Senate report on torture exposes collusion between corporate media and CIA [View all]

[Octafish]

by Niles Williamson
World Socialist Web Site, 11 December 2014

The executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report sheds light on the manner in which the corporate media knowingly served as a conduit for the CIA to selectively and anonymously leak favorable reports on its interrogation program to the public. The Senate document also discloses that the media acceded to requests from CIA officials and Vice President Dick Cheney to withhold information about the program that was deemed unfavorable.

The report makes clear that the so-called “free press” in America functions as a propaganda arm of the state, with journalists serving as stenographers of official lies. Through the input of the CIA, the media sought to obscure the heinous character of the actions being carried out and condition public opinion to tolerate, if not support, so-called “enhanced interrogation” methods.

An entire section toward the end of the Senate report is devoted to the role of the media. It explains that the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs (OPA) fed information to journalists on the torture program while the program was still officially classified in order to undercut critics and project a more favorable image of the program to the public. When such classified information was published, the CIA did not press for criminal investigations, as the leaks had been approved by the agency itself.

Classified information on the torture regime was provided to journalist Ronald Kessler, who used the information in his book The CIA at War, published in 2003. The Senate report states that the CIA decided not to investigate this as a leak of classified information because “the book contained no first time disclosures,” and “OPA provided assistance with the book.”

Senior Deputy General Counsel for the CIA John Rizzo is quoted as saying that an investigation was not opened because the transfer of information to Kessler had been “blessed” by then-CIA Director George Tenet.

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http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/12/11/pres-d11.html

PS: I wonder how else CIA pressures Corporate McPravda?

PPS: I wonder if it would have made a significant difference had the media, uh, pressured Congress to release the report BEFORE the election?