determined role-playing, but the difficulties of staying in character in the Trump White House became evident almost from the first day.
“You can’t make this shit up,” Sean Spicer, soon to be portrayed as the most hapless man in America, muttered to himself after his tortured press briefing on the first day of the new administration, when he was called to justify the president’s inaugural crowd numbers — and soon enough, he adopted this as a personal mantra. Reince Priebus, the new chief of staff, had, shortly after the announcement of his appointment in November, started to think he would not last until the inauguration. Then, making it to the White House, he hoped he could last a respectable year, but he quickly scaled back his goal to six months. Kellyanne Conway, who would put a finger-gun to her head in private about Trump’s public comments, continued to mount an implacable defense on cable television, until she was pulled off the air by others in the White House who, however much the president enjoyed her, found her militancy idiotic. (Even Ivanka and Jared regarded Conway’s fulsome defenses as cringeworthy.)
Steve Bannon tried to gamely suggest that Trump was mere front man and that he, with plan and purpose and intellect, was, more reasonably, running the show — commanding a whiteboard of policies and initiatives that he claimed to have assembled from Trump’s off-the-cuff ramblings and utterances. His adoption of the Saturday Night Live sobriquet “President Bannon” was less than entirely humorous. Within the first few weeks, even rote conversations with senior staff trying to explain the new White House’s policies and positions would turn into a body-language ballet of eye-rolling and shrugs and pantomime of jaws dropping. Leaking became the political manifestation of the don’t-blame-me eye roll.
The surreal sense of the Trump presidency was being lived as intensely inside the White House as out. Trump was, for the people closest to him, the ultimate enigma. He had been elected president, that through-the-eye-of-the-needle feat, but obviously, he was yet … Trump. Indeed, he seemed as confused as anyone to find himself in the White House, even attempting to barricade himself into his bedroom with his own lock over the protests of the Secret Service.
There was some effort to ascribe to Trump magical powers. In an early conversation — half comic, half desperate — Bannon tried to explain him as having a particular kind of Jungian brilliance. Trump, obviously without having read Jung, somehow had access to the collective unconscious of the other half of the country, and, too, a gift for inventing archetypes: Little Marco … Low-Energy Jeb … the Failing New York Times. Everybody in the West Wing tried, with some panic, to explain him, and, sheepishly, their own reason for being here. He’s intuitive, he gets it, he has a mind-meld with his base. But there was palpable relief, of an Emperor’s New Clothes sort, when longtime Trump staffer Sam Nunberg — fired by Trump during the campaign but credited with knowing him better than anyone else — came back into the fold and said, widely, “He’s just a fucking fool.”
Part of that foolishness was his inability to deal with his own family. In a way, this gave him a human dimension. Even Donald Trump couldn’t say no to his kids. “It’s a littleee, littleee complicated …” he explained to Priebus about why he needed to give his daughter and son-in-law official jobs. But the effect of their leadership roles was to compound his own boundless inexperience in Washington, creating from the outset frustration and then disbelief and then rage on the part of the professionals in his employ.
The men and women of the West Wing, for all that the media was ridiculing them, actually felt they had a responsibility to the country. “Trump,” said one senior Republican, “turned selfish careerists into patriots.” Their job was to maintain the pretense of relative sanity, even as each individually came to the conclusion that, in generous terms, it was insane to think you could run a White House without experience, organizational structure or a real purpose.
White House: Trump Doesn’t Want Michael Wolff’s Book Published
On March 30, after the collapse of the health care bill, 32-year-old Katie Walsh, the deputy chief of staff, the effective administration chief of the West Wing, a stalwart political pro and stellar example of governing craft, walked out. Little more than two months in, she quit. Couldn’t take it anymore. Nutso. To lose your deputy chief of staff at the get-go would be a sign of crisis in any other administration, but inside an obviously exploding one it was hardly noticed.
While there might be a scary national movement of Trumpers, the reality in the White House was stranger still: There was Jared and Ivanka, Democrats; there was Priebus, a mainstream Republican; and there was Bannon, whose reasonable claim to be the one person actually representing Trumpism so infuriated Trump that Bannon was hopelessly sidelined by April. “How much influence do you think Steve Bannon has over me? Zero! Zero!” Trump muttered and stormed. To say that no one was in charge, that there were no guiding principles, not even a working org chart, would again be an understatement. “What do these people do?” asked everyone pretty much of everyone else.
The competition to take charge, which, because each side represented an inimical position to the other, became not so much a struggle for leadership, but a near-violent factional war. Jared and Ivanka were against Priebus and Bannon, trying to push both men out. Bannon was against Jared and Ivanka and Priebus, practicing what everybody thought were dark arts against them. Priebus, everybody’s punching bag, just tried to survive another day. By late spring, the larger political landscape seemed to become almost irrelevant, with everyone focused on the more lethal battles within the White House itself. This included screaming fights in the halls and in front of a bemused Trump in the Oval Office (when he was not the one screaming himself), together with leaks about what Russians your opponents might have been talking to.
Reigning over all of this was Trump, enigma, cipher and disruptor. How to get along with Trump — who veered between a kind of blissed-out pleasure of being in the Oval Office and a deep, childish frustration that he couldn’t have what he wanted? Here was a man singularly focused on his own needs for instant gratification, be that a hamburger, a segment on Fox & Friends or an Oval Office photo opp. “I want a win. I want a win. Where’s my win?” he would regularly declaim. He was, in words used by almost every member of the senior staff on repeated occasions, “like a child.” A chronic naysayer, Trump himself stoked constant discord with his daily after-dinner phone calls to his billionaire friends about the disloyalty and incompetence around him. His billionaire friends then shared this with their billionaire friends, creating the endless leaks which the president so furiously railed against.
Read Donald Trump’s Full Legal Demand Over Michael Wolff’s Book
One of these frequent callers was Rupert Murdoch, who before the election had only ever expressed contempt for Trump. Now Murdoch constantly sought him out, but to his own colleagues, friends and family, continued to derisively ridicule Trump: “What a fucking moron,” said Murdoch after one call.
With the Comey firing, the Mueller appointment and murderous White House infighting, by early summer Bannon was engaged in an uninterrupted monologue directed to almost anyone who would listen. It was so caustic, so scabrous and so hilarious that it might form one of the great underground political treatises.
By July, Jared and Ivanka, who had, in less than six months, traversed from socialite couple to royal family to the most powerful people in the world, were now engaged in a desperate dance to save themselves, which mostly involved blaming Trump himself. It was all his idea to fire Comey! “The daughter,” Bannon declared, “will bring down the father.”
Priebus and Spicer were merely counting down to the day — and every day seemed to promise it would be the next day — when they would be out.
And, indeed, suddenly there were the 11 days of Anthony Scaramucci.
Scaramucci, a minor figure in the New York financial world, and quite a ridiculous one, had overnight become Jared and Ivanka’s solution to all of the White House’s management and messaging problems. After all, explained the couple, he was good on television and he was from New York — he knew their world. In effect, the couple had hired Scaramucci — as preposterous a hire in West Wing annals as any — to replace Priebus and Bannon and take over running the White House.
There was, after the abrupt Scaramucci meltdown, hardly any effort inside the West Wing to disguise the sense of ludicrousness and anger felt by every member of the senior staff toward Trump’s family and Trump himself. It became almost a kind of competition to demystify Trump. For Rex Tillerson, he was a moron. For Gary Cohn, he was dumb as shit. For H.R. McMaster, he was a hopeless idiot. For Steve Bannon, he had lost his mind.
Most succinctly, no one expected him to survive Mueller. Whatever the substance of the Russia “collusion,” Trump, in the estimation of his senior staff, did not have the discipline to navigate a tough investigation, nor the credibility to attract the caliber of lawyers he would need to help him. (At least nine major law firms had turned down an invitation to represent the president.)
There was more: Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repetitions. It used to be inside of 30 minutes he’d repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories — now it was within 10 minutes. Indeed, many of his tweets were the product of his repetitions — he just couldn’t stop saying something.
By summer’s end, in something of a historic sweep — more usual for the end of a president’s first term than the end of his first six months — almost the entire senior staff, save Trump’s family, had been washed out: Michael Flynn, Katie Walsh, Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon. Even Trump’s loyal, longtime body guard Keith Schiller — for reasons darkly whispered about in the West Wing — was out. Gary Cohn, Dina Powell, Rick Dearborn, all on their way out. The president, on the spur of the moment, appointed John Kelly, a former Marine Corps general and head of homeland security, chief of staff — without Kelly having been informed of his own appointment beforehand. Grim and stoic, accepting that he could not control the president, Kelly seemed compelled by a sense of duty to be, in case of disaster, the adult in the room who might, if needed, stand up to the president … if that is comfort.
As telling, with his daughter and son-in-law sidelined by their legal problems, Hope Hicks, Trump’s 29-year-old personal aide and confidant, became, practically speaking, his most powerful White House advisor. (With Melania a nonpresence, the staff referred to Ivanka as the “real wife” and Hicks as the “real daughter.”) Hicks’ primary function was to tend to the Trump ego, to reassure him, to protect him, to buffer him, to soothe him. It was Hicks who, attentive to his lapses and repetitions, urged him to forgo an interview that was set to open the 60 Minutes fall season. Instead, the interview went to Fox News’ Sean Hannity who, White House insiders happily explained, was willing to supply the questions beforehand. Indeed, the plan was to have all interviewers going forward provide the questions.
As the first year wound down, Trump finally got a bill to sign. The tax bill, his singular accomplishment, was, arguably, quite a reversal of his populist promises, and confirmation of what Mitch McConnell had seen early on as the silver Trump lining: “He’ll sign anything we put in front of him.” With new bravado, he was encouraging partisans like Fox News to pursue an anti-Mueller campaign on his behalf. Insiders believed that the only thing saving Mueller from being fired, and the government of the United States from unfathomable implosion, is Trump’s inability to grasp how much Mueller had on him and his family.
Steve Bannon was openly handicapping a 33.3 percent chance of impeachment, a 33.3 percent chance of resignation in the shadow of the 25th amendment and a 33.3 percent chance that he might limp to the finish line on the strength of liberal arrogance and weakness.
Donald Trump’s small staff of factotums, advisors and family began, on Jan. 20, 2017, an experience that none of them, by any right or logic, thought they would — or, in many cases, should — have, being part of a Trump presidency. Hoping for the best, with their personal futures as well as the country’s future depending on it, my indelible impression of talking to them and observing them through much of the first year of his presidency, is that they all — 100 percent — came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job.
At Mar-a-Lago, just before the new year, a heavily made-up Trump failed to recognize a succession of old friends.
Happy first anniversary of the Trump administration.
A March Madness-style bracket to find the most loathed man in media might include Rupert Murdoch biographer, movie theater scofflaw, and resident killjoy Michael Wolff as its No. 1 overall seed. The ornery press critic is, as Fox News’ Howard Kurtz once said with understatement, “rarely impressed by anyone other than himself.” And immediate reactions to the rollout of a new, likely overwritten book about the first year in Donald Trump’s White House are likely already feeding Wolff’s Vanity Fair-sized ego.
Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House will probably sell bigly. But I implore you all, before latching onto the sort of two-scoops-of-ice-cream anecdotes that have inspired many a tweeted screenshot, to consider the source: the same Trumpian gremlin who’s often been admonished for the very same brand of writing over the past two decades.
The PR tour for Wolff’s book, out Jan. 9, began in earnest on Wednesday. The Guardian, which got a copy “ahead of publication from a bookseller in New England,” wrote up Steve Bannon’s reaction to a Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a group of Russians in 2016 contained in the book: “treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit.” Hours later, New York magazine reportedly pushed up its pre-planned publication of an excerpt that would be widely shared by political media types for its intimate retellings of Donald Trump’s cluelessness during the transition—Who’s John Boehner?—his apparent inability to make it to the Fourth Amendment during a lesson about the Constitution, and his reprimanding the White House’s housekeeping staff for picking his shirts up off the floor apparently against his wishes.
“Few people who knew Trump had illusions about him,” Wolff breathlessly writes. “That was his appeal: He was what he was. Twinkle in his eye, larceny in his soul.”
It’s hard to imagine what exactly that means. But it sounds fun and breezy while appearing to take no prisoners—classic Wolff fare. The published selections portray Trump as stupid and vindictive, his aides as basically good-faith underlings struggling to manage a walking, talking national security threat. And New York included a lengthy editor’s note on how The Hollywood Reporter contributing editor landed such fly-on-the-wall accounts, which included extensive direct quotations:
Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Wolff says, he was able to take up “something like a semi-permanent seat on a couch in the West Wing”—an idea encouraged by the president himself. Because no one was in a position to either officially approve or formally deny such access, Wolff became “more a constant interloper than an invited guest.” There were no ground rules placed on his access, and he was required to make no promises about how he would report on what he witnessed.
Since then, he conducted more than 200 interviews. In true Trumpian fashion, the administration’s lack of experience and disdain for political norms made for a hodgepodge of journalistic challenges. Information would be provided off-the-record or on deep background, then casually put on the record. Sources would fail to set any parameters on the use of a conversation, or would provide accounts in confidence, only to subsequently share their views widely. And the president’s own views, private as well as public, were constantly shared by others.
These are the type of lax ground rules that allow writers plenty of wiggle room—the type of which Wolff has long been known to take full advantage, at times with questionably accurate results. The difference is that the people in Trump’s orbit are likely even less reliable sources than many of his past subjects.
Wolff’s 1998 book about pursuing digital riches, Burn Rate, was met by largely positive reviews in the midst of the dot-com bubble. But longtime press critic Jack Shafer—perhaps as close to a defender as Wolff has—also wondered in his take for Slate whether Wolff’s nitty-gritty details could be trusted:
Wolff exploits the human tendency to confuse frankness and cruelty with truth-telling. And by repeatedly reminding the reader of what a dishonest, scheming little shit he is, he seeks to inflate his credibility. A real liar wouldn’t tell you that he’s a liar as Wolff does, would he? The wealth of verbatim quotations—constituting a good third of this book—also enhances Burn Rate’s verisimilitude. But should it? Wolff writes that he jotted down bits of dialogue on his legal pads during meetings while others composed to-do lists. Not to accuse anyone of Stephen Glassism, but I’d love to see Wolff post those copious notes on his promotional Web site, www.burnrate.com.
Michelle Cottle made similar observations in a 2004 profile for the New Republic, published when Wolff was a media writer at Vanity Fair, tut-tutting him as “neither as insightful nor as entertaining when dissecting politics.” She continued:
Much to the annoyance of Wolff’s critics, the scenes in his columns aren’t recreated so much as created—springing from Wolff’s imagination rather than from actual knowledge of events. Even Wolff acknowledges that conventional reporting isn’t his bag. Rather, he absorbs the atmosphere and gossip swirling around him at cocktail parties, on the street, and especially during those long lunches at Michael’s….“His great gift is the appearance of intimate access,” says an editor who has worked with Wolff. “He is adroit at making the reader think that he has spent hours and days with his subject, when in fact he may have spent no time at all.”
Even the late David Carr, would-be reverend of the media class from his New York Times pulpit, wrote that “Wolff has never distinguished himself as a reporter” when reviewing his 2008 Murdoch biography, The Man Who Owns The News. “Over the years, Carr wrote, “he has succeeded in cutting through the clutter by being far less circumspect—and sometimes more vicious—than other journalists, whom he views as archaic losers about to go the way of the Walkman.” Factual errors be damned, Carr added with a begrudging thumbs-up, for “Wolff prefers the purity of his constructs.”
That approach would seem to be even more dangerous with a book sold as an “inside story” of a White House that has proven atrocious at narrating its own story with any grasp of the truth. Since the selections of Wolff’s book have dropped, administration officials trotted out the usual cries of false anecdotes and fake sources—usually a good sign for those in search of the facts. But journalists have already started poking holes in some of the juicier aspects of Wolff’s account. Just one example: a simple Google search proves Trump has previously spokenabout Boehner at length, making the notion that he would respond “Who?” to a mention of the former House Speaker feel dubious at best. But such details are what gets shared or aggregated, often uncritically.
None of that is to say that Fire and Fury won’t be an entertaining read. Wolff has been a frequent critic of the media’s Trump coverage, lambasting the press earlier this year for portraying Trump as “an inept and craven sociopath.” He’s also spoken in favor of journalists acting only as stenographers. Those may have been sly plays to get greater access to the Trump Administration before biting its hand en route to a bestseller.
But if these early excerpts are any indication, Wolff’s turn at stenography led to the same basic observations as everybody else—that the administration is chock full of back-stabbing, out-of-their-depth staffers washed up from a campaign that no one, even the man who’s now president, expected to win. The fact that the internet has latched onto so many of these colorful—if only “notionally accurate,” anecdotes—may say less about Wolff, that much-hated media man, than it does about the rest of us.
Bannon: ‘They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV
Steve Bannon exits an elevator in the lobby of Trump Tower on 11 November 2016 in New York City. Other Trump campaign officials met with Russians there in June 2016. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon has described the Trump Tower meeting between the president’s son and a group of Russians during the 2016 election campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic”, according to an explosive new book seen by the Guardian.
Bannon, speaking to author Michael Wolff, warned that the investigation into alleged collusion with the Kremlin will focus on money laundering and predicted: “They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.”
Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, reportedly based on more than 200 interviews with the president, his inner circle and players in and around the administration, is one of the most eagerly awaited political books of the year. In it, Wolff lifts the lid on a White House lurching from crisis to crisis amid internecine warfare, with even some of Trump’s closest allies expressing contempt for him.
Bannon, who was chief executive of the Trump campaign in its final three months, then White House chief strategist for seven months before returning to the rightwing Breitbart News, is a central figure in the nasty, cutthroat drama, quoted extensively, often in salty language.
He is particularly scathing about a June 2016 meeting involving Trump’s son Donald Jr, son-in-law Jared Kushner, then campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in New York. A trusted intermediary had promised documents that would “incriminate” rival Hillary Clinton but instead of alerting the FBI to a potential assault on American democracy by a foreign power, Trump Jr replied in an email: “I love it.”
The meeting was revealed by the New York Times in July last year, prompting Trump Jr to say no consequential material was produced. Soon after, Wolff writes, Bannon remarked mockingly: “The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers.
“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.”
Bannon went on, Wolff writes, to say that if any such meeting had to take place, it should have been set up “in a Holiday Inn in Manchester, New Hampshire, with your lawyers who meet with these people”. Any information, he said, could then be “dump[ed] … down to Breitbart or something like that, or maybe some other more legitimate publication”.
Bannon added: “You never see it, you never know it, because you don’t need to … But that’s the brain trust that they had.”
Bannon also speculated that Trump Jr had involved his father in the meeting. “The chance that Don Jr did not walk these jumos up to his father’s office on the twenty-sixth floor is zero.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed last May, following Trump’s dismissal of FBI director James Comey, to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election. This has led to the indictments of four members of Trump’s inner circle, including Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Manafort has pleaded not guilty to money laundering charges; Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. In recent weeks Bannon’s Breitbart News and other conservative outlets have accused Mueller’s team of bias against the president.
Trump predicted in an interview with the New York Times last week that the special counsel was “going to be fair”, though he also said the investigation “makes the country look very bad”. The president and his allies deny any collusion with Russia and the Kremlin has denied interfering.
Bannon has criticised Trump’s decision to fire Comey. In Wolff’s book, obtained by the Guardian ahead of publication from a bookseller in New England, he suggests White House hopes for a quick end to the Mueller investigation are gravely misplaced.
“You realise where this is going,” he is quoted as saying. “This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmannfirst and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner … It’s as plain as a hair on your face.”
Last month it was reported that federal prosecutors had subpoenaed records from Deutsche Bank, the German financial institution that has lent hundreds of millions of dollars to the Kushner property empire. Bannon continues: “It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit. The Kushner shit is greasy. They’re going to go right through that. They’re going to roll those two guys up and say play me or trade me.”
Scorning apparent White House insouciance, Bannon reaches for a hurricane metaphor: “They’re sitting on a beach trying to stop a Category Five.”
He insists that he knows no Russians, will not be a witness, will not hire a lawyer and will not appear on national television answering questions.
Fire and Fury will be published next week. Wolff is a prominent media critic and columnist who has written for the Guardian and is a biographer of Rupert Murdoch. He previously conducted interviews for the Hollywood Reporter with Trump in June 2016 and Bannon a few months later.
He told the Guardian in November that to research the book, he showed up at the White House with no agenda but wanting to “find out what the insiders were really thinking and feeling”. He enjoyed extraordinary access to Trump and senior officials and advisers, he said, sometimes at critical moments of the fledgling presidency.
The rancour between Bannon and “Javanka” – Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump – is a recurring theme of the book. Kushner and Ivanka are Jewish. Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state, is quoted as saying: “It is a war between the Jews and the non-Jews.”
Trump is not spared. Wolff writes that Thomas Barrack Jr, a billionaire who is one of the president’s oldest associates, allegedly told a friend: “He’s not only crazy, he’s stupid.” Barrack denied that to the New York Times.
Election Night: It “looked as if he had seen a ghost.”
n the afternoon of November 8, 2016, Kellyanne Conway settled into her glass office at Trump Tower. Right up until the last weeks of the race, the campaign headquarters had remained a listless place. All that seemed to distinguish it from a corporate back office were a few posters with right-wing slogans.
Conway, the campaign’s manager, was in a remarkably buoyant mood, considering she was about to experience a resounding, if not cataclysmic, defeat. Donald Trump would lose the election — of this she was sure — but he would quite possibly hold the defeat to under six points. That was a substantial victory. As for the looming defeat itself, she shrugged it off: It was Reince Priebus’s fault, not hers.
She had spent a good part of the day calling friends and allies in the political world and blaming Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Now she briefed some of the television producers and anchors whom she had been carefully courting since joining the Trump campaign — and with whom she had been actively interviewing in the last few weeks, hoping to land a permanent on-air job after the election.
Even though the numbers in a few key states had appeared to be changing to Trump’s advantage, neither Conway nor Trump himself nor his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — the effective head of the campaign — wavered in their certainty: Their unexpected adventure would soon be over. Not only would Trump not be president, almost everyone in the campaign agreed, he should probably not be. Conveniently, the former conviction meant nobody had to deal with the latter issue.
As the campaign came to an end, Trump himself was sanguine. His ultimate goal, after all, had never been to win. “I can be the most famous man in the world,” he had told his aide Sam Nunberg at the outset of the race. His longtime friend Roger Ailes, the former head of Fox News, liked to say that if you want a career in television, first run for president. Now Trump, encouraged by Ailes, was floating rumors about a Trump network. It was a great future. He would come out of this campaign, Trump assured Ailes, with a far more powerful brand and untold opportunities.
“This is bigger than I ever dreamed of,” he told Ailes a week before the election. “I don’t think about losing, because it isn’t losing. We’ve totally won.”
From the start, the leitmotif for Trump about his own campaign was how crappy it was, and how everybody involved in it was a loser. In August, when he was trailing Hillary Clinton by more than 12 points, he couldn’t conjure even a far-fetched scenario for achieving an electoral victory. He was baffled when the right-wing billionaire Robert Mercer, a Ted Cruz backer whom Trump barely knew, offered him an infusion of $5 million. When Mercer and his daughter Rebekah presented their plan to take over the campaign and install their lieutenants, Steve Bannon and Conway, Trump didn’t resist. He only expressed vast incomprehension about why anyone would want to do that. “This thing,” he told the Mercers, “is so fucked up.”
Bannon, who became chief executive of Trump’s team in mid-August, called it “the broke-dick campaign.” Almost immediately, he saw that it was hampered by an even deeper structural flaw: The candidate who billed himself as a billionaire — ten times over — refused to invest his own money in it. Bannon told Kushner that, after the first debate in September, they would need another $50 million to cover them until Election Day.
“No way we’ll get 50 million unless we can guarantee him victory,” said a clear-eyed Kushner.
“Twenty-five million?” prodded Bannon.
“If we can say victory is more than likely.”
In the end, the best Trump would do is to loan the campaign $10 million, provided he got it back as soon as they could raise other money. Steve Mnuchin, the campaign’s finance chairman, came to collect the loan with the wire instructions ready to go so Trump couldn’t conveniently forget to send the money.
Most presidential candidates spend their entire careers, if not their lives from adolescence, preparing for the role. They rise up the ladder of elected offices, perfect a public face, and prepare themselves to win and to govern. The Trump calculation, quite a conscious one, was different. The candidate and his top lieutenants believed they could get all the benefits of almost becoming president without having to change their behavior or their worldview one whit. Almost everybody on the Trump team, in fact, came with the kind of messy conflicts bound to bite a president once he was in office. Michael Flynn, the retired general who served as Trump’s opening act at campaign rallies, had been told by his friends that it had not been a good idea to take $45,000 from the Russians for a speech. “Well, it would only be a problem if we won,” Flynn assured them.
Not only did Trump disregard the potential conflicts of his own business deals and real-estate holdings, he audaciously refused to release his tax returns. Why should he? Once he lost, Trump would be both insanely famous and a martyr to Crooked Hillary. His daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared would be international celebrities. Steve Bannon would become the de facto head of the tea-party movement. Kellyanne Conway would be a cable-news star. Melania Trump, who had been assured by her husband that he wouldn’t become president, could return to inconspicuously lunching. Losing would work out for everybody. Losing was winning.
Shortly after 8 p.m. on Election Night, when the unexpected trend — Trump might actually win — seemed confirmed, Don Jr. told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he calls him, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears — and not of joy.
There was, in the space of little more than an hour, in Steve Bannon’s not unamused observation, a befuddled Trump morphing into a disbelieving Trump and then into a horrified Trump. But still to come was the final transformation: Suddenly, Donald Trump became a man who believed that he deserved to be, and was wholly capable of being, the president of the United States.
