Mark Hyman: Stepford Spook and the new Operation Mockingbird

[oldhat]

Mark Hyman: Stepford Spook and the new Operation Mockingbird

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/966

October 12, 2004
Bob Fitrakis

The first time I saw Mark Hyman on Columbus’ Sinclair Television ABC affiliate, I told the listeners of my WVKO radio show that he looked like a Stepford CIA clone with a microchip buried in his ass.

Hyman is the Vice President for Corporate Relations for Sinclair Broadcasting, which owns and operates programs or provides sales services affiliated with the top six TV networks in the country: ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, UPN and Warner Brothers.

Sinclair plans to air a CIA-agit-prop-style documentary called “Stolen Honor: Wounds that never heal,” highly critical of John Kerry’s anti-war activities, two weeks before the November 2 election. Sixty-three Sinclair affiliates including a dozen in the battleground states of Ohio, Florida, Iowa and Wisconsin plan to air the 42-minute long negative campaign ad for George W. Bush in the form of a documentary.

The airing of the documentary to nearly a quarter of all TV markets in the U.S. represents tens of millions of dollars in in-kind campaign donations to the Bush coffers. It is one of the most blatant and illegal uses of the people’s airwaves in U.S. history and another signal that smiley-faced fascism is just around the corner.

[frank frankly]

1. good find

good read...

we need another Frank Church. now.

[AntiSmirk]

2. Scary but...

I thought the CIA was on our side vs. Bushco.

[Octafish]

3. Not all CIA are good people.

Take E Howard Hunt. Please.



Scavenger Hunt

E. Howard Hunt talks about Guatemala, the Bay of Pigs, and what really happened to Che.

By Ann Louise Bardach
Updated Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2004, at 5:04 AM PT

The spymaster at twilight

MIAMI, Aug. 25, 2004—E. Howard Hunt is one of the most notorious spies of the 20th century. The son of an influential Republican leader in upstate New York, Hunt began his career as a founding member of the OSS, the precursor of the CIA in the 1940s. After beginning as an intelligence operative in China, Hunt trailblazed the path for the CIA in Latin America from 1950 to 1970, ever on the lookout for the Communist menace. By his account, he was the architect of the 1954 U.S.-backed coup ("Operation Success") in Guatemala that deposed democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz. Adept at psych ops (propaganda and subversion) and running "black flights" (covert operations), he also played a role in the Bay of Pigs: He was responsible for propaganda operations and the organization of a post-Castro government. Such exploits and excesses led to the scaling back of the CIA's prerogatives following hearings by the Church Committee in 1976.

In July 1970, Hunt went into "private practice," taking with him the tools he acquired during his 25 years in the intelligence business. His most famous black-bag jobs were breaking into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office and, later, Watergate, where Hunt's "plumbers" cadre, recruited from among his Cuban exile comrades, rifled and bugged the offices of the Democratic Party in May and June of 1972.

Since pleading guilty to his role in Watergate and spending "33 months in 13 federal prisons," Howard Hunt has lived in Miami where he met and married his second wife of 27 years, Laura. An expert storyteller, Hunt has had a second career as a spy novelist. The couple live in a modest ranch house at the end of a cul-de-sac in north Miami. Posted around his door are warnings against trespassing, which seems somehow appropriate for a man with a history of illegal entry.

CONTINUED MUST READ...

http://slate.msn.com/id/2107718/

[Moderator]

4. Good article, but not LBN

Feel free to re-post in another forum