"If I were operating some sort of mafia in the United States, I would be only too delighted to have the leading voices of the news media insist to the public that many of my crimes could never have happened. It might even be worth hiring some goofballs to spread preposterous theories about nonexistent conspiracies in order to discredit persons who might stumble upon evidence of the real thing."- James Dale Davidson, Strategic Investment Newsletter, 7/25/95, commenting on the Susan Schmidt article in the Washington Post of 7/4/95.
After monitoring some of the Internet conspiracy newsgroups now for over a year, I suspect that at some level, authorized or not, one or more disinformation experiments have been occurring on the Net. Most of those who promote this disinformation are unaware of their role. The only way to counter this is to do our homework better, and challenge those who offer conspiracy theories that fly in the face of reason, or who offer facts that are unsubstantiated.
There are two ways to stifle investigative journalism, which is currently at its lowest point in America since the mid-sixties. One way is to centralize the media, and blend all news into an infotainment video image. This has certainly been happening. When journalism professor Ben Bagdikian wrote "Media Monopoly" in 1983, he concluded that the trend toward centralization was ominous. By the time of the third edition in 1990, it was much worse:
"At the end of World War II, 80 percent of the daily newspapers in the U.S. were independently owned, but by 1989 the proportion was reversed, with 80 percent owned by corporate chains. In 1981 twenty corporations controlled most of the business of the country's 11,000 magazines, but only seven years later that number had shrunk to three corporations. Today, despite the more than 25,000 outlets in the U.S., 23 corporations control most of the business in daily newspapers, magazines, television, books, and motion pictures." (page 4)
That's one way to stifle investigative journalism. Another way is to draw up a list of all the hot scandals currently of interest among various marginalized constituencies -- in other words, the people who don't depend on the Dan Rather ten-second version of "that's the way it is," and have the time and energy to dig out their own sources. Take this list and dispatch threads of disinformation, so that to a reasonable person, any of these particular scandals seems outrageously improbable. To make it easier on yourself, try to arrange it so that the various scandals seem to merge into one huge octopus-type theory. This conserves your resources by allowing cross-fertilization of your disinformation threads.
Consider, for example, the October Surprise scandal, which was the object of a Congressional investigation and had the potential of undermining the electoral system:
"I was asked by some people to mount a disinformation campaign.... The people who asked me to intervene felt that the country could not stand another Watergate.... I met with four people [not named, but identified as associated with the U.S. intelligence community], and was given to understand that there were a number of others who were interested in seeing this succeed. In other words, making sure that the media lost interest, that the story was discredited. I contacted Barbara Honegger ... [and] managed to pass on some information to her which had factual elements in it, but also elements that with a little bit of digging could be discovered to be questionable. The story would lead some investigators to spend time and effort running into blind alleys, with the result that eventually the whole story would be discredited."Along comes the Internet. Journalists interested in a particular issue because they are sincerely curious, or because they sincerely believe in public accountability, may be inclined to cruise the Net for leads on what's bumping around among the Great Unwashed at any given point in time. (Real journalists, that is -- not the Cokie Roberts kind of journalist that gets thousands for speaking at global-grab corporate conventions to tell them how wonderful they are for promoting free trade and the two-party system.)- Oswald LeWinter, explaining on camera to Robert Parry why he accepted $100,000 to plant disinformation concerning the October Surprise scandal. (From Robert Parry, "Trick or Treason," New York: Sheridan Square, 1993, p. 68.)
A real journalist, let's say, looks into the Vince Foster issue by following posts from Jim Norman, Orlin Grabbe, Sherman Skolnick, and a couple dozen others. This real journalist has limited resources, because any journalist with major resources behind him already knows that when push comes to crunch, the majors will not support the publication of anything that threatens the status quo. The best you can hope for from the majors is to follow up on something AFTER it has been picked up by others. The major outlets don't want to rock the boat, but they don't want to be conspicuously irrelevant either.
Can there be any doubt that a real journalist would be completely burned out and turned off after a few weeks of reading about Foster on the Whitewater newsgroup? The only impression you can glean from the experience is that the Conspiracy is so big that 1) if you know the extent of it you end up dead, which suggests that 2) those who remain alive can never know. Any journalist worth anything would go screaming from their computer, and that's the end of their story. Furthermore, they'd be so demoralized that it will be a long time before they make any effort on a similar story. I've spoken with journalists who've had this reaction.
We have to be more careful with our posts. Those who want their paranoia titillated should stick with "Nowhere Man" and "The X Files," where the only time the characters get into trouble is when they are guilty of insufficient paranoia. At least here you won't cross paths with journalists interested in the truth. But those who remain behind should try to be more responsible. Otherwise the Internet, which is one of the few remaining islands where information isn't centrally controlled, will become a joke. Then they'll shut it down except for the virtual shopping malls, and you won't hear any complaints from me.
-- Daniel Brandt