From the moment of victory, the Trump administration became a looking-glass presidency: Every inverse assumption about how to assemble and run a White House was enacted and compounded, many times over. The decisions that Trump and his top advisers made in those first few months — from the slapdash transition to the disarray in the West Wing — set the stage for the chaos and dysfunction that have persisted throughout his first year in office. This was a real-life version of Mel Brooks’s The Producers, where the mistaken outcome trusted by everyone in Trump’s inner circle — that they would lose the election — wound up exposing them for who they really were.
On the Saturday after the election, Trump received a small group of well-wishers in his triplex apartment in Trump Tower. Even his close friends were still shocked and bewildered, and there was a dazed quality to the gathering. But Trump himself was mostly looking at the clock. Rupert Murdoch, who had promised to pay a call on the president-elect, was running late. When some of the guests made a move to leave, an increasingly agitated Trump assured them that Rupert was on his way. “He’s one of the greats, the last of the greats,” Trump said. “You have to stay to see him.” Not grasping that he was now the most powerful man in the world, Trump was still trying mightily to curry favor with a media mogul who had long disdained him as a charlatan and fool.
The day after the election, the bare-bones transition team that had been set up during the campaign hurriedly shifted from Washington to Trump Tower. The building — now the headquarters of a populist revolution — suddenly seemed like an alien spaceship on Fifth Avenue. But its otherworldly air helped obscure the fact that few in Trump’s inner circle, with their overnight responsibility for assembling a government, had any relevant experience.
Ailes, a veteran of the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush 41 administrations, tried to impress on Trump the need to create a White House structure that could serve and protect him. “You need a son of a bitch as your chief of staff,” he told Trump. “And you need a son of a bitch who knows Washington. You’ll want to be your own son of a bitch, but you don’t know Washington.” Ailes had a suggestion: John Boehner, who had stepped down as Speaker of the House only a year earlier.
“Who’s that?” asked Trump.
As much as the president himself, the chief of staff determines how the Executive branch — which employs 4 million people — will run. The job has been construed as deputy president, or even prime minister. But Trump had no interest in appointing a strong chief of staff with a deep knowledge of Washington. Among his early choices for the job was Kushner — a man with no political experience beyond his role as a calm and flattering body man to Trump during the campaign.
It was Ann Coulter who finally took the president-elect aside. “Nobody is apparently telling you this,” she told him. “But you can’t. You just can’t hire your children.”
Bowing to pressure, Trump floated the idea of giving the job to Steve Bannon, only to have the notion soundly ridiculed. Murdoch told Trump that Bannon would be a dangerous choice. Joe Scarborough, the former congressman and co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, told the president-elect that “Washington will go up in flames” if Bannon became chief of staff.
So Trump turned to Reince Priebus, the RNC chairman, who had became the subject of intense lobbying by House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. If congressional leaders were going to have to deal with an alien like Donald Trump, then best they do it with the help of one of their own kind.
Jim Baker, chief of staff for both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and almost everybody’s model for managing the West Wing, advised Priebus not to take the job. Priebus had his own reservations: He had come out of his first long meeting with Trump thinking it had been a disconcertingly weird experience. Trump talked nonstop and constantly repeated himself.
“Here’s the deal,” a close Trump associate told Priebus. “In an hour meeting with him, you’re going to hear 54 minutes of stories, and they’re going to be the same stories over and over again. So you have to have one point to make, and you pepper it in whenever you can.”
But the Priebus appointment, announced in mid-November, put Bannon on a co-equal level to the new chief of staff. Even with the top job, Priebus would be a weak figure, in the traditional mold of most Trump lieutenants over the years. There would be one chief of staff in name — the unimportant one — and others like Bannon and Kushner, more important in practice, ensuring both chaos and Trump’s independence.
Priebus demonstrated no ability to keep Trump from talking to anyone who wanted his ear. The president-elect enjoyed being courted. On December 14, a high-level delegation from Silicon Valley came to Trump Tower to meet him. Later that afternoon, according to a source privy to details of the conversation, Trump called Rupert Murdoch, who asked him how the meeting had gone.
“Oh, great, just great,” said Trump. “These guys really need my help. Obama was not very favorable to them, too much regulation. This is really an opportunity for me to help them.”
“Donald,” said Murdoch, “for eight years these guys had Obama in their pocket. They practically ran the administration. They don’t need your help.”
“Take this H-1B visa issue. They really need these H-1B visas.”
Murdoch suggested that taking a liberal approach to H-1B visas, which open America’s doors to select immigrants, might be hard to square with his promises to build a wall and close the borders. But Trump seemed unconcerned, assuring Murdoch, “We’ll figure it out.”
“What a fucking idiot,” said Murdoch, shrugging, as he got off the phone.
Steve Bannon, suddenly among the world’s most powerful men, was running late. It was the evening of January 3, 2017 — a little more than two weeks before Trump’s inauguration — and Bannon had promised to come to a small dinner arranged by mutual friends in a Greenwich Village townhouse to see Roger Ailes.
Snow was threatening, and for a while the dinner appeared doubtful. But the 76-year-old Ailes, who was as dumbfounded by his old friend Donald Trump’s victory as everyone else, understood that he was passing the right-wing torch to Bannon. Ailes’s Fox News, with its $1.5 billion in annual profits, had dominated Republican politics for two decades. Now Bannon’s Breitbart News, with its mere $1.5 million in annual profits, was claiming that role. For 30 years, Ailes — until recently the single most powerful person in conservative politics — had humored and tolerated Trump, but in the end Bannon and Breitbart had elected him.
At 9:30, having extricated himself from Trump Tower, Bannon finally arrived at the dinner, three hours late. Wearing a disheveled blazer, his signature pairing of two shirts, and military fatigues, the unshaven, overweight 63-year-old immediately dived into an urgent download of information about the world he was about to take over.
“We’re going to flood the zone so we have every Cabinet member for the next seven days through their confirmation hearings,” he said of the business-and-military, 1950s-type Cabinet choices. “Tillerson is two days, Sessions is two days, Mattis is two days …”
Bannon veered from James “Mad Dog” Mattis — the retired four-star general whom Trump had nominated as secretary of Defense — to the looming appointment of Michael Flynn as national-security adviser. “He’s fine. He’s not Jim Mattis and he’s not John Kelly … but he’s fine. He just needs the right staff around him.” Still, Bannon averred: “When you take out all the Never Trump guys who signed all those letters and all the neocons who got us in all these wars … it’s not a deep bench.” Bannon said he’d tried to push John Bolton, the famously hawkish diplomat, for the job as national-security adviser. Bolton was an Ailes favorite, too.
“He’s a bomb thrower,” said Ailes. “And a strange little fucker. But you need him. Who else is good on Israel? Flynn is a little nutty on Iran. Tillerson just knows oil.”
“Bolton’s mustache is a problem,” snorted Bannon. “Trump doesn’t think he looks the part. You know Bolton is an acquired taste.”
“Well, he got in trouble because he got in a fight in a hotel one night and chased some woman.”
“If I told Trump that,” Bannon said slyly, “he might have the job.”
Bannon was curiously able to embrace Trump while at the same time suggesting he did not take him entirely seriously. Great numbers of people, he believed, were suddenly receptive to a new message — the world needs borders — and Trump had become the platform for that message.
“Does he get it?” asked Ailes suddenly, looking intently at Bannon. Did Trump get where history had put him?
Bannon took a sip of water. “He gets it,” he said, after hesitating for perhaps a beat too long. “Or he gets what he gets.”
Pivoting from Trump himself, Bannon plunged on with the Trump agenda. “Day one we’re moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s all-in. Sheldon” — Adelson, the casino billionaire and far-right Israel defender — “is all-in. We know where we’re heading on this … Let Jordan take the West Bank, let Egypt take Gaza. Let them deal with it. Or sink trying.”
“Where’s Donald on this?” asked Ailes, the clear implication being that Bannon was far out ahead of his benefactor.
“He’s totally onboard.”
“I wouldn’t give Donald too much to think about,” said an amused Ailes.
Bannon snorted. “Too much, too little — doesn’t necessarily change things.”
“What has he gotten himself into with the Russians?” pressed Ailes.
“Mostly,” said Bannon, “he went to Russia and he thought he was going to meet Putin. But Putin couldn’t give a shit about him. So he’s kept trying.”
Again, as though setting the issue of Trump aside — merely a large and peculiar presence to both be thankful for and to have to abide — Bannon, in the role he had conceived for himself, the auteur of the Trump presidency, charged forward. The real enemy, he said, was China. China was the first front in a new Cold War.
“China’s everything. Nothing else matters. We don’t get China right, we don’t get anything right. This whole thing is very simple. China is where Nazi Germany was in 1929 to 1930. The Chinese, like the Germans, are the most rational people in the world, until they’re not. And they’re gonna flip like Germany in the ’30s. You’re going to have a hypernationalist state, and once that happens, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”
“Donald might not be Nixon in China,” said Ailes, deadpan.
Bannon smiled. “Bannon in China,” he said, with both remarkable grandiosity and wry self-deprecation.
“How’s the kid?” asked Ailes, referring to Kushner.
“He’s my partner,” said Bannon, his tone suggesting that if he felt otherwise, he was nevertheless determined to stay on message.
“He’s had a lot of lunches with Rupert,” said a dubious Ailes.
“In fact,” said Bannon, “I could use your help here.” He then spent several minutes trying to recruit Ailes to help kneecap Murdoch. Since his ouster from Fox over allegations of sexual harassment, Ailes had become only more bitter toward Murdoch. Now Murdoch was frequently jawboning the president-elect and encouraging him toward Establishment moderation. Bannon wanted Ailes to suggest to Trump, a man whose many neuroses included a horror of senility, that Murdoch might be losing it.
“I’ll call him,” said Ailes. “But Trump would jump through hoops for Rupert. Like for Putin. Sucks up and shits down. I just worry about who’s jerking whose chain.”
Trump did not enjoy his own inauguration. He was angry that A-level stars had snubbed the event, disgruntled with the accommodations at Blair House, and visibly fighting with his wife, who seemed on the verge of tears. Throughout the day, he wore what some around him had taken to calling his golf face: angry and pissed off, shoulders hunched, arms swinging, brow furled, lips pursed.
The first senior staffer to enter the White House that day was Bannon. On the inauguration march, he had grabbed 32-year-old Katie Walsh, the newly appointed deputy chief of staff, and together they had peeled off to inspect the now-vacant West Wing. The carpet had been shampooed, but little else had changed. It was a warren of tiny offices in need of paint, the décor something like an admissions office at a public university. Bannon claimed the nondescript office across from the much grander chief of staff’s suite and immediately requisitioned the whiteboards on which he intended to chart the first 100 days of the Trump administration. He also began moving furniture out. The point was to leave no room for anyone to sit. Limit discussion. Limit debate. This was war.
Those who had worked on the campaign noticed the sudden change. Within the first week, Bannon seemed to have put away the camaraderie of Trump Tower and become far more remote, if not unreachable. “What’s up with Steve?” Kushner began to ask. “I don’t understand. We were so close.” Now that Trump had been elected, Bannon was already focused on his next goal: capturing the soul of the Trump White House.
He began by going after his enemies. Few fueled his rancor toward the standard-issue Republican world as much as Rupert Murdoch — not least because Murdoch had Trump’s ear. It was one of the key elements of Bannon’s understanding of Trump: The last person the president spoke to ended up with enormous influence. Trump would brag that Murdoch was always calling him; Murdoch, for his part, would complain that he couldn’t get Trump off the phone.
“He doesn’t know anything about American politics, and has no feel for the American people,” Bannon told Trump, always eager to point out that Murdoch wasn’t an American. Yet in one regard, Murdoch’s message was useful to Bannon. Having known every president since Harry Truman — as Murdoch took frequent opportunities to point out — the media mogul warned Trump that a president has only six months, max, to set his agenda and make an impact. After that, it was just putting out fires and battling the opposition.
This was the message whose urgency Bannon had been trying to impress on an often distracted Trump, who was already trying to limit his hours in the office and keep to his normal golf habits. Bannon’s strategic view of government was shock and awe. In his head, he carried a set of decisive actions that would not just mark the new administration’s opening days but make it clear that nothing ever again would be the same. He had quietly assembled a list of more than 200 executive orders to issue in the first 100 days. The very first EO, in his view, had to be a crackdown on immigration. After all, it was one of Trump’s core campaign promises. Plus, Bannon knew, it was an issue that made liberals batshit mad.
Bannon could push through his agenda for a simple reason: because nobody in the administration really had a job. Priebus, as chief of staff, had to organize meetings, hire staff, and oversee the individual offices in the Executive-branch departments. But Bannon, Kushner, and Ivanka Trump had no specific responsibilities — they did what they wanted. And for Bannon, the will to get big things done was how big things got done. “Chaos was Steve’s strategy,” said Walsh.
On Friday, January 27 — only his eighth day in office — Trump signed an executive order issuing a sweeping exclusion of many Muslims from the United States. In his mania to seize the day, with almost no one in the federal government having seen it or even been aware of it, Bannon had succeeded in pushing through an executive order that overhauled U.S. immigration policy while bypassing the very agencies and personnel responsible for enforcing it.
The result was an emotional outpouring of horror and indignation from liberal media, terror in immigrant communities, tumultuous protests at major airports, confusion throughout the government, and, in the White House, an inundation of opprobrium from friends and family. What have you done? You have to undo this! You’re finished before you even start! But Bannon was satisfied. He could not have hoped to draw a more vivid line between Trump’s America and that of liberals. Almost the entire White House staff demanded to know: Why did we do this on a Friday, when it would hit the airports hardest and bring out the most protesters?
“Errr … that’s why,” said Bannon. “So the snowflakes would show up at the airports and riot.” That was the way to crush the liberals: Make them crazy and drag them to the left.
On the Sunday after the immigration order was issued, Joe Scarborough and his Morning Joe co-host, Mika Brzezinski, arrived for lunch at the White House. Trump proudly showed them into the Oval Office. “So how do you think the first week has gone?” he asked the couple, in a buoyant mood, seeking flattery. When Scarborough ventured his opinion that the immigration order might have been handled better, Trump turned defensive and derisive, plunging into a long monologue about how well things had gone. “I could have invited Hannity!” he told Scarborough.
After Jared and Ivanka joined them for lunch, Trump continued to cast for positive impressions of his first week. Scarborough praised the president for having invited leaders of the steel unions to the White House. At which point Jared interjected that reaching out to unions, a Democratic constituency, was Bannon’s doing, that this was “the Bannon way.”
“Bannon?” said the president, jumping on his son-in-law. “That wasn’t Bannon’s idea. That was my idea. It’s the Trump way, not the Bannon way.”
Kushner, going concave, retreated from the discussion.
Trump, changing the topic, said to Scarborough and Brzezinski, “So what about you guys? What’s going on?” He was referencing their not-so-secret secret relationship. The couple said it was still complicated, but good.
“You guys should just get married,” prodded Trump.
“I can marry you! I’m an internet Unitarian minister,” Kushner, otherwise an Orthodox Jew, said suddenly.
“What?” said the president. “What are you talking about? Why would they want you to marry them when I could marry them? When they could be married by the president! At Mar-a-Lago!”
The First Children couple were having to navigate Trump’s volatile nature just like everyone else in the White House. And they were willing to do it for the same reason as everyone else — in the hope that Trump’s unexpected victory would catapult them into a heretofore unimagined big time. Balancing risk against reward, both Jared and Ivanka decided to accept roles in the West Wing over the advice of almost everyone they knew. It was a joint decision by the couple, and, in some sense, a joint job. Between themselves, the two had made an earnest deal: If sometime in the future the opportunity arose, she’d be the one to run for president. The first woman president, Ivanka entertained, would not be Hillary Clinton; it would be Ivanka Trump.
Bannon, who had coined the term “Jarvanka” that was now in ever greater use in the White House, was horrified when the couple’s deal was reported to him. “They didn’t say that?” he said. “Stop. Oh, come on. They didn’t actually say that? Please don’t tell me that. Oh my God.”
The truth was, Ivanka and Jared were as much the chief of staff as Priebus or Bannon, all of them reporting directly to the president. The couple had opted for formal jobs in the West Wing, in part because they knew that influencing Trump required you to be all-in. From phone call to phone call — and his day, beyond organized meetings, was almost entirely phone calls — you could lose him. He could not really converse, not in the sense of sharing information, or of a balanced back-and-forth conversation. He neither particularly listened to what was said to him nor particularly considered what he said in response. He demanded you pay him attention, then decided you were weak for groveling. In a sense, he was like an instinctive, pampered, and hugely successful actor. Everybody was either a lackey who did his bidding or a high-ranking film functionary trying to coax out his performance — without making him angry or petulant.
Ivanka maintained a relationship with her father that was in no way conventional. She was a helper not just in his business dealings, but in his marital realignments. If it wasn’t pure opportunism, it was certainly transactional. For Ivanka, it was all business — building the Trump brand, the presidential campaign, and now the White House. She treated her father with a degree of detachment, even irony, going so far as to make fun of his comb-over to others. She often described the mechanics behind it to friends: an absolutely clean pate — a contained island after scalp-reduction surgery — surrounded by a furry circle of hair around the sides and front, from which all ends are drawn up to meet in the center and then swept back and secured by a stiffening spray. The color, she would point out to comical effect, was from a product called Just for Men — the longer it was left on, the darker it got. Impatience resulted in Trump’s orange-blond hair color.
Kushner, for his part, had little to no success at trying to restrain his father-in-law. Ever since the transition, Jared had been negotiating to arrange a meeting at the White House with Enrique Peña Nieto, the Mexican president whom Trump had threatened and insulted throughout the campaign. On the Wednesday after the inauguration, a high-level Mexican delegation — the first visit by any foreign leaders to the Trump White House — met with Kushner and Reince Priebus. That afternoon, Kushner triumphantly told his father-in-law that Peña Nieto had signed on to a White House meeting and planning for the visit could go forward.
The next day, on Twitter, Trump blasted Mexico for stealing American jobs. “If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall,” the president declared, “then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting.” At which point Peña Nieto did just that, leaving Kushner’s negotiation and statecraft as so much scrap on the floor.
Nothing contributed to the chaos and dysfunction of the White House as much as Trump’s own behavior. The big deal of being president was just not apparent to him. Most victorious candidates, arriving in the White House from ordinary political life, could not help but be reminded of their transformed circumstances by their sudden elevation to a mansion with palacelike servants and security, a plane at constant readiness, and downstairs a retinue of courtiers and advisers. But this wasn’t that different from Trump’s former life in Trump Tower, which was actually more commodious and to his taste than the White House.
Trump, in fact, found the White House to be vexing and even a little scary. He retreated to his own bedroom — the first time since the Kennedy White House that a presidential couple had maintained separate rooms. In the first days, he ordered two television screens in addition to the one already there, and a lock on the door, precipitating a brief standoff with the Secret Service, who insisted they have access to the room. He reprimanded the housekeeping staff for picking up his shirt from the floor: “If my shirt is on the floor, it’s because I want it on the floor.” Then he imposed a set of new rules: Nobody touch anything, especially not his toothbrush. (He had a longtime fear of being poisoned, one reason why he liked to eat at McDonald’s — nobody knew he was coming and the food was safely premade.) Also, he would let housekeeping know when he wanted his sheets done, and he would strip his own bed.
If he was not having his 6:30 dinner with Steve Bannon, then, more to his liking, he was in bed by that time with a cheeseburger, watching his three screens and making phone calls — the phone was his true contact point with the world — to a small group of friends, who charted his rising and falling levels of agitation through the evening and then compared notes with one another.
As details of Trump’s personal life leaked out, he became obsessed with identifying the leaker. The source of all the gossip, however, may well have been Trump himself. In his calls throughout the day and at night from his bed, he often spoke to people who had no reason to keep his confidences. He was a river of grievances, which recipients of his calls promptly spread to the ever-attentive media.
On February 6, in one of his seething, self-pitying, and unsolicited phone calls to a casual acquaintance, Trump detailed his bent-out-of-shape feelings about the relentless contempt of the media and the disloyalty of his staff. The initial subject of his ire was the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, whom he called “a nut job.” Gail Collins, who had written a Times column unfavorably comparing Trump to Vice-President Mike Pence, was “a moron.” Then, continuing under the rubric of media he hated, he veered to CNN and the deep disloyalty of its chief, Jeff Zucker.
Zucker, who as the head of entertainment at NBC had commissioned The Apprentice, had been “made by Trump,” Trump said of himself in the third person. He had “personally” gotten Zucker his job at CNN. “Yes, yes, I did,” said the president, launching into a favorite story about how he had once talked Zucker up at a dinner with a high-ranking executive from CNN’s parent company. “I probably shouldn’t have, because Zucker is not that smart,” Trump lamented, “but I like to show I can do that sort of thing.” Then Zucker had returned the favor by airing the “unbelievably disgusting” story about the Russian “dossier” and the “golden shower” — the practice CNN had accused him of being party to in a Moscow hotel suite with assorted prostitutes.
Having dispensed with Zucker, the president of the United States went on to speculate on what was involved with a golden shower. And how this was all just part of a media campaign that would never succeed in driving him from the White House. Because they were sore losers and hated him for winning, they spread total lies, 100 percent made-up things, totally untrue, for instance, the cover that week of Time magazine — which, Trump reminded his listener, he had been on more than anyone in history — that showed Steve Bannon, a good guy, saying he was the real president. “How much influence do you think Steve Bannon has over me?” Trump demanded. He repeated the question, then repeated the answer: “Zero! Zero!” And that went for his son-in-law, too, who had a lot to learn.
The media was not only hurting him, he said — he was not looking for any agreement or even any response — but hurting his negotiating capabilities, which hurt the nation. And that went for Saturday Night Live, which might think it was very funny but was actually hurting everybody in the country. And while he understood that SNL was there to be mean to him, they were being very, very mean. It was “fake comedy.” He had reviewed the treatment of all other presidents in the media, and there was nothing like this ever, even of Nixon, who was treated very unfairly. “Kellyanne, who is very fair, has this all documented. You can look at it.”
The point is, he said, that that very day, he had saved $700 million a year in jobs that were going to Mexico, but the media was talking about him wandering around the White House in his bathrobe, which “I don’t have because I’ve never worn a bathrobe. And would never wear one, because I’m not that kind of guy.” And what the media was doing was undermining this very dignified house, and “dignity is so important.” But Murdoch, “who had never called me, never once,” was now calling all the time. So that should tell people something.
The call went on for 26 minutes.
Without a strong chief of staff at the White House, there was no real up-and-down structure in the administration—merely a figure at the top and everyone else scrambling for his attention. It wasn’t task-based so much as response-oriented — whatever captured the boss’s attention focused everybody’s attention. Priebus and Bannon and Kushner were all fighting to be the power behind the Trump throne. And in these crosshairs was Katie Walsh, the deputy chief of staff.
Walsh, who came to the White House from the RNC, represented a certain Republican ideal: clean, brisk, orderly, efficient. A righteous bureaucrat with a permanently grim expression, she was a fine example of the many political professionals in whom competence and organizational skills transcend ideology. To Walsh, it became clear almost immediately that “the three gentlemen running things,” as she came to characterize them, had each found his own way to appeal to the president. Bannon offered a rousing fuck-you show of force; Priebus offered flattery from the congressional leadership; Kushner offered the approval of blue-chip businessmen. Each appeal was exactly what Trump wanted from the presidency, and he didn’t understand why he couldn’t have them all. He wanted to break things, he wanted Congress to give him bills to sign, and he wanted the love and respect of New York machers and socialites.
As soon as the campaign team had stepped into the White House, Walsh saw, it had gone from managing Trump to the expectation of being managed by him. Yet the president, while proposing the most radical departure from governing and policy norms in several generations, had few specific ideas about how to turn his themes and vitriol into policy. And making suggestions to him was deeply complicated. Here, arguably, was the central issue of the Trump presidency, informing every aspect of Trumpian policy and leadership: He didn’t process information in any conventional sense. He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate. He trusted his own expertise — no matter how paltry or irrelevant — more than anyone else’s. He was often confident, but he was just as often paralyzed, less a savant than a figure of sputtering and dangerous insecurities, whose instinctive response was to lash out and behave as if his gut, however confused, was in fact in some clear and forceful way telling him what to do. It was, said Walsh, “like trying to figure out what a child wants.”
By the end of the second week following the immigration EO, the three advisers were in open conflict with one another. For Walsh, it was a daily process of managing an impossible task: Almost as soon as she received direction from one of the three men, it would be countermanded by one or another of them.
“I take a conversation at face value and move forward with it,” she said. “I put what was decided on the schedule and bring in comms and build a press plan around it … And then Jared says, ‘Why did you do that?’ And I say, ‘Because we had a meeting three days ago with you and Reince and Steve where you agreed to do this.’ And he says, ‘But that didn’t mean I wanted it on the schedule …’ It almost doesn’t matter what anyone says: Jared will agree, and then it will get sabotaged, and then Jared goes to the president and says, see, that was Reince’s idea or Steve’s idea.”
If Bannon, Priebus, and Kushner were now fighting a daily war with one another, it was exacerbated by the running disinformation campaign about them that was being prosecuted by the president himself. When he got on the phone after dinner, he’d speculate on the flaws and weaknesses of each member of his staff. Bannon was disloyal (not to mention he always looks like shit). Priebus was weak (not to mention he was short — a midget). Kushner was a suck-up. Sean Spicer was stupid (and looks terrible too). Conway was a crybaby. Jared and Ivanka should never have come to Washington.
