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 assure 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 Websites 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.
Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush with CIA Director William Casey at the White House on Feb. 11, 1981.
(Image by (Photo credit: Reagan Library)) Details DMCA
Raymond, who has been compared to a character from a John LeCarre' 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
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