Declassified records from the Reagan presidential library show
how the U.S. government enlisted civilian agencies in psychological operations
designed to exploit information as a way to manipulate the behavior of targeted
foreign audiences and, at least indirectly, American citizens.
A
just-declassified sign-in sheet for a meeting of an inter-agency
“psyops” committee on Oct. 24, 1986, shows representatives from the Agency for
International Development (USAID), the State Department, and the U.S.
Information Agency (USIA) joining officials from the Central Intelligence
Agency and the Defense Department.
Some of the names of
officials from the CIA and Pentagon remain classified more than three decades
later. But the significance of the document is that it reveals how agencies
that were traditionally assigned to global development (USAID) or international
information (USIA) were incorporated into the U.S. government’s strategies for
peacetime psyops, a military technique for breaking the will of a wartime enemy
by spreading lies, confusion and terror.
Essentially, psyops play on
the cultural weaknesses of a target population so they could be more easily
controlled or defeated, but the Reagan administration was taking the concept
outside the traditional bounds of warfare and applying psyops to any time when
the U.S. government could claim some threat to America.
This
disclosure – bolstered by other documents released earlier this year by
archivists at the Reagan library in Simi Valley, California – is relevant to
today’s frenzy over alleged “fake news” and accusations of “Russian
disinformation” by reminding everyone that the U.S. government was active in
those same areas.
The
U.S. government’s use of disinformation and propaganda is, of course, nothing
new. For instance, during the 1950s and 1960s, the USIA regularly published articles
in friendly newspapers and magazines that appeared under fake names such
as Guy Sims Fitch.
However, in the 1970s, the
bloody Vietnam War and the Pentagon Papers’ revelations about U.S. government
deceptions to justify that war created a crisis for American propagandists,
their loss of credibility with the American people. Some of the traditional
sources of U.S. disinformation, such as the CIA, also fell into profound
disrepute.
This so-called “Vietnam
Syndrome” – a skeptical citizenry dubious toward U.S. government claims about
foreign conflicts – undermined President Reagan’s efforts to sell his plans for
intervention in the civil wars then underway in Central America, Africa and
elsewhere.
Reagan depicted Central
America as a “Soviet beachhead,” but many Americans saw haughty Central
American oligarchs and their brutal security forces slaughtering priests, nuns,
labor activists, students, peasants and indigenous populations.
Reagan and his advisers
realized that they had to turn those perceptions around if they hoped to get
sustained funding for the militaries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras as
well as for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, the CIA-organized paramilitary force marauding
around leftist-ruled Nicaragua.
Perception
Management
So, it became a high priority
to reshape public perceptions inside those targeted countries but even more
importantly among the American people. That challenge led the Reagan
administration to revitalize and reorganize methods for distributing propaganda
and funding friendly foreign operatives, such as creation of the National
Endowment for Democracy under neoconservative president Carl Gershman in 1983.
Another
entity in this process was the Psychological Operations Committee formed
in 1986 under Reagan’s National Security Council. In the years since, the U.S.
administrations, both Republican and Democratic, have applied many of these
same psyops principles, cherry-picking or manufacturing evidence to undermine
adversaries and to solidify U.S. public support for Washington’s policies.
This reality – about the U.S.
government creating its own faux reality to manipulate the American people and
international audiences – should compel journalists in the West to treat all
claims from Washington with a large grain of salt.
However, instead, we have
seen a pattern of leading news outlets simply amplifying whatever U.S. agencies
assert about foreign adversaries while denouncing skeptics as purveyors of
“fake news” or enemy “propaganda.” In effect, the success of the U.S.
psyops strategy can be measured by how Western mainstream media has stepped
forward as the enforcement mechanism to ensure conformity to the U.S.
government’s various information themes and narratives.
For
instance, any questioning of the U.S. government’s narratives on, say, the
current Syrian conflict, or the Ukraine coup of 2014, or Russian “hacking” of
the 2016 U.S. election, or Iran’s status as “the leading sponsor of terrorism”
is treated by the major Western news outlets as evidence that you are a “useful fool” at best,
if not a willful enemy “propagandist” with loyalty to a foreign power, i.e., a
traitor.
