Back in 1983, former-CIA operative Frank Snepp described how he would plant disinformation into US media during the Vietnam War. He would first feed reporters real, verifiable information to establish confidence. Then he would plant unverifiable disinformation that was intended to influence political debates in the US. In many cases he would work with the British ambassador or other friendly officials who would confirm the disinformation. In most cases the reporter would publish what Snepp had planted.
See video for details. Language warning.
I suspect these techniques are less common these days. The US media is much less skeptical than it was during the Vietnam War. Nowadays they openly hire former intel officials as experts and commentators even when the officials are known to have pushed debunked disinformation in the past. Once the disinformation proven to be false, there is little effort to correct the stories.
Should a working assumption be that reports in the US media about wars and politics are really disinformation until proven otherwise?
Yes, we saw that in the run-up to the Iraq war. Dick Cheney would tell Judith Miller of the NYT that Iraq had WMD, the NYT would print it, and then Cheney would go on Meet The Press and say that Iraq has WMD, even the NYT says so.
If RT and the US media report the same thing about news involving Russia, it is a good indication that the reports are correct. If the only report is from US mainstream media, then a good working assumption should be that it is US / Ukrainian disinformation until proven otherwise.
Foreign media provides a valuable service in sorting out the truth. Perhaps that is why has been such an effort to prevent access to it.
Yes, they create an echo chamber where everyone is repeating the same disinformation.
What is amazing to me is that so many people who were openly skeptical about WMDs in Iraq are now willing to blindly follow the party line from officials in Washington.
The effort to silence dissenting voices is about protecting disinformation not stopping it.
Actually, the media have shown little interest in getting the scoop when it contracts the party line set by official Washington. Tony Bobulinski held a news conference where he confirmed key facts related to the Biden laptop, and the room was empty two weeks before the election. Obeying the letter from 50+ former intel officials was more important actually investigating the story.
The US news media has become little more than an infomercial for state-approved narratives.
Bobulinski had copies of key emails and had personal knowledge of Biden business dealings that confirmed reports in the New York Post.
In contrast, the gag order from former intel officials readily admitted that the officials had no information about Russian involvement. The evidence-free suspicions were then used to censor accurate reports about the story.
It screams that Hunter Biden was a cocaine addict who had a habit of abandoning old laptops, and the FBI/CIA has worked overtime to protect the Bidens.
Over a year after the election, The New York Times admitted that key emails from the laptop were authentic:
âPeople familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity,â the Times writes. âThose emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.â https://nypost.com/2022/03/17/the-times-finally-admits-hunter-bidens-laptop-is-real/
Whatâs funny is Bill pointed out this very amplification trick himself in this Disinformation thread!
And yet somehow missed that very same amplification feedback loop in what he posted.
AlthoughâŚcorrectionâŚNY Post did not have access to Hunterâs laptop. They had access to files Giuliani claimed came from Hunterâs laptop.
But itâs still an amplification trickâŚcoupled with the fact that the author of the Post story was a former FoxNews show runner for several of the night time Fox News opinion showsâŚwho got the assignment when all the senior writers at the Post passed it up for dearth of information.
And this was her first story for the PostâŚfresh off her stint running the FoxNews opinion shows.
The only disinformation about the Biden laptop came from your friends affiliated with the George Bush Center for Intelligence and their quasi-official mouthpiece at Politico. They falsely claimed that the laptop was Russian disinformation with zero evidence. The FBI had the laptop for many months but apparently did nothing to investigate. The 50+ former intel official did not bother to even look at the laptop or its files before they issued the letter. This story reeks of cover-ups and corruption.
Sneppâs description of planting disinformation in the media during the Vietnam War sounds very similar to the techniques used to get FISA warrants. In both cases leaked disinformation was used to generate reports to falsely claim an independent source for the information. The difference was that Snepp used friendly diplomats to provide a fictious verification to create news reports, while Steele used friendly journalists to generate bogus media reports that were used to get FISA warrants against Trump associates. Bogus circular verification still appears to be a widely used technique to disguise disinformation:
On four occasions, the FBI told the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court that it âdid not believeâ former British spy Christopher Steele was the direct source for a Yahoo News article implicating former Trump aide Carter Page in Russian collusion, newly released documents reveal.
Instead, the FBI suggested to the court, the September 2016 article by Michael Isikoff was independent corroboration of the salacious, unverified allegations against Trump in the infamous Steele Dossier. Federal authorities used both the Steele Dossier and Yahoo News article to convince the FISA court to authorize a surveillance warrant for Page.
