Reed Irvine - Editor
"Imperial Masquerade," a documentary aired by the Public Broadcasting Service on November 14, the fourth program in its "America's Century" series, divulged some extra- ordinary information about our country and its role in the world over the past four decades. Here are some of the surprising "facts" disclosed in this program.
1.A major goal of American foreign policy has been to "block nationalism" in the world, whether of the right or of the left.
2. The U.S. labels all nationalistic regimes, such as Castro's Cuba that are responsive to the need of independent development "communist."
3. In 1954, the U.S. accused President Arbenz of Guatemala of communism because he "began to talk too much like a democrat."
4. Castro's defeat of the CLA-directed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs showed the "third world" that America was "the agent of the reactionary past."
5. The policies of Ho Chi Minh "were local and expedient, in no way connected to a global conspiracy."
6. South Vietnam was never an independent nation, and a foreign enemy from the Communist North did not attack it."
7. The U.S. began "the chemical destruction of Vietnam" in 1961.
8. In 1965, "the U.S. had a substantial expeditionary force attacking South Vietnam."
This was not a summary of disinformation disseminated by the KGB. All these "fact folds" were found in a program written and narrated by Lewis H. Lapham, the editor of Harper's magazine. To support his indictment of the United States as a wicked imperialist, Lapham included interviews with Marcus Raskin and Noam Chomsky. Raskin was identified only as "National Security Council, 1961-63," not as a founder of the left-wing Institute for Policy Studies. Chomsky was not identified at all. He is a retired M.I.T. professor of linguistics whose radical views have made him something of a cult figure among extremists on the left.
The program was aired just when the long-suppressed anger of the people of Eastern Europe was exploding against the cruel, corrupt Marxist dictatorships. Marxism was being dumped into the dustbin of history before our very eyes, together with the massive structure of lies that had for so many years propped up the flawed ideology. Many who bad deplored Reagan's characterization of the Soviet bloc as an "evil empire" were pretending that they had known all along how evil it was.
PBS could not have chosen a worse time to air a program that reiterated a number of those lies and ridiculed and condemned our country's efforts to keep that evil empire from extending its crushing embrace to additional millions of people. The program had, of course, been recorded before the Marxist crackup. With appropriate commentary, it could have been presented as a curiosity. Like an ancient fly embedded in a lump of amber, it could be viewed as a perfectly preserved example of dead arguments in support of a discredited idea.
Exposing Anti-Communist Paranoia
The documentary was replete with allusions to the paranoia of those who thought that communism posed a danger to the Free World and its peoples. Here are some quotes, all but the last from Lewis Lapham himself. "Politicians raised in the atmosphere of the Cold War thought America was besieged by adversaries from all parts of the compass at all times.", "Under the Eisenhower administration the campaign against foreign devils enjoyed the unusual advantage of being captained by two brothers, Alien and John Foster Dulles.", "[John Foster Dulles] spent two full weeks in Caracas making apocalyptic speeches, browbeating the Latin American delegates about the vicious communist conspiracy certain to ruin their innocent hemisphere.", "The CIA...embraced the doctrine of secret war. The American government was confirmed in its disastrous belief that the cause of liberty could be made to stand on the pedestals of criminal violence." "American statesmen at the time were seized with the fervor of ideological crusade, and they found it easy to imagine communists lurking like trolls or robbers in all the world's forests and dark alleys. They didn't draw careful distinctions between a Soviet tank in Poland, a kind remark whispered about Karl Marx in a Paris cafe or a national independence movement in Hanoi." ú "Anti-communism is just the name for the reigning ideology. When you find nationalistic regimes [showing Fidel Castro] that are responsive to the need of independent development, that's labeled 'communist.' It's at once identified with the 'Soviet barbarians.'" (Noam Chomsky)
The idea that U.S. covert action to combat the spread of communism has been the enemy rather than the friend of freedom in the world is one of the favorite themes of PBS. The same examples to prove this point are brought up again and again in PBS programs. The coup in Guatemala that overthrew President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 is a favorite of the Marxists.