Leading
mainstream media outlets and establishment-approved Web sites are now teaming up with Google, Facebook and other
technology companies to develop algorithms to bury or remove content from the
Internet that doesn’t march in lockstep with what is deemed to be true, which
often simply follows what U.S. government agencies say is true.
Yet, the documentary evidence
is now clear that the U.S. government undertook a well-defined strategy of
waging psyops around the world with regular blowback of this propaganda and
disinformation onto the American people via Western news agencies covering
events in the affected countries.
During
more recent administrations, euphemisms have been used to cloak the more
pejorative phrase, “psychological operations” – such as “public diplomacy,” “strategic communications,” “perception management,” and “smart power.” But the serious push to expand
this propaganda capability of the U.S. government can be traced back to the
Reagan presidency.
The
Puppet Master
Over the years, I’ve obtained
scores of documents related to the psyops and related programs via “mandatory
declassification reviews” of files belonging to Walter Raymond Jr., a senior
CIA covert operations specialist who was transferred to Reagan’s National
Security Council staff in 1982 to rebuild capacities for psyops, propaganda and
disinformation.
Raymond, who has been
compared to a character from a John LeCarré novel slipping easily into the
woodwork, spent his years inside Reagan’s White House as a shadowy puppet
master who tried his best to avoid public attention or – it seems – even having
his picture taken.
From the tens of thousands of
photographs from meetings at Reagan’s White House, I found only a couple
showing Raymond – and he is seated in groups, partially concealed by other
officials.
But
Raymond appears to have grasped his true importance. In his NSC files, I
found a doodle of an organizational chart that
had Raymond at the top holding what looks like the crossed handles used by
puppeteers to control the puppets below them. The drawing fits the reality of
Raymond as the behind-the-curtains operative who was controlling the various
inter-agency task forces that were responsible for implementing psyops and
other propaganda strategies.
In
Raymond’s files, I found an influential November 1983 paper, written by Col.
Alfred R. Paddock Jr. and entitled “Military Psychological Operations and US Strategy,”
which stated: “the planned use of communications to influence attitudes or
behavior should, if properly used, precede, accompany, and follow all applications
of force. Put another way, psychological operations is the one weapons system
which has an important role to play in peacetime, throughout the spectrum of
conflict, and during the aftermath of conflict.”
Paddock continued, “Military
psychological operations are an important part of the ‘PSYOP Totality,’ both in
peace and war. … We need a program of psychological operations as an integral
part of our national security policies and programs. … The continuity of a
standing interagency board or committee to provide the necessary coordinating
mechanism for development of a coherent, worldwide psychological operations
strategy is badly needed.”
One
declassified “top secret” document in Raymond’s file – dated Feb.
4, 1985, from Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger – urged the fuller
implementation of President Reagan’s National Security Decision Directive 130,
which was signed on March 6, 1984, and which authorized peacetime psyops by
expanding psyops beyond its traditional boundaries of active military
operations into peacetime situations in which the U.S. government could claim
some threat to national interests.
“This approval can provide
the impetus to the rebuilding of a necessary strategic capability, focus
attention on psychological operations as a national – not solely military –
instrument, and ensure that psychological operations are fully coordinated with
public diplomacy and other international information activities,” Weinberger’s
document said.
An
Inter-Agency Committee
This broader commitment to
psyops led to the creation of a Psychological Operations Committee (POC) that
was to be chaired by a representative of Reagan’s National Security Council
with a vice chairman from the Pentagon and with representatives from CIA, the
State Department and USIA.
“This
group will be responsible for planning, coordinating and implementing
psychological operations activities in support of United States policies and
interests relative to national security,” according to a “secret” addendum to a memo, dated March 25, 1986,
from Col. Paddock, the psyops advocate who had become the U.S. Army’s Director
for Psychological Operations.