During that first month, Walsh’s disbelief and even fear about what was happening in the White House moved her to think about quitting. Every day after that became a countdown toward the moment she knew she wouldn’t be able to take it anymore. To Walsh, the proud political pro, the chaos, the rivalries, and the president’s own lack of focus were simply incomprehensible. In early March, not long before she left, she confronted Kushner with a simple request. “Just give me the three things the president wants to focus on,” she demanded. “What are the three priorities of this White House?”
It was the most basic question imaginable — one that any qualified presidential candidate would have answered long before he took up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Six weeks into Trump’s presidency, Kushner was wholly without an answer.
“Yes,” he said to Walsh. “We should probably have that conversation.”
HOW HE GOT THE STORY
This story is adapted from Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, to be published by Henry Holt & Co. on January 9. Wolff, who chronicles the administration from Election Day to this past October, conducted conversations and interviews over a period of 18 months with the president, most members of his senior staff, and many people to whom they in turn spoke. Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Wolff says, he was able to take up “something like a semi-permanent seat on a couch in the West Wing” — an idea encouraged by the president himself. Because no one was in a position to either officially approve or formally deny such access, Wolff became “more a constant interloper than an invited guest.” There were no ground rules placed on his access, and he was required to make no promises about how he would report on what he witnessed.
Since then, he conducted more than 200 interviews. In true Trumpian fashion, the administration’s lack of experience and disdain for political norms made for a hodgepodge of journalistic challenges. Information would be provided off-the-record or on deep background, then casually put on the record. Sources would fail to set any parameters on the use of a conversation, or would provide accounts in confidence, only to subsequently share their views widely. And the president’s own views, private as well as public, were constantly shared by others. The adaptation presented here offers a front-row view of Trump’s presidency, from his improvised transition to his first months in the Oval Office.
*Excerpted from Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff (Henry Holt and Co., January 9, 2018). This article appears in the January 8, 2018, issue of New York Magazine.
*This article has been updated to include more information from Wolff’s book about the nature of Trump’s conversation with the Mercers.
The White House was quick to dismiss a new book about President Donald Trump’s campaign and presidency on Wednesday after New York Magazine published an excerpt.
“This book is filled with false and misleading accounts from individuals who have no access or influence with the White House,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “Participating in a book that can only be described as trashy tabloid fiction exposes their sad desperate attempts at relevancy.”
The excerpt from Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” painted a picture of a chaotic campaign and White House run by staffers who were unprepared for their roles and who were constantly battling each other for Trump’s attention. The book also alleges that Melania Trump did not want Trump to win the White House and was upset when he won the race.
The first lady’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, denied that account in a statement.
“The book is clearly going to be sold in the bargain fiction section. Mrs. Trump supported her husband’s decision to run for President and in fact, encouraged him to do so. She was confident he would win and was very happy when he did,” Grisham said.
Trump’s response to the book was less measured and specifically took aim at Steve Bannon, who told Wolff that the infamous Trump Tower meeting Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner attended with a Kremlin-linked lawyer in June 2016 was “treasonous,” per The Guardian. In a Wednesday statement, Trump said that Bannon had “lost his mind” and claimed that he did little to help Trump win the presidency.
Michael Wolff (born August 27, 1953) is an Americanauthor, essayist, and journalist who is a regular columnist and contributor to USA Today, The Hollywood Reporter, and the UK edition of GQ.[1]
Michael Wolff was born in New Jersey, the son of Lewis A. Wolff, an advertising man, and Marguerite “Van” (Vanderwerf) Wolff (1925–2012), a newspaper reporter. He went to Columbia College of Columbia University in New York City. While a student at Columbia, he worked for The New York Times as a copy boy.
He published his first magazine article in the New York Times Magazine in 1974: a profile of Angela Atwood, a neighbor of his family. As a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, she helped kidnap Patricia Hearst. Shortly afterwards he left the Times and became a contributing writer to the New Times, a bi-weekly news magazine started by John Larsen and George Hirsch. Wolff’s first book was White Kids (1979), a collection of essays.
After publishing his first book, Wolff received an advance to write a novel, which he never finished. A college friend, Steven J. Hueglin, who had become a successful Wall Street banker, asked for Wolff’s help in evaluating investments in media companies. He pulled him into a career as a media business entrepreneur.[citation needed]
In 1988, Wolff took over the management of the magazine Campaigns & Elections. He became involved in advising start-up magazines, including Wired. He also raised financing for media companies and new businesses.[citation needed]
In 1991, he launched Michael Wolff & Company, Inc., specializing in book-packaging. Its first project, Where We Stand, was a book with a companion PBS series. The company’s next major project was creating one of the first guides to the Internet, albeit in book form. Net Guide was published by Random House.[2] On the eve of launching the title as a monthly magazine, the incipient magazine was bought by CMP Media, the publisher of computer magazines.[citation needed]
Wolff’s company continued to publish a succession of book-form Internet guides. In 1995, the company took a round of venture capital investment, with shareholders including Patricof & Co., the New York venture capitalfirm. It began to convert its print directories into a website and digital directory called Your Personal Network. At one point, the company was valued by bankers seeking to take the company public at more than $100 million. The venture collapsed in 1997, and Wolff was expelled from the company.[citation needed]
Wolff returned to writing, from which he had been absent for more than ten years, and recounted the details of the financing, positioning, personalities, and ultimate breakdown of a start-up Internet company. The book, Burn Rate, became a bestseller. Wolff briefly worked as a weekly columnist for The Industry Standard, an Internet trade magazine published by IDG.[3]
In August 1998, he was recruited by New York magazine to write a weekly column. Over the next six years, he wrote more than 300 columns, solidifying his reputation as provocative and knowledgeable writer about the media industry.[4] The entrepreneur Steven Brill, the media banker Steven Rattner, and the book publisher Judith Regan, were criticized by him.[5][6][7][8]
Wolff has been nominated for the National Magazine Award three times, winning twice.[9] His second National Magazine Award was for a series of columns he wrote from the media center in the Persian Gulf as the Iraq War started in 2003. His book, Autumn of the Moguls (2004), which predicted the mainstream media crisis that hit later in the decade, was based on many of his New York magazine columns.[10]
In 2004, when New York magazine’s owners, Primedia, Inc., put the title up for sale, Wolff helped assemble a group of investors, including New York Daily News publisher Mortimer Zuckerman, to back him in acquiring the magazine.[11][12] Although the group believed it had made a successful bid, Primedia decided to sell the magazine to the investment banker Bruce Wasserstein.[13]
In 2005, Wolff joined Vanity Fair as its media columnist.[14] In 2007, with Patrick Spain, the founder of Hoover’s, and Caroline Miller, the former editor-in-chief of New York magazine, he launched Newser, a news curator.[15]
That year, he also wrote a biography of Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News, based on more than 50 hours of conversation with Murdoch, and extensive access to his business associates and his family. The book was published in 2008.[16][17][not in citation given] That year he also began writing a daily column for Newser.[18]
In 2010, Wolff became editor of Adweek. He lasted in the job barely a year before stepping down.[19]
Wolff wrote Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, which will be released on January 9, 2018. After an excerpt was released online on January 3, the book reached number one on Amazon.com.[20]
Criticism
In its review of Wolff’s book Burn Rate, Brill’s Content criticized Wolff for “apparent factual errors” and said that 13 people, including subjects he mentioned, complained that Wolff had “invented or changed quotes”.[21]
In a 2004 cover story for The New Republic, Michelle Cottle wrote that Wolff was “uninterested in the working press,” preferring to focus on “the power players—the moguls” and was “fixated on culture, style, buzz, and money, money, money.” She also noted that “the scenes in his columns aren’t recreated so much as created—springing from Wolff’s imagination rather than from actual knowledge of events.” Calling his writing “a whirlwind of flourishes and tangents and asides that often stray so far from the central point that you begin to wonder whether there is a central point.”[22]
Wolff was married to Alison Anthoine, an attorney.[24] Wolff began divorce proceedings from Anthoine in 2009.[24] Since 2009, Wolff has been dating freelance writer Victoria Floethe.[25][26]
Books
The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch
A Liberal, Progressive and Socialist Opinion of the John Birch Society
A Personal History of the John Birch Society
1 Why Did I Write This Book?
Because of the accident of my birth, I watched the rise of the John Birch Society in the late 1950s and 60s. Because of my own experiences, I had to share the reality that John Birch ideas are dominating right wing politics today. Read more at http://www.claireconner.com.
2 I Never Hear About The Birchers, Aren’t They All Dead?
Follow me at http://www.claireconner.com. Read my blog, check out the family photo album and read all the endorsements of Wrapped in the Flag: A Personal History of America’s Radical Right, coming July 2 from Beacon Press. You can also share your ideas with me on facebook: Wrapped in the Flag by Claire Conner. I’m twittering @wrappedinflag.
3 What About The Koch Family And Why Do They Matter?
Say the word KOCH and people pay attention. Here’s a short version of their story from Fred Koch, an original John Birch Society member to today’s infamous David and Charles who are determined to change our government into a tiny, weak, powerless system where rich folks and businesses pay no taxes and face no regulations. Read more at http://www.claireconner.com.
4 What Do These People Want?
These right wingers have an agenda. Listen to this video to discover how wealthy men built tax free foundations based on Birch ideas and partnered with the religious right. Discover more about this powerful right wing coalition. You’ll learn much more about these folks in my book, Wrapped in the Flag: A Personal History of America’s Radical Right, coming July 2 from Beacon Press. You can pre-order today on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Indie Press. See more at http://www.claireconner.com.
5 Who Are The Birchers Today?
The lurch to the right in 2010 is the unholy coalition of Tea Party, libertarian, big business, the gun lobby, the religious right and the newly reborn John Birch Society. It took 50 years, but these folks are back and they are strong. See more at http://www.claireconner.com. In my new book, Wrapped in the Flag: A Personal History of America’s Radical Right (coming from Beacon Press on July 2, 2013), you be able to read all about this right wing gang.
6 Why Did You Reject John Birch Society Ideas?
The Antidote To Progressives, Socialists and Other Fellow Travelers
Ezra Taft Benson on The John Birch Society
This is an excerpt of an hour-long talk given in 1965 by Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson, just 4 years after having left the cabinet in Washington DC where he served the full 8 years (despite all predictions that he would be the first one in the cabinet to be removed given his severe anti-socialist policies). He sought to undo the bondage and destruction brought on by the New Deal as government now had moved far outside of it’s jurisdiction and constitutional bounds. Visit http://www.JBS.org for more information about The John Birch Society.
Mind blowing speech by Robert Welch in 1958
What Is the John Birch Society?
Betrayal Of The Constitution-An Expose of the Neo-Conservative Agenda
G. Edward Griffin Interviews the John Birch Society (1984)
Super rich are in a conspiracy to rule the world – G. Edward Griffin – 2007
The Quigley Formula – G. Edward Griffin lecture
G. Edward Griffin – The Collectivist Conspiracy
Alex Jones welcomes John Birch Society President John McManus 1/5
Alex Jones welcomes John Birch Society President John McManus 2/5
Alex Jones welcomes John Birch Society President John McManus 3/5
Alex Jones welcomes John Birch Society President John McManus 4/5
Alex Jones welcomes John Birch Society President John McManus 5/5
John Birch Society on the Illuminati and the New World Order
Robert Welch: The Truth in Time [Preview]
In this classic watershed presentation, Robert Welch, founder of The John Birch Society, significantly updates his worldview by introducing evidence that Communism is merely a tool of a much larger Conspiracy. He coins the term “Insiders” and outlines their relationship to international Communism. Filmed in 1966.
The Truth in Time by Robert Welch.flv
If You Want it Straight by Robert Welch
Alex Jones Ron Paul founded the Tea party and the Koch brothers fund it
Ron Paul’s Keynote Speech at the 50th Anniversary of JBS
John Birch Society CEO Arthur Thompson on the Article V Convention
John Birch Society CEO Art Thompson: The Dangers of Foreign Entanglements
Mark Levin’s Dangerous Constitutional Convention Proposal
Conspiracy Against the Independence of the American People
Betrayal of the Constitution: The Neocons Now Run the GOP | John F. McManus
Stand Up For Freedom
A classic 1966 message in which religious and patriotic leader Ezra Taft Benson challenges Americans to defend their freedom against the socialist currents now engulfing our country, and he defends the John Birch Society.
Story 1: Biden/Warren Democratic Ticket? — World Stock Markets Crash! — Trump Breaks New Ceiling in Polls — Trump A Leader — Political Elitist Establishment Panic — American People Want To Make America Great Again — Vidoes
Rudyard Kipling “If” Poem animation
(‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies)
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
Peter Schiff Economic Collapse Headed for U S in 2015
Will Wall Street’s rough week prove an overdue correction?
Keiser Report: $32 trillion in pointless trading (E799)
Gordon Chang on the China Problem
Gordon Chang – A Lot Of People Are Losing Substantial Amounts In China – 20 Aug 15 | Gazunda
Keiser Report: Planet Ponzi dwarfing world’s economy (E795)
Keiser Report: China Mainland MSM Myths (E704)
Is China’s Economy On The Verge Of Collapse?
Alex Jones & Max Keiser – American Economic Crisis! Dollar Collapse Imminent!
Why China is Panicking About the Stock Market Crash | China Uncensored
China Reality Check: Has the Hard Landing in China Already Started?
China’s economic growth rate fell to 7.4% in 2014, and many believe the official figure is actually more generous than the reality. Most forecasts expect growth to come in well under 7.0% in 2015. What are we to make of these trends? Are we at the beginning of a hard landing where the long history of structural inefficiencies are finally and inescapably being revealed and the possibilities of a financial crisis more ever looming? Or are we in a gradual shift toward a “new normal” of healthier and still relatively robust growth as a result of foresighted policy adjustments? Or is something else going on altogether? Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder of J Capital Research, is a veteran analyst of the China’s economy and economic policy process. She travels widely in China in order to compare official data with actual behavior and performance. Bob Davis of the Wall Street Journal is a leading expert on macroeconomic policy and recently completed an extended posting in Beijing, where he wrote regularly about China’s economy.
Why 99% of trading is pointless
Published: Aug 1, 2015
An astonishing $32 trillion in securities changes hands every year with no net positive impact for investors, charges Vanguard Group Founder John Bogle.
Meanwhile, corporate finance — the reason Wall Street exists — is just a tiny slice of the total business. The nation’s big investment banks probably could work for less than a week and take the rest of the year off with no real effect on the economy.
“The job of finance is to provide capital to companies. We do it to the tune of $250 billion a year in IPOs and secondary offerings,” Bogle told Time in an interview.
“What else do we do? We encourage investors to trade about $32 trillion a year. So the way I calculate it, 99% of what we do in this industry is people trading with one another, with a gain only to the middleman. It’s a waste of resources.”
Rent seekers
It’s a lot of money, $32 trillion. Nearly double the entire U.S. economy moving from one pocket to another, with a toll-taker in the middle. Most people refer to them as “stock brokers,” but let’s call them what they are — toll-takers and rent-seekers.
Rent-seeking as an occupation is as old as the hills. In exchange for working to build up credentials and relative fluency in the arcane rules of an industry, one gets to stand back from actual work and just collect money.
Ostensibly, the job of a financial adviser is to provide advice. Do you actually get that from your broker? It is worth anything?
Research shows, over and over, that stock brokers can’t do much of anything demonstrably valuable. They don’t know which stocks will go up or down and when. They don’t know which asset classes will outperform this year or next.
Nobody knows. That’s the point. If you’re among that small cadre of extremely high-level traders who can throw loads of cash at a short-term fluke, fantastic. If you have a mind for numbers like Warren Buffett that allows you to buy companies on the cheap and hold them forever, excellent.
If you’re a normal retirement investor trying to get from A to B and retire on time, well, you have a really big problem to face: The toll-taker wants your money.
Dead weight
So he needs you to trade — a lot. Because that’s how stock brokers make money. Not by doling out retirement advice, but by ensuring that your account is active and churning commissions on behalf of them and their employers.
What’s a highway with no traffic on it? If you’re a toll-taker, it’s a money loser. So Wall Street’s rent-seekers need traffic in the form of regular trading. An account that sits invested for months at a time with no trades is dead weight to them.
Nevertheless, as Bogle maintains, doing nothing is the key. “Don’t do something, just stand there!” he has often said.
A portfolio indexing approach to investing codifies Bogle’s time-tested and effective way of investing for retirement — without lining the pockets of toll-taking stock brokers along the way.
Trump widens lead over U.S. Republican presidential field: Reuters poll
By Emily Stephenson
Republican Donald Trump is pulling away from the pack in the race for the party’s U.S. presidential nomination, widening his lead over his closest rivals in the past week, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Friday.
Republican voters show no signs they are growing weary of the brash real estate mogul, who has dominated political headlines and the 17-strong Republican presidential field with his tough talk about immigration and insults directed at his political rivals. The candidates are vying to be nominated to represent their party in the November 2016 general election.
Nearly 32 percent of Republicans surveyed online said they backed Trump, up from 24 percent a week earlier, the opinion poll found. Trump had nearly double the support of his closest competitor, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who got 16 percent. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson was third at 8 percent.
Even when Trump was pitted directly in the poll against just his top two competitors, 44 percent backed him. Bush won about 29 percent of respondents, and Carson 25 percent.
“He’s not taking any guff from anybody,” Dewey Stedman, 70, a Republican from East Wenatchee, Washington, said of the publicity-loving billionaire. “If you don’t have something in your brains, you’re not going to have billions of dollars.”
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U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gives a thumbs up to supporters as he is driven …
Trump has driven the debate on the campaign trail with a hard-line immigration plan that calls for the deportation of undocumented immigrants, amendment of the Constitution to end automatic citizenship for all people born in the United States, and construction of a wall along the border with Mexico.
He also has feuded with Bush and other rivals while boasting he could easily beat Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s campaign momentum has paid off with bigger crowds on the campaign trail. On Friday night, he moved a planned rally in Mobile, Alabama, to a football stadium seating more than 40,000.
“It is an appeal to people that are just aggravated about what’s going on,” Republican strategist Rich Galen said, adding that Trump is a “novelty act” that voters will tire of.
Friday’s results in the online rolling opinion poll are based on a survey of 501 Republicans and have a credibility interval of plus or minus 5 percent.
Separate results found Clinton leading among Democrats, though support for her dipped below 50 percent to 48.5 percent.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont came in second in the poll of 625 Democrats, followed by Vice President Joe Biden, who has not entered the race. That survey had a credibility interval of plus or minus 4.5 percent.
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has one less thing to worry about. News Corp announced in February 2015 that the U.S. Department of Justice had finished its investigation related to the phone-hacking charges at Murdoch’ newspapers in London and would not prosecute News Corp or 21st Century Fox. On the management front, in March 2014 he got his sons Lachlan and James appointed to top positions at News Corporation and 21st Century Fox, ensuring that his legacy will live on. He also tried, and failed, to acquire Time Warner in what would have been an $80 billion mega-deal. Meanwhile Murdoch, who gave ex-wife Wendi Deng their Fifth Avenue apartment along with a residence in Beijing, bought himself a $57 million bachelor pad in Manhattan in 2014. He then sold his Beverly Hills estate for $30 million, reportedly to his son, James. Australian born, Murdoch inherited two Adelaide newspapers at age 22 after his father’s sudden death. The Murdoch empire includes 120 newspapers in at least five countries (including The Wall Street Journal), a massive cable network comprised of the Fox channels in the U.S. and across Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia, one of the largest movie studios with 21st Century Fox, book publishing powerhouse HarperCollins, and a broadcasting and satellite TV arm.
Media magnate Rupert Murdoch is the founder and head of News Corporation, a global media conglomerate. He created FOX Broadcasting Company in 1986.
Synopsis
Rupert Murdoch was born on March 11, 1931, in Melbourne, Australia. His father was a famous war correspondent and newspaper publisher. Murdoch inherited his father’s papers, the Sunday Mail and the News, and continued to purchase other media outlets over the years. In the 1970s, he started buying American newspapers. Murdoch branched out into entertainment with the purchase of 20th Century Fox Film Corp. in 1985. He later launched his own cable news channel, FOX News.
Early Life and Career
Keith Rupert Murdoch was born on March 11, 1931, on a small farm about 30 miles south of Melbourne, Australia. Since birth, Murdoch has gone by his middle name, Rupert, the name of his maternal grandfather. His father, Keith Murdoch, was a well-known Australian journalist who owned a number of local and regional newspapers: the Herald in Melbourne, the Courier-Mail in Brisbane, and the News and Sunday Mail.
The family farm was named Cruden Farm, after the Scottish village from which both of Murdoch’s parents had emigrated. The house at Cruden Farm was a stone building with colonial pillars, adorned with original paintings, a grand piano and a library of books, situated amongst green expanses of farmland and bordered by Ghost Gum trees. Murdoch’s favorite childhood pastime was horseback riding. His mother later described her son’s childhood: “I think it was a very normal childhood, not in any way elaborate or an overindulged one. I suppose he was lucky to be brought up in attractive—you could say aesthetic—surroundings.”
The son of a well-respected journalist, Murdoch was groomed to enter the world of publishing from a very young age. He remembers, “I was brought up in a publishing home, a newspaper man’s home, and was excited by that, I suppose. I saw that life at close range, and after the age of ten or twelve never really considered any other.” Murdoch graduated from Geelong Grammar, a prestigious Australian boarding school, in 1949 before crossing the ocean to attend Worcester College at Oxford University in England. According to one of his early biographers, Murdoch was a “a normal, red-blooded college student who had many friends, chased girls, went on the usual drinking binges, engaged in slapdash horseplay, tried at sports and never had enough money, no doubt due to his gambling.” Murdoch’s fun-loving youthful ways came to an abrupt end when his father suddenly passed away in 1952, leaving his son the owner of his Adelaide newspapers, theNews and the Sunday Mail. After preparing himself with a brief apprenticeship under Lord Beaverbrook at the Daily Express in London, in 1953, a 22-year-old Murdoch returned to Australia to take up the reins of his father’s papers.
Media Mogul
Immediately upon assuming control of the Sunday Mail and the News, Murdoch immersed himself in all aspects of the papers’ daily operations. He wrote headlines, redesigned page layouts and labored in the typesetting and printing rooms. He quickly converted the News into a chronicle of crime, sex and scandal, and while these changes were controversial, the paper’s circulation soared. Only three years later, in 1956, Murdoch expanded his operations by purchasing the Perth-based Sunday Times, and revamped it in the sensationalist style of the News. Then, in 1960, Murdoch broke into the lucrative Sydney market by purchasing the struggling afternoon daily, theMirror, and slowly transforming it into Sydney’s best-selling afternoon paper. Encouraged by his success and harboring ambitions of political influence, in 1965 Murdoch founded Australia’s first national daily paper, the Australian, which helped to rebuild Murdoch’s image as a respectable news publisher.
In the fall of 1968, 37 years old and owner of an Australian news empire valued at $50 million, Murdoch moved to London and purchased the enormously popular Sunday tabloid, The News of the World. One year later, he purchased a struggling daily tabloid, the Sun, once again transformed the paper into a wild success with his formula of reporting heavily on sex, sports and crime. The Sun also attracted readers by including pictures of topless women in its infamous “Page 3” feature.
Murdoch next expanded his news empire to the United States, with the 1973 acquisition of a Texas-based tabloid, the San Antonio News. As he had done in Australia and England, Murdoch quickly set out to expand across the country, founding a national tabloid, the Star, in 1974 and purchasing theNew York Post in 1976. In 1979, Murdoch founded News Corporation, commonly referred to as News Corp., as a holding company for his various media properties.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Murdoch acquired news outlets around the globe at a dizzying pace. In the United States, he bought up the Chicago Sun-Times, the Village Voice and New York magazine. In England, he acquired the eminently respectable Times and Sunday Times of London.
It was also during these years that Murdoch began expanding his media empire into television and entertainment. In 1985, he purchased 20th Century FOX Film Corporation as well as several independent television stations and consolidated these companies into FOX, Inc.—which has since become a major American television network. In 1990, he founded STAR TV, a Hong Kong-based television broadcasting company that broadcasts to over 320 million viewers across Asia. Throughout the late 1980s, he purchased several prestigious American and British academic and literary publishing companies and consolidated them into HarperCollins in 1990. Murdoch has also invested in sports; he is a part owner of the Los Angeles Kings NHL franchise, the Los Angeles Lakers NBA franchise and the Staples Center, as well as FOX Sports Radio and FOXSports.com.
Later Career
With the dawn of the new century, Murdoch continued to expand News Corp’s holdings to control more and more of the media people view on a daily basis. In 2005, he purchased Intermix Media, the owner of the popular social networking site MySpace.com. Two years later, in 2007, the longtime newspaper mogul made headlines himself with the purchase of Dow Jones, the owner of the Wall Street Journal.
Murdoch has drawn wide criticism for monopolizing control over international media outlets as well as for his conservative political views, which are often reflected in the reporting of Murdoch-controlled outlets such as FOX News Channel. In the 2010 American midterm elections, News Corp donated $1 million each to the Republican Governors Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a group supporting Republican candidates. Critics argued that the owner of major news sources covering the election should not contribute directly to the political campaigns involved.
His empire, however, was dealt a significant blow in 2011. His London tabloid, The News of the World, was caught up in a phone hacking scandal. Several editors and journalists were brought up on charges for illegally accessing the voicemails of some of Britain’s leading figures. Rupert himself was called to testify that same year, and he shut down The News of the World. News Corp later paid damages to some of individuals who were hacked.
Despite this scandal, News Corp retains a significant share of virtually all forms of media across the globe. Murdoch owns many of the books and newspapers people read, the television shows and films they watch, the radio stations they listen to, the websites they visit, and the blogs and social networks they create. In 2013, he announced a significant restructuring of his empire. Murdoch decided to divide his business into two companies—21st Century Fox Inc. and News Corp. This move separated his entertainment holdings from his publishing interests. According to the Los Angeles Times, Murdoch explained that “Both companies will be uniquely positioned to execute on their respective strategic objectives and to lead their industries forward.”
