Posted on 02/26/2008 1:15:37 PM PST by Richard Poe
| by Richard Lawrence Poe Tuesday, February 26, 2008 |
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FORMER CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite is 91 years old and ailing. Poor health prevented him from accepting his Lifetime Achievement Award in person on January 19. At such a moment, I would prefer to speak charitably of Cronkite. But the times call for candor. Cronkite's intrigues have cost the lives of countless American soldiers. Even worse, it appears that our Central Intelligence Agency assisted Cronkite in his betrayals. Americans need to know why.
Born in Saint Joseph, Missouri, Cronkite grew up in Kansas City and Houston, Texas. He dropped out of the University of Texas in 1935 to become a journalist.
Cronkite covered World War II for the United Press. He reported from North Africa; landed at Normandy in 1944; flew B-17 bombing raids over Germany and landed in a glider behind German lines in Holland. After the war, Cronkite covered the Nuremberg Trials, and served as Moscow bureau chief from 1946-48.
Then he got into television. In her 1979 book Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and Her Washington Post Empire, investigative journalist Deborah Davis reports that CIA co-founder Allen Dulles brokered a deal between the Washington Post and CBS News in 1948. Through this arrangement, the Washington Post became sole owner of all CBS radio and TV outlets in our nation's capital. The Post's CBS affiliate WTOP-TV hired Cronkite in 1950, giving him his first job in television.
Allen Dulles -- who served as Director of Central Intelligence from 1953-61 -- carefully nurtured his ties with the two media companies he had brought together. Davis writes:
"The Post men continued to see Paley and Cronkite every Christmas at a dinner given by Allen Dulles at a private club called the Alibi. ... in the middle of downtown Washington..."
Investigative reporter Carl Bernstein wrote in 1977:
"CBS was unquestionably the CIA's most valuable broadcasting asset. CBS President William Paley and Allen Dulles enjoyed an easy working and social relationship. Over the years, the network provided cover for CIA employees... Paley’s designated contact for the Agency was Sig Mickelson, president of CBS News between 1954 and 1961. ... [CBS News president Richard] Salant... continued many of his predecessor's practices..."
Sig Mickelson was Cronkite's first mentor at CBS. Richard Salant appointed Cronkite anchorman for CBS evening news in 1962.
In my last column, "How the CIA Lost Vietnam", I recounted Cronkite's infamous conduct following the communist Tet Offensive of 1968. American and South Vietnamese forces had routed the enemy. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin later wrote in his memoirs:
"Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise. ... Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out by all the fighting in 1968. It took us until 1971 to re-establish our presence..."
Cronkite reported the opposite. "We are mired in stalemate," he told Americans on February 27, 1968. America's only hope, said Cronkite, was to "negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who... did the best they could".
Cronkite's message reached Hanoi loud and clear. The communists understood that Cronkite spoke for official Washington. In their darkest hour, he gave them hope. They resolved to fight on.
Nearly 30,000 American soldiers would die in Vietnam over the next five years. Then Nixon ended the war with the Paris Peace Accords of January 17, 1973. South Vietnam was safe. As long as Nixon remained in office, the communists did not dare break the treaty.
But the press had another trick up its sleeve; Watergate. Early Watergate reports in the Washington Post aroused little interest. Then Cronkite stepped in. “The story was fading from the papers and we thought we needed to revive it", Cronkite told PBS’s Frontline in 1996.
Under Cronkite’s direction, CBS News aired a twenty-two-minute, two-part summary of the Watergate scandal in October 1972. It rekindled the scandal, forcing President Nixon's resignation on August 8, 1974.
Predictably, North Vietnam invaded the South in December 1974. Saigon fell on April 30, 1975.
Cronkite's CIA connection surfaced briefly during the Congressional Pike Committee hearings of 1975-76. CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr, who covered the hearings, later wrote:
"A former CBS correspondent, Sam Jaffe, said that the CIA had gotten him a job at CBS and that the list of current and former journalist-spies included Walter Cronkite. Cronkite heatedly denied that..."
In theory, I see no reason why journalists should avoid helping the CIA in matters of national interest. But who defines the national interest? The tragic story of Walter Cronkite teaches us that CIA spymasters may be poor judges at best.