“The committee will provide
the focal point for interagency coordination of detailed contingency planning
for the management of national information assets during war, and for the
transition from peace to war,” the addendum added. “The POC shall seek to
ensure that in wartime or during crises (which may be defined as periods of
acute tension involving a threat to the lives of American citizens or the
imminence of war between the U.S. and other nations), U.S. international
information elements are ready to initiate special procedures to ensure policy
consistency, timely response and rapid feedback from the intended audience.”
In other words, the U.S.
government could engage in psyops virtually anytime because there are always
“periods of acute tension involving a threat to the lives of American
citizens.”
The
Psychological Operations Committee took formal shape with a “secret” memo from Reagan’s National Security
Advisor John Poindexter on July 31, 1986. Its first meeting was called on Sept. 2,
1986, with an agenda that focused on Central America and “How can other POC
agencies support and complement DOD programs in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras,
Costa Rica and Panama.” The POC was also tasked with “Developing National
PSYOPS Guidelines” for “formulating and implementing a national PSYOPS
program.” (Underlining in original)
Raymond
was named a co-chair of the POC along with CIA officer Vincent Cannistraro, who
was then Deputy Director for Intelligence Programs on the NSC staff, according
to a “secret” memo from Deputy Under Secretary of
Defense Craig Alderman Jr.
The memo also noted that
future POC meetings would be briefed on psyops projects for the Philippines and
Nicaragua, with the latter project codenamed “Niagara Falls.” The memo also
references a “Project Touchstone,” but it is unclear where that psyops program
was targeted.
Another
“secret” memo dated Oct. 1, 1986, co-authored by
Raymond, reported on the POC’s first meeting on Sept. 10, 1986, and noted that
“The POC will, at each meeting, focus on an area of operations (e.g., Central
America, Afghanistan, Philippines).”
The
POC’s second meeting on Oct. 24, 1986 – for which the sign-in sheet was just
released – concentrated on the Philippines, according to a Nov. 4, 1986 memo also co-authored by Raymond.
But
the Reagan administration’s primary attention continued to go back to Central
America, including “Project Niagara Falls,” the psyops program aimed at
Nicaragua. A “secret” Pentagon memo from Deputy Under Secretary Alderman
on Nov. 20, 1986, outlined the work of the 4th Psychological Operations Group
on this psyops plan “to help bring about democratization of Nicaragua,” by
which the Reagan administration meant a “regime change.” The precise details of
“Project Niagara Falls” were not disclosed in the declassified documents but
the choice of codename suggested a cascade of psyops.
Key
Operatives
Other
documents from Raymond’s NSC file shed light on who other key operatives in the
psyops and propaganda programs were. For instance, in undated notes on efforts to influence the
Socialist International, including securing support for U.S. foreign policies
from Socialist and Social Democratic parties in Europe, Raymond cited the
efforts of “Ledeen, Gershman,” a reference to
neoconservative operative Michael Ledeen and Carl Gershman, another neocon who
has served as president of the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for
Democracy (NED), from 1983 to the present. (Underlining in original.)
Although
NED is technically independent of the U.S. government, it receives the bulk of
its funding (now about $100 million a year) from Congress. Documents from the
Reagan archives also make clear that NED was organized as a way to replace some
of the CIA’s political and propaganda covert operations, which had fallen into
disrepute in the 1970s. Earlier released documents from Raymond’s file show CIA
Director William Casey pushing for NED’s creation and Raymond, Casey’s
handpicked man on the NSC, giving frequent advice and direction to Gershman.
[See Consortiumnews.com’s “CIA’s Hidden Hand in ‘Democracy’ Groups.”]
While the initials USAID
conjure up images of well-meaning Americans helping to drill wells, teach
school and set up health clinics in impoverished nations, USAID also has kept
its hand in financing friendly journalists around the globe.
