{"id":144094,"date":"2019-09-30T12:00:32","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T11:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=144094"},"modified":"2019-09-28T08:11:04","modified_gmt":"2019-09-28T07:11:04","slug":"why-does-chris-hedges-hedge-his-bets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/09\/why-does-chris-hedges-hedge-his-bets\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Does Chris Hedges Hedge His Bets?"},"content":{"rendered":"

27 Sep 2019 – <\/em>Revelations about the machinations of the so-called \u201cdeep state\u2019s\u201d conspiracies often conceal deeper truths that go unmentioned. This is quite common, whether it is done intentionally or not.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it is intentional and is directed by the intelligence agencies themselves or their accomplices in the media, who operate a vast propaganda network.\u00a0 In that case, it is because the secret rulers have been caught doing some evil deed, and, not being able to fully deny it, they admit to part of it while concealing deeper secrets.\u00a0 This is termed \u201ca limited hangout.\u201d\u00a0 It is described by ex-CIA Deputy Director Victor Marchetti, author of The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence<\/em>, as follows:<\/p>\n

Spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting\u2014sometimes even volunteering\u2014some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For the average person, it is very hard to read between the lines and smell a skunk.\u00a0 The subterfuge is often very subtle and appeals to readers\u2019 sense of outrage at what happened in the past.\u00a0 After the Church Hearings in the 1970s<\/a>, and then Carl Bernstein\u2019s limited hangout article in Rolling Stone <\/em>in 1977, where he named the names and \u201couted\u201d many major media and individuals for having worked with the CIA, many people breathed deeply and consigned these evil and propagandistic activities to the bad old days. But these \u201climited hangouts\u201d have been going on ever since, allowing people to express outrage and feel some sort of redemption is at hand in the na\u00efve belief that the system is reformable.\u00a0 It is a pipe dream induced by the smallest puff on the media\u2019s latest recreational drug, for which no prescription is needed.\u00a0 The media that more openly and proudly than ever reveal their jobs as stenographers for the intelligence agencies (see my US Media Propaganda. Drawing \u201cLiberals\u201d and \u201cLeftists\u201d into the CIA\u2019s Orbit. NPR)<\/em><\/a> .\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

In The Iceman Cometh<\/em>, the playwright Eugene O\u2019Neill puts the delusional nature of so much public consciousness thus:<\/p>\n

To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It’s irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Truth may never have been popular, but if one studies the history of propaganda techniques as they have developed in tandem with technological changes, it becomes apparent that today\u2019s incredibly sophisticated digital technology and the growth of screen culture that has resulted in what Guy Debord has called \u201cthe society of the spectacle\u201d has made the manipulation of truth increasingly easier and far trickier.\u00a0 News in today\u2019s world appears as a pointillistic canvas of thousands of disconnected dots impossible to connect unless one has the desire, time, determination, and ability to connect the points through research, which most people do not have.\u00a0 \u201cAs a result,\u201d writes Jacques Ellul in his classic study, Propaganda<\/em>, \u201che finds himself in a kind of kaleidoscope in which thousands of unconnected images follow each other rapidly\u201d and \u201chis attention is continually diverted to new matters, new centers of interest, and is dissipated on a thousand things, which disappear from one day to the next.\u201d\u00a0 This technology is a boon to government propagandists that make sure to be on the cutting edge of new technology and the means to control the flow of its content, often finding that the medium is the message, one that is especially confounding since seemingly liberating \u2013 e.g. cell phones and their easy and instantaneous ability to access information and \u201cbreaking news.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there are writers, artists, and communicators of all types, whether consciously or not, who contribute to the obfuscating of essential truths even while informing the public of important matters. These people come from across the political spectrum.\u00a0 To know their intentions is impossible, unless they spell them out in public to let their audiences evaluate them, which rarely happens, otherwise one is left to guess, which is a fool\u2019s game.\u00a0 One can, however, point out what they say and what they don\u2019t and wonder why.<\/p>\n

A recent article, Our Invisible Government<\/a>, by the well-known journalist, Chris Hedges, is a typical case in point.\u00a0 As is his habit, he sheds light on much that is avoided by the mainstream press. Very important matters. \u00a0In this piece, he writes in his passionate style that<\/p>\n