Although he could never have imagined the power he would one day yield, this kind of influence was exactly what Murdoch sought as a young publisher building his empire. “I sensed the excitement and the power,” he recalls. “Not raw power, but the ability to influence at least the agenda of what was going on.” And after six decades working in the media, Murdoch has said that he could not imagine his life any other way. “If you’re in the media, particularly newspapers, you are in the thick of all the interesting things that are going on in a community, and I can’t imagine any other life that one would want to dedicate oneself to,” he said.
In June 2015, news broke that Murdoch would be handing over the leadership of 21st Century Fox to his son James. James would become the company’s chief executive while Murdoch would stay on in the organization as the executive co-chairman. Murdoch would share this position with his oldest son Lachlan. The company’s board must approve this plan before it can be implemented.
Personal Life
Rupert Murdoch married Patricia Booker in 1956. They had a daughter, Prudence, before divorcing in 1965. He married Anna Torv in 1967, and they had four children before eventually divorcing in 1999. Only 17 days after his second divorce, Murdoch married his third wife, Wendi Deng. They have two children.
Murdoch filed for divorce from Deng in June 2013, citing that the “relationship between husband and wife had broken down irretrievably” in court papers. The news of the split came as a surprise to some, but there had some rumors of trouble in the marriage in recent years. The couple has a prenuptial agreement, but many have speculated that there may still be a battle for his billions.
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Rupert Murdoch
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rupert Murdoch
Murdoch at Les Misérables premiere in Sydney, on 21 December 2012
In the 1950s and ’60s, he acquired various newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, before expanding into the United Kingdom in 1969, taking over the News of the World followed closely by The Sun. He moved to New York City in 1974 to expand into the US market, but retained interests in Australia and Britain. In 1981, he boughtThe Times, his first British broadsheet, and became a naturalised US citizen in 1985 to satisfy the legal requirement for US television ownership.[9]
In 1986, keen to adopt newer electronic publishing technologies, he consolidated his UK printing operations in Wapping, causing bitter industrial disputes. His News Corporation acquired Twentieth Century Fox (1985), HarperCollins (1989)[14] and The Wall Street Journal (2007). He formed the British broadcaster BSkyB in 1990, and during the 1990s expanded into Asian networks and South American television. By 2000, Murdoch’s News Corporation owned over 800 companies in more than 50 countries with a net worth of over $5 billion.
In July 2011, Murdoch faced allegations that his companies, including the News of the World, owned by News Corporation, had been regularly hacking the phones of celebrities, royalty and public citizens. He faces police and government investigations into bribery and corruption by the British government and FBI investigations in the US.[15][16] On 21 July 2012, Murdoch resigned as a director of News International.[17][18] On July 1, 2015, Murdoch left his post as CEO of 21st Century Fox.[19]
Early life
Murdoch was born Keith Rupert Murdoch on 11 March 1931 in Melbourne, Australia to Sir Keith Murdoch (1885–1952) and Elisabeth Joy Greene (1909–2012), daughter of Rupert Greene. Rupert is of English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. His parents were also born in Melbourne. Keith Murdoch was a war correspondent and later a regional newspaper magnate owning two newspapers in Adelaide, South Australia, and a radio station in a faraway mining town.[9] Later in life, Keith Rupert chose to use Rupert, the first name of his maternal grandfather.
Keith Murdoch the elder asked for a rendezvous with his future wife after seeing her debutante photograph in one of his own newspapers and they married in 1928, when she was aged 19 and he 23 years her senior.[20] In addition to Rupert, the couple had three daughters: Janet Calvert-Jones, Anne Kantor and Helen Handbury (1929–2004). Murdoch attended Geelong Grammar School,[21] where he had his first experience of editing a publication, being co-editor of the school’s official journal The Corian and editor of the student journal If Revived.[22][23] He also took his school’s cricket team to the National Junior Finals. He worked part-time at the Melbourne Heraldand was groomed by his father from an early age to take over the family business.[6][9] Murdoch read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Worcester College, Oxford in England, where he supported the Labour Party[6] and managed Oxford Student Publications Limited, the publishing house of Cherwell.[24] After her husband’s death from cancer in 1952, Elisabeth Murdoch went on to invest herself in charity work, as life governor of the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne and establishing the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. At 102 (in 2011), she had 74 descendants.[20] Murdoch completed an MA before working as a sub-editor with the Daily Express for two years.[9]
Activities in Australia and New Zealand
Journalist Sir Keith Murdoch (1885–1952), Rupert Murdoch’s father
Following his father’s death, when he was 21, Murdoch returned from Oxford to take charge of the family business News Limited, which had been established in 1923. Rupert Murdoch turned its newspaper, Adelaide News, its main asset, into a major success.[6] He began to direct his attention to acquisition and expansion, buying the troubled Sunday Times in Perth, Western Australia (1956) and over the next few years acquiring suburban and provincial newspapers in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and the Northern Territory, including the Sydney afternoon tabloid, The Daily Mirror (1960). The Economist describes Murdoch as “inventing the modern tabloid”,[25] as he developed a pattern for his newspapers, increasing sports and scandal coverage and adopting eye-catching headlines.[9]
Murdoch’s first foray outside Australia involved the purchase of a controlling interest in the New Zealand daily The Dominion. In January 1964, while touring New Zealand with friends in a rented Morris Minor after sailing across the Tasman, Murdoch read of a takeover bid for the Wellington paper by the British-based Canadian newspaper magnate, Lord Thomson of Fleet. On the spur of the moment, he launched a counter-bid. A four-way battle for control ensued in which the 32-year-old Murdoch was ultimately successful.[26] Later in 1964, Murdoch launched The Australian, Australia’s first national daily newspaper, which was based first in Canberra and later in Sydney.[27] In 1972, Murdoch acquired the Sydney morning tabloid The Daily Telegraph from Australian media mogul Sir Frank Packer, who later regretted selling it to him.[28] In 1984, Murdoch was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for services to publishing.[29]
In 1999, Murdoch significantly expanded his music holdings in Australia by acquiring the controlling share in a leading Australian independent label, Michael Gudinski‘s Mushroom Records; he merged that with Festival Records, and the result was Festival Mushroom Records (FMR). Both Festival and FMR were managed by Murdoch’s son James Murdoch for several years.[30]
Political activities in Australia
Murdoch found a political ally in John McEwen, leader of the Australian Country Party (now known as the National Party of Australia), who was governing in coalition with the larger Menzies-Holt Liberal Party. From the very first issue of The Australian Murdoch began taking McEwen’s side in every issue that divided the long-serving coalition partners. (The Australian, 15 July 1964, first edition, front page: “Strain in Cabinet, Liberal-CP row flares.”) It was an issue that threatened to split the coalition government and open the way for the stronger Australian Labor Party to dominate Australian politics. It was the beginning of a long campaign that served McEwen well.[31]
After McEwen and Menzies retired, Murdoch threw his growing power behind the Australian Labor Party under the leadership of Gough Whitlam and duly saw it elected[32] on a social platform that included universal free health care, free education for all Australians to tertiary level, recognition of the People’s Republic of China, and public ownership of Australia’s oil, gas and mineral resources. Rupert Murdoch’s backing of Whitlam turned out to be brief. Murdoch had already started his short-lived National Star[31] newspaper in America, and was seeking to strengthen his political contacts there.[33]
Asked about the Australian federal election, 2007 at News Corporation’s annual general meeting in New York on 19 October 2007, its chairman Rupert Murdoch said, “I am not commenting on anything to do withAustralian politics. I’m sorry. I always get into trouble when I do that.” Pressed as to whether he believed Prime Minister John Howard should continue as prime minister, he said: “I have nothing further to say. I’m sorry. Read our editorials in the papers. It’ll be the journalists who decide that – the editors.”[34] In 2009, in response to accusations by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd that News Limited was running vendettas against him and his government, Murdoch opined that Rudd was “oversensitive”.[35] Murdoch described Howard’s successor, Labor Party Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, as “…more ambitious to lead the world [in tackling climate change] than to lead Australia…” and criticised Rudd’s expansionary fiscal policies in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 as unnecessary.[36] Although News Limited’s interests are extensive, also including the Daily Telegraph, the Courier-Mail and the Adelaide Advertiser, it was suggested by the commentator Mungo MacCallum in The Monthly that “the anti-Rudd push, if coordinated at all, was almost certainly locally driven” as opposed to being directed by Murdoch, who also took a different position from local editors on such matters as climate change and stimulus packages to combat the financial crisis.[37]
In 1968 Murdoch entered the British newspaper market with his acquisition of the populist News of the World, followed in 1969 with the purchase of the struggling daily broadsheet The Sun from IPC.[38] Murdoch turned The Sun into a tabloid format and reduced costs by using the same printing press for both newspapers. On acquiring it, he appointed Albert ‘Larry’ Lamb as editor and – Lamb recalled later – told him: “I want a tearaway paper with lots of tits in it”. In 1997 The Sun attracted 10 million daily readers.[9] In 1981, Murdoch acquired the struggling Times and Sunday Times from Canadian newspaper publisher Lord Thomson of Fleet.[38] Ownership of The Times came to him through his relationship with Lord Thomson, who had grown tired of losing money on it as a result of much industrial action that stopped publication.[39] In the light of success and expansion at The Sun the owners believed that Murdoch could turn the papers around. Harold Evans, Editor of the Sunday Times from 1967, was made head of the daily Times, though he stayed only a year amid editorial conflict with Murdoch.[40][41]
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Murdoch’s publications were generally supportive of Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.[42] At the end of the Thatcher/Major era, Murdoch switched his support to the Labour Party and its leader, Tony Blair. The closeness of his relationship with Blair and their secret meetings to discuss national policies was to become a political issue in Britain.[43] This later changed, with The Sun, in its English editions, publicly renouncing the ruling Labour government and lending its support to David Cameron‘sConservative Party, which soon afterwards formed a coalition government. In Scotland, where the Tories had yet to recover from their complete annihilation in 1997, the paper began to endorse the Scottish National Party (though not yet its flagship policy of independence), which soon after came to form the first ever outright majority in the proportionally elected Scottish Parliament. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s official spokesman said in November 2009 that Brown and Murdoch “were in regular communication” and that “there is nothing unusual in the prime minister talking to Rupert Murdoch”.[44]
In 1986, Murdoch introduced electronic production processes to his newspapers in Australia, Britain and the United States. The greater degree of automation led to significant reductions in the number of employees involved in the printing process. In England, the move roused the anger of the print unions, resulting in a long and often violent dispute that played out in Wapping, one of London’s docklands areas, where Murdoch had installed the very latest electronic newspaper purpose-built publishing facility in an old warehouse.[45] The bitter dispute at Wapping started with the dismissal of 6,000 employees who had gone on strike and resulted in street battles and demonstrations. Many on the political left in Britain alleged the collusion of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government with Murdoch in the Wapping affair, as a way of damaging the British trade union movement.[46][47][48] In 1987, the dismissed workers accepted a settlement of £60 million.[9]
Murdoch’s British-based satellite network, Sky Television, incurred massive losses in its early years of operation. As with many of his other business interests, Sky was heavily subsidised by the profits generated by his other holdings, but convinced rival satellite operator British Satellite Broadcasting to accept a merger on his terms in 1990.[9] They were quick to see the advantages of direct to home (DTH) satellite broadcasting that did not require costly cable networks and the merged company, BSkyB, has dominated the British pay-TV market ever since.[49] By 1996, BSkyB had more than 3.6 million subscribers, triple the number of cable customers in the UK.[9] British financier Lord Jacob Rothschild, a close Murdoch friend since the 1960s, served as deputy chairman of Murdoch’s BSkyB corporation from 2003–2007, and Murdoch jointly invested with Rothschild in a 5.5 percent stake in Genie Oil and Gas, which conducted shale gas and oil exploration in Israel.[50]
In response to print media’s decline and the increasing influence of online journalism during the 2000s, Murdoch proclaimed his support of the micropayments model for obtaining revenue from on-line news,[51]although this has been criticised by some.[52]
The Labour Party, from when Tony Blair became leader in 1994, had moved from the Left to a more central position on many economic issues prior to 1997. Murdoch identifies himself as a libertarian, saying “What does libertarian mean? As much individual responsibility as possible, as little government as possible, as few rules as possible. But I’m not saying it should be taken to the absolute limit.”[55]
In a 2005 speech delivered in New York, Murdoch said that Blair described the BBC coverage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster as being full of hatred of America.[56]
In 1998, Rupert Murdoch made an attempt to buy the football club Manchester United F.C.,[57] with an offer of £625 million, but this failed. It was the largest amount ever offered for a sports club. It was blocked by the United Kingdom’s Competition Commission, which stated that the acquisition would have “hurt competition in the broadcast industry and the quality of British football”.
On 28 June 2006 the BBC reported that Murdoch and News Corporation were considering backing new Conservative leaderDavid Cameron at the next General Election – still up to four years away.[58] In a later interview in July 2006, when he was asked what he thought of the Conservative leader, Murdoch replied “Not much”.[59] In a 2009 blog, it was suggested that in the aftermath of the News of the World phone hacking scandal which is still ongoing in 2012 and might yet have Transatlantic implications[60] Murdoch and News Corporation might have decided to back Cameron.[61] Despite this, there had already been a convergence of interests between the two men over the muting of Britain’s communications regulator Ofcom.[62]
In 2006, Britain’s Independent newspaper reported that Murdoch would offer Tony Blair a senior role in his global media company News Corporation when the prime minister stood down from office.[63]
He is accused by former Solidarity MSPTommy Sheridan of having a personal vendetta against him and of conspiring with MI5 to produce a video of him confessing to having affairs – allegations over which Sheridan had previously sued News International and won.[64] On being arrested for perjury following the case, Sheridan claimed that the charges were “orchestrated and influenced by the powerful reach of the Murdoch empire”.[65]
In August 2008, British Conservative leader and future Prime Minister David Cameron accepted free flights to hold private talks and attend private parties with Murdoch on his yacht, the Rosehearty.[66] Cameron has declared in the Commons register of interests he accepted a private plane provided by Murdoch’s son-in-law, public relations guru Matthew Freud; Cameron has not revealed his talks with Murdoch. The gift of travel in Freud’s Gulfstream IV private jet was valued at around £30,000. Other guests attending the “social events” included the then EU trade commissioner Lord Mandelson, the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and co-chairman of NBC UniversalBen Silverman. The Conservatives have not disclosed what was discussed.[67]
In July 2011, it emerged that Cameron met key executives of Murdoch’s News Corporation 26 times during the 14 months that Cameron had served as Prime Minister.[68] It was also reported that Murdoch had given Cameron a personal guarantee that there would be no risk attached to hiring Andy Coulson, the former editor of News of the World, as the Conservative Party’s communication director in 2007.[69] This was in spite of Coulson having resigned as editor over phone hacking by a reporter. Cameron chose to take Murdoch’s advice, despite warnings from Nick Clegg, Lord Ashdown and The Guardian.[70] Coulson resigned his post in 2011 and was later arrested and questioned on allegations of further criminal activity at The News of the World, specifically the News International phone hacking scandal. As a result of the subsequent trial, Coulson was sentenced to 18 months in jail.[71]
In July 2011 Rupert Murdoch, along with his son James, provided testimony before a British parliamentary committee regarding phone hacking. In the U.K., his media empire remains under fire as investigators continue to probe reports of other phone hacking.[72]
On 14 July, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the House of Commons served a summons on Murdoch, his son James, and his former CEO Rebekah Brooks to testify before a committee on 19 July.[73] After an initial refusal, the Murdochs confirmed they would attend after the committee issued them a summons to Parliament.[74] The day before the committee, the website of the News Corporation publication The Sunwas hacked, and a false story was posted on the front page claiming that Murdoch had died.[75] Murdoch described the day of the committee “the most humble day of my life”. He argued that since he ran a global business of 53,000 employees and that the News of the World was “just 1%” of this, he was not ultimately responsible for what went on at the tabloid. He added that he had not considered resigning,[76] and that he and the other top executives had been completely unaware of the hacking.[77][78]
On 15 July, Murdoch attended a private meeting in London with the family of Milly Dowler, where he personally apologized for the hacking of their murdered daughter’s voicemail by a company he owns.[79][80] On 16 and 17 July, News International published two full-page apologies in many of Britain’s national newspapers. The first apology took the form of a letter, signed by Rupert Murdoch, in which he said sorry for the “serious wrongdoing” that occurred. The second was titled “Putting right what’s gone wrong”, and gave more detail about the steps News International was taking to address the public’s concerns.[80] In the wake of the allegations Murdoch accepted the resignations of Rebekah Brooks, head of Murdoch’s British operations, and Les Hinton, head of Dow Jones who was chairman of Murdoch’s British newspaper division when some of the abuses happened. They both deny any knowledge of any wrongdoing under their command.[81]
On 27 February 2012, the following day after Murdoch’s controversial release of the Sun on Sunday, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers informed the Leveson Inquiry that police are investigating a “network of corrupt officials” as part of their inquiries into phone hacking and police corruption. She said that evidence suggested a “culture of illegal payments” at the Sun newspaper and that these payments allegedly made by the Sun were authorised at a senior level.[82]
In testimony on 25 April 2012, Murdoch did not deny the quote attributed to him by his former editor of The Sunday Times, Harold Evans: “I give instructions to my editors all round the world, why shouldn’t I in London?”[83][84] On 1 May 2012, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee issued a report stating that Murdoch was “not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company”.[85][86]
On 3 July 2013 Exaro and Channel 4 news broke the story of a secretly recorded tape. The tape was recorded by Sun journalists and in it Murdoch can be heard telling them that the whole investigation was one big fuss over nothing, and that he, or his successors, would take care of any journalists who went to prison.[87] He said: “Why are the police behaving in this way? It’s the biggest inquiry ever, over next to nothing.”[88]
Activities in the United States
Murdoch made his first acquisition in the United States in 1973, when he purchased the San Antonio Express-News. Soon afterwards, he founded Star, a supermarket tabloid, and in 1976, he purchased the New York Post.[9] On 4 September 1985, Murdoch became a naturalized citizen to satisfy the legal requirement that only US citizens were permitted to own US television stations. This resulted in Murdoch losing his Australian citizenship.[89][90]
Marvin Davis sold Marc Rich‘s interest in 20th Century Fox to Murdoch for $250 million in March 1984. Davis later backed out of a deal with Murdoch to purchase John Kluge‘s Metromedia television stations.[91]Murdoch went alone and bought the stations, and later bought out Davis’ remaining stake in Fox for $325 million.[91] The six television stations owned by Metromedia would form the nucleus of the Fox Broadcasting Company, founded on 9 October 1986, which would go on to have great success with programmes such as The Simpsons and The X-Files.[9]
In 1987 in Australia, he bought The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd, the company that his father had once managed. By 1990 News Corporation had built up debts of $7 billion (much from Sky TV in the UK).[9] forcing Murdoch to sell many of the American magazine interests he had acquired in the mid-1980s. In 1993, it took exclusive coverage of the National Football League (NFL) from CBS and increased programming to seven days a week.[92] In 1995, Murdoch’s Fox Network became the object of scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), when it was alleged that News Ltd.’s Australian base made Murdoch’s ownership of Fox illegal. However, the FCC ruled in Murdoch’s favour, stating that his ownership of Fox was in the best interests of the public. That same year, Murdoch announced a deal with MCI Communicationsto develop a major news website and magazine, The Weekly Standard. Also that year, News Corporation launched the Foxtel pay television network in Australia in partnership with Telstra. In 1996, Murdoch decided to enter the cable news market with the Fox News Channel, a 24-hourcable news station. Ratings studies released in 2009 showed that the network was responsible for nine of the top ten programs in the “Cable News” category at that time.[93] Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner (founder and former owner of CNN) are long-standing rivals.[94] In late 2003, Murdoch acquired a 34 percent stake in Hughes Electronics, the operator of the largest American satellite TV system, DirecTV, from General Motors for $6 billion (USD).[29] His Fox movie studio would go on to have global hits with Titanic and Avatar.[95]
In 2004, Murdoch announced that he was moving News Corporation headquarters from Adelaide, Australia to the United States. Choosing a US domicile was designed to ensure that American fund managers could purchase shares in the company, since many were deciding not to buy shares in non-US companies.[citation needed]
News Corporation logo
On 20 July 2005, News Corporation bought Intermix Media Inc., which held Myspace, Imagine Games Network and other social networking-themed websites, for $580 million USD, making Murdoch a major player in online media concerns.[96] In June 2011, it sold off Myspace for US$35 million.[97] On 11 September 2005, News Corporation announced that it would buy IGN Entertainment for $650 million (USD).[98]
In May 2007, Murdoch made a $5 billion offer to purchase Dow Jones. At the time, the Bancroft family, who had owned the Dow Jones for 105 years and controlled 64% of the shares at the time, declined the offer. Later, the Bancroft family confirmed a willingness to consider a sale. Besides Murdoch, the Associated Press reported that supermarket magnate Ron Burkle and Internet entrepreneur Brad Greenspan were among the other interested parties.[99] In 2007, Murdoch acquired Dow Jones,[100][101] which gave him such publications as The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s Magazine, the Far Eastern Economic Review (based in Hong Kong) and SmartMoney.[102]
In June 2014, Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox made a bid for Time Warner at $85 per share in stock and cash ($80 billion total) which Time Warner’s board of directors turned down in July. Warner’s CNN unit would have been sold to ease antitrust issues of the purchase.[103] On 5 August 2014 the company announced it had withdrawn its offer for Time Warner, and said it would spend $6 billion buying back its own shares over the following 12 months.[104]
Political activities in the United States
McNight (2010) identifies four characteristics of his media operations: free market ideology; unified positions on matters of public policy; global editorial meetings; and opposition to a liberal bias in other public media.[105]
On 8 May 2006, the Financial Times reported that Murdoch would be hosting a fund-raiser for Senator Hillary Clinton‘s (D-New York) Senate re-election campaign.[106] In a 2008 interview with Walt Mossberg, Murdoch was asked whether he had “anything to do with the New York Post‘s endorsement of Barack Obama in the democratic primaries.” Without hesitating, Murdoch replied, “Yeah. He is a rock star. It’s fantastic. I love what he is saying about education. I don’t think he will win Florida… but he will win in Ohio and the election. I am anxious to meet him. I want to see if he will walk the walk.”[107][108] Murdoch is a strong supporter of Israel and its domestic policies.[109]
Murdoch is a supporter of more open immigration policies in western nations generally.[116] In the United States, Murdoch and chief executives from several major corporations, including Hewlett-Packard, Boeing andDisney joined New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to form the Partnership for a New American Economy to advocate “for immigration reform – including a path to legal status for all illegal aliens now in the United States.”[117] The coalition, reflecting Murdoch and Bloomberg’s own views, also advocates significant increases in legal immigration to the United States as a means of boosting America’s sluggish economy and lowering unemployment. The Partnership’s immigration policy prescriptions are notably similar to those of the Cato Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—both of which Murdoch has supported in the past.[118]
The Wall Street Journal editorial page has similarly advocated for increased legal immigration, in contrast to the staunch anti-immigration stance of Murdoch’s British newspaper, The Sun.[119] On 5 September 2010, Murdoch testified before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law Membership on the “Role of Immigration in Strengthening America’s Economy.” In his testimony, Murdoch called for ending mass deportations and endorsed a “comprehensive immigration reform” plan that would include a pathway to citizenship for all illegal immigrants.[117]
In the 2012 U.S. Presidential election, Murdoch was critical of the competence of Mitt Romney‘s team but was nonetheless strongly supportive of a Republican victory, tweeting: “Of course I want him [Romney] to win, save us from socialism, etc.”[120]
Murdoch owns controlling interest in Sky Italia, a satellite television provider in Italy.[123] Murdoch’s business interests in Italy have been a source of contention since they began.[123] In 2010 Murdoch won a media dispute with then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. A judge ruled the then Prime Minister’s media arm Mediaset prevented News Corporation’s Italian unit, Sky Italia, from buying advertisements on its television networks.[124]
Activities in Asia
In 1993, Murdoch acquired Star TV, a Hong Kong company founded by Richard Li[125] for $1 billion (Souchou, 2000:28), and subsequently set up offices for it throughout Asia. The deal enables News International to broadcast from Hong Kong to India, China, Japan and over thirty other countries in Asia, becoming one of the biggest satellite TV networks in the east.[9] However, the deal did not work out as Murdoch had planned, because the Chinese government placed restrictions on it that prevented it from reaching most of China.
