“On September 25, 1997, ABC used its news magazine program 20/20 to take an unusual journalistic step. In the first segment of the program, Peter Jennings took pains to discredit documents that had been about to be used by its own contracted reporter for an upcoming show scheduled for broadcast. The contracted reporter was Seymour Hersh. The documents purported to show a secret deal involving Marilyn Monroe, Sam Giancana, and President John F. Kennedy. They were to be the cornerstone of Hersh’s upcoming Little, Brown book, The Dark Side of Camelot. In fact, published reports indicate that it was these documents that caused the publisher to increase Hersh’s advance and provoke three networks to compete for a television special to hype the book. It is not surprising to any informed observer that the documents imploded. What is a bit surprising is that Hersh and ABC could have been so naive for so long. And it is ironic that ABC should use 20/20 to expose a phenomenon that it itself fueled twelve years ago.
What happened on September 25th was the most tangible manifestation of three distinct yet overlapping journalistic threads that have been furrowing into our culture since the Church Committee disbanded in 1976. Hersh’s book would have been the apotheosis of all three threads converged into one book. In the strictest sense, the convergent movements did not actually begin after Frank Church’s investigation ended. But it was at that point that what had been a right-wing, eccentric, easily dismissed undercurrent, picked up a second wind—so much so that today it is not an eccentric undercurrent at all. It is accepted by a large amount of people. And, most surprisingly, some of its purveyors are even accepted within the confines of the research community.
The three threads are these: 1) That the Kennedys ordered Castro’s assassination, despite the verdict of the Church Committee on the CIA’s assassination plots. As I noted last issue, the committee report could find no evidence indicating that JFK and RFK authorized the plots on Fidel Castro, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, or Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. 2) That the Kennedys were really “bad boys,” in some ways as bad as Chicago mobsters or the “gentleman killers” of the CIA. Although neither JFK nor RFK was lionized by the main centers of the media while they were alive, because of their early murders, many books and articles were written afterward that presented them in a sympathetic light, usually as liberal icons. This was tolerated by the media establishment as sentimental sop until the revelations of both Watergate and the Church Committee. This “good guy” image then needed to be altered since both those crises seemed to reveal that the Kennedys were actually different than what came before them (Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers) and what came after (Nixon). Thus began a series of anti-Kennedy biographies. 3) That Marilyn Monroe’s death was somehow ordained by her “involvement” with the Kennedy “bad boys.” Again, this was at first a rather peculiar cottage industry. But around the time of Watergate and the Church Committee it was given a lift, and going back to a 1964 paradigm, it combined elements of the first two movements into a Gothic (some would say grotesque) right-wing propaganda tract which is both humorous and depressing in its slanderous implications, and almost frightening in its political and cultural overtones. Egged on by advocates of Judith Exner (e.g. Liz Smith and Tony Summers), this political and cultural time bomb landed in Sy Hersh’s and ABC’s lap. When it blew up, all parties went into a damage control mode, pointing their fingers at each other. As we examine the sorry history of all three industries, we shall see that there is plenty of blame (and shame) to be shared. And not just in 1997….”
James di Eugenio on possible media (in this case, Seymour Hersh) complicity in promoting propaganda on JFK.
Comment
In Language of Empire (2005) I came to a similar conclusion about Hersh, but given his status and the fact that I was an outsider and novice in comparison to such a veteran and well respected figure, I contented myself with this observation. (my editor cut out a lengthy chapter on media ownership, and the word length requirements also posed insuperable problems to exploring this angle properly):
” Or were the torture photos leaked intentionally in a calculated damage-control effort as some have suggested? There is a documented history of ties between the CIA and the major media – from CBS to Newsweek and the New York Times. Reaching far back to the Cold War, this record makes it impossible to discount the possibility of a damage-control campaign.” (The Torture Trompe L’Oeil, p. 162)
My footnote to this passage includes the following references, which I add here for the benefit of anyone who wants to look up more information:
“The CIA and the Media: How America’s Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up,” Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977.
“America’s Secret Power: the CIA in a Democratic Society,” Loch K. Johnson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)
“CIA in America,” Counter Spy, Spring 1980
“The CIA’s use of the Press: A ‘mighty Wurlitzer,'” Columbia Journalism Review, Sept/Oct 1974, p. 9-18.
[There are many more leads in my book. 25 pages out of 225 pages, that is, more than 10% of the book is devoted to footnotes].
The place where the CIA, torture, and propaganda meet is of course the place where all three emanate from – Wall Street.