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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to coast am on iHeartRadio, Dan.

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Speaker 2: You were about to get into the Washington Post and

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Speaker 2: how it covered Watergate with a particular bias or agenda.

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Speaker 2: Perhaps do you want to expand on that a little bit?

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Speaker 3: I would the There was a book written by Lynn

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Speaker 3: Colodney called Silent Coup, and I ran across this book

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Speaker 3: as I was doing my research for The Mantarin Journalist,

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Speaker 3: and I got in touch with Lynn Colodney. He has

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Speaker 3: since passed, but he wrote a book about the Watergate

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Speaker 3: affair and about Bob Woodward, and his contention was that

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Speaker 3: that Woodward had some undisclosed history that might be interesting

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Speaker 3: for the American public to know, that being that that Woodward,

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Speaker 3: or he was a reporter with the Washington Post, had

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Speaker 3: been a naval in Naval Intelligence, and he had also

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Speaker 3: been a White House or had been a briefer for

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Speaker 3: Alexander Haigh in the White House. I've never seen that

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Speaker 3: reported before. I talked to Glen about that, and his book,

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Speaker 3: originally published by Saint Martin's Press, was I think illustrative

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Speaker 3: of this kind of issue of not knowing the public,

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Speaker 3: not knowing the backstory in some things he did an

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Speaker 3: interview with Bob Woodward. Woodward never effectively denied that relationship

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Speaker 3: with Alexander Haig. All of that preceded water Grate. Watergate

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Speaker 3: colod News contention was that that there was a concerted

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Speaker 3: effort to get Richard Nixon out of White House, and

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Speaker 3: that much of what we know or understand about Watergate

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Speaker 3: was not as it appeared that the Washington Posts expose.

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Speaker 3: A was that parts of that story are missing. So

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Speaker 3: these kinds of things, I think have happened throughout history.

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Speaker 3: As certain storylines are adopted, they become a part of

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Speaker 3: American history. You ask anyone I think today, for instance,

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Speaker 3: who ran the Chicago Mob in the nineteen twenties, and

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Speaker 3: they will tell you it was al Capone. But al

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Speaker 3: Capone never ran The Chicago Mob was run by a

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Speaker 3: man was run by a man named Jake Guzi, who

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Speaker 3: was a Russian Jew. And the Chicago Mob always characterized

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Speaker 3: as the mafia as Italian, was never Italian. It was

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Speaker 3: multi ethnic. It was Irish, it was Jewish, it was Russian,

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Speaker 3: it was many different ethnicities that came together. And where

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Speaker 3: do you find that information? Where do you find the

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Speaker 3: truth about about what the Mob's real origin was you

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Speaker 3: have to find that from within the mob itself. And

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Speaker 3: that's how I know about that. It is because I

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Speaker 3: developed sources in the Chicago organization and was taken inside

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Speaker 3: and actually did interviews with Jake Musick's son Charles, who

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Speaker 3: had been a photographer for Damon Renyon, who had been

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Speaker 3: involved in the Hollywood elite. The Mob was very active

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Speaker 3: with Hollywood, as most people that are interested in that known.

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Speaker 3: But but but the myth in America about al Capone

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Speaker 3: explains something in a way that gives us a false

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Speaker 3: impression about what that history is. And I think there

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Speaker 3: are many examples of that.

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Speaker 2: Just getting back to the to the Washington Post here

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Speaker 2: for a moment, and the editor of the Post, Ben Bradley,

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Speaker 2: I mean, the kind of an interesting period in history.

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Speaker 2: I don't know if this still exists now, where you

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Speaker 2: had the the editor of the paper who reported on

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Speaker 2: the presidents and also advised the presidents.

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Speaker 3: Uh.

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Speaker 2: And then you had Ben Bradley's rather unique alliances or

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Speaker 2: friendships with people in the c I A. Uh, James

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Speaker 2: Jesus Angleton and and Cord Meyer were friends. Was court Meyer,

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Speaker 2: brother in law of Ben Bradley's I'm trying to remember her.

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Speaker 3: I can't remember off the top of my head.

