Bush administration's "Ministry of Truth" attacks American journalists who fail to adhere to the official line

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

April 18, 2005—After revelations that the Bush White House cleared a gay male prostitute as a daily credentialed member of the White House press corps and that the administration was paying journalistic shills like Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, Michael McManus, and Karen Ryan to pump out pro-Bush propaganda to the media, nothing should come as any surprise when it comes to the Fourth Estate's buckling under to political pressure from the right-wing regime that rules America.

What is surprising is that, in addition to using the media to concoct favorable propaganda, the Bush administration maintains an office in the State Department that keeps an eye on American and other journalists and does not hesitate to attack them for straying from the party line.

To show how much censorship exists in America today, this journalist would have likely never known about the existence of a one-man office in the State Department that acts to debunk and attack anything the Bush administration deems is false. Thanks to a recent report by veteran America watcher and journalist Jyri Raivio in Finland's Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, it can now be reported in the United States that the State Department uses taxpayers' money to attack American journalists who refuse to parrot the Bush administration's disinformation and propaganda.

The head of the State Department's "Counter Mis-Information 'Team'" is Todd Leventhal, a long-time neoconservative propaganda operative who once worked for the U.S. Information Agency's (USIA) Bureau of Information to counter Soviet and other disinformation with his own Brand X of American disinformation. Raivio reports that Leventhal was part of the Bush administration's effort to convince the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction {WMD). Leventhal also contends in the Helsingin Sanomat report that any suggestion that false WMD intelligence was cooked up by the Bush administration is merely a conspiracy theory and that the faulty intelligence on Iraqi WMD was merely a huge "mistake."

It should not have come as any surprise that I was singled out by Leventhal for an attack over a story written for Online Journal about the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and the involvement in the assassination's planning of two neoconservative Bush administration officials—namely, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl C. Rove—with whom Leventhal is ideologically aligned. Leventhal's operation is part of the State Department's International Information Programs Bureau, now headed by former Bush White House Communications Director and long time gal pal Karen Hughes.

Leventhal's barb appears at http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archiv...01-220547.html and states, "self-described investigative journalist Wayne Madsen claimed that the Hariri assassination was 'authorized' by the United States because Mr. Hariri was known to adamantly oppose the construction of a major U.S. air base in the north of Lebanon."

Leventhal continues, "These claims are false. U.S. policy has expressly forbidden assassination since 1976, when President Ford signed Executive Order 11905. The prohibition against assassination was reaffirmed by President Carter and President Reagan, the latter in Executive Order 12333, which remains in force. Executive Order 12333 states, 'No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination' . . . Moreover, the U.S. military has confirmed that it has no plans for an air base in Lebanon.

"Mr. Madsen has made unreliable claims in the past. On October 20, 2004, he claimed that, in order to win reelection, the Bush administration 'has initiated plans to launch a military strike on Iran's top Islamic leadership, its nuclear reactor at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf, and key nuclear targets throughout the country.' Needless to say, no such events occurred."

Leventhal is obviously concerned that on numerous occasions this journalist's articles are picked up by media outlets around the world, including papers in Pakistan, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Egypt and serve to debunk the cacophony of propaganda emanating from Washington and its embassies abroad. Leventhal citing two Executive Orders that prohibit assassinations is laughable in light of recent well-documented disclosures that U.S. interrogators killed at least one Iraqi general in custody. Since September 11, 2001, and adoption of George Tenet's Worldwide Attack Matrix—a carte blanche for political assassinations around the world—both Executive Orders cited by Leventhal are not worth the paper they are printed on.

As to the "October Surprise" story about a pre-election attack on Iran, I stand by my sources—which, since the original article's appearance—have multiplied in number. In fact, I will stand my sources—including crew aboard the USS John F. Kennedy, then on station in the Persian Gulf—against Leventhal's trite disinformation machine. Similarly, the sources on the Hariri assassination and the plans for the U.S. air base are well connected and trusted. The firm promised the air base construction contract by the Pentagon, Jacobs Engineering, is a major player in U.S. military and intelligence projects The company was started by the late Dr. Joseph Jacobs, a Lebanese-American who served on the advisory board of the Rand Corporation's Center for Middle East Public Policy. The co-chair of that group during Jacobs's tenure was none other than Frank Carlucci, the chairman emeritus of The Carlyle Group—an organization that has criminal conspiracy written all over it.

Perhaps, if Leventhal and his neocon friends used such trusted sources as the many I have developed over some twenty years, rather than using deluded and alcoholic disinformation scoundrels like Iraq's "Curveball," this country would not be in the mess it is in today in Iraq and the entire Middle East. As a matter of fact, foreign ministries around the world could use their own Ministries of Truth for the sole purpose of wading through all the disinformation pumped out by the Bush administration: Iraq's WMD, Saddam's links to al Qaeda, Iraq's shopping for yellowcake uranium in Niger, and the many other lies and distortions.

First of all, some housekeeping is in order. Leventhal refers to this journalist as "self described." True, I use the term "investigative journalist" in tag lines. However, it is not "self described" that my articles have been cited by Project Censored, famed author Gore Vidal, keen investigative journalist Greg Palast, and newspapers from Austria to Zimbabwe. In addition, it was not self-aggrandizement that resulted in my investigative book on genocide in Africa being cited in a French government counter-terrorism judicial investigation, a UN War Crimes Tribunal, U.S. House of Representatives testimony, and respected periodicals in Africa and Europe.

Although he is basically a one-man show (he does have a full-time assistant and one part-timer), Leventhal does not seem to produce much for his work at the State Department. Leventhal was actually laid off by the State Department in 1996 after his Cold War-era counter-disinformation office was disestablished, but he was rehired in October 2003 after the White House decided to resurrect its propaganda effort under the rubric of "strategic influence operations." Leventhal's attacks are narrowly focused on particular stories, sources, and journalists. His web site has an explanation of how to spot disinformation—Leventhal contends that most conspiracy theories are rarely true and that they are spread by ideological extremists, that is liberals, because right-wingers like Leventhal would never be willing to address right-wing extremism (such as Fox News, the National Review, and The Wall Street Journal editorial page) in the media. Leventhal's dismissing conspiracies as often untrue will, nevertheless, come as a great shock to the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, which has put away many a criminal based on violation of criminal conspiracy laws.

Another one of Leventhal's government-funded attack pieces flays ex-U.S. soldier Nadim Abou Rabeh, an Iraqi war veteran who had taken part in Saddam Hussein's capture. Leventhal pillories Rabeh for suggesting Saddam's capture in a "spider hole" was faked. Leventhal also calls fanciful reports that the United States used mustard gas in the siege of Fallujah, contends that the use of depleted uranium weapons by U.S. forces in Iraq is safe, and derides it as a "conspiracy theory" that the United States helped create Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda via its support of the Afghan mujaheddin through Saudi and Pakistani facilitators.

End Part I