by Clyde Lewis
(Ground Zero Radio)

Throughout history, there have been cycles where governments have found ways to use disinformation in order to steer consensus intelligence away from the truth about what is truly happening behind the curtain of government. The general root of all conspiracy theory is the notion that someone in a group of someone’s are not telling the truth and therefore, it is imperative the lies that are being told are exposed to the public.

There are those who see conspiracies everywhere, and then there are those who are reasonable and critical that recognizes something out of place, and, the gaping holes in any story need to be filled either with an outrageous hypothesis or to be left alone in a dangling mystery.

There is usually one thing that inclines you to believing in a conspiracy and that is the way more trusting people react to the very idea that government keeps secrets and with those secrets they are actually plotting against you in favor of more rights and freedoms for them.

The eroding sense of values and human rights in this country and they way we allow them to be sucked from us is suspicious and part of what is called an open conspiracy where people are literally participating in it and acting as if they have no choice but to hear and obey.

This week, I have been obsessing over the talking point of fake news. I haven’t been reporting every day about it because no one wants to be bored listening to my obsessions, but when colleagues of mine are attacked or accused of faking news and when I have been accused of faking news, I feel it is necessary to set the record straight about how the “fake news” news and meme that has been generated by the mainstream media is most certainly a cover for their own news which is misleading and obviously controlled by the state and corporate interests.

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As I was looking over material for my show about the JFK assassination yesterday, I found an old report by Dan Rather of CBS news talking about what he saw in Dallas in 1963.

Everything Rather reported about the Kennedy hit was a lie, or fake news.

Rather said: “At that moment when the president had his right hand up to this side of his face, he lurched just a bit forward. It was obvious that the first shot had hit him. Governor Connally with his coat open his button was undone turned in this manner. The governor was obviously hit by a bullet. Another bullet obviously hit the head of the president. The president’s head went forward violently in this manner.”

These statements were considered to be part of the most counterfactual news reports given in the hours after the Kennedy assassination.

As seen clearly on the Zapruder film, which was not shown to the public until 1975, the final shot jarred Kennedy’s head back and to the left.

It was a perfect example of fake news from a trusted source.

The genesis of oligarchic control of American major media was reported in the US Congressional Record in 1917. US Congressperson, Oscar Callaway claimed evidence that J.P. Morgan had purchased editorial control over 25 of the nation’s most influential publications in order to create public support for US entry into World War I and his new banking legislative victory: creation of the Federal Reserve System. Mr. Callaway’s colleagues voted down an official investigation.

William Randolph Hearst, owner of a huge chain of newspapers used his power to vilify the use of marijuana. He had invested heavily in the timber industry to support his newspaper chain and didn’t want to see the development of hemp paper in competition. Hearst would order his editors to publish scathing lies about Mexicans and Marijuana use. Hearst was also supported by DuPont chemical company and various pharmaceutical companies in the effort to outlaw cannabis. DuPont had patented nylon, and wanted hemp removed as competition. The pharmaceutical companies could neither identify nor standardize cannabis dosages, and besides, with cannabis, folks could grow their own medicine and not have to purchase it from large companies.

Lies about marijuana continue today because of a powerful media force telling lies and spreading fake News.

Even today, print media is owned by the same few conglomerates and are funded by the same banks.

News Corp owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s weekly, the London times, far Eastern Economic Review, the New York Post, and hundreds of other large and small city and community newspapers, magazines, and internet properties.

Time-Warner owns Time Magazine, Fortune Magazine, People Magazine, Sports Illustrated, CNN news group, Turner networks and movies, Warner brothers films, DC Comics, Times online systems, and much more.

Disney owns ABC Television, Marvel Comic’s magazine publishing business, Disney Films, Lucas Films, and a huge number of other media and entertainment enterprises.

Many people are unaware that choices are limited in information because the mainstream media is controlled by just a few corporations. People believe if they can change channels they are making choices of numerous sources of media to fit their bias.

There aren’t numerous US mass media news sources at all; there are just five. Five giant corporations that control 90 percent of US mass media. And direct links connect all five of these media conglomerates to the political establishment and the economic and political power-elites of the United States.

These five conglomerates are Time Warner, Disney, Murdochs’ News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS). Their control spans most of the newspapers, magazines, books, radio and TV stations, movie studios, and much of the web news content of the United States. These conglomerates are in large measure responsible for inculcating the social, political, economic, and moral values of both adults and children in the United States.

Now it is important to point out that all the five major media conglomerates are corporate members of the Council on Foreign Relations, a US think-tank whose members have been instrumental in formulating US government policies resulting in sanctions, destabilization efforts, and t military attacks on nations which have never attacked the US.

The Council’s members’ activities helped to promote the Iraq War, the bombings of Serbia and Libya, and the recent overthrow of the elected government of the Ukraine. The promotion of these policies by the media conglomerates which belong to the Council has been key to preparing the American public to accept these policies.

The media conglomerates’ fellow members of the Council on Foreign Relations include a large number of large corporations, powerful CEO’s, and present and former government officials. One prominent member is former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, a cold war fossil who has over time called for the United States control of the Eurasian landmass, which includes Russia and China, pushing us ever closer to war with these countries.

Two years ago there was a CIA intelligence dump that was recovered and heavily redacted. The intelligence dump revealed that Intelligence operations actually manipulate the media.

The history of the CIA’s involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception. There are still many individuals who will continue to deny the news business has a very long and deceptive relationship with the State department and the CIA.