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Speaker 2: But he had friends that were CIA.

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Speaker 3: Right, and those close associations don't get talked about who

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Speaker 3: is reporting on them, who gets to report on them.

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Speaker 3: That's one of the things that the book discusses. Because

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Speaker 3: the book is early about journalism. Lawrence Wright is an example,

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Speaker 3: and the Church of Scientology coverage as an example. But

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Speaker 3: it's really about how journalism works in this country and

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Speaker 3: how it has worked and how it's failed to work

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Speaker 3: In many cases. The auspice of the CIA have important

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Speaker 3: work to do, and I've known individuals, but then the

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Speaker 3: CIA attended the fiftieth birth birthday party of the CIA

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Speaker 3: station chief in Paris back in nineteen ninety. But the

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Speaker 3: idea that there are cooperative groups, foundations that that provide

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Speaker 3: front funding, organizations that go into banks and into law

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Speaker 3: firms that that provide literally provide cover for domestic intelligence operations.

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Speaker 3: Those are things that that should be talked about, that

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Speaker 3: that should be reported on. But was that reporters don't

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Speaker 3: get that opportunity.

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 1: Right?

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Speaker 2: Are we talking about uh? Project Mockingbird here?

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Speaker 3: Mockingbird was was one of the projects. The you know,

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Speaker 3: Carl Bernstein wrote about Operation Mockingbird and Rolling Stone Magazine

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Speaker 3: and identified not by name, but by number some foreigner

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Speaker 3: journalists I supposely had been either on the payroll wittingly

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Speaker 3: or unwinningly, have been influenced by intelligence operations. It's never

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Speaker 3: been well described, but we do know of influences that

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Speaker 3: have affected what gets published or what what doesn't get published, Lonladny.

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Speaker 3: But Claudie reminded me that after the Saint Martin's Press

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Speaker 3: published his book, the New York Times threatened to stop

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Speaker 3: reviewing books for Saint Martin's Press. They didn't like Silent Coup.

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Speaker 3: The you know, the the relationships that we don't know

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Speaker 3: about Alan Dallas and his friendships with Washington Post and

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Speaker 3: with other major outlets, his his relationships with with Charles Cabell,

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Speaker 3: and the Dallas situations. Those are all things that we

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Speaker 3: continue to think about and speculate about and wonder about

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Speaker 3: what the assassination was concerned. But we don't see investigative

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Speaker 3: reporters digging into these relationships and explaining them very often.

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Speaker 3: There there are fine exceptions to that. Uh David Talitt's

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Speaker 3: book on Alan Dallas. There there have been a number

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Speaker 3: of really good works on these subjects. David Price, uh uh,

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Speaker 3: professor in Washington State, has written about the cia is

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Speaker 3: recruitment of anthropologists and and uh we we all know.

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Speaker 3: I think anyone who has paid attention to this knows

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Speaker 3: about the National Student Association. Now, the CIA filtrated, uh

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Speaker 3: that organization in order to influence or react to Communist

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Speaker 3: youth festivals and to efforts by by the Soviet Union

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Speaker 3: to attract young people to communist ideas. I think so

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Speaker 3: many things, though we we don't know. Gloria Steinem, one

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Speaker 3: of our premier journalists in this country, was part of

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Speaker 3: that that same effort to react to Communist influences, and

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Speaker 3: she participated in programs that In fact, it was Alex

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Speaker 3: Gidney's father, Frank Gidney, who recruited her into that network.

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Speaker 2: Was MSS magazine a CIA front.

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Speaker 3: Well, I don't think so. The show magazine, which was

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Speaker 3: run by Frank give me was, if I'm remembering correctly,

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Speaker 3: was where Steinhem published at first and mentioned the Radcliffe

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Speaker 3: Publishing Procedures course, which is a six week summer course

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Speaker 3: each year run by Helen Ben. She brought in some

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Speaker 3: of the literary lights to talk to members of her class.

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Speaker 3: There were some seventy students each year. Her placement rate

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Speaker 3: in the publishing industry from this class was ninety seven percent.