In 1956 Murdoch married Patricia Booker, a former shop assistant and flight attendant from Melbourne and they had their only child, Prudence, in 1958.[126][127] Rupert and Patricia Murdoch divorced in 1967.[5]
On 25 June 1999, 17 days after divorcing his second wife, Murdoch, then aged 68, married Chinese-born Wendi Deng.[131] She was 30, a recent Yale School of Managementgraduate, and a newly appointed vice-president of his STAR TV. Murdoch has two daughters with her; Grace (born 2001) and Chloe (born 2003). Rupert Murdoch has six children in all, and is grandfather to thirteen grandchildren.[132] On 13 June 2013, a News Corporation spokesperson confirmed that Murdoch filed for divorce from Deng in New York City, U.S.[133] According to the spokesman, the marriage had been irretrievably broken for more than six months.[134] Murdoch also ended his long-standing relationship with Tony Blair after suspecting him of having an affair with Deng while they were still married.[135]
Children
Murdoch has six children.[136] His eldest child, Prudence MacLeod, was appointed on 28 January 2011 to the board of Times Newspapers Ltd, part of News International, which publishes The Times and The Sunday Times.[137] Murdoch’s eldest son Lachlan, formerly the deputy chief operating officer at the News Corporation and the publisher of the New York Post, was Murdoch’s heir apparent before resigning from his executive posts at the global media company at the end of July 2005.[136] Lachlan’s departure left James Murdoch chief executive of the satellite television service British Sky Broadcasting since November 2003, as the only Murdoch son still directly involved with the company’s operations, though Lachlan has agreed to remain on the News Corporation’s board.[138]
After graduating from Vassar College[139] and marrying classmate Elkin Kwesi Pianim (the son of Ghanaian financial and political mogul Kwame Pianim) in 1993,[139] Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, along with her husband, purchased a pair of NBC-affiliate television stations in California, KSBW and KSBY, with a $35 million loan provided by her father. By quickly re-organising and re-selling them at a $12 million profit in 1995, Elisabeth emerged as an unexpected rival to her brothers for the eventual leadership of the publishing dynasty’s empire. But after divorcing her first husband in 1998 and quarrelling publicly with her assigned mentorSam Chisholm at BSkyB, she struck out on her own as a television and film producer in London. She has since enjoyed independent success, in conjunction with her second husband, Matthew Freud, the great-grandson of Sigmund Freud (the founder of psychoanalysis) whom she met in 1997 and married in 2001.[139]
It is not known how long Murdoch will remain as News Corporation’s CEO. For a while the American cable television entrepreneur John Malone was the second-largest voting shareholder in News Corporation after Murdoch himself, potentially undermining the family’s control. In 2007, the company announced that it would sell certain assets and give cash to Malone’s company in exchange for its stock. In 2007, the company issued Murdoch’s older children voting stock.[citation needed]
Murdoch has two children with Wendi Deng: Grace (b. New York, 19 November 2001)[6] and Chloe (b. New York, 17 July 2003).[5][127] It was revealed in September 2011 that Tony Blair is Grace’s godfather.[140]There is reported to be tension between Murdoch and his oldest children over the terms of a trust holding the family’s 28.5 percent stake in News Corporation, estimated in 2005 to be worth about $6.1 billion. Under the trust, his children by Wendi Deng share in the proceeds of the stock but have no voting privileges or control of the stock. Voting rights in the stock are divided 50/50 between Murdoch on the one side and his children of his first two marriages. Murdoch’s voting privileges are not transferable but will expire upon his death and the stock will then be controlled solely by his children from the prior marriages, although their half-siblings will continue to derive their share of income from it. It is Murdoch’s stated desire to have his children by Deng given a measure of control over the stock proportional to their financial interest in it (which would mean, if Murdoch dies while at least one of the children is a minor, that Deng would exercise that control). It does not appear that he has any strong legal grounds to contest the present arrangement, and both ex-wife Anna and their three children are said to be strongly resistant to any such change.[141]
Portrayal on television, in film, books and music
Murdoch and rival newspaper and publishing magnate Robert Maxwell are thinly fictionalised as “Keith Townsend” and “Richard Armstrong” in The Fourth Estate by British novelist and former MP Jeffrey Archer.[142]
by Kevin Phelan in SQUINT theatre company’s “Long Story Short” (The Pleasance, Islington, 2014)
It has been speculated that the character of Elliot Carver, the global media magnate and main villain in the 1997 James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, is based on Murdoch. The writer of the film, Bruce Feirstein, has stated that Carver was actually inspired by British press magnate Robert Maxwell, who was one of Murdoch’s rivals.[145]
In the 1997 film Fierce Creatures, the head of Octopus Inc. Rod McCain (initials R.M.) character is likely modelled after Murdoch.[146]
In 1999, the Ted Turner owned TBS aired an original sitcom, The Chimp Channel. This featured an all-simian cast and the role of an Australian TV veteran named Harry Waller. The character is described as “a self-made gazillionaire with business interests in all sorts of fields. He owns newspapers, hotel chains, sports franchises and genetic technologies, as well as everyone’s favourite cable TV channel, The Chimp Channel.” Waller is thought to be a parody of Murdoch, a long-time rival of Turner’s.[147]
In 2004, the movie Outfoxed included many interviews accusing Fox News of pressuring reporters to report only one side of news stories, in order to influence viewers’ political opinions.[148]
In 2012, the satirical show Hacks, broadcast on UK-based Channel 4, made obvious comparisons with Rupert Murdoch using the fictional character ‘Stanhope Feast’, as well as other central figures in the phone hacking scandal.[149]
Influence, wealth and reputation
This section may lend undue weight to certain ideas, incidents, or controversies. Please help to create a more balanced presentation. Discuss andresolve this issue before removing this message.(May 2014)
According to Forbes‘ 2013 list of richest Americans, Murdoch is the 33rd richest person in the US and the 91st richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$13.4 billion.[1] In 2014, Forbes ranked “Rupert Murdoch & Family” as the 33rd most-powerful person in the world.[150]
In 2003 Murdoch bought a ‘Rosehearty’, 11 bedroom home on a 5-acre waterfront estate in Centre Island, New York.[151]
In August 2013, Terry Flew, Professor of Media and Communications at Queensland University of Technology, wrote an article for the Conversation publication in which he verified a claim by former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd that Murdoch owned 70% of Australian newspapers in 2011. Flew’s article showed that News Corp Australia owned 23% of the nation’s newspapers in 2011, according to the Finkelstein Review of Media and Media Regulation, but, at the time of the article, the corporation’s titles accounted for 59% of the sales of all daily newspapers, with weekly sales of 17.3 million copies.[152]
In connection with Murdoch’s testimony to the Leveson Inquiry “into the ethics of the British press”, editor of Newsweek International, Tunku Varadarajan, referred to him as “the man whose name is synonymous with unethical newspapers”.[153]
News Corp papers were accused of supporting the campaign of the Australian Liberal government and influencing public opinion during the 2013 federal election. Following the announcement of the Liberal Party victory at the polls, Murdoch tweeted “Aust. election public sick of public sector workers and phony welfare scroungers sucking life out of economy. Other nations to follow in time”.[154]
Fox News boss Roger Ailes renews contract to remain CEO and chairman
Powerhouse executive signs multi-year contract a month after Rupert Murdoch passed reins of company to sons, which had put Ailes’s future at Fox in doubt
Roger Ailes – the powerhouse executive behind Fox News – has signed a new multi-year contract with 21st Century Fox that will see him continuing in his role as chairman and CEO of the channels. The move comes after it appeared Ailes was losing his grip on Fox.
Earlier this month media mogul Rupert Murdoch announced he would pass the reins of his TV, film and news empire to his sons James and Lachlan. Fox announced that Ailes, who has clashed with both sons, would now be reporting to Murdoch’s heirs.
Days earlier Fox Business had reported that Ailes would continue to report directly to Rupert Murdoch.
The company did not specify how long Ailes’s new contract would run but Murdoch and his sons gave the Fox boss a ringing endorsement. “Roger and I have always had, and will continue to have, a special relationship. Lachlan, James and I are delighted that Roger will be leading key businesses for us and our shareholders for years to come, and he has our unwavering support,” Rupert Murdoch said in a statement.
“Roger is an incredibly talented executive and we’re pleased he has accepted our offer to continue his extraordinary record of success at 21st Century Fox,” Lachlan and James Murdoch said in a joint statement. “We look forward to witnessing his energy and entrepreneurial drive in leading the next wave of growth for Fox News, Fox Business Network and Fox Television Stations, as well as many years of continued success together.”
The news is a major victory for Ailes whose relations with both sons has been strained at best. According to Ailes biographer Gabriel Sherman the Fox boss and James Murdoch have clashed over their views on the environment. Ailes is a hardcore rightwing climate change denier, James Murdoch has supported green causes and his wife once worked for the Clinton Foundation.
Lachlan Murdoch returned to Australia after a series of clashes with Ailes. According to Sherman’s biography, The Loudest Voice in the Room, Ailes bragged about moving into Lachlan’s vacant office. “Do you know whose chair I’m sitting in? I’m sitting in Lachlan Murdoch’s chair,” Ailes boasted to a colleague. “Do you know who’s sitting on the other side of that wall? Rupert Murdoch.”
Ailes’s contract was set to expire in 2016, the new deal will keep him at Fox through the presidential election and beyond. Under Ailes’s leadership Fox has been the highest-rated news channel in the US for 13 consecutive years.
The contract deal comes amid a series of top level changes in Murdoch’s empire. The billionaire businessman also announced on Thursday that Natalie Ravitz, Murdoch’s chief of staff and vice president of strategy, would be stepping down from her role and seeking “a leadership operating position.”
It is not yet clear whether Ravitz will stay with the company. Ravitz, previously a communications director with the New York City department of education, has looked after Murdoch’s personal affairs as well as business interests.
“I cannot say enough about the exceptional job Natalie has done for me, giving valued support across many functions. She is immensely talented and able, and has greatly benefited me and our companies. I am confident wherever Natalie chooses to go she will be an incredible asset and wish her all the best,” Murdoch wrote in a memo to staff.
There is rarely a good time to do hard things, and America won’t advance if legislators act like seat-warmers.
By
RUPERT MURDOCH
When I learned that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor had lost his Republican primary, my heart sank. Not simply because I think he is an intelligent and talented member of Congress, or because I worry about the future of the Republican Party.
Like others who want comprehensive immigration reform, I worried that Mr. Cantor’s loss would be misconstrued and make Congress reluctant to tackle this urgent need. That would be the wrong lesson and an undesirable national consequence of this single, local election result.
People are looking for leadership—those who stand for something and offer a vision for how to take America forward and keep our nation economically competitive. One of the most immediate ways to revitalize our economy is by passing immigration reform.
I chose to come to America and become a citizen because America was—and remains—the most free and entrepreneurial nation in the world. Our history is defined by people whose character and culture have been shaped by ambition, imagination and hard work, bound together by a dream of a better life.
Is the idea of immigration reform complicated by the fact that some immigrants went outside the legal system to be here? Yes. It is complicated even more by the fear some Americans have, quite naturally, of how changing populations might also change our culture, communities and economic circumstances.
Well, of course immigration means change. Immigrants enrich our culture and add to our economic prosperity.
You don’t have to take one immigrant’s word for it. The Partnership for a New American Economy, a bipartisan group of political and business leaders, reports that people who moved here from abroad or their children founded more than 40% of America’s Fortune500 companies—businesses that collectively employ millions of people.
Do Americans really wish Google,eBay,Pfizer or Home Depot were headquartered in Eastern Europe or China instead of America? Whether it’s a high-profile tech company or a small business employing just 10 people, 28% of all new American businesses started in 2011 were founded by immigrants. Those are entrepreneurial people we want to continue to attract to our economy.
I don’t believe that people come to America to sit on their hands. The vast majority of America’s immigrants are hardworking, family-minded individuals with strong values. They are drawn here from many different places by a common belief that this is still the land of opportunity for those willing to work hard.
We need to give those individuals who are already here—after they have passed checks to ensure they are not dangerous criminals—a path to citizenship so they can pay their full taxes, be counted, and become more productive members of our community.
Next, we need to do away with the cap on H-1B visas, which is arbitrary and results in U.S. companies struggling to find the high-skill workers they need to continue growing. We already know that most of the applications for these visas are for computer programmers and engineers, where there is a shortage of qualified American candidates. But we are held back by the objections of the richly funded labor unions that mistakenly believe that if we keep innovation out of America, somehow nothing will change. They are wrong, and frankly as much to blame for our stalemate on this issue as nativists who scream about amnesty.
If we are serious about advancing our economic future and about creating job growth here in America, then we must realize that it is suicidal to suggest closing our doors to the world’s entrepreneurs, or worse, to continue with large-scale deportations.
That is not to suggest we don’t need to do a far better job securing our border. Border security should be an integral part of a comprehensive solution, and we should not dismiss the concerns of states that are struggling to deal with the consequences of ongoing illegal immigration.
Some politicians and pundits will argue that this is not the time to bring immigration reform to the congressional floor—that it will frighten an already anxious workforce and encourage more extreme candidates, especially on the right. They may be right about the short-term politics, but they are dead wrong about the long-term interests of our country.
Maybe, as someone who came here as an immigrant, I have more faith in the compassion and fortitude of the American people, and in their ability to reject extreme views on either side of the political spectrum. Or maybe, as a businessman, I have learned that there is rarely a good time to do the hard things.
That is why I was pleased to see Sen. Rand Paul and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, step up their efforts to lobby for immigration reform.
President Obama has shown wise restraint despite pressure from the left to act, recognizing that a bipartisan approach on such an immense issue would be best. Remember ObamaCare?
However, if Congress fails to even try to have this important debate, the president might feel tempted to act via executive order. I hope it doesn’t get to that point, given the furious political firestorm that would result.
All the more reason, then, to recognize that the facts are on the side of reform, and democratic societies don’t advance when our elected officials act like seat-warmers.
Mr. Murdoch is executive chairman of News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal.
You can add Rupert Murdoch’s name to the list of billionaires who not only profit from massive legal and illegal immigration, but who advocate for it. In an editorial for the Wall Street Journal, owned by News Corp, of which Murdoch is the Executive Chairman, Murdoch confesses his “heart sank” at the defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor because he thought immigration reform would be thwarted.1
I suggest we get the definitions straight before we go any further. Because, we in the immigration reform movement have been using the term “immigration reform” for over two decades, referring to the porous border and chain migration and hoping that “immigration reform” would mean that we actually, you know, enforce the law.
When people like Murdoch, John McCain, Barack Obama, and Luis Guitierez use the term, they mean amnesty. Murdoch makes a number of mistakes in his Op-Ed. First one is to refer to his “worry about the future of the Republican Party.” It makes one wonder if he is ignorant of the political history of immigration politics, or a corrupt liar.
Rupert Murdoch is in favor of the amnesty for political reasons? If so, he is terribly confused. Because, it won’t result in votes for Republicans. How can I be so sure? Because, it never has.
This issue has been discussed and analyzed by many people, including this writer.
Many in the media get it wrong.
The following statement gets it right.
Passing an amnesty for illegal aliens, most of whom are from Mexico, will do nothing to earn Republicans the Hispanic vote… period. Nothing! Zip, zero, nada!
Polling data of Hispanic voters do not support Murdoch’s claim, which is, if you think about it, not only wrong, but an insult to Hispanic Americans. The head of FOX News is suggesting that the Hispanic vote can be bought by Republicans if they ignore, excuse, and reward lawbreakers who happen to be Hispanic with amnesty.
A quick review:
Let’s look at who won the Hispanic vote in the past nine presidential races and their position on enforcement and amnesty.
• In 1980 and in 1984 Ronald Reagan received 35 percent and 37 percent of the Hispanic vote, respectively.
• In 1986 Reagan signed the IRCA Amnesty,2 which began in 1987 and legalized over 3 million illegal aliens, mostly from Mexico, with 12–15 million additional beneficiaries from chain migration.
Hispanics were overwhelmingly beneficiaries of the amnesty.
But…
• In 1988, less than two years after the amnesty went into effect, George H.W. Bush, who supported the IRCA as Vice President, got only 30 percent of the Hispanic vote, 7 points fewer than Reagan.
• In 1992 Bush Senior saw his Hispanic vote total decline to 25 percent, a 12-point drop from Reagan’s second election, and he lost the presidency to Bill Clinton.
• In 1996, five weeks before the November election, Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA),3 the toughest immigration enforcement legislation since Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback4 in the 1950s. The result? Hispanics rewarded Clinton with a staggering 71 percent of the vote for his re-election.
• In 2000, George W. Bush received 35 percent of the Hispanic vote. Al Gore, the Vice President at the time of the 1996 IIRIRA, got 62 percent.
• In 2004 George Bush, after making anti-amnesty comments, increased his Hispanic support to 40 percent.
During the 2008 presidential race, Barack Obama said, “I will make sure that the federal government does what it’s supposed to do…a better job of closing our borders and preventing hundreds of thousands of people to pour in.”
• Obama also voted for the secure border fence bill in 2008 and still got 67 percent of the Hispanic vote.
Now, pay attention
• Obama’s opponent in 2008, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), was the first presidential candidate who actually advocated for and wrote an amnesty bill for illegal aliens. Senator McAmnesty got 31 percent of the Hispanic vote to Obama’s 67 percent. McCain didn’t even win a majority of Hispanic votes in Arizona, where everybody knows he supports amnesty.
And, in November 2012;
• Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who endorsed an amnesty on Meet the Press in 2005, won only 27 percent of the Hispanic vote.
• President Obama, whose Department of Homeland Security lied all year long that they deported more illegal aliens than George Bush did, won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote.
Now, in light of these FACTS: as follows does Mr. Murdoch actually believe his own words? Don’t believe for a minute that an amnesty will get the Republicans votes. It will actually cost them votes, as McCain learned.
Pat Buchanan put it succinctly in, The Bell Tolls for the “New Majority,”5 “So what are the Republicans doing? Going back on their word, dishonoring their platform, and enraging their loyal supporters, who gave Mitt 90 percent of his votes, to pander to a segment of the electorate that gave Mitt less than 5 percent of his total votes.Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.”
It has been proven over and over and over again that amnesty, or talk of an amnesty, doesn’t translate into votes for Republicans.
Murdoch also refers to revitalizing the American economy.
The U.S. Census Bureau predicted a decade ago that we were importing two generations of poverty. As each year passes, the generations of the future are repopulated with poverty.
I would suggest that one of the most immediate ways to revitalize our economy would be to pass a tax cut, offer Americans a tax rebate, and adopt the Mack Penny Plan6 for future federal government budgets. That would do nicely, for a start.
But I get what Mr. Murdoch is referring to, because I’ve been saying it for years. He is referring to new customers. Mass legal and illegal immigration brings new customers to America. That’s what this is all about. Yes, it’s about jobs too, but it is what they do with their paychecks, which is the goal of those who want to throw down the borders and let anyone in who can get here.
Certainly business wants as cheap a labor force as they can get. But, cheap labor is a smaller part of the equation.
And, certainly, Democrat strategists want new voters, which illegal aliens could become if they are given amnesty with a pathway to citizenship. No, not because of the amnesty, that is the myth that was demolished above. But, because illegal aliens will be low income wage earners, so will their kids, so that’s two generations in poverty, and low income people, be they Hispanic, black, white, whatever, when they do vote, do not vote for Republicans.
The big one is new customers. As the baby boomers age out of the consuming cycle they need to be replaced, and that is what the desire to let millions of mostly young people into the country, call it amnesty or call it “comprehensive immigration reform,” is all about.
Illegal aliens are perfect new consumers. Be they from Mexico or Central America, they have grown up watching American movies and American TV shows. They know exactly how we live here and they want to come and live like us. And, who can blame them, really? Their own countries are hellholes, dominated by thugs and drug cartels; who wouldn’t want to escape?
When an illegal alien arrives here they have nothing but the clothes on their back, and a water jug. They pitch the water jug and hop into the load car and are off to their new lives in the land of opportunity. And for them, as well as us, it is indeed the land of opportunity.
That is what Rupert Murdoch is referring to, new customers. Is he hoping that he will attract new viewers to FOX News Latino? You be the judge.
Story 1: Operation Jade Helm: America’s Military Training Exercise in Southwest United States With 1,200 Special Forces — DisInfo Psyop Against American People — Texas Is Hostile — Ruling Elite Afraid of American People? — Videos
SOCOM Plans to Invade HOSTILE Texas Revealed
MSM Caught Lying: Breaking Jade Helm Update
OPERATION:JADE HELM 1 5…GOV TRAINING TO TAKE OVER TEXAS
ARMY and MSM Launch DisInfo Psyop Against American People
Army Betrays One Of Their Own
Jade Helm 15: 2 More States Join, Green Beret Says Drill Ends On 9/11 In Florida
Jade Helm 15: 10 States Now Involved with Massive US Military Exercise
Army Planing a Surprise Visit to US Towns! WHY? The Answer Will Make You Rethink Everything!
Jade Helm 15 – the low down
DEBUNK THIS: OP JADE HELM 15 Surgical Strikes Included
Psy Op Colonel Texas Needs To Submit
Army Special Ops Command Pushes Back Against Infowars
PSYOP and MISO
History of Psychological Operations and Military Information Support Operations
What is United States Army Civil Affairs & Psychological Command(Airborne)
Army MOS 37F Psychological Operations Specialist
304th PSYOP Company – Information video
US Army Reserves Psychological Operations
37F Psychological Operations Specialist (Reserve)
PSYOP Soldiers Training
Army embeds PSYOPS soldiers at local TV stations
Heather Wokusch on ‘Welcome to the Jungle: US Military Psychological Operations’
Sentient World Simulation by James Corbett
The Sentient World Simulation’s aim, according to its creator, is to be a “continuously running, continually updated mirror model of the real world that can be used to predict and evaluate future events and courses of action.” In practical terms that equates to a computer simulation of the planet complete with billions of “nodes” representing every person on the earth.
The EyeOpener- PSYOPS 101: The Technology of Psych Warfare
Yuri Bezmenov: Psychological Warfare Subversion & Control of Western Society (Complete)
Soviet Subversion of the Free World Press, 1984 – Complete
The Quigley Formula – G. Edward Griffin lecture
An excellent lecture by G. Edward Griffin entitled “The Quigley Formula: A conspiratorial view of history as taught by the conspirators themselves”
“Quigley” is the late Carroll Quigley, a Council on Foreign Relations member and historian, as well as mentor to CFR & Trilateral Commission member Bill Clinton.
The lecture is based around the following quote from his book Tragedy & Hope, pp. 1247-1248:
“The National parties and their presidential candidates, with the Eastern Establishment assiduously fostering the process behind the scenes, moved closer together and nearly met in the center with almost identical candidates and platforms, although the process was concealed as much as possible, by the revival of obsolescent or meaningless war cries and slogans (often going back to the Civil War)….The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy. … Either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.”
Carroll Quigley on Tragedy And Hope
Michael Hastings: Army Deploys Psychological Operations on U.S. Senators in Afghanistan War Effort
Sgt. Biggs On Military Life and Why Michael Hastings was Murdered
Michael Hastings Widow Speaks Out For The First Time To Piers Morgan,Piers Asks Was His Death
Infowars Special Report: Introduction to Media Manipulation & Psychological Operations
Minority Report: Fiction Has Become Reality
Minority Report 2012 Full – CG (Tom Cruise)
Special forces set to swarm Southwest and operate undetected among civilians in massive military exercise
Operation Jade Helm will see 1,200 service members including Green Berets and SEALs and special forces from the Air Force and Marines in July
Soldiers armed with blank rounds will operate in and around towns in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado for 8 weeks
The so-called Realistic Military Training has some residents fearful the drill is a preparation for martial law
By DAILYMAIL.COM REPORTER
Seven Southwestern states will soon be infiltrated by 1,200 military special ops personnel as part of a controversial domestic military training in which some of the elite soldiers will operate undetected among civilians.
Operation Jade Helm begins in July and will last for eight weeks. Soldiers will operate in and around towns in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado where some of them wil drop from planes while carrying weapons loaded with blanks in what military officials have dubbed Realistic Military Training.
But with residents of the entire states of Texas and Utah dubbed ‘hostile’ for the purposes of the exercises, Jade Helm has some concerned the drills are too realistic.
+3
Hostile: An unclassified military document reveals the states involved in a controversial multi-agency training exercises that will place 1,200 military personnel into 7 Southwest states–with residents of Utah, Texas and part of Southern California designated as ‘hostile’
Special ops: Operation Jade Helm will involve Green Berets and SEALs and special forces from the Air Force and Marines starting in July and lasting 8 weeks
Headlines like Freedom Outpost‘s ‘Operation Jade Helm—military trains for martial law in American South-west’ abound across the Right-leaning blogosphere and Info Wars warns that Jade Helm is simply ‘an effort to test the effectiveness of infiltration techniques’ on the American public.
‘They’re having Delta Force, Navy SEALS with the Army trained to basically take over,’ Info Wars’ Alex Jones said Sunday. ‘Texas is listed as a hostile sector, and of course, we are…We’re here defending the republic.’
The Houston Chronicle reports that, among the planned exercises, soldiers will attempt to operate undetected among civilian populations.
Residents, in turn, will be asked to report suspicious activity in order to gauge the effectiveness of the soldiers.
Military officials say they’ve gotten the go ahead for the operations from local authorities such as mayors and county commissions.
And sheriff’s deputies told the Houston Chronicle they would ensure residents living near where aircraft were slated to create disturbances and drop soldiers, civilian and military vehicles will barrel through and where blank rounds would be fired.
Jim Stewart with the Brazos County, Texas Sheriff’s Office told the Chronicle that such exercises are far from anything new.
‘Special ops for years have trained off-post for years, where they go out and have folks that are role players out on the economy,’ said the Army intelligence veteran. ‘They’ll have a scenario they’ll be following and they’ll interact with these role players as if they’re in another country.’
However, the U.S. Army Special Operations Command themselves say Jade Helm is different.
+3
Reassuring? Sheriff’s deputies say they will ensure residents living near where aircraft were slated to create disturbances and drop soldiers, civilian and military vehicles will barrel through and where blank rounds would be fired [FILE PHOTO]
Texas, which the military has designated as ‘hostile’ for the purposes of the training, was chosen to be a hub of the unprecedentedly large program because ‘Texans are historically supportive of efforts to prepare our soldiers’ writes the USASOC
‘The size and scope of Jade Helm sets this one apart. To stay ahead of the environmental challenges faced overseas, Jade Helm will take place across seven states,’ the USASOC wrote in a March 24 release.
‘The diverse terrain in these states replicates areas Special Operations Soldiers regularly find themselves operating in overseas.’
The military has also reacted to widespread fear of the operation by calling some ultra-conservative coverage of the ‘martial law’ drills alarmist and inaccurate.