There are many conspiracy theorists who tell you that media disinformation provided by the CIA or NSA is old news, however, it is still worthy of exposure due to the fact the mainstream as decided to make alternative media the scapegoat for Hillary Clinton’s loss in the election.

After 24 theories were examined by CNN, the two main culprits were social media and internet “fake news.” “Fake news” is just Orwellian Newspeak for alternative news.

According to Carl Bernstein, the famed reporter of the Washington Post, the use of journalists has been among the most productive means of spreading of disinformation or “fake news” employed by the CIA. Although the Agency has cut back sharply on the use of reporters since 1973 primarily as a result of pressure from the media), some journalist operatives’ are still posted abroad.

Just last week, the Justice Department gave the green light for FBI agents to conduct undercover investigations and to impersonate journalists. They are once again legalizing the government’s most notorious propaganda program, Operation Mockingbird.

Allowing agents to infiltrate media organizations for any reason threatens to utterly undermine public trust, kill the very concept of journalistic integrity, and throttle the flow of information from sources and whistleblowers concerned with the legitimacy of journalists they contact.

As shocking as the finding sounds, it only validates the practice — in fact, the report centers around a case from 2007 in which an FBI agent pretended to be an Associated Press journalist to identify an elusive suspect online. At the time, the FBI “did not prohibit agents from impersonating journalists or from posing as a member of a news organization,” the report states.

Mockingbird has a rich history where agents posing as reporters and anchors intentionally report fake news to cover up the abuse of power and impunity of the government.

In the past the CIA’s use of the American news media has been much more extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed sessions with members of Congress. The general outlines of what happened are indisputable; the specifics are harder to come by. CIA sources hint that a particular journalist was trafficking all over Eastern Europe for the Agency; the journalist says no, he just had lunch with the station chief. CIA sources say flatly that a well known ABC correspondent worked for the Agency through 1973; they refuse to identify him.

However it has been revealed that the well known anchor on ABC Anderson Cooper worked for the CIA 20 years ago. Cooper admits in a blog that for a couple months over the course of two summers, that he worked at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

In his blog explaining the stint after his attending Yale, Cooper is incredulous as to why so many people want to know what he did for the CIA.

According to CNN spokespeople he left the CIA and nothing more was said about it. The only thing that seems strange is that after he allegedly left the CIA he went to Burma and got involved with dissident students fighting the government there while claiming to be a reporter though having no affiliation with any news outlet. After that he moved to Vietnam, he also lived in Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda.

Anyone with cursory knowledge of the U.S. government’s nefarious programs to control its citizenry will undoubtedly see similarities between the FBI’s fake journalism plot and the post-World War II CIA propaganda campaign, Operation Mockingbird.

To ensure support for its operations and views, the CIA clandestinely recruited American journalists and media outlets, funded the creation of student and cultural organizations, launched purely propaganda-based print media, and, ultimately, worked its way into political campaigns and employed similar methods abroad.

Mainstream outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, and many others, actively and willingly disseminated propaganda disguised as news through suppression, censorship, and selective focus, etc., in the interest of the government.

Mockingbird covertly influenced national opinion for years, nefariously planting the CIA’s narrative on the unwitting collective public mind before finally being at least partially exposed over a decade later. It wasn’t until a congressional investigation in 1975 the putative full extent of the program was revealed. Although the CIA claimed it would no longer recruit journalists and media organizations into its folds, Mockingbird has often been rumored never to have stopped.

It was the CIA that first disseminated the idea of “conspiracy theory” and now “fake news” has been created to take its place.

Some 50 percent of Americans now believe in so-called “conspiracies,” so it’s very obvious that “fake news” is a meme needed to completely discredit any theory or thought that goes against the mainstream narrative.

President Barack Obama has spoken out about fake news on Facebook and other media platforms, suggesting that it helped undermine the US political process.

He stated at a press conference in Germany that “If we are not serious about facts and what’s true and what’s not, if we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems.”

Since the surprise election of Donald Trump as president-elect, Facebook has battled accusations that it has failed to stem the flow of misinformation on its network and that its business model leads to users becoming divided into polarized political echo chambers.

The “fake news” meme is all over search-engine news and prominent people like Obama are speaking out about the meme and basically endorsing it.

Timing is everything and now allowing agents to infiltrate media organizations for any reason threatens to utterly undermine public trust, kill the very concept of journalistic integrity, and throttle the flow of information from sources and whistleblowers concerned with the legitimacy of journalists they contact.

They float the meme of fake news as they make preparations to fake the news.

According to a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center, the majority of the American public sees the US major media news organizations as politically biased, inaccurate, and uncaring. Among those who use the Internet, two-thirds report that major media news do not care about the people they report on, 59% say the news is inaccurate, 64% see bias, and 53% summarize their view on major media news as, “failing to stand up for America.” In their 2009 poll, “just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate.”

Gallup’s 2014 poll recorded the lowest ever US public confidence in accurate news reporting from corporate media’s television news: 18%.

A June 2010 Rasmussen poll found 66% of voters “angry” at the media, with 33% “very angry.” Rasmussen also found 70% “angry” at current federal government policies. The most current Gallup poll in 2012 shows Americans’ distrust at an all-time high in the reporting from “mass media — such as newspapers, TV, and radio”: 60% have either “not very much” trust and confidence or “none at all” to “reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly.”

If the media places its communicative muscle behind tarring and feathering certain cogent criticisms of the government as “false,” it will likely only speed up the decline of mainstream credibility.

The media and the intelligent agencies infiltrating it are desperate.