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. |
Don't confuse the Johnson administration (or any presidential administration) with "official" Washington. Presidents and administrations come and go like clockwork. Official Washington is permanent -- it stays in the government offices, in the law firms and in the news rooms. They work together, cover for each other, and they are the ones who make or break presidents and policies.
Please add me as well.
In the words of a great patriot:
"bump dat" : )
Agreed, Phil...agreed.
As I recall the intent was for Agnew to get hosed first which he did and then impeach Nixon while the was no sitting VP thus allowing the Speaker of the House, a Democrat, to become president, thus completely overturning the election( a landslide for all those who are not old enough to remember). A coup of sorts. It almost worked.
If you look at some of the old file footage you will see two modern day politicos. Fred Thompson who uttered the famous what did he know and when did he know it line, and Hillary as staffer for the Democrat Watergate committee.
Okay, taking the old Birchite tinfoil hat off now!
You know, the ironic thing in all the alleged wars between the "liberal" Eastern Seaboard (especially the Northeast) and the "conservative" hinterlands is that originally it was the other way around. The "liberal Northeast" was in a panic over Jacobinism and was sure Thomas Jefferson, if elected, would confiscate and burn every Bible in the country. Meanwhile, from Jackson to Jefferson to William Jennings Bryan, a leftist populism was endemic to the exact same part of the country we now consider conservative. Maybe this is the reason the colors (red and blue) were switched two decades ago?
As a genuine pre-Goldwater Unionist Southern Republican (and therefore an heir to the Federalist, Anti-Masonic, Whig, and Know-Nothing political traditions) I've always been very aware of this ideological switcheroo and felt a little embarrassed by it. Is modern liberalism really merely Hamiltonian Federalism with a different ideological justification? Why did the Southern and Western populist opponents of the "Wall Street Bankers" support an income tax, railroad nationalization, and property limits in the nineteenth century but turn around and oppose these very things the following century, all the while remaining convinced that those same "Wall Street Bankers" were behind it all?
Weird.
Awwwww...;0)
Maybe not so weird. The rich and powerful have always sought the support of the masses through populist appeals. Getting the masses on your side gives you an advantage over wealthy rivals.
Julius Caesar, for example, gained an edge over rival patricians by winning favor with the Roman mob. He accomplished this by making lavish hand-outs of grain and by passing laws which conferred new rights on the masses while curtailing many privileges of the nobility. Caesar's popularity with the mob enabled him to become dictator of Rome. However, his unpopularity with the aristocracy got him assassinated.
Communism is a modern form of Caesarism. It enables rich men to win the support of the masses, in order to rule them.
The kaleidoscope of shape-shifting ideologies you describe results from the fact that, in modern times, Caesarism has been honed and perfected to a science, and employed in many different forms by innumerable rival factions of the power elite. These factions compete for the favor of the masses using a multitude of different appeals. When one sort of appeal stops working, they discard it and try another.
Ultimately, our freedom depends on the ability of the masses to see through these manipulations in the end, and to resist them when they become too burdensome or intrusive. This, I think, is what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said, "You can fool some of the people some of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time".
: )
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