‘That notion was proposed by a few individuals who are unfamiliar with how and why USASOC conducts training exercises,’ USASOC spokesman Army Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria told Stripes.
‘This exercise is routine training to maintain a high level of readiness for Army Special Operations Forces because they must be ready to support potential missions anywhere in the world on a moment’s notice.’
Army Special Operations Command pushes back against alarmist claims about upcoming exercise
U.S. Army Special Operations Command is pushing back against alarmist claims that an upcoming U.S. military exercise is a preparation for imposing martial law or subduing right-leaning groups and individuals.
Conspiracy theories about the exercise, known as JADE HELM 15, appeared online this week. Some commentators railing against the event referred to an online slide show allegedly created by USASOC, which outlined a special operations exercise slated to take place across multiple states, outside the confines of U.S. military bases. In the slide show, a map of the southwest region of the United States labels Texas and other territory as “hostile” or “insurgent pocket.” The document also refers to coordination with law enforcement agencies.
Officials at USASOCM were not able to immediately verify the authenticity of the slide show because their computer firewalls prevented them from accessing the websites where the document appeared.
Army Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria, a USASOC spokesman, confirmed that there is an upcoming exercise called Jade Helm 15 which is scheduled to take place this summer at locations in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, California and Nevada. But he denied the event is preparation for some sort of military takeover.
“That notion was proposed by a few individuals who are unfamiliar with how and why USASOC conducts training exercises,” he said in an email. “This exercise is routine training to maintain a high level of readiness for Army Special Operations Forces because they must be ready to support potential missions anywhere in the world on a moment’s notice.”
He said the only thing unique about this particular exercise, which is slated to take place between July 15 and Sept. 15, is “the use of new challenging terrain” which was chosen because it is similar to conditions special operations forces operate in overseas.
Lastoria said coordination with local law enforcement is necessary for safety reasons because some of the training will take place outside of military bases where civilian agencies have jurisdiction.
He said his office has been receiving a lot of calls from people who heard about the exercise and are concerned about “the nature of the training objectives.”
Reserve Army – U.S. Army Civil Affairs Psychological Operations Command(USACAPOC)Garrison/HQFort Bragg, NCPatronSaint GabrielMotto”Persuade, Change, Influence”ColorsArmy – Bottle-green piped withsilver gray.InsigniaIdentification
symbolArmy – Knight chess piece (Often mistaken for the Trojan Horse)
Psychological operations (PSYOP) or, as it has been known since 2010, Military Information Support Operations (MISO),[1] are planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.[2]
The purpose of United States psychological operations is to induce or reinforce behavior favorable to U.S. objectives. They are an important part of the range of diplomatic, informational, military, and economic activities available to the U.S. They can be utilized during both peacetime and conflict. There are three main types: strategic, operational, and tactical. Strategic PSYOP include informational activities conducted by the U.S. government agencies outside of the military arena, though many utilize Department of Defense (DOD) assets.Operational PSYOP are conducted across the range of military operations, including during peacetime, in a defined operational area to promote the effectiveness of the joint force commander’s (JFC) campaigns and strategies. Tactical PSYOP are conducted in the area assigned to a tactical commander across the range of military operations to support the tactical mission against opposing forces.
PSYOP can encourage popular discontent with the opposition’s leadership and by combining persuasion with a credible threat, degrade an adversary’s ability to conduct or sustain military operations. They can also disrupt, confuse, and protract the adversary’s decision-making process, undermining command and control.[3] When properly employed, PSYOP have the potential to save the lives of friendly or enemy forces by reducing the adversary’s will to fight. By lowering the adversary’s morale and then its efficiency, PSYOP can also discourage aggressive actions by creating disaffection within their ranks, ultimately leading to surrender.
The integrated employment of the core capabilities of electronic warfare, computer network operations, psychological operations, military deception, and operations security, in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own.[4]
Products
A Somali boy holding up a leaflet dispersed during Operation Restore Hope in the early 1990s
PSYOP involves the careful creation and dissemination of a product message. There are three types of products that are used to create these messages. They include White products which are used in overt operations and Gray and Black products which are used in covert PSYOP. White, Gray, and Black don’t refer to the product’s content but rather the methods used to carry out the operation.
In order for PSYOP to be successful they must be based in reality. All messages must be consistent and must not contradict each other. Any gap between the product and reality will be quickly noticed. A credible “truth” must be presented which is consistent to all audiences. Primarily it is a component of offensive counterinformation but can be used defensively as well. PSYOP are used in support of special operations, unconventional warfare, and counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. PSYOP can include military operations other than warfare and also include joint operations. They include counterterrorism operations, peace operations, noncombatant evacuation, enforcement of sanctions and maritime interception operations, strikes and raids, etc.
White PSYOP
White PSYOP is attributable to PSYOP as a source.
U.S. Army PSYOP soldiers with Detachment 1080, 318th Psychological Operations Company distribute newspaper products in the East Rashid region of Baghdad, Iraq, July 11, 2007.
White is acknowledged as an official statement or act of the U.S. Government, or emanates from a source associated closely enough with the U.S. Government to reflect an official viewpoint. The information should be true and factual. It also includes all output identified as coming from U.S. official sources.
Authorized to engage in white activity directed at foreign audiences are: The State Department, USIA, the Foreign Operations Administration (a predecessor of the Agency for International Development), the Defense Department and other U.S. Government departments and agencies as necessary.[5]
Gray PSYOP
The source of the gray PSYOP product is deliberately ambiguous.
The true source (U.S. Government) is not revealed to the target audience. The activity engaged in plausibly appears to emanate from a non-official American source, or an indigenous, non-hostile source, or there may be no attribution.
Gray is that information whose content is such that the effect will be increased if the hand of the U.S. Government and in some cases any American participation are not revealed. It is simply a means for the U.S. to present viewpoints which are in the interest of U.S. foreign policy, but which will be acceptable or more acceptable to the intended target audience than will an official government statement.[5][dead link]
Black PSYOP
The activity engaged in appears to emanate from a source (government, party, group, organization, person) usually hostile in nature. The interest of the U.S. Government is concealed and the U.S. Government would deny responsibility. It is best used in support of strategic plans.
Covert PSYOP is not a function of the U.S. military but instead is used in special operations due to their political sensitivity and need for higher level compartmentalization. Further, black PSYOP, to be credible, may need to disclose sensitive material, with the damage caused by information disclosure considered to be outweighed by the impact of successful deception.[6] In order to achieve maximum results and to prevent compromise of overt PSYOP, overt and covert operations need to be kept separate. Personnel involved in one must not be engaged in the other.
Media
PSYOP conveys messages via visual, audio, and audiovisual media. Military psychological operations, at the tactical level, are usually delivered by loudspeaker, and face to face communication. For more deliberate campaigns, they may use leaflets, radio or television. Strategic operations may use radio or television broadcasts, various publications, airdropped leaflets, or, as part of a covert operation, with material placed in foreign news media.
Process
In order to create a successful PSYOP the following must be established: 1) clearly define the mission so that it aligns with national objectives 2) need a PSYOP estimate of the situation 3) prepare the plan 4) media selection 5) product development 6) pretesting – determines the probable impact of the PSYOP on the target audience 7) production and dissemination of PSYOP material 8) implementation 9) posttesting – evaluates audience responses 10) feedback
Before these steps can occur, intelligence analysts must profile potential targets in order to determine which ones it would be most beneficial to target. In order to figure this out, analysts must determine the vulnerabilities of these groups and what they would be susceptible to. The analysts also determine the attitudes of the targets toward the current situation, their complaints, ethnic origin, frustrations, languages, problems, tensions, attitudes, motivations, and perceptions, and so on. Once the appropriate target(s) have been determined, the PSYOP can be created.
Psychological operations should be planned carefully, in that even a tactical message, with modern news media, can spread worldwide and be treated as the policy of the United States. The U.S. Army is responsible for military psychological warfare doctrine.[6] See the World War I section for an example of how a tactical leaflet, not properly coordinated, can cause national-level harm.
Psychological operations, at any level, must be consistent with the policies of higher levels of command
The message to be delivered can be adapted to tactical situations, but promises made must be consistent with national policy.
U.S. PSYOP forces are forbidden to target (i.e., attempt to change the opinions of) U.S. citizens at any time, in any location globally, or under any circumstances.[7] However, commanders may use PSYOP forces to provide public information to U.S. audiences during times of disaster or crisis. The use of PSYOP forces to deliver necessary public information to a U.S. audience was established in relief activities after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Tactical Psychological Operations teams (TPTs) were employed to disseminate information by loudspeaker on locations of relief shelters and facilities. Information support to a noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO) by PSYOP forces to provide evacuation information to U.S. and third-country nationals would also adhere to the order.[6]
As an example of the use of PSYOP in a humanitarian relief operation Major General Anthony Zinni, Director of Operations for Unified Task Force Somalia, said
Psychological operations were a key Battlefield Operating System used extensively to support Unified Task Force (UNITAF) Somalia operations. In order to maximize the PSYOP impact, we established a Joint PSYOP Task Force under the supervision of the Director of Operations, integrated PSYOP into all plans and operations, and limited the PSYOP focus to the operational and tactical levels. Psychological operations do not accomplish missions alone. They work best when they are combined with and integrated in an overall theater campaign plan. In Operation RESTORE HOPE, we were successful in doing that.[6]
United States PSYOP units and soldiers of all branches of the military are prohibited by law from conducting PSYOP missions on domestic audiences.[7] While PSYOP soldiers may offer non-PSYOP related support to domestic military missions, PSYOP can only target foreign audiences. Though, it is worth noting that this does not rule out PSYOP targeting foreign audiences of allied nations. Additionally, in the Information Operations Roadmap made public January 2006 but originally approved by Defense SecretaryDonald Rumsfeld in October 2003, it stated “information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa.”[10]
Army
Chieu Hoi Mission by Craig L. Stewart, U. S. Army Vietnam Combat Artists Team IX (CAT IX 1969-70). Painting shows army soldiers airdropping Psy Op leaflets during the Vietnam War.
Soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 350th Tactical Psychological Operations, 10th Mountain Division, drop leaflets over a village near Hawijah in Kirkuk province, Iraq, on March 6, 2008.
U.S. Army PSYOP Force structure
Until recently, the Army’s Psychological Operations elements were administratively organized alongside Civil Affairs to form the U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (USACAPOC), forming a part of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC). However, in May 2006 USCAPOC was reorganized to instead fall under the Army reserve command, and all active duty PSYOP elements were placed directly into USASOC. While reserve PSYOP forces no longer belong to USASOC, that command retains control of PSYOP doctrine. Operationally, PSYOP individuals and organizations support Army and Joint maneuver forces or interagency organizations.
Army Psychological Operations support operations ranging from strategic planning down to tactical employment.
PSYOP Support Elements generally support Corps sized elements. Tactical Psychological Operations Companies typically support Division sized elements, with Tactical Control through G-3. Brigades are typically supported by a Tactical PSYOP Detachment. The PSYOP Commander maintains Operational Control of PSYOP elements, advises the Commander and General Staff on the psychological battlespace.
The smallest organizational PSYOP element is the Tactical PSYOP Team (TPT). A TPT generally consists of a PSYOP team chief (Staff Sergeant or Sergeant), an assistant team chief (Sergeant or Specialist), and an additional soldier to serve as a gunner and to operate the speaker system (Specialist). A team is equipped with a Humvee fitted with a loud speaker, and often works with a local translator indigenous to the host or occupied country.
Generally, each maneuver battalion-sized element in a theater of war or operational area has at least one TPT attached to it. Women are not allowed to serve on TPTs in a war zone due to a PSYOP team’s high chance of contact with the enemy.
U.S. Army PSYOP branch of service collar insignia and regimental distinctive insignia.
PSYOP soldiers are required to complete nine weeks of Basic Combat Training. All enlisted PSYOP soldiers report to Fort Bragg to complete the 13-week Psychological Operation Advanced Individual Training (AIT) course. After AIT, the active duty-component PSYOP soldier is then required to attend Airborne training. Sometime after initial training, PSYOP soldiers will spend up to a year (or perhaps more for specific languages) in foreign language qualification training. Certain reserve soldiers serving in units designated as Airborne are also required to attend Airborne training, while language training and Airborne qualification for PSYOP soldiers assigned to non-Airborne units is awarded on a merit and need basis.
A U.S. Army field manual released in January 2013 states that “Inform and Influence Activities” are critical for describing, directing, and leading military operations. Several Army Division leadership staff are assigned to “planning, integration and synchronization of designated information-related capabilities.”[11]
245th Psychological Operations Company (POC) – Dallas, Texas
*Became the 345th PSYOP Company. Deployed soldiers during Operation Desert Storm (The Gulf War).
The 345th also deployed post 9-11 to Afghanistan working with U.S. Army Special Forces. In 2003 the 345th deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Since November 2001, the 345th Tactical Psychological Operations Company (Airborne) has continuously had a detachment of deployed soldiers in Afghanistan, Iraq and / or Horn of Africa.
Commando Solo flies low over theStatue of Liberty in New York Harbor in 2001.
The Air National Guard provides support for Psychological Operations using a modified C-130 Hercules aircraft named EC-130 COMMANDO SOLO, operated by the 193d Special Operations Wing. The purpose of COMMANDO SOLO is to provide an aerial platform for broadcast media on both television and radio. The media broadcast is created by various agencies and organizations. As part of the broader function of information operations, COMMANDO SOLO can also jam the enemy’s broadcasts to his own people, or his psychological warfare broadcasting.
The Commando Solo aircraft currently is the only stand-off, high-altitude means available to PSYOP forces to disseminate information to large denied areas. Two orbits were established during Operation Iraqi Freedom, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, one in the northern area and one in the southern part of the country, both far enough from harm’s way to keep the aircraft out of reach of potential enemy attack. At their operational altitude of 18,000 feet (5,500 m) and assuming clear channels, these aircraft can transmit radio and TV signals approximately 170 miles (270 km), which does not reach the objective areas near Baghdad. Straightforward physics dictate the range, given the power installed and the antenna configuration and assuming clear channels.
The enhanced altitude capability of the Commando Solo EC–130J (now funded) is increasing transmitter range. While this is an improvement over 130E capability, it is a small step, since the
increase in altitude is only 7,000 feet (less than 50 percent) and the range increase is governed by a square root function (that is, a 14 percent increase in range).[12]
A challenge to COMMANDO SOLO is the increasing use of cable television, which will not receive signals from airborne, ground, or any other transmitters that the cable operator does not want to connect to the system. At best, in the presence of cable TV, COMMANDO SOLO may be able to jam enemy broadcasts that are not, themselves, transmitted by cable.
Navy
Navy psychological operations policy is specified in OPNAVINST 3434.1, “Psychological Operations”.[9] The Navy provides support to Joint PSYOP programs by providing assets (such as broadcast platforms using shortwave and very high frequency (VHF) frequencies) for the production and dissemination of PSYOP materials. With the ability of naval vessels (especially the larger task forces) to produce audio-visual materials the Navy can often produce PSYOP products for use in denied areas. Leaflets are dropped utilizing the PDU-5B dispenser unit (aka Leaflet Bomb). The Navy coordinates extensively with the Army as the majority of PSYOP assets reside within USASOC. PSYOP planning and execution is coordinated through the Naval Network Warfare Command (NETWARCOM) and the Naval Information Operations Command (NIOC), both located in Norfolk, VA.
The U.S. Navy possesses the capability to produce audiovisual products in the Fleet Audiovisual Command, Pacific; the Fleet Imagery Command, Atlantic; the Fleet Combat Camera Groups; Naval Imaging Command; various film libraries; and limited capability from ships and aircraft of the fleet. A Naval Reserve PSYOP audiovisual unit supports the Atlantic Fleet. Navy personnel assets have the capability to produce documents, posters, articles, and other material suitable for PSYOP. Administrative capabilities exist ashore and afloat that prepare and produce various quantities of printed materials. Language capabilities exist in naval intelligence and among naval personnel for most European and Asian languages. The Fleet Tactical Readiness Group provides equipment and technical maintenance support to conduct civil radio broadcasts and broadcast jamming in the amplitude modulation frequency band. This unit is not trained to produce PSYOP products and must be augmented with PSYOP personnel or linguists when necessary. The unit is capable of being fully operational within 48 hours of receipt of tasking. The unit’s equipment consists of a 10.6 kW AM band broadcast radio transmitter; a broadcast studio van; antenna tuner; two antennas (a pneumatically raised 100-foot (30 m) top-loaded antenna mast and a 500-foot (150 m) wire helium balloon antenna); and a 30 kW generator that provides power to the system.
Central Intelligence Agency
Psychological operations was assigned to the pre-CIA Office of Policy Coordination, with oversight by the Department of State.[13] The overall psychological operations of the United States, overt and covert, were to be under the policy direction of the U.S. Department of State during peacetime and the early stages of war:
The Secretary of State shall be responsible for:
(1) The formulation of policies and plans for a national foreign information program in time of peace. This program shall include all foreign information activities conducted by departments and agencies of the U. S. Government.[13]
(2) The formulation of national psychological warfare policy in time of national emergency and the initial stages of war.[13]
(3) The coordination of policies and plans for the national foreign information program and for overt psychological warfare with the Department of Defense, with other appropriate departments and agencies of the U.S. Government, and with related planning…[13]
(4) Plans prepared by this organization for overt psychological
warfare in time of national emergency or the initial stages of war shall
b. The employment and expansion, insofar as is feasible, of the activities and facilities which compose the national foreign information program in time of peace, in order to assure rapid transition to operations in time of national emergency or war.[13]
c. Control of the execution of approved plans and policies by:
(1) the Department of Defense in theaters of military operations;
(2) the Department of State in areas other than theaters of military operations.[13]
d. Transmittal of approved psychological warfare plans and policies to theater commanders through the Joint Chiefs of Staff.[13]
After the OPC was consolidated into the CIA,[5] there has been a psychological operations staff, under various names, in what has variously been named the Deputy Directorate of Plans, the Directorate of Operations, or the National Clandestine Service.
History of U.S. Psychological Warfare
World War I
During World War I, the Propaganda Sub-Section was established under the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) Military Intelligence Branch within the Executive Division of the General Staff in early 1918. Although they produced most propaganda, the AEF Propaganda Sub-Section did not produce a few of the leaflets. General Pershing is supposed to have personally composed Leaflet “Y,” Austria Is Out of the War, which was run off on First Army presses, but distributed by the Propaganda Sub-Section. That Sub-Section, perhaps reflecting some professional jealousy, thought the leaflet sound in principle, but too prolix and a little too “brotherly.” Corps and Army presses issued several small leaflet editions containing a “news flash,” after the Sub-Section had approved their content. But in one or two cases that approval was not obtained, and in one unfortunate example a leaflet in Romanian committed the Allies and the United States to the union of all Romanians in Austria-Hungary with Romania. Such geopolitics was emphatically not the job of AEF propaganda and had the potential to cause serious embarrassment.[6]
World War II
There was extensive use of psychological operations in World War II, from the strategic to the tactical. National-level white propaganda was the responsibility of theOffice of War Information, while black propaganda was most often the responsibility of the Morale Operations branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).[14]
Psychological operations planning started before the U.S. entry into the war, with the creation of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA), under Nelson Rockefeller, with the responsibility for psychological operations targeted at Latin America.[15] Special operations and intelligence concerning Latin America was a bureaucratic problem throughout the war. Where the OSS eventually had most such responsibilities, the FBI had its own intelligence system in Latin America.
On 11 July 1941, William Donovan was named the Coordinator of Information, which subsequently became the OSS. At first, there was a unit called the Foreign Information Service inside COI, headed by Robert Sherwood, which produced white propaganda outside Latin America.[15]
To deal with some of the bureaucratic problems, the Office of War Information (OWl) was created with Elmer Davis as director. FIS, still under Sherwood, became the Overseas Branch of OWl, dealing in white propaganda. OSS was created at the same time. Donovan obtained considerable help from the British, especially with black propaganda, from the British Political Warfare Executive (PWE), part of the Ministry of Economic Warfare. PWE was a sister organization to the Special Operations Executive, which conducted guerilla warfare. The British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6), was an essentially independent organization. For the U.S., the OSS included the functions of SIS and SOE, and the black propaganda work of PWE.
The OSS Morale Operations (MO) branch was the psychological operations arm of OSS. In general, its units worked on a theater-by-theater basis, without a great deal of central coordination.[15] It was present in most theaters, with the exception of the Southwest Pacific theater under Douglas MacArthur, who was hostile to OSS.
OSS was responsible for strategic propaganda, while the military commanders had operational and tactical responsibility. Dwight Eisenhower was notably supportive of psychological operations, had psychological warfare organization in the staff of all his commands, and worked with OSS and OWI.[15] The military did theater-level white propaganda, although the black propaganda function varied, often carried out by joint U.S.-UK organizations.
For the first time in U.S. history, American psywarriors employed electronic psywar in the field, in September 1944. Engineers of the 1st Radio Section of the 1st MRBC recorded POW interviews for front- line broadcasts, and reproduced the sound effects of vast numbers of tanks and other motor vehicles for Allied armored units in attempts to mislead German intelligence and lower enemy morale.[6]
Leaflets were delivered principally from aircraft, but also with artillery shells.[16]
Psychological operations were used extensively during the Korean War. The first unit, the 1st Loudspeaker and Leaflet Company, was sent to Korea in fall 1950.[19][20] Especially for the operations directed against troops of the Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK; North Korea), it was essential to work with Republic of Korea (ROK; South Korea personnel) to develop propaganda with the most effective linguistic and cultural context.
Since the war was a United Nations mandated operation, political sensitivities were high. While rules limited mentioning thePeoples Republic of China or the Soviet Union, first due to fear it would increase their intervention, and later because it might demoralize ROK civilians, Stalin was depicted and Chinese troops were targeted in leafleting.[21][20]
Various methods were used to deliver propaganda, with constraints imposed by exceptionally rugged terrain and that radios were relatively uncommon among DPRK and PRC troops. Loudspeaker teams often had to get dangerously close to enemy positions. Artillery and light aircraft delivered leaflets on the front lines, while heavy bombers dropped leaflets in the rear. Over 2.5 billion leaflets were dropped over North Korea during the war.[19] There was a somewhat artificial distinction made between strategic and tactical leaflets: rather than differentiating by the message, tactical leaflets were delivered within 40 miles (64 km) of the front lines and strategic leaflets were those delivered farther away.
Less direct and immediate correlation between tactical PSYOP efforts and target audience behavior may still be substantiated after the fact, especially by means of polling and interviews. For example, in the Korean War, approximately one-third of the total prisoner of war (POW) population polled by the United Nations (UN) forces claimed to have surrendered at least in part because of the propaganda leaflets. The contributions of PSYOP in the first Persian Gulf War have also been corroborated through POW interviews. Ninety-eight percent of the 87,000 POWs captured either possessed or had seen PSYOP leaflets that provided them with instructions on how to approach U.S. troops to surrender. Fifty-eight percent of the prisoners interviewed claimed to have heard coalition radio broadcasts, and 46 percent believed that the coalition broadcasts were truthful despite coming from their enemy. Again, some portion of the surrenders might have occurred even without PSYOP encouragement; but certainly, there would appear to be a correlation between PSYOP, which offered the enemy a way to escape the onslaught of U.S. military power, and their compliance with those instructions.[12]
One such operation, is Operation Moolah. The objective of the psychological operation was to target Communist pilots to defect to South Korea with a MiG-15, in order for the U.S. to conduct analysis of the capabilities of the MiG.
Some leafleting of North Korea was resumed after the Korean War, such as in the Cold WarOperation Jilli from 1964 to 1968.[22]
Guatemala
The CIA’s operation to overthrow the Government of Guatemala in 1954 marked an early zenith in the Agency’s long record of covert action. Following closely on two successful operations, one of which was the installation of the Shah as ruler of Iran in August 1953, the Guatemalan operation, known as PBSUCCESS, was both more ambitious and more thoroughly successful than either precedent. Rather than helping a prominent contender gain power with a few inducements, PBSUCCESS used an intensive paramilitary and psychological campaign to replace a popular, elected government with a political non-entity. In method scale and conception it had no antecedent, and its triumph confirmed the belief of many in the Eisenhower Administration that covert operations offered a safe, inexpensive substitute for armed force in resisting what they declared was Communist inroad in the Third World.[23]
As early as August 1964, almost one year before the activation of the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office (JUSPAO), General William Westmoreland told a CA and PSYOP conference that “psychological warfare and civic action are the very essence of the counterinsurgency campaign here in Vietnam…you cannot win this war by military means alone.” Westmoreland’s successor, Creighton Abrams, is known to have sent down guidelines to the 4th Psychological Operations Group that resulted in the drawing up of no fewer than 17 leaflets along those lines. In fact, the interest in PSYOP went all the way up to the Presidency; weekly reports from JUSPAO were sent to the White House, as well as to the Pentagon and the Ambassador in Saigon. In sum, it is a myth that the United States, stubbornly fixated on a World War II-style conventional war, was unaware of the “other war.”[6]
Safe conduct pass.
During the Vietnam era, the organization of the 4th Psychological Operations Group was very different. The four battalions of the group were divided by geographic region rather than area of expertise as they are now.
The 6th PSYOP Battalion was stationed at Bien Hoa and provided services to the tactical units, both American and Vietnamese, and to the various political entities such as provinces and cities in the area of III Corps.
The 7th PSYOP Battalion was stationed in Da Nang and provided service to I Corps.
The 8th PSYOP Battalion was based at Nha Trang, but it its B Company, which was its field teams, was based out ofPleiku nearly 100 kilometers away. The 8th Battalion served the II Corps area of Vietnam.
The 10th PSYOP Battalion was stationed in Can Tho and served IV Corps.