This has been used at least four times in the last four years in PBS documentaries to prove how wicked the United States and the CIA have been. These are: "Guatemala: When the Mountains Tremble" (Dec., 1985), Moyers' "The Secret Government," (1987), Bill Kurtis' "Secret Intelligence" (1989) and now Lapham's "Imperial Masquerade." AIM has exposed the false- hoods in the Guatemala story each time it has been aired, but facts don't daunt the determined disinformers at PBS. They never refute the criticisms. They just keep repeating the same old lies.
Here are examples of the line on Guatemala as expressed by Lewis Lapham and Noam Chomsky: "Guatemala was one of the first countries to bear the weight of America's experiment with secret wars. The U.S. arranged a coup d'etat in 1954, as a result of which Guatemala was condemned to 30 years of despotism." --"The mountains of Guatemala were an unlikely setting to look for communist subversion, but to the Dulles brothers it seemed as good a place as any to practice the arts of covert action." --"Guatemala was largely owned by the United Fruit Company of Boston, and America's wish to save the world for democracy was synonymous with the protection of the trade in bananas." --"When the Guatemalan government undertook a program of land reform and when the duly elected Guatemalan president, Jacobo Arbenz, began to talk too much like a democrat, the U.S. accused him of communism." --"There was no concern with Guatemala as long as it was under a dictatorship. However, it had a democratic revolution in 1944 modeled more or less after the New Deal, and there began union organizing, peasant organizing, political mobilization and so on. That just set the alarm bells off." (Chomsky) --"We wanted to impose on these countries a capitalist system...we wanted to insure access to resources. Now nationalistic regimes are going to impede this. Therefore the U.S. must block nationalism.... it has nothing to do with left and right. Right-wing nationalism is just as bad as left-wing nationalism." (Chomsky)
The CIA was behind the 1954 coup in Guatemala. It has cited it as one of its more successful covert operations. The Marxist lie is that Jacobo Arbenz was nothing more than a New Deal democrat and that we opposed him for that reason, not because he was leading Guatemala down the path to communism. PBS has never rebutted the evidence AIM has presented to expose this lie, but they keep on repeating it. Here are the facts once again.
Arbenz was elected president of Guatemala in March 1951 with communist backing. A death squad eliminated HIS strongest rival for the office, a popular anti-communist, Francisco Javier Arana. Ronald Schneider, in his book, Communism in Guatemala, 1944-54, says that Arana would probably have won the election had he not been murdered. Arana's driver, who survived the attack, identified one of the killers as Capt. Alfonso Martinez Estevez, a close friend of Arbenz, who subsequently became Arbenz's private secretary and was later made chief of the National Agrarian Department. The car used by the killers belonged to Mrs. Arbenz and was driven by her chauffeur. Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, in their book, Bitter Fruit, noted reports that Arbenz himself watched the murder from a distance through binoculars.
The U.S. ambassador, John Peurifoy, reported in a dispatch to the State Department dated Dec. 16, 1953, on a long conversation with Arbenz and his wife. Arbenz acknowledged having brought communists into his government. He defended his close friendship with the head of the Communist Party of Guatemala, Jose Manuel Fortuny, and another top communist. He said they were honest men who had gone to Moscow to study Marxism, not necessarily to receive instructions. He admitted having supported the communist newspaper with government advertising. He insisted that communism was no threat and said that if given a choice he would prefer to live under communist domination than live with the United Fruit Company. Mrs. Arbenz, who was believed to be a member of the Communist Party, defended the Guatemalan Congress's memorial observance of the death of Stalin. Peurifoy, a career diplomat, concluded that if Arbenz was not a communist, he would do until one came along.
Arbenz had expropriated large amounts of American. Owned property without paying fair compensation. He had instigated political strikes against the American- owned railroad with a view to expropriating it. He was wrecking the Guatemalan economy with his leftist programs and was perceived to be moving Guatemala into the Soviet orbit.
The largest expropriations were directed against United Fruit, a company that had invested about $50 million in Guatemala, developing banana plantations on land that was formerly jungle. United Fruit employed nearly 10,000 Guatemalans. Its workers were better paid, better housed, and provided with better health and education facilities than other workers in the country. They were described as the "aristocrats" of Guatemalan labor. The expropriation by Arbenz of nearly 75 percent of United Fruit's land threatened to wreck this important industry and discourage new foreign investment.