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Richard Lawrence Poe is a contributing editor to Newsmax, an award-winning journalist and a New York Times bestselling author. His latest book is The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Siezed Control of the Democratic Party, co-written with David Horowitz. |
Just want to mention that the Johnson administration and its eggheads were a pathetic bunch as well. Think of all the “brilliant” minds who left that supposedly war-minded administration and emerged as total leftists and defeatists. They screwed everything up.
It is, thank you. I read it about 1982 and let someone borrow it...never got it back. I certainly recommend it.
And mine as well!
Great post!
Well, that's three of us!!
Everything you say is correct, except Nixon was guilty. The republicans in Congress abandoned him and I agreed with them at the time. Then we had the spectacle of what democrats do when their president commits criminal acts in plain view - they rally around him and turn the rule of law on its head. Also all rules of morality.
Nixon WAS guilty. He was trapped by the media and Dems through his own foolishness. Had he stepped up in early ‘74 and fired some people he would have had a terrible six weeks and then finished out his second term.
My point is...Nixon thought the old dodge of “national security” that FDR used with J Edgar Hoover to find out dirt on his enemies was still good...it wasn’t.
The rules changed without anybody telling Dick.
bump
To the far left in this country (that would include CBS, the Washington Post, the NY Times, large elements of the US Department of State, and elements within the CIA) Nixon was guilty of deeds far worse than covering up a break in of DNC headquarters at the Watergate hotel. He was guilty of helping that bastard Joe McCarthy. They never forgave him for that and Watergate was the pay back.
We have a DIA. The CIA has been proven useless and disloyal.
Time to disband it.
That, and redo the State Department.
Carl Oglesby
Thanks for the insight. ...very revealing.
You are EXACTLY right.
The rules haven't changed, they just don't apply to Democrats and haven't at least since that Commie Roosevelt.
all agreed and don’t forget they hated Nixon for prosecuting Soviet spy Alger Hiss.
I believe that would come under the broad heading of "helping McCarthy".
I think the climactic battles of the Cold War were fought within the CIA.
It was the CIA of the Washington Post vs. the CIA of Howard Hunt and the plumbers...left vs. right.
Nixon was the scapegoat.
I read this article and the last won you wrote. Where is the evidence that the CIA desired to lose the war in Vietnam? If there is any evidence to support this claim, please highlight it.
The only statement that is related to your claim in the most recent Vietnam article is this quote below.
“The CIA made a fateful choice. Rather than accept President Johnson’s decision, it resolved to stop him (regarding the Vietnam War).”
That appears to be your statement and assumption. Do you have any specific supporting evidence or rationale to make your claim. It’s a bold claim with no evidence in these two articles. If I’m mistaken I’ll be glad to read specific points.
there is a special place in hell reserved for that old bastard.
.
“Another battle that lasted through and beyond Tet also deserves mention for what some perceived as a historical parallel. As James Griffiths, a veteran of the 11th Armored Cavalry, notes in his book “Vietnam Insights,” gloomy media depictions were not limited to the Saigon area but also occurred at the northern Marine base at Khe Sanh during Tet. Bob Young of ABC and Walter Cronkite of CBS linked the victorious general of Dien Bien Phu, Vo Nguyen Giap, to the siege at Khe Sanh, and Time put him on its cover. It was as if Giap’s presence would cause a Marine defeat at Khe Sanh to be a foregone conclusion. Newsweek jumped on the antiwar bandwagon with its March 18, 1968, issue. Using the Khe Sanh ammo dump explosion as its cover, it failed to let readers know that the incident had occurred two months earlier, concluding, “Though the U.S. dilemma at Khe Sanh is particularly acute, it is not unique. It simply reflects in microcosm the entire U.S. military position in Vietnam. U.S. strategy up to this point has been a failure.””
http://www.11thcavnam.com/education/americanlegion.htm
“What’s left unsaid is why the CIA would want to bring about a US defeat in Vietnam. ?”
It was and is still full of lefties - they took down Nixon and tried to get Bush, too.
Amen!
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