The A company of each battalion consisted of a command section, S-1, S-2, S-3, and a Psyop Development Center (PDC). Additionally, they generally had extensive printing facilities.
The B companies consisted of the field teams that were stationed throughout their respective corps billeted with MACV teams and combat units.
There are individual authors who claim that U.S. submarines and other vessels “frequently” and “regularly” operated in the territorial waters of neutral Sweden, including in Stockholm harbor, as part of an elaborate psychological warfare operation whose target was the Swedish people. The Swedish people and government were led to believe that the vessels were Soviet. U.S. operations were likely conducted by the National Underwater Reconnaissance Office (NURO) and aspects of the operations were coordinated with the secret NATO “stay-behind” network deployed in Sweden. See Strategy of tension and Operation Gladio. British submarines also participated in such secret operations. The campaign was successful in totally changing the psychology of the Swedish people: the Swedish population was convinced of the “present danger” posed by the desired enemy, the Soviet Union, and was prepared for war against it. Also, since the Swedish government continued to release “enemy” submarines, large parts of the Swedish population turned against their government’s conciliatory attitude and adopted more hard-line views.[24]
Most PSYOP activities and accomplishments in Panama were hardly noticed by either the U.S. public or the general military community. But the special operations community did notice. The lessons learned in Panama were incorporated into standard operating procedures. Where possible, immediate changes were made to capitalize on the PSYOP successes of the Grenada and Panama operations. This led to improved production, performance, and effect in the next contingency, which took place within 6 months after the return of the last PSYOP elements from Panama. Operations [in Iraq] employed PSYOP of an order of magnitude and effectiveness which many credit to the lessons learned from Panama.[6]
The broader scope of information operations in Panama included denying the Noriega regime use of their own broadcasting facilities. A direct action missionremoved key parts of the transmitters.[25] After-action reports indicate that this action should have had a much higher priority and been done very early in the operation.
An unusual technique, developed in real time, was termed the “Ma Bell Mission”, or, more formally, capitulation missions. There were a number of Panamian strongpoints that continued to have telephone access. By attaching Spanish-speaking Special Forces personnel to a combat unit that would otherwise take the strongpoint by force, the Spanish-speaking personnel would phone the Panamian commander, tell him to put away his weapons and assemble his men on the parade ground, or face lethal consequences. Because of the heavy reliance on telephones, these missions were nicknamed “Ma Bell” operations. “During this ten day period, TF BLACK elements were instrumental in the surrender of 14 cuartels (strongpoints), almost 2,000 troops, and over 6,000 weapons without a single U.S. casualty. Several high-ranking cronies of Manuel Noriega who were on the “most wanted” list were also captured in Ma Bell operations.[25]
Psychological operations sometimes are intimately linked to combat operations, with the use of force driving home the propaganda mission. During the Panamanian operation, it was necessary ? Ft. Amador, an installation shared by the U.S. and Panamanian Defence Forces (PDF). There were U.S. dependents at the installation, but security considerations prevented evacuating them before the attack. Concern for U.S. citizens, and rules of engagement (ROE) that directed casualties be minimized, PSYOP loudspeaker teams, from the 1st Bn, 4th PSYOP Gp, became a key asset. When the PDF did not surrender after initial appeals, the message changed, with the tactical commander warning “that resistance was hopeless in the face of overwhelming firepower and a series of demonstrations took place, escalating from small arms to 105 mm howitzer rounds. Subsequent broadcasts convinced the PDF to give up. The entire process allowed Ft. Amador to be secured with few casualties and minimal damage.”[26]
United States PSYOP became a part of popular culture during the U.S. invasion of Panama, the America public watched on TV as PSYOP soldiers blasted rock music into the Vatican Embassy to drive out ousted leader Manuel Noriega. However, it is widely believed inside the PSYOP community that the reasoning for the music was not actually to drive Noriega out, but to keep American news reporters from listening in on the negotiations for Noriega’s surrender.[citation needed]
The 1991 Gulf War
Psychological Operations was extremely valuable during the Gulf War due to the Iraqi military’s desire to avoid combat. Through leaflets and loudspeaker broadcasts, PSYOP forces walked many enemy soldiers through successful surrender.
Coalition forces worked extensively with Saudi, Kuwaiti, and other partners, to be sure psychological operations were culturally and linguistically appropriate.[27] One unusual technique involved dropping leaflets telling Iraqi troops that they would be bombed the next day by B-52 bombers, and urged them to surrender and save their lives. After the bombing the next day, which was not done in a manner to maximize casualties, another set of leaflets were dropped, saying the promise was kept and the survivors should surrender to save themselves. Variants of this technique were used on other units, telling them the specific unit that had been bombed the previous day. By the number of prisoners who surrendered, presenting the leaflet that identified itself as a safe-conduct pass, this program was effective.
United States PSYOP was widely employed in both Bosnia and Kosovo, most famously for their “mine awareness” campaign and its Superman comic.[citation needed]
In the 1990s it came to light that soldiers from the 4th Psychological Operations Group had been interning at the American news networks Cable News Network (CNN) and National Public Radio (NPR). The program was an attempt to provide its PSYOP personnel with the expertise developed by the private sector under its “Training with Industry” program. The program caused concern about the influence these soldiers might have on American news and the programs were terminated.
National Public Radio reported on April 10, 2000:
The U.S. Army’s Psychological Operations unit placed interns at CNN and NPR in 1998 and 1999. The placements at CNN were reported in the European press in February of this year and the program was terminated. The NPR placements will be reported this week in TV Guide.[28]
Toppling of Saddam Hussein statue
Arguably the most visible image of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square in central Baghdad. Allegations that the event was staged have been published. It is claimed it was actually an idea hatched by an Army psychological operations team.[29] Allegations surfaced that not only were the cheering group of people surrounding the statue in fact smaller than they were made out to be, in media depictions, but that also the group were not local to the area and were instead brought in by the military for the specific purpose of watching and lending credence to the pre-planned toppling.[30][31][32]
PSYOP pamphlet disseminated inIraq. The text translates as “This is your future al-Zarqawi,” and depicts al-Qaeda terrorist al-Zarqawi caught in a rat trap which is being held by an Iraqi Army soldier or an Iraqi Policeman.
In 2003 Sergeant Mark Hadsell claimed to have used loud music during the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners:[33]
“These people haven’t heard heavy metal. They can’t take it. If you play it for 24 hours, your brain and body functions start to slide, your train of thought slows down and your will is broken. That’s when we come in and talk to them.”[33]
Other reports of the use of music during interrogation have occasionally plagued PSYOP.[34]
On 9 December 2008 the Associated Press reported that various musicians were coordinating their objections to the use of their music as a technique for softening up captives through an initiative called Zero dB.[35][36] However, not all musicians have taken issue with the possibility that their music is being used during interrogations. Stevie Benton of the groupDrowning Pool commented supportively:[36]
“I take it as an honor to think that perhaps our song could be used to quell another 9/11 attack or something like that.”[36]
Afghanistan burning bodies incident
On 1 October 2005 in Gumbad, Afghanistan, Soldiers from the 173rd Airborne decided to burn the bodies of two Taliban fighters killed in a firefight the previous day for hygienic reasons. Despite Islamic customs that forbid cremation, they chose to proceed. The Platoon Leader also failed to properly notify his Battalion Commander of the decision prior to burning the bodies. When his Battalion Commander was notified, he ordered the flaming bodies extinguished. An official investigation into the incident found evidence of poor decision making, poor judgement, poor reporting, a lack of knowledge and respect for local Afghan custom and tradition. The Infantry Officer received a General Officer letter of reprimand. Reserve PSYOP soldiers were involved because they heard about the incident and used the information to incite Taliban fighters in another area where freelance journalist Stephen Dupont was located. Dupont reported that the PSYOP soldiers claimed the bodies were to be burned due to hygiene concerns.[37]
During the War on Terror, U.S. PSYOP teams often broadcast abrasive messages over loudspeakers to try tempting enemy fighters into a direct confrontation where the Americans have the upper hand. Other times, they use their loudspeaker to convince enemy soldiers to surrender. In the Afghanistan incident, a PSYOP sergeant allegedly broadcast the following message to the Taliban:
Attention, Taliban, you are all cowardly dogs. You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be.
Another soldier stated:
You attack and run away like women. You call yourself Talibs but you are a disgrace to the Muslim religion and you bring shame upon your family. Come and fight like men instead of the cowardly dogs you are.
U. S. authorities investigated the incident and the two Reserve PSYOP Soldiers received administrative punishment for broadcasting messages which were not approved. Investigators found no evidence that the bodies were burned for a psychological effect. They concluded that the broadcast violated standing policies for the content of loudspeaker messages and urged that all soldiers in the command undergo training on Afghan sensitivities.[38]
Pentagon Analysts and the Main Stream Media
In 2008, The New York Times exposed how analysts portrayed in the U.S. news media as independent and objective were in fact under the tutelage of the Pentagon.[39] From the NYT:
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance
2009 congressional delegation to Afghanistan
In February 2011, journalist Michael Hastings published an article in Rolling Stone reported that Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the supposed leader of a PSYOP group in Afghanistan, alleged that Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell a three-star General in charge of training troops in Afghanistan,[40] ordered Holmes and his group to perform in-depth research on visiting U.S. congressmen in order to spin presentations and visits.[41] According to Holmes, his team was tasked with “illegally providing themes and messages to influence the people and leadership of the United States.”[42] Reported targets included United States Senators John McCain,Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken, Carl Levin, Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and think-tank analysts.[41] Under the 1948 Smith–Mundt Act, such operations may not be used to target Americans. When Holmes attempted to seek counsel and to protest, he was placed under investigation by the military at the behest of General Caldwell’s chief of staff.[41]
Caldwell’s spokesman, Lt. Col. Shawn Stroud, denied Holmes’s assertions, and other unnamed military officials disputed Holmes’s claims as false and misleading, saying there are no records of him ever completing any PSYOP training. Subsequently Holmes conceded that he was not a Psychological Operations officer nor was he in charge of a Psychological Operations unit and acknowledged that Caldwell’s orders were “fairly innocuous.”[43] Officials say that Holmes spent his time in theater starting a strategic communications business with Maj. Laural Levine, with whom he conducted an improper relationship in Afghanistan. A former aid said, “At no point did Holmes ever provide a product to Gen. Caldwell”. General David Petraeus has since ordered an investigation into the alleged incident.[42]
Portrayals in popular culture
The general’s daughter from both the novel and blockbuster movie The General’s Daughter was a PSYOP officer.
A USACAPOC combat patch (FWS-SSI) can be seen being worn by a soldier in the film X-Men: The Last Stand in the President’s command center.
In the 9th season of the television series NCIS, Jamie Lee Curtis plays a recurring role as the civilian PSYOPs director at the US Department of Defense.
Purdue University‘s Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations, or SEAS, is currently being used by Homeland Security and the US Defense Department to simulate crises on the US mainland.[1] SEAS “enables researchers and organizations to try out their models or techniques in a publicly known, realistically detailed environment.”[2] It “is now capable of running real-time simulations for up to 62 nations, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and China. The simulations gobble up breaking news, census data, economic indicators, and climactic events in the real world, along with proprietary information such as military intelligence. […] The Iraq and Afghanistan computer models are the most highly developed and complex of the 62 available to JFCOM-J9. Each has about five million individual nodes representing things such as hospitals, mosques, pipelines, and people.”[1]
SEAS was developed to help Fortune 500 companies with strategic planning. Then it was used to help “recruiting commanders to strategize ways to improve recruiting potential soldiers”. In 2004 SEAS was evaluated for its ability to help simulate “the non-kinetic aspects of combat, things like the diplomatic, economic, political, infrastructure and social issues”.[3]
Sentient World Simulation is the name given to the current vision of making SEAS a “continuously running, continually updated mirror model of the real world that can be used to predict and evaluate future events and courses of action.”[4]
Development and use
SEAS technology resulted from over ten years of research at Purdue University, funded by the Department of Defense, several Fortune 500 companies, the National Science Foundation, the Century Fund of the state of Indiana, and the Office of Naval Research. Originally, SEAS was developed to help Fortune 500 companies with strategic planning. It was also used to model the population of the U.S. that is eligible for military service to help “recruiting commanders to strategize ways to improve recruiting potential soldiers”[3]and to study biological attacks.[5]
In January 2004 SEAS was evaluated by the Joint Innovation and Experimentation Directorate (J9) of the US Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) for its ability to help simulate “the non-kinetic aspects of combat, things like the diplomatic, economic, political, infrastructure and social issues” at the Purdue Technology Park during Breaking Point 2004, an environment-shaping war game resulting in the conclusion that it “moves us from the current situation where everyone comes together and sits around a table discussing what they would do, to a situation where they actually play in the simulation and their actions have consequences.”[3]
In 2006 JFCOM-J9 used SEAS to war game warfare scenarios for Baghdad in 2015. In April 2007 JFCOM-J9 began working with Homeland Security and multinational forces in a homeland defense war gaming exercise.[1]
Sentient World Simulation
The Sentient World Simulation project (SWS) is to be based on SEAS. The ultimate goal envisioned by Alok R. Chaturvedi on March 10, 2006 was for SWS to be a “continuously running, continually updated mirror model of the real world that can be used to predict and evaluate future events and courses of action. SWS will react to actual events that occur anywhere in the world and incorporate newly sensed data from the real world. […] As the models influence each other and the shared synthetic environment, behaviors and trends emerge in the synthetic world as they do in the real world. Analysis can be performed on the trends in the synthetic world to validate alternate worldviews. […] Information can be easily displayed and readily transitioned from one focus to another using detailed modeling, such as engineering level modeling, to aggregated strategic, theater, or campaign-level modeling.”[4]
^ Jump up to:abcPurdue University article USJFCOM teams with Purdue University to add the human factor to war game simulations published February 6, 2004
^ Jump up to:abPurdue University abstract from Alok Chaturvedi titled Computational Challenges for a Sentient World Simulation published March 10, 2006
Jump up^Purdue University article Indiana researchers tap into grid computing to prepare for disasters published June 24, 2002
NATO article Using the Multinational Experiment 4 (MNE4) Modeling and Simulation Federation to Support Joint Experimentation begins with: “Multinational experimentation is a critical element of the United States Joint Forces Command’s (USJFCOM) Experimentation Directorate (J9) joint concept development and experimentation program. The Multinational Experiment (MNE) series explores ways to achieve a coalition’s political goals by influencing the behaviour of our adversaries by relying on the full weight of the coalition’s collective national powers (diplomatic, information, military and economics actions). MNE4, conducted in February – March 2006, was one such experimentation venue that explored new ways to apply the various elements of the coalition’s considerable influence, short of direct military conflict. MNE4 required an extensive international modeling and simulation (M&S) development effort with models provided by France, Germany and the United States.”
Story 1: The Great Divider Obama Promotes Class Warfare and Racism: Black Criminal Class Attacks Black Middle Class and Police — Which Sides Are You On Boys? — This Land Is Your Land — Videos
pete seeger which side are you on
Woody Guthrie-This Land Is Your Land
Obama Requests Millions for Police Body Cameras
Black Man Goes on EPIC Rant Against Ferguson Rioters
BILL WHITTLE: FERGUSON AND THE REAL RACE WAR
Afterburner w/Bill Whittle — Showtime: Evil or Stupid?
FERGUSON RIOTS – Elite Using Ferguson to Bring a RACE WAR to United States?
PJTV: State of the Union: Obama Embraces Class Warfare
Don’t Let The Race War Begin
Cornel West: ‘Ferguson Signifies the End of the Age of Obama’
Cornel West: Sharpton Sold Soul for Obama
Cornel West: Obama A ‘Republican In Blackface,’ Black MSNBC Hosts Are ‘Selling Their Souls’
Racial Profiling and Police Body Cameras
Ferguson Looters/Rioters confront Alex Jones reporters Joe Biggs and Jakari Jackson
Masked Thug Threatens Infowars Reporters
Reporters Discover Ferguson Psy Op
Ferguson Is A Beta Test For Coming Civil War
Epic Riot Footage From Inside The Battle of Ferguson
The Root of this is Racism: Ferguson Activist Speaks Out on Police Abuses After Meeting Obama
Obama Ordered Standdown Created Ferguson Race Riots
Ferguson Could Ignite Race War
Pete Seeger – Talks about his banjo tutorial and sings ‘Which side are you on’
This Land Is Your Land: Woody and Arlo Guthrie
The final montage of the film “Woody Guthrie: Hard Travelin'”, produced by J. Brown. Audio mixed and overdubbed at Long View Farm in 1984 by Jesse Henderson and John Pilla, now deceased. Video edit and audio restoration by Gil Markle. High-res playback available on studiowner.com.
Included in the video are the images and voices of Woody and Arlo Guthrie, Holly Near, Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Hoyt Axton, and others.
Woody Guthrie-This Land Is Your Land
JUDY COLLINS, PETE SEEGER – “This Land Is Your Land” with ARLO GUTHRIE & FRED HELLERMAN 1976
Arlo Guthrie & Pete Seeger – This Land Is Your Land
Joel Skousen is a political scientist, by training, specializing in the philosophy of law and Constitutional theory, and is also a designer of high security residences and retreats. He has designed Self-sufficient and High Security homes throughout North America, and has consulted in Central America as well. His latest book in this field is Strategic Relocation–North American Guide to Safe Places, and is active in consulting with persons who need to relocate for security and increased self-sufficiency. He also assists people who need to live near a large city to develop contingency retreat plans involving rural farm or recreation property. http://www.joelskousen.com/
Strategic Relocation: Preparing for the Economic Collapse with Joel Skousen
Joel Skousen: Strategic Relocation – North American Guide to Safe Places 1/5
Joel Skousen: Strategic Relocation – North American Guide to Safe Places 2/5
Joel Skousen: Strategic Relocation – North American Guide to Safe Places 3/5
Joel Skousen: Strategic Relocation – North American Guide to Safe Places 4/5
Joel Skousen: Strategic Relocation – North American Guide to Safe Places 5/5
TEDxSanDiego 2011 – Jason Russell – Joseph Kony 2012
Secrets KONY 2012 Is Desperate to Hide
Kony 2012, hyped on the backs of celebrities and do-gooders, is revealed for what it is– a propaganda salvo for a continent wide invasion of Africa.
Research makes clear that KONY is a full on deception for geostrategic positioning vis-a-vis China for oil and mineral resources, as well as an effort to legitimize the U.S. military’s AFRICOM unit in the region through newly-branded “humanitarian” interventions.
It is not only War in the name of Peace, but an attempt to empower the International Criminal Court under the influence of NGOs and other related globalist corporate interests.
Obama has already deployed 100 special forces troops to the central African region back in October 2011, and a resolution in Congress– on the heels of KONY 2012’s viral views of more than 100 million– seeks to send more forces there for an all out invasion on the pretext of hunting down a shadowy warlord with less blood on his hands than an average African despot.
How Cults Work (MUST SEE)
Invisible Children are liars and Kony 2012 is a scam
Uganda Genocide
Congo 20 million dead the role US and its allies played
CONGO 20MILLION DIE AND THE WORLD SILENT: The role that the America/Isreal and its allies, Rwanda/Uganda, have played in the greatest humanitarian crisis at the dawn of the 21st century
KONY 2012 SCAM – Ron Paul Speaks Out Against Brainwashing
Stop Kony Now – Discussion !!
Oil behind US nose poking in Uganda – RT 111018
Obama, the US and 5 Million Deaths in The Congo
US Sends Troops to Uganda – Is it About the Oil?
The US, Mining and Dictators in the Congo
RE: KONY 2012 — Beware Invisible Children SCAM (Video Response)
KONY 2012 Exposed: Dr. Webster Tarpley Reports 1/3
KONY 2012 Exposed: Dr. Webster Tarpley Reports 2/3
KONY 2012 Exposed: Dr. Webster Tarpley Reports 3/3
Invisible Children and Kony 2012: Avoiding Scams and Irresponsible Donations
Is Kony 2012 FRAUD? Just Asking Questions!
The TRUTH About “Invisible Children org” & “KONY 2012 Campaign”
Kony 2012 – Truth About Kony 2012 – Uganda oil find 2009 – Share this video!
US Military in Uganda = Soros, NWO Want Uganda’s Oil; Another Battle For Resources 10/17/11
GBR: What is “Kony 2012”?
Wag the Dog (1997) – Trailer
Wag The Dog
Wag The Dog – War On Terror
US sends combat troops to Uganda
U.S. sending troops to Africa combat Joseph Kony
US Sends Troops to Uganda – Is it About the Oil?
Obama sends troops to Africa
KONY 2012 = BIG OIL – Truth UGANDA OIL – Share this video!
People & Power – The LRA and Sudan
Occupy Uganda: Obama Sneaks U.S. Combat Troops Into African War Zone
KONY 2012: The Charity of Death with Ugandan Activist Sanyu & Writer Patrick Henningsen
Real News @ http://RevolutionNews.US — Why U.S. military in Uganda? Soros fingerprints all over it! Obama’s billionaire friend has interests in African country’s oil…
Obama on Friday notified House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, that he plans to send about 100 military personnel, mostly Special Operations Forces, to central Africa. The first troops reportedly arrived in Uganda on Wednesday.
The U.S. mission will be to advise forces seeking to kill or capture Joseph Kony, the leader of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA. Kony is accused of major human rights atrocities. He is on the U.S. terrorist list and is wanted by the International Criminal Court.
In a letter on Friday, Obama announced the initial team of U.S. military personnel “with appropriate combat equipment” deployed to Uganda on Wednesday. Other forces deploying include “a second combat-equipped team and associated headquarters, communications and logistics personnel.”
“Our forces will provide information, advice and assistance to select partner nation forces,” he said.
Both conservatives and liberals have raised questions about whether military involvement in Uganda advances U.S. interests.
Writing in The Atlantic yesterday, Max Fisher noted the Obama administration last year approved special forces bases and operations across the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and Central Asia.
“But those operations, large and small, target terrorist groups and rogue states that threaten the U.S. — something the Lord’s Resistance Army could not possibly do,” he wrote.
“It’s difficult to find a U.S. interest at stake in the Lord’s Resistance Army’s campaign of violence,” continued Fisher. “It’s possible that there’s some immediate U.S. interest at stake we can’t obviously see.”
Bill Roggio, the managing editor of The Long War Journal, referred to the Obama administration’s stated rationale for sending troops “puzzling,” claiming the LRA does not present a national security threat to the U.S. — “despite what President Obama said.”
Inhofe Sets LRA Record Straight
U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), the driving force behind the legislative efforts against Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), discusses the LRA and dispenses with many misconceptions about the group and what they have done. Inhofe has been raising awareness and working to end Kony’s reign of terror for over a decade.
Lured by a government amnesty, senior commanders from the LRA are coming out of the bush and speaking about their time with Joseph Kony. In this rare report, they justify their actions.
“He is from God. What he predicts comes true”, states Captain Ray Apire, explaining Kony’s hold over his soldiers. “By making people suffer, he is bringing people close to God”. Commanders explain how they interpreted Jesus’ command to “Go and catch people”, seeing it as an order to abduct children. For the first time in a decade, the government and LRA are involved in serious peace talks. But the conflict is far from over. A woman breaks down describing how her daughter was abducted the previous night. This is the second time her girl has been kidnapped so she knows she will probably be killed.
Why Is Obama Sending Troops to Uganda to Support a Dictator?
“…One possible explanation is oil. When Yoweri Museveni won re-election this year Bloomberg reported that Tullow Oil would begin to pump oil out of the Lake Albert region as they have an estimated 2.5 billion barrels and possibly as high as 6 billion.
Are Presidents concerned with oil agreements in other countries? Former President Clinton was overseeing the oil Production Sharing Agreement of Tullow Oil back in 2000. As president Clinton supported and invested in what is called a “murderous gang” consisting of General Kagame of Rwanda, and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda.
A grantee of the Soros-funded Revenue Watch called the Africa Institute for Energy Governance, started the Publish What You Pay Coalition of Uganda, supposedly to promote transparency in the oil industry.
According to World Net Daily Soros is the main financier of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect. The “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine is based on principles backed by the UN which propogate the formula that sovereignty is not a right but rather a responsibility that can be taken away if they have engaged in “ethnic cleansing” or “war crimes.” Though one member of the group, Hanan Ashrawi is a staunch Holocaust denier according to WND.
WND has reported that the founder of “Responsibility to Protect,” Ramesh Thakur recently advocated for global redistribution to create a “New World Order.”
Then Soros’ International Crisis Group advised the White House to deploy the military to Uganda to capture the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony. The ICG executive board along with Soros also has Bill Clinton’s former national security advosor Samuel Berger, a socialist former secretary general of NATO, and the senior advisor of ICG is Zbignew Brzezinski just to add a little new world order spice to the mix.
The real issue appears to be an oil dispute as the Ugandan President Museveni has been accused of taking bribes from Tullow Oil and Italian ENI though he staunchly denies the claim. …”
Soros’ “Responsibility to Protect Doctrine” Advanced By Comrade Obama
By Ed Randazzo
“…Responsibility to Protect, or Responsibility to Act, as cited by Obama, is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege but a responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of “war crimes,” “genocide,” “crimes against humanity” or “ethnic cleansing.”
The Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect is the world’s leading champion of the military doctrine. Billionaire activist George Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect. Several of the doctrine’s main founders also sit on boards with Soros.
The luminaries that devised the Responsibility to Protect doctrine included Arab League Secretary General Amre Moussa as well as Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, a staunch denier of the Holocaust who long served as the deputy of late Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.
Also, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy has a seat on the advisory board of the 2001 commission that originally founded Responsibility to Protect. The commission is called the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. It invented the term “responsibility to protect” while defining its guidelines.