Communism, with its central planning, weak incentives, and its inability to exploit the advantages derived from international trade and capital flows, is an economic flop. It has failed everywhere it has been tried, from industrialized East Germany to agricultural China. But PBS unashamedly berates our government for having encouraged and helped countries like Guatemala to stay on the free-market, capitalist road. Time and again it has propounded the Marxist myth that foreign investments in backward countries, such as those of United Fruit, are bad for the receiving country. Today, the newly liberated communist countries in Eastern Europe want desperately to attract foreign investment to close the gap caused by their 40 lost years.
Prof. Noam Chomsky, who in 1967 called for "the denazification of the U.S." and who, in 1970, identified the communist dictatorship of North Vietnam with "the cause of humanity," is employed in "Imperial Masquerade" to propound another lie that PBS has done much to spread. This is the claim that communists such as Vietnam's He Chi Minh and Fidel Castro are just nationalists and that charges that they are communists are simply a pretext for opposing nationalism. Here is Chomsky's argument: "We wanted to impose on these countries a capitalist system in which there will be ample opportunities for business, and, in the case of foreign investment, there will be protection for the repatriation of profits. And, furthermore, we want to insure access to resources. Now, nationalistic regimes are going to impede this. Therefore the United States must block nationalism. Incidentally, it has nothing to do with left and right. Right-wing nationalism is just as bad as left-wing nationalism. The problem is nationalism."
While scenes of a triumphant Fidel Castro are shown on the screen, Chomsky says: "Anti-communism is just the name for the reigning ideology. When you find nationalistic regimes that are responsive to the need of independent development, that's labeled 'communist.' It's at once identified with the 'Soviet barbarians.' So you can over- throw it in serf-defense."
Lapham then reinforces that point with this statement, voiced over a shot of President Eisenhower shaking hands with Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban president overthrown by Castro: "In the good old days before Castro, American interests in Cuba enjoyed a comfortable arrangement with Fulgencio Batista, a dictator of the old school, who appreciated shows of force and the rule of profit. Castro's revolution took away the familiar comforts and called into question the safe platitudes."
All of this is by way of introducing an attack on our support of the Cuban freedom fighters who tried to overthrow Castro in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Lapham fails to point out that one important reason for the failure of that operation was because President Kennedy got cold feet and reneged on his promise to provide adequate air cover. He says: "Castro's triumph at the Bay of Pigs ratified and made heroic the promises of the Cuban revolution. Americans were seen as greedy and vicious imperialists....The lesson was not lost on the third world. America had intervened with force on the side that it thought was the future. By doing so, it proved itself the agent of the reactionary past."
There were those who felt that way in 1961, but 28 years later, with an impoverished Cuba still ruled by a dictator who dares not risk a plebiscite or a whiff of glasnost, the words have a hollow ring. Lapham is right on one point. Castro's revolution certainly took away the familiar comforts--the comforts that had long been enjoyed by the Cuban people--adequate food, clothing, housing, freedom to speak and write, freedom to travel, and freedom to make a profit by using their entrepreneurial talents in industry, commerce and agriculture.
As the Cuban people wistfully watch the liberation of Eastern Europe from the impoverishing, depressing yoke of communism, Castro vows that he will never abandon the true faith of Marx and Lenin, as so many of the European communists have done. This "nationalist" has made Cuba a beggar state, dependent on a subsidy from the Soviet Union estimated at upwards of $5 billion a year. That subsidy could be terminated any day by a Soviet regime that can ill-afford to sustain this costly and ungrateful vassal. Why is Castro not following his paymaster's lead?
The future that now confronts Castro is the fate of East Germany's equally hardline dictator, Erich Honecker. Deposed and under arrest, Honecker faces charges of corruption and abuse of power. It is reported that nothing has infuriated the East Germans more than the discovery that their communist leaders were living in lavish luxury while they were telling the people that their Spartan lifestyle was far superior to that of the decadent West Germans.