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Speaker 3: She recruited people to come to her publishing class, and

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Speaker 3: I went to Harvard Library and spent more than a

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Speaker 3: week going through the Publishing courses archives, and that's where

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Speaker 3: I discovered a letter from the course to Frank Giveney

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Speaker 3: asking him to encourage Glorious him to come and talk

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Speaker 3: to the next year's class. I tracked down the woman

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Speaker 3: who wrote that letter those many years ago and had

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Speaker 3: a delightful lunch with her in Cambridge, and she talked

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Speaker 3: to me about Ben's history and the UH in the

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Speaker 3: intelligence community and these things I never mentioned. I've never

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Speaker 3: seen much reported about about Gloria Steinem's activities with with

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Speaker 3: the CIA, UH and CIA programs. I did try to

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Speaker 3: talk to her on several occasions about that, but we've

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Speaker 3: been to that opportunity. But those things.

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Speaker 2: Is the fact, though, that Dan, that you're able to

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Speaker 2: write about it and and talk about it and talk

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Speaker 2: about it on this you know program, which has a

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Speaker 2: pretty big audience, doesn't It kind of show, though that

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Speaker 2: the system works. Yes, there are you know, there are

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Speaker 2: perhaps organizations that are controlled and influenced in publishing houses.

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Speaker 2: But then there's the counter the countervailing forces, where ultimately

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Speaker 2: the truth gets told and reported.

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Speaker 3: Well, if it does ultimately, I'm not sure that it

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Speaker 3: ultimately does. You know, this book is published by a

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Speaker 3: small publisher. It went out to major publishers was not

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Speaker 3: picked up, and I don't know that that means anything

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Speaker 3: other than that it wasn't attractive to those publishers. But

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Speaker 3: I think some of these ideas don't get the attention

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Speaker 3: that they should get because publishing houses have certain perspectives

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Speaker 3: towards what shouldar should not be published. To go beyond that,

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Speaker 3: I think there's certainly some legitimacy to the idea that

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Speaker 3: ultimately some things do get reported. We've seen that happen

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Speaker 3: with the Kennedy assassination as we've learned more over the

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Speaker 3: years to understand more about it. But how soon does

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Speaker 3: it get published or how far do we go down

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Speaker 3: the road before we realize what is or isn't true?

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Speaker 2: Is the CIA still actively recruiting journalists?

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Speaker 3: I can't say definitively. The book does raise questions about

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Speaker 3: Lawrence Wright's work and or and Terror, and whether or

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Speaker 3: not his access to information was beyond that that a

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Speaker 3: journalist might expect to have. You know, I can't define

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Speaker 3: that in the book notes that at the end there's

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Speaker 3: a lot more work to do on this subject. This

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Speaker 3: is not the definitive book on what has occurred in

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Speaker 3: history as far as these efforts to propagandize within the

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Speaker 3: American borders. But the certainly history has spoken to us

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Speaker 3: on many occasions about concerns over these issues. There were

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Speaker 3: hearings in the nineteen seventies on the use of journalists

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Speaker 3: by the CIA and the use of priests and academians

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Speaker 3: and others as essentially resources for the agency, and it

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Speaker 3: was fairly universally the use of journalists by the CIA

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Speaker 3: was condemned by major journalists at the time in testimony

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Speaker 3: and these hearings, and it gave the impression at the

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Speaker 3: end that whatever had been done before was not being

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Speaker 3: done afterwards. But certainly, the programs as I saw them

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Speaker 3: when I researched them, involving these recruiting efforts and the

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Speaker 3: efforts to line up publishers in other countries and to

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Speaker 3: win frames among publishing houses in the US, it was

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Speaker 3: continuing well into the eighties. I can't say definitively what's

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Speaker 3: happening in it.

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Speaker 2: And that you mentioned Carl Bernstein in the and the

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Speaker 2: Rolling Stone magazine expose a on the CIA's infiltration into

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Speaker 2: the media. What was the number four hundred reporters.

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Speaker 3: Some four hundred reporters I think is reported, Yeah, and

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Speaker 3: he identified a few major names that story also, and

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Speaker 3: some others said we still recognize.

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