The most powerful and important organs in the invisible government are the nation\u2019s bloated and unaccountable intelligence agencies. They are the vanguard of the invisible government. They oversee a vast \u201cblack world,\u201d tasked with maintaining the invisible government\u2019s lock on power.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This, of course, is true.\u00a0 He then goes on to catalogue ways these intelligence agencies, led by the CIA, have overthrown foreign governments and assassinated their leaders, persecuted and besmirched the names of those \u2013 Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, et al. \u2013 who have opposed government policies, and used propaganda to conceal the real reasons for their evil deeds, such as the wars against Vietnam, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. He condemns such actions.<\/p>\n

He spends much of his article referencing Stephen Kinzer\u2019s new book, Poisoner in Chief: Sydney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control <\/a>and Gottlieb\u2019s heinous exploits during his long CIA career.\u00a0 Known as \u201cDr. Death,\u201d this Bronx born son of Jewish immigrants ran the CIA\u2019s mind control programs and its depraved medical experiments on unknowing victims, known as MK-ULTRA and Artichoke.\u00a0 He oversaw the development of various poisons and bizarre methods to kill foreign leaders such as Fidel Castro and Patrice Lumumba.\u00a0 He worked closely with Nazi scientists who had been brought to the United States by Allen Dulles in an operation called Operation Paperclip.\u00a0 Gottlieb was responsible for so many deaths and so much human anguish and suffering that it is hard to believe, but believe it we must because it is true.\u00a0 His work on torture and mind control led to Abu Ghraib, CIA black sites, and assorted U.S. atrocities of recent history.<\/p>\n

Hedges tells us all this and rightly condemns it as \u201cthe moral squalor\u201d and \u201ccriminality\u201d that it is.\u00a0 Only a sick or evil person could disagree with his account of Gottlieb via Kinzer\u2019s book. I suspect many good people who have or will read his piece will agree with his denunciations of this evil CIA history.\u00a0 Additionally, he correctly adds:<\/p>\n

It would be naive to relegate the behavior of Gottlieb and the CIA to the past, especially since the invisible government has once again shrouded the activities of intelligence agencies from congressional oversight or public scrutiny and installed a proponent of torture, Gina Haspel<\/a>, as the head of the agency.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This also is very true.\u00a0 All these truths can make you forget what\u2019s not true and what\u2019s missing in his article.<\/p>\n

But something is missing, and some wording is quite odd and factually false. It is easy to miss this as one\u2019s indignation rises as one reads Hedges\u2019 cataloguing of Gottlieb\u2019s and the CIA\u2019s obscenities.<\/p>\n

He omits mentioning the Clinton administration\u2019s dismantling wars against Yugoslavia, including 78 days of non-stop bombing of Serbia in 1999 that killed thousands of innocent people in the name of \u201chumanitarian intervention,\u201d wars he covered for the New York Times, the paper he has come to castigate and the paper that has a long history of doing the CIA\u2019s bidding.<\/p>\n

He claims that Gottlieb and the CIA\u2019s scientists failed in their \u201cvain quest\u201d for mind control drugs or electronic implants that might, among other things, get victims to act against their wills, such as acting as a Manchurian candidate, and as a result, \u201cabandoned\u201d their efforts.\u00a0 That they failed is not true, and that they abandoned their efforts is unknowable, unless you wish to take the CIA at its word, which is a hilarious thought.\u00a0 How could Hedges possibly know they abandoned such work?\u00a0 A logical person would assume they would say that and continue their work more secretly. On one hand, Hedges says, \u201cIt would be naive to relegate the behavior of Gottlieb and the CIA to the past,\u201d but then he does just that. Which is it, Chris? By definition, the \u201cinvisible\u201d government, the CIA, never reveals their operations, and lying is their modus operandi, especially with their brazen in-your-face biblical motto: \u201cAnd ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says the invisible deep state \u201cfailed to foresee\u2026the 9\/11 attacks or the absence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.\u201d\u00a0 This is factually wrong and quite absurd, as is well documented.\u00a0 They simply lied about these matters ex post facto.\u00a0 He suggests such failures were due to \u201cineptitude,\u201d a coy word used by numerous other writers who find reasons to deny intentionality to the \u201cdeep state.\u201d<\/p>\n