Castro is guilty of identical hypocrisy, with one difference. An official East German report reveals that the luxuries enjoyed by the East German leadership were paid for in large part from the profits of covert sales of arms and antiques. Castro's have been financed by payoffs from the Colombian drug cartels. Last summer, he executed and imprisoned a potential rival, Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa, and some high-ranking army officers and officials privy to the corruption. But even this preemptive strike will not save Fidel. His vow never to abandon the true faith is not ideological. He knows that like Honecker he is a goner if he gives the Cuban people the least chance to slip from under his iron heel. That is why he has banned the liberal Soviet papers, Moscow News and Sputnik. He fears they will infect his subjects with the virus of liberation.
The PBS-Lapham comments on Vietnam are even more absurd than those on Cuba, but PBS does try to be consistent. The $5.5 million, 13-part PBS documentary, "Vietnam: A Television History," floated the claim that Ho Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese dictator, was a nationalist and a patriot. AIM's critique of that series, "Television's Vietnam: The Real Story," (available on video cassette) demolished that lie, but it appears again in Lapham's program. Ho became a founding member of the French Communist Party in 1920, and in 1922, he began his life-long career as an agent of the Comintern, the Soviet-run organization whose task was to coordinate communist subversive activity throughout the world. The AIM film showed that Ho was the foe of Vietnam's genuine nationalists and betrayed many of them to the French during the colonial era.
One of the true nationalists who survived was the highly respected Ngo Dinh Diem, who had an enviable record of integrity and incorruptibility. Backed by the United States, he became the first president of South Vietnam. Against heavy odds, Diem succeeded in unifying the country and holding at bay the terrorist forces deployed against him by the veteran Comintern agent, Ho Chi Minh.
Lapham, either ignorant or uncaring about the truth, dismisses Diem as one of "a succession of second-rate politicians who were unable to command the affection or loyalty of the Vietnamese people." He says, "Diem's greed and ambition alienated South Vietnam's turbulent political and religious factions. When the protests took the form of a Buddhist monk setting fire to himself, the Americans understood Diem would have to be replaced." He says President Kennedy "deferred to the advice of his ambassador in Saigon [Henry Cabot Lodge], who encouraged the plotting of a military coup against Diem." The complaint against Diem was not that he was corrupt, which he was not, but that he was not prosecuting the war as effectively as some Americans thought he should. Those Americans included three young reporters, David Halberstam of The New York Times, Malcolm Browne of the AP and Neil Sheehan of the UPI. Influenced by Col. John Paul Vann, a critic of Diem, these American reporters vowed to topple him, and they succeeded. They gave worldwide publicity to the activities of radicalized Buddhist priests, falsely presenting their self-immolations and demonstrations as evidence of religious persecution of Buddhists by Diem, a Roman Catholic. Largely as a result of their efforts, Diem came under heavy attack in the U.S. and some other countries. Our ambassador to Vietnam, Frederick Nolting, supported Diem, but Henry Cabot Lodge, Nixon's 1960 running mate, who was sent to Vietnam with the intention of using him to carry out the coup that resulted in Diem's death, replaced him.
Lapham, after portraying Diem as a U.S. puppet, doesn't point out that Diem was killed precisely because he refused to do the bidding of one faction within the U.S. government. Lapham's outrage over the coup that ousted the pro- communist Arbenz is not matched by any criticism of the coup against the anti-communist Diem. Why? The coup against Arbenz kept Guatemala from becoming the hemisphere's first communist state. The coup against Diem resulted in a weakened government and opened the door to increased communist subversion. This led to the large-scale use of American troops to save the country, a remedy that ultimately failed, apparently to the satisfaction of Lewis Lapham, Noam Chomsky and PBS.
This program was part of a series underwritten by DHL World Airways, Inc., an international express mail company. DHL spokesman Dean Christon says they signed a contract with PBS a year ago without seeing the programs they were paying for. He thought that relieved them of any responsibility for the content. We don't agree. DHL thought it was just buying advertising. It was funding disinformation. Send the enclosed cards or your own letters to Patrick Foley, the chairman of DHL and Cong. John D. Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. There is also a card for Time magazine. See the Notes.
AIM REPORT is published twice monthly by Accuracy In Media, Inc., 1275 K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005, and is free to AIM members. Dues and contributions to AIM are tax deductible. The AIM Report is mailed 3rd class to those whose contribution is at least $20 a year and 1st class to those contributing $30 a year or more. Non- members subscriptions are $35 (lst class mail).