The Carr Center is a research center concerned with human rights located at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, that bastion of conservative thought.
Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights, was Carr’s founding executive director and headed the institute at the time it advised in the founding of Responsibility to Protect.
Power reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading to the decision to bomb Libya.
Soros’ Open Society Institute is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect. Soros’ Open Society is one of only three nongovernmental funders of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Government sponsors include Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Rwanda and the U.K. …”
“…Kony 2012 is a film created by Invisible Children, Inc. which became a viral video.[2][3][4][5] The film’s purpose is to promote the charity’s ‘Stop Kony’ movement to make indicted Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony internationally known in order to arrest him in 2012.[6]
The film has spread virally.[7][8][9] As of 9 March 2012 (2012 -03-09)[update], the film currently has over 15.5 million views on Vimeo,[10] and over 64 million views on video-sharing website YouTube,[11] with other viewing emanating from a central “Kony2012” website operated by Invisible Children. The intense exposure of the video caused the “Kony 2012” website to crash shortly after it began gaining widespread popularity.[12] The video has also seen a number of celebrities endorsing the campaign including Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Christina Milian, Nicki Minaj, Bill Gates and Kim Kardashian.[8][13][14][15][16] On April 20, 2012, as part of the campaign, supporters will put up posters promoting Kony 2012 in their home towns. Invisible Children offers posters from an online shop in an attempt to gain wider recognition on the issue. They have also created action kits that include campaign buttons, posters, bracelets, and stickers to help spread awareness.[12]
Plot
The film documents the Invisible Children Inc’s plans and efforts to arrest Kony. It describes Kony’s guerrilla warfare tactics with his Lord’s Resistance Army and the regions (northern Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan) in which they have been employed.[17] One of the main people featured in the film is a Ugandan named Jacob, whose brother was killed by Kony. In response, director and founder of Invisible Children, Jason Russell, “promises Jacob that he will help stop Kony.”[18] The film advocates curtailing compelled and coerced youth military service and the restoration of social order.[4] The video also has clips of Jason Russell’s son, Gavin. Gavin is a young child and many children his age are subject to Kony’s regime. Gavin shows that even though he’s young he wants to help and wonders why no one else does. He also says innocent, childlike things – when told that Kony forces people to kill family members and fellow countrymen, his response is “But they’re not gonna do what he says, ’cause they’re nice guys… right?”.
“Culture and policy makers”
The Invisible Children charity has been focused on obtaining the support of a select group of individuals in order to “help bring awareness to the horrific abuse and killing of children in the East and Central African countries at the hands of Kony and his leadership”. This list included 20 “celebrity culture makers”, such as George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Taylor Swift, and Ryan Seacrest.[19]
The list also featured 12 “policy makers” that have “the power to keep U.S. government officials in Africa” in order to work toward the capture of Kony. This list includes former U.S. President George W. Bush and his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (although their administration pursued a policy of hostility towards the International Criminal Court[20]), and U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate John Kerry.[21]
Criticism and responses
The campaign has come under criticism for its simplification of events in the region.[22] Part of this purported simplification is the campaign’s failure to mention Ugandan government actions or those committed by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army or the complicated regional politics fueling the conflict.[23] Another critique is that the film gives a misleading impression of the whereabouts and magnitude of Kony’s remaining LRA forces: in fact, Kony’s followers are now thought to number only in the hundreds.[24] There has also been a more cynical analysis of Barack Obama‘s decision to send military advisers to the region, it being suggested that it was a reward for Uganda giving assistance in Somalia. Obama did announce a kill-or-capture mission with “combat-equipped troops” to take out Kony in Uganda. [23] Further criticism has come from the campaign’s lack of accountability towards the Ugandan government in the conflict.[22] Jedediah Jenkins, the “director of idea development for Invisible Children”, responded to the concerns about working with the Ugandan government by stating that, “There is a huge problem with political corruption in Africa. If we had the purity to say we will not partner with anyone corrupt, we couldn’t partner with anyone.”[25]
In November of 2011, while the Kony 2012 film was in production, Foreign Affairs magazine published an article that stated that Invisible Children had “manipulated facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders” and was “portraying Kony – a brutal man, to be sure – as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil”.[25]Resolve, one of Invisible Children’s “partner organizations”, responded to the article, saying that the accusations were a “serious charge … published with no accompanying substantiation.”[25] These criticisms of how Invisible Children has been acting to raise awareness and the statements that were made in the film resurfaced when Kony 2012 was released. Jenkins responded to the new criticisms by saying that they were “myopic” and that the video itself was a “tipping point” that “got young people to care about an issue on the other side of the planet that doesn’t affect them”.[25]
There has also been criticism related to the plausibility of Kony 2012. Cooperation between the United States of America and Uganda is hard-fought, and the two armies have failed to come together and cooperate in numerous occasions [26]. The Kony 2012 film has raised a possibility of the military of African nations coming together to find Kony, however, military coordination and cooperation is lacking within the countries where the LRA resides itself. Since the LRA has split up, there is no guarentee of quick or even possible success in the mission to capture Kony, and Kony is not with the group that has been committing the most damage and atrocity with the people of Uganda.
Official response
On March 8, 2012, Invisible Children released an official response, addressing the criticisms directed at the Kony 2012 film. They explained that they “do not defend any of the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Ugandan government or the Ugandan army” and the reason why they are working with the Ugandan army even though Kony is no longer in Uganda is because the army is “more organized and better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries (DRC, South Sudan, CAR) to track down Joseph Kony” and that they want all of the governments in the region to work together to arrest Kony. As an explanation for the simplicity of the movie, they stated that “in [their] quest to garner wide public support of nuanced policy, [they] sought to explain the conflict in an easily understandable format”. [27] …”
Andrew Breitbart speaking at Tea Party rally at Independence Mall in Philadelphia in July 31, 2010
IN MEMORIAM, ANDREW BREITBART: PJTV Remembers a True Patriot and Friend
“PJTV’s Roger L. Simon, Bill Whittle, Lionel Chetwynd and Stephen Kruiser remember the energy and impact of the great Andrew Breitbart. From his internet savvy, to his willingness to battle ACORN and the left, Andrew Breitbart will be greatly missed by the PJ Media community.”
The Bully! Pulpit Show: Mark Joseph interviews Andrew Breitbart
Andrew Breitbart at The Heritage Foundation
Andrew Breitbart: Father, Husband, Patriot, Warrior
Tribute to Andrew Breitbart 1969-2012
Andrew Breitbart Big Government
Gone Without a Clue: The Suspicious Death of Andrew Breitbart
Andrew Breitbart – From Mindless Liberal to Conscious Conservative
Rush Limbaugh remembers Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012)
CNN: Arianna Huffington remembers Andrew Breitbart
Michael Savage on the Passing of Andrew Breitbart – (Radio Commentary Aired on March 1, 2012)
Glenn Beck Discusses Andrew Breitbart’s Death P1
Glenn Beck Discusses Andrew Breitbart’s Death P2
Glenn Beck Discusses Andrew Breitbart’s Death P3
Alex Jones – Andrew Breitbart Mysteriously Dies Before Releasing Damaging Obama Video
Is This What Killed Andrew Breitbart? The CIA Heart-Attack Gun
Last Interview with Andrew Breitbart
Peter Schiff’s interview with Andrew Breitbart (May 23, 2011)
Cenk Uygur interviews Andrew Breitbart
Andrew Breitbart on his Legacy “I want the left to know they screwed with the wrong guy!”
Dylan Ratigan Interviews Andrew Breitbart
Andrew Breitbart’s epic interview on MSNBC
On March 1, conservative activist, blogger and new media publisher, Andrew Breitbart, collapsed and died of an apparent heart attack shortly after midnight while walking near his home in Westwood, California. A bystander saw him collapse and called paramedics. They rushed him to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where he was declared dead. The Los Angeles Coroner’s Office will be conducting an autopsy.
Breitbart spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference 2012 on Feb. 10, where he made a surprise announcement about videos he claimed to have of Barack Obama from his college days:
“This election we are going to vet him from his college days to show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008. The videos are going to come out and the narrative is going to come out. That Barack Obama met a bunch of silver ponytails in 1980s, like Bill (Ayers) and Bernadine (Dohrn), equally radical, who said one day we would have the presidency, and the rest of us slept as they plotted, and they plotted, and they plotted and they oversaw hundreds of millions of dollars in the Annenberg Challenge and they had real money, from real capitalists. …Then they became communists. We got to work on that. That is a parenthesis. Barack Obama is a radical, we should not be afraid to say that! Okay? And Barack Obama was launched from Bill and Bernadine’s salon. I’ve been there.”
Breitbart’s entire CPAC 2012 speech can be viewed on YouTube.
Andrew Breitbart at CPAC 2012 02102012 – FULL SPEECH
Andrew Breitbart Just Another Weird Death
Did OBAMA KILL Andrew Breitbart?
Obama’s Black Reparations and Redistributing The Wealth Scandal–The Pigford Fraud
Pigford: Claimants Win. Lawyers Win. You Lose
Andrew Breitbart on the Pigford story, part 1
Andrew Breitbart on the Pigford story, part 2
Andrew Breitbart ~ Part 7 of 8
Andrew Breitbart ~ Part 8 of 8
Glenn Beck -SHIRLEY SHERROD Obama Fired Her for being Black
Andrew Breitbart’s epic interview on MSNBC
Shirley Sherrod: the FULL video
Andrew Breitbart: Glenn Beck “Screwed the Pooch”
CNN: 2010, Andrew Breitbart defends Sherrod video
Michael Savage interviews Andrew Breitbart on Shirley Sherrod Controversy Part 1
Michael Savage interviews Andrew Breitbart on Shirley Sherrod Controversy Part 2
Michael Savage interviews Andrew Breitbart on Shirley Sherrod Controversy Part 3
Michael Savage talks to Andrew Breitbart about the Shirley Sherrod Controversy Part 4
Michael Savage talks to Andrew Breitbart about the Shirley Sherrod Controversy Part 5
Michael Savage talks to Andrew Breitbart about the Shirley Sherrod Controversy Part 6.
Michael Savage talks to Rep. Steve King about the Shirley Sherrod linked Pigford Affair
For 10 years Breitbart had been an editor of the Drudge Report website and researcher for Arianna Huffington who he helped launch The Huffington Post web publication.
Breitbart published his own websites breitbart.com and a video blog breitbarttv.com and the “bigs” websites–Big Government, Big Hollywood, Big Journalism and Big Peace.
His Big Journalism website posted on May 28, 2011, a sexually explicit photo of New York Rep. Anthony Weiner. The congressman had sent a 21-year-old college student a link to the photograph. On June 8, 2011, Brietbart reported that Weiner has sent other photos. Weiner resigned from Congress on June 21, 2011.
Weiner Takes on Blitzer over Weinergate
Breitbart at Rep. Weiner’s press conference
Dennis Miller Interviews Andrew Breitbart About Anthony Weiner And The Jokes Came Naturally
Weiner apologizes to wife, family and Andrew Breitbart
In 2009 Breitbart and his Big Government website assisted in the demise of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Videos of Hannah Giles, who posed as a prostitute, and James O’Keefe, her boyfriend, meeting with ACORN staff in several offices were aired on both the Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity television shows and Fox News. ACORN was subsequently liquidated in November 2010.
PJTV: How Breitbart Conquered ACORN (and the MSM)
Barack Obama – ACORN Will Shape My Domestic Policy
Glenn Beck 20090910 Part 1/4
Glenn Beck 20090910 Part 2/4
Glenn Beck 20090910 Part 3/4
Glenn Beck 20090910 Part 4/4
Much More Footage From The ACORN Prostitution Slavery Sting In Baltimore MA
Hannah Giles Interviewed on Red Eye
Glenn Beck – Hannah poses as a prostitute to ACORN worker
Hannity Interviews Couple Behind ACORN “Pimp And Prostitute” Video
Sean Hannity with Hannah Giles, Andrew Breitbart discuss ACORN
Sean Hannity, Hannah Giles and Andrew Breitbart discuss ACORN San Diego undercover operation
Sean Hannity, Hannah Giles and Andrew Breitbart discuss ACORN San Bernadino
Michael Savage Interviews Andrew Breitbart on ACORN Investigation -(Part 1 of 2)- September 18, 2009
Michael Savage Interviews Andrew Breitbart on ACORN Investigation -(Part 2 of 2)- September 18, 2009
Death Of A Breitbart
He wrote a weekly column for the Washington Times and his work was also published by the National Review Online, the Weekly Standard Online and the Wall Street Journal.
Breitbart wrote two bestsellers, “Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon — the Case Against Celebrity,” in 2004 and “Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World,” in 2011. He recently wrote a new conclusion to “Righteous Indignation” where he said:
“I love my job. I love fighting for what I believe in. I love having fun while doing it. I love reporting stories that the Complex refuses to report. I love fighting back, I love finding allies, and—famously—I enjoy making enemies.
Three years ago, I was mostly a behind-the-scenes guy who linked to stuff on a very popular website. I always wondered what it would be like to enter the public realm to fight for what I believe in. I’ve lost friends, perhaps dozens. But I’ve gained hundreds, thousands—who knows?—of allies. At the end of the day, I can look at myself in the mirror, and I sleep very well at night.”
The Politics of Hollywood with Andrew Breitbart
Andrew Breitbart — Media War
Breitbart was 43 and is survived by his wife, Susie Bean, daughter of actor Orson Bean, and four young children.
[Raymond Thomas Pronk is host of the Pronk Pops Show on KDUX web radio from 3-5 p.m. Wednesdays and author of the companion blog www.pronkpops.wordpress.com]
Background Articles and Videos
PART 1 Glenn Beck – Soros puts “hit” on Beck – 10-20-2010
PART 2 Glenn Beck – Soros puts “hit” on Beck – 10-20-2010
Ron Paul is in The Fight of His Life, We Must Stand With Him!-
“Ron Paul Leads in Iowa. How Can We Bring Him Down?”
What Ron Paul Thinks Of America
Ron Paul Walks out on CNN Interview (12-21-11)
Ron Paul on Old Newsletter Controversy (Part 1)
Ron Paul on Old Newsletter Controversy (Part 2)
“The Torpedoes Are Now in the Water for Ron Paul”
Is the GOP Establishment Scared of Ron Paul?
Is Ron Paul a Racist?
Mark Levin – Who Wrote Ron Paul’s Newsletters In The 1990’s They’re Full Of Racist Statements
Did Sean Hannity Use The Race Card Or Report The News On Ron Paul During Interview With Karl Rove
Armed Chinese Troops in Texas!
Judge Napolitano and Michael Scheuer Talk Popularity of Ron Paul’s Foreign Policy
RON PAUL AND TALK SHOW HISTORY
NAACP Austin branch pres talks about Ron Paul. info in about
Ron Paul Revealed – Tucker – Updated (see about section)
Ron Paul’s Racist Quotes
Rants in Ron Paul newsletters
Lew Rockwell at Ron Paul’s Rally for the Republic (part 1)
Lew Rockwell at Ron Paul’s Rally for the Republic (part 2)
Tom Woods (1 of 2) Ron Paul Rally For The Republic
Tom Woods (2 of 2) Ron Paul Rally For The Republic
New Ron Paul Ad Staying on the Right Path
The Story Behind Ron Paul’s Racist Newsletters
“…So as Ron Paul is on track to win the Iowa caucuses, he is getting a new dose of press scrutiny.
And the press is focusing on the newsletters that went out under his name in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They were called the Ron Paul’s Political Report, Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, the Ron Paul Survival Report and the Ron Paul Investment Letter.
There is no doubt that the newsletters contained utterly racist statements.
Some choice quotes:
“Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”“We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational.”After the Los Angeles riots, one article in a newsletter claimed, “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks.”One referred to Martin Luther King Jr. as “the world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours” and who “seduced underage girls and boys.”
Another referred to Barbara Jordan, a civil rights activist and congresswoman as “Barbara Morondon,” the “archetypical half-educated victimologist.”
Other newsletters had strange conspiracy theories about homosexuals, the CIA, and AIDS.
In 1996 when the Texas Monthly investigated the newsletters, Paul took responsibility for them and said that certain things were taken out of context. (It’s hard to imagine a context that would make the above quotes defensible.)
When the newsletter controversy came up again during the 2008 campaign, Paul explained that he didn’t actually write the newsletters but because they carried his name he was morally responsible for their content. Further, he didn’t know exactly who wrote the offensive things and they didn’t represent his views.
But it is still a serious issue. Jamie Kirchick reported in The New Republic that Paul made nearly one million dollars in just one year from publishing the newsletters. Could Paul really not understand the working of such a profitable operation? Reporters at the libertarian-leaning Reason magazine wrote that the author was likely longtime Paul-friend and combative polemicist Lew Rockwell.
Even though many of the newsletters are written in a first person, conversational style, many observers don’t believe that Ron Paul actually wrote them.
There aren’t any videos on YouTube with Paul speaking in incendiary terms about minorities. The newsletters don’t “sound” like Ron Paul — he doesn’t do wordplay like “Morondon” or use prefixes like “semi-criminal” or “half-educated” in his speech or his recent writings. Further, most newsletter and direct-mail operations in politics employ ghostwriters.
So why were Ron Paul or his ghostwriters engaged in racism and conspiracy theories? And why did Ron Paul allow this?
The Ron Paul Newsletters
By Jeffrey Lord
“…o refresh, Reason magazine came out with a detailed piece on the Paul newsletters back in 2008. The piece was written by reporters Julian Sanchez and David Weigel.
The article was as disturbing as it was alarming.
Here, according to Reason, was a potential Republican nominee for president who had for whatever rationale acquiesced to having a newsletter sent out under his name that used the most vile of racist language. To wit, this from the May 22nd Dallas Morning News in 1996:
Dr. Ron Paul, a Republican congressional candidate from Texas, wrote in his political newsletter in 1992 that 95 percent of the black men in Washington, D.C., are “semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”
And this, from the Houston Chronicle on May 23, 1996:
…we are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers.
And this from the Austin American-Statesman, also on May 23, 1996:
Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions.
Look.
One can, unfortunately, go on and on and on here with this story and various appalling quotes.
But since we are busy doing political proctology exams on all these candidates, and Congressman Paul has mostly escaped the examination, it’s past time for discussion and explanations. Were Ron Paul the GOP nominee the liberal media would pounce within micro seconds, so better that the questions come here and from Sean Hannity and Mark Levin and others on the conservative side. …”
“Fast And Furious” Just Might Be President Obama’s Watergate
ATF agent blows the whistle on the U.S. government running GUNS into Mexico !
Fast & Furious Round 2: Nightly News Report 09/27/11
Issa & Gosar: Fast & Furious Investigation Continues
Fast and Furious Whistleblower Interview Operation Gun Walker – Video http://www.RightFace.us
Operation Fast and Furious 1- 13
Operation Fast and Furious 2- 13
Operation Fast and Furious 3- 13
Operation Fast and Furious 4- 13
Operation Fast and Furious 5- 13
Operation Fast and Furious 6- 13
Operation Fast and Furious 7- 13
Operation Fast and Furious 8- 13
Operation Fast and Furious 9- 13
Operation Fast and Furious 10- 13
Operation Fast and Furious 11- 13
Operation Fast and Furious 12- 13
Operation Fast and Furious 13- 13
Issa on CNN: Obama Administration Stonewalling Public Accountability for Fast & Furious
Issa on Fox News: Americans Deserve Accountability for Deaths by Operation Fast & Furious
Issa on Fox Biz Gives the Latest on Investigations of Fast & Furious, Obama Admin Green Energy Deals
Background Articles and Videos
ATF Enabling Illegal US Gun Traffic to Mexico!!!
Whistleblower ATF Agent John Dodson Exposes Deadly “Operation Gunrunner”
ATF Director Tells Congressmen Dept Of Justice Is Obstructing “Fast & Furious” Gun Running Probe
ATF Fires ‘Fast and Furious’ Whistleblower
Rep. Issa: Holder ‘Absolutely’ Knew About Fast & Furious Earlier Than He Testified
Obama Orders Launched Fast and Furious
Obama Snubs Subpoena for ATF ‘Project Gunrunner’ Documents
Fast and Furious Agents Promoted by Obama Administration; Project Gunrunner Promotions
“Fast And Furious” Just Might Be President Obama’s Watergate
Frank Miniter
“…Why a gunrunning scandal codenamed “Fast and Furious,” a program run secretly by the U.S. government that sent thousands of firearms over an international border and directly into the hands of criminals, hasn’t been pursued by an army of reporters all trying to be the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein is a story in itself.
But the state of modern journalism aside, this scandal is so inflammatory few realize that official records show the current director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), B. Todd Jones — yes the individual the Obama administration brought in to replace ATF Director Kenneth Melson Aug. 30 in an effort to deflect congressional criticism — also has questions to answer about his involvement in this gunrunning scandal.
Fast and Furious was an operation so cloak-and-dagger Mexican authorities weren’t even notified that thousands of semi-automatic firearms were being sold to people in Arizona thought to have links to Mexican drug cartels. According to ATF whistleblowers, in 2009 the U.S. government began instructing gun storeowners to break the law by selling firearms to suspected criminals. ATF agents then, again according to testimony by ATF agents turned whistleblowers, were ordered not to intercept the smugglers but rather to let the guns “walk” across the U.S.-Mexican border and into the hands of Mexican drug-trafficking organizations. …”
“…Given all the politics and the cover up that even the former ATF director says has occurred, could operation Fast and Furious have been about anything other than pushing for new gun-control laws? And given all of this obfuscation from the Obama dministration, isn’t this scandal comparable to the cover up that surrounded Watergate? After all, both administrations forgot that America is a country that reveres its freedom of the press and that in America officers speak out when misguided policies get cops killed. Here mothers testify before Congress when they find out a secret government program, and a stupid one at that, got their son killed.
Not that morality ends at the American border. To stress this point, Rep. Issa held a conference call with journalists on September 21 in which he said Marisela Morales, Mexico’s attorney general, is reporting that at least 200 Mexican deaths can now be traced to weapons from the Fast and Furious program.
And so the investigation and the bloody aftermath continue….
“…Late Friday, the White House turned over new documents in the Congressional investigation into the ATF “Fast and Furious” gunwalking scandal.
The documents show extensive communications between then-ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell – who led Fast and Furious – and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O’Reilly. Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O’Reilly are long time friends.
ATF agents say that in Fast and Furious, their agency allowed thousands of assault rifles and other weapons to be sold to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels. At least two of the guns turned up at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.
The email exchanges span a little over a month last summer. They discuss ATF’s gun trafficking efforts along the border including the controversial Fast and Furious case, though not by name. The emails to and from O’Reilly indicate more than just a passing interest in the Phoenix office’s gun trafficking cases. They do not mention specific tactics such as “letting guns walk.” …”
“…Cooper’s reporter on this story, Drew Griffin, tried to explain a possible motive for Fast and Furious. He said that “the operation makes no sense.” So in attempting to explain it, he invoked the usual bogeymen. “So what’s the real purpose?,” asked Griffin. “The lack of sense, the apparent cover-up has opened the door now for these conspiracy theorists. And you got to follow this. They believe this was part of a convoluted plan for the Obama administration and the attorney general to actually increase the level of violence on the Mexican border with assault weapons purchased in the U.S. in an apparent attempt to rekindle interest in an assault weapons ban. As wacky as that may sound, I must tell you that theory is gaining traction, not just among the second amendment crowd, because this operation makes no other sense.”
Griffin is correct that such theories are out there. But until some independent entity can get to the bottom of this, hopefully with the cooperation of the Obama administration rather than the stonewalling and obstruction that has characterized their response up to now, the reasons for the operation might remain theoretical. Let’s see if the cover-up proves worse than the crimes. …”
“…Law enforcement sources and others close to the Congressional investigation say the Justice Department’s Inspector General obtained the audio tapes several months ago as part of its investigation into Fast and Furious.
Then, the sources say for some reason the Inspector General passed the tapes along to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona: a subject in the investigation. It’s unclear why the Inspector General, who is supposed to investigate independently, would turn over evidence to an entity that is itself under investigation.
A spokesman from the Office of the Inspector General today said, “The OIG officially provided the United States Attorney’s Office with a copy of the recordings in question so that the USAO could consider them in connection with the government’s disclosure obligations in the pending criminal prosecutions of the gun traffickers. Prior to receiving the tapes, the OIG made clear that we would have to provide a copy of the recordings to the United States Attorney’s Office because they would need to review them to satisfy any legal disclosure obligations.” …”
Firearms from ATF sting linked to 11 more violent crimes
“…By Richard A. Serrano, Washington Bureau August 17, 2011
Reporting from Washington—
Firearms from the ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious weapons trafficking investigation turned up at the scenes of at least 11 violent crimes in the U.S., as well as at a Border Patrol agent’s slaying in southern Arizona last year, the Justice Department has acknowledged to Congress.
The department did not provide details about the crimes. But The Times has learned that they occurred in several Arizona cities, including Phoenix, where Fast and Furious was managed, as well as in El Paso, where a total of 42 weapons from the operation were seized at two crime scenes.
The new numbers, which expand the scope of the danger the program posed to U.S. citizens over a 14-month period, are contained in a letter that Justice Department officials turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee last month. …”
Mass Media Big Lie Campaign To Take Down Trump With Out of Context Propaganda! — Trump Never Said He Wants All Muslims In U.S. To Register– The So-Called “Journalist” Did! — Hit and Run Political Character Assassination Attempt By Hillary Clinton Journalist Supporter — Hunter Walker — Videos
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The Pronk Pops Show Podcasts
Pronk Pops Show 579: November 20, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 578: November 19, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 577: November 18, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 576: November 17, 2015
Pronk Pops Show 575: November 16, 2015 (more…)
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