He therefore is implying that the attacks of September 11, 2001, a subject that he has consistently failed to address over the years even while he has written in detail about so much else, did not involve America\u2019s \u201cinvisible government forces.\u201d The ineptitude explanation fails elementary logical analysis. Does he think it was intelligence ineptitude that allowed operatives to wire the highly-secure Twin Towers and Building 7 for controlled demolition that brought those buildings down, as the testimony of one\u2019s eyes and that of hundreds of NYC firefighters who reported explosions throughout the buildings affirm?\u00a0 Ineptitude is another word for avoidance of evidence, gathered over the years by careful scholars and researchers.\u00a0 Ineptitude is another word for the belief \u201cin miracles,\u201d as David Ray Griffin has phrased it.<\/p>\n

What does he think Colin Powell was doing at the United Nations on February 5, 2003 with CIA Director George Tenet sitting behind him when he lied repeatedly and fabricated evidence for Iraq having weapons of mass destruction to promote and justify the U.S. war against Iraq?\u00a0 Ineptitude?\u00a0 A failure of intelligence?<\/p>\n

Chris Hedges is a very intelligent man, so why does he write such things?<\/p>\n

Most importantly, why, when he writes about the past evil deeds of the intelligence operatives \u2013 Gottlieb and the CIA\u2019s overseas coups and assassination of foreign leaders, etc. \u2013 does he fail to say one word about the CIA\u2019s assassination of domestic leaders, including President John Kennedy in 1963, the foundational event in the invisible government\u2019s takeover of the United States.\u00a0 Can an act be more evil and in need of moral condemnation?\u00a0 And how about the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in 1968, or Malcolm X in 1965? Why does Hedges elide these assassinations as if they are not worthy of attention, but Gottlieb\u2019s sick work for the CIA is?\u00a0 Like the attacks of September 11, 2001, he has avoided these assassinations throughout the years.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know why.\u00a0 Only he can say.\u00a0 He is a very well-read man, who is constantly quoting from scholars about various important issues.\u00a0 His books are chock full of such quotations and references.\u00a0 But you will look in vain for references to the brilliant, scholarly work of such writers on these assassinations, the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the CIA\u2019s criminal and morally repugnant activities as James Douglass, David Talbot, David Ray Griffin, William Pepper, Graeme MacQueen, Lisa Pease, and so many others.\u00a0 Is it possible that he has never read their books when he has read so much else?\u00a0 If so, why?<\/p>\n

As I said before, Chris Hedges, who has a passionate but mild-mannered style, is not alone in his disregard of these key matters. Other celebrity names on the left have been especially guilty of the same approach: Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Alexander Cockburn, to name just a few (Zinn and Cockburn are dead).\u00a0 They have avoided these issues as if they were toxic. \u00a0Nor would they logically explain why.\u00a0 The few times they did respond to those who criticized them for this, it was usually through a dismissive wave of the hand or name calling, a tactic such as the CIA developed with the term \u201cconspiracy theory.\u201d Cockburn was particularly nasty in this regard, priding himself on dismissing others with words such as kooks, lunatics, and idiots, even when his logic was deplorable.\u00a0 He liked to use ineptitude\u2019s synonym, \u201cincompetence,\u201d to explain away what he considered intelligence agency failures.\u00a0 \u201cWhy,\u201d he wrote in one piece attacking September 11 critics while upholding the government\u2019s version, \u201cdoes the obvious have to be proved?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cBrillig!\u201d as Humpty Dumpty would say.\u00a0 Absolutely brillig!<\/p>\n

The CIA\u2019s mind control operations need to be exposed, as Hedges does to a degree in this latest article.\u00a0 But revealing while concealing is unworthy of one who condemns \u201ccreeps who revel in human degradation, dirty tricks, and murder.\u201d\u00a0 It itself is a form of mind control.<\/p>\n

Perhaps he will see fit to publicly explain why he has done this.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. Website: <\/em>Behind the Curtain<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

27 Sep 2019 – The CIA\u2019s mind control operations need to be exposed, as Hedges does to a degree in this latest article. But revealing while concealing is unworthy of one who condemns \u201ccreeps who revel in human degradation, dirty tricks, and murder.\u201d It itself is a form of mind control. Perhaps he will see fit to publicly explain why he has done this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":89352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[229,133,120,378,234,291,112,109,287,572,249,70,126,118],"class_list":["post-144094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-activism","tag-cia","tag-conflict","tag-journalism","tag-media","tag-military","tag-pentagon","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-torture","tag-trump","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}