AIM Report NOTES FROM THE EDITOR'S CUFF
SOME MEMBERS TELL US THAT THEY ALWAYS MAIL THE POSTCARDS WE INCLUDE with each issue but they wonder if it does any good. The answer is an emphatic YES. The latest proof of this has been provided by Time magazine. With our October-B issue we included a card to Jason McManus, editor-in-chief of Time, asking him if he would call to his readers' attention the confession of his science editor that Time had crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy on environmental issues. In its December 18 issue, Time published the reply, reproduced here, at the end of its letters-to-the-editor column. I knew that hundreds of you were mailing the postcards we provide with each issue, but frankly I was surprised to learn from Time that they received over 3,400 of these cards. That is terrific! We thank all of you who mailed those cards and letters. Time's unusual response shows in a very public way that they do have an impact.
We've received more than 3,400 identically worded postcards referring to this quote in the Wall Street Journal from TIME senior editor Charles Alexander: "On this issue [the environment] we have crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy." The postcards said, "Tell your readers about this." We are happy to. In all our coverage we try to be balanced and fair in our presentation of the facts and in reporting the range of differing views on the issues posed by the facts. But from the beginning of TIME over 66 years ago, we have also undertaken--and made no secret of it--to add our own judgments on subjects that truly mattered, from civil rights to arms control. We do not believe this will be news to our regular readers. Indeed, because they so often eloquently agree or disagree with us in these columns, it may be part of the reason they value TIME. We hope so, because we believe considered journalistic judgments are an important contribution to am informed society. And, yes, our stand on the planet is that we support its survival.
TO BE SURE, TIME'S REPLY IS DISAPPOINTING IN THAT it endorses the advocacy journalism that Charles Alexander, the science editor, confessed Time was practicing. But all we asked was that Time inform its readers that this was the case. They have now done so. They have alerted the readers to the fact that they are not getting straight news from Time on environmental and other issues about which the editors feel deeply. Mr. McManus must now be challenged on his claim that Time can do this and at the same time be fair, balanced and accurate in its presentation of the news. A card doing this is included with this issue. Please send it or your own letter to Mr. McManus. Let's send him 10,000 cards this time!
TAKE THE STORY IN TIME'S NOV. 27 ISSUE ON THE terrorist attack on San Salvador. It was illustrated with a gory photo of the bodies of three of the murdered priests that occupied nearly two-thirds of a page. It said the priests were killed by M-16 rifles (both AK-47 and M-16 cartridges were found at the site); that it was widely believed to be the work of right-wing death squads and that "it will be difficult to convince outraged citizens that the military played no role." Time was doing its best to pin the murders on the army. It said in its Dec. 4 issue, "It has become harder to avoid the conclusion that only the army or the police carded out the murders. Witnesses have told of seeing as many as 30 men in olive-drab uniforms enter the priests' residence." The fact: One woman claimed to have seen 5 or 8 masked men in camouflage uniforms outside the residence. It is now reported that she has failed six FBI lie-detector tests.
TIME SAID NOTHING ABOUT THE TERRORISTS' FAILED ATTEMPT TO MURDER President Cristiani and other high officials. It said nothing about the terrorist tactic of taking up positions in the homes in three working-class districts, exposing the residents and their property to death and destruction when the army moved to root them out, as it had to do. Instead of blaming the terrorists for the deaths resulting from their callous conduct, Time said: "While both sides inflicted civilian casualties, the air attacks by the army appeared to take the highest toll." It didn't mention that the terrorists had to force people at gunpoint to help them, nor did it say that they were failing to achieve any of their goals until the six priests were murdered on Nov. 16. That diverted the negative publicity from the terrorists to the government and its supporters, one of the main terrorist goals. All three stories in Time from Nov. 27 to Dec. 11 gave the impression that the attacks had demonstrated the strength of the terrorists and their civilian support. They all tried to associate the government with human rights abuses, going so far on Dec. 11 as to say, "Already, the government is betraying distressingly fascist leanings."