In 2015, USAID issued a fact
sheet summarizing its work financing “journalism education, media business
development, capacity building for supportive institutions, and strengthening
legal-regulatory environments for free media.” USAID estimated its budget
for “media strengthening programs in over 30 countries” at $40 million
annually, including aiding “independent media organizations and bloggers in
over a dozen countries,”
In
Ukraine before the 2014 coup, USAID offered training in “mobile phone and
website security,” which sounds a bit like an operation to thwart the local
government’s intelligence gathering, an ironic position for the U.S. with
its surveillance obsession, including prosecuting whistleblowers based on evidence that they
talked to journalists.
USAID, working with
billionaire George Soros’s Open Society, also funded the Organized Crime and
Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which engages in “investigative
journalism” that usually goes after governments that have fallen into disfavor
with the United States and then are singled out for accusations of corruption.
The
USAID-funded OCCRP also collaborates with Bellingcat, an online
investigative website founded by blogger Eliot Higgins, who is now a senior
non-resident fellow of the Atlantic Council, a pro-NATO think tank that
receives funding from the U.S. and allied governments.
Higgins
has spread misinformation on the Internet, including discredited claims implicating the Syrian government in the sarin attack in
2013 and directing an Australian TV news crew to what looked to
be the wrong location for a video of a BUK anti-aircraft
battery as it supposedly made its getaway to Russia after the
shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014.
Despite his dubious record of
accuracy, Higgins has gained mainstream acclaim, in part, because his
“findings” always match up with the propaganda theme that the U.S. government
and its Western allies are peddling. Though most genuinely independent bloggers
are ignored by the mainstream media, Higgins has found his work touted by both
The New York Times and The Washington Post, and Google has included Bellingcat
on its First Draft coalition, which will determine which news will be deemed
real and which fake.
In other words, the U.S.
government has a robust strategy for deploying direct and indirect agents of
influence who are now influencing how the titans of the Internet will structure
their algorithms to play up favored information and disappear disfavored
information.
A
Heritage of Lies
During
the first Cold War, the CIA and the U.S. Information Agency refined the art of “information warfare,” including
pioneering some of its current features like having ostensibly “independent”
entities and cut-outs present U.S. propaganda to a cynical public that would
reject much of what it hears from government but may trust “citizen
journalists” and “bloggers.”
USIA, which was founded in
1953 and gained new life in the 1980s under its Reagan-appointed director
Charles Wick, was abolished in 1999, but its propaganda functions were largely
folded into the new office of Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and
Public Affairs, which became a new fount of disinformation.
For
instance, in 2014, President Obama’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy
Richard Stengel engaged in a series of falsehoods and misrepresentations regarding
Russia’s RT network. In one instance, he claimed that the RT had made the
“ludicrous assertion” that the U.S. had invested $5 billion in the regime
change project in Ukraine. But that was an obvious reference to a public speech
by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland on
Dec. 13, 2013, in which she said “we have invested more than $5
billion” to help Ukraine to achieve its “European aspirations.”
Nuland
also was a leading proponent of the Ukraine coup, personally cheering on the
anti-government rioters. In an intercepted
phone call with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt,
Nuland discussed how “to glue” or “midwife this thing” and who the new leaders
would be. She picked Arseniy Yatsenyuk – “Yats is the guy” – who ended up as
Prime Minister after elected President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown.
Despite
all the evidence of a U.S.-backed coup, The New York Times simply ignored the
evidence, including the Nuland-Pyatt phone call, to announce that there never was a coup. The
Times’ obeisance to the State Department’s false narrative is a good example of
how the legacy of Walter Raymond, who died in 2003, extends to the present.
Over
several decades, even as the White House changed hands from Republicans to Democrats,
the momentum created by Raymond continued to push the peacetime psyops strategy forward.
In more recent years, the
wording of the program may have changed to more pleasing euphemisms. But the
idea is the same: how you can use psyops, propaganda and disinformation to sell
U.S. government policies abroad and at home.
Reprinted
with permission from Consortiumnews.com.
Investigative reporter
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and
Newsweek in the 1980s. His latest book is America’s Stolen Narrative.
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