THE VIETCONG TET OFFENSIVE IN 1968 WAS A SUCCESS IN THAT IT WAS USED TO convince the public that the war was unwinnable because of the strength demonstrated by the Vietcong. That was a media exaggeration. Time has tried to do the same with the terrorist attack on E1 Salvador. It ran a comment alongside its E1 Salvador story in the Dec. 4 issue, which said that after spending $4 billion over the past decade, we had been unable to bring peace to El Salvador and that "U.S. money has in large part financed an unwinnable war." It added: "Washington should rethink its relationship with a democratically elected government that cannot control fanatic right-wing elements in the armed forces. E1 Salvador's armed forces, nourished by American dollars, bear primary responsibility for the country's scandalous human rights record. Washington should cut off military aid unless travesties like the killing of the six Jesuits are stopped." If Time's advice were followed, all the terrorists would have to do to end U.S. military aid would be to kill more leftist priests. Even if the killers were caught in the act the government would be blamed.
LOOK AT THE REACTION OF MOST OF OUR MEDIA TO THE ARREST OF JENNIFER JEAN Casolo, a young American employee of Christian Educational Seminars in San Salvador. Acting on information obtained from a captured terrorist, soldiers raided Casolo's home and found an enormous cache of weapons, ammunition and explosives buried in drums in the garden. The weapons included AK-47 rifles, rockets, grenades and bayonets. We have viewed a videotape of the weapons being dug up, and there is no reason to doubt its authenticity. The video shows Miss Casolo curled up on a chair in the fetal position, hiding her head, and saying in Spanish, "I don't know." She denied any knowledge of the weapons, but she admitted that papers and photographs that were dug up at the same time belonged to her. These included a notebook in which she kept a diary. We have copies of parts of it in which she describes herself as "radical," saying, "Within the context of the war in El Salvador, our everyday experience is highly politicized." A Catholic, she says her church for centuries has been "in league with the entrenched Herods and the Caesars who controlled Latin American society, often brutally, for the benefit of a selfish powerful few."
OUR MEDIA HAVE DONE THEIR BEST TO PORTRAY CASOLO AS THE VICTIM OF A FRAME- up. The same day The Washington Inquirer ran an excellent story about the revelations in her diary of her sympathy for the FMLN, The Washington Post ran a lengthy story based on interviews with her friends, all of who insisted that she had to be innocent because she was such a nice, non-violent person. The reporter had seen the video of the excavation of the arms, but he made no mention of the diary, which showed that Casolo's friends didn't know her as well as they thought. Nor have we seen any reports about the diary in any other publication or on any broadcast. Incidentally, Time has yet to mention the Casolo case, even though it said in two different stories that the success of the terrorists in getting large amounts of arms and ammunition into the city "demonstrated significant civilian support."
I SUGGEST THAT YOU CHECK OUT A NEW CABLE TV CHANNEL, CNBC. IT HAS A NEW 30-minute Morton Downey, Jr. show with a format similar to CNN's "Crossfire," five nights a week at 8:00 P.M., EST, and an hour show hosted by John McLaughlin at 10:00 P.M. with a Donahue-type format. I was the guest on the Downey show on December 12, discussing the media's handling of Barney Frank and other Congressional ethics cases. It was lively but not wild.
DR. FRED SCHWARZ, A TOWERING FIGURE IN THE ANTI-COMMUNIST CAUSE, THE founder and head of the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, will be honored at a banquet at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. on Jan. 11. I plan to be there, and I hope many of you will attend. The banquet will celebrate Dr. Schwarz's 40 years as a leader in the battle against communism, his 77th birthday, and his and Lillian's golden wedding anniversary. Fred Schwarz, through his excellent newsletter, his books, lectures and debates, has probably taught more people the truth about Marxism-Leninism than all our universities combined. I have learned a great deal from him: And what better time could there be for anti-communist crusaders to celebrate? Make your reservations by writing the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, P.O. Box 890, Long Beach, CA 90801. The cost per person is $50. I will look forward to seeing you there. Those in the Santa Barbara are, who can't make this banquet may want to attend my talk at the Channel City Club luncheon the next day, Jan. 12, at the Miramar Hotel Convention Center. The club's number is (805) 966-6303.