How the CIA Played Dirty Tricks With Our Culture.. NY TIMES

[Ichingcarpenter]

Published on Saturday, March 18, 2000 in the New York Times
How the Central Intelligence Agency Played Dirty Tricks With Our Culture
by Laurence Zuckerman

Many people remember reading George Orwell's "Animal Farm" in high school or college, with its chilling finale in which the farm animals looked back and forth at the tyrannical pigs and the exploitative human farmers but found it "impossible to say which was which."

That ending was altered in the 1955 animated version, which removed the humans, leaving only the nasty pigs. Another example of Hollywood butchering great literature? Yes, but in this case the film's secret producer was the Central Intelligence Agency.

The C.I.A., it seems, was worried that the public might be too influenced by Orwell's pox-on-both-their-houses critique of the capitalist humans and Communist pigs. So after his death in 1950, agents were dispatched (by none other than E. Howard Hunt, later of Watergate fame) to buy the film rights to "Animal Farm" from his widow to make its message more overtly anti-Communist.

Rewriting the end of "Animal Farm" is just one example of the often absurd lengths to which the C.I.A. went, as recounted in a new book, "The Cultural Cold War: The C.I.A. and the World of Arts and Letters" (The New Press) by Frances Stonor Saunders, a British journalist. Published in Britain last summer, the book will appear here next month.

Much of what Ms. Stonor Saunders writes about, including the C.I.A.'s covert sponsorship of the Paris-based Congress for Cultural Freedom and the British opinion magazine Encounter, was exposed in the late 1960's, generating a wave of indignation. But by combing through archives and unpublished manuscripts and interviewing several of the principal actors, Ms. Stonor Saunders has uncovered many new details and gives the most comprehensive account yet of the agency's activities between 1947 and 1967.


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/031800-02.htm


THEY ARE EVEN MORE POWERFUL NOW AND HAVE THE NSA AND HOMELAND SECURITY.

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. I knew it!

I was always confused why everyone said it was a commentary on communism. Because you could apply the same ending to Democracy where the people who we vote to represent us develop the characteristics of the leaders we tried to displace.

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. This is just the tip of an iceberg that has gotten larger

There is just the early stuff, although the books are good

Think about this...... this was in 2000 that the news reported on this old news.

What has happened in the last decade when the article was written

If anyone thinks their powers have gotten less
hasn't been paying attention to the budgets of
the agencies such as the CIA, Defense, NSA and Homeland Security.

Never mind what happened to the press in the last ten years.

[gratuitous]

3. "Absurd" lengths?

Yeah, I guess so, looked at in one way. But looked at another way, these "absurd" lengths serve a very definite purpose, and until they are exposed, can be quite successful. Not only CIA, but any number of industries have gone to absurd lengths to influence public opinion, and when viewed from decades later, they seem almost laughable. Almost. Because at the time they were used, many of these tactics were quite successful in their own way. See for example the tobacco industry's relentless efforts to confuse public knowledge about the addictiveness of nicotine and the dangers posed by tobacco use. Nowadays "everybody knows" that tobacco is a deadly, addictive product that when used as intended means an early grave for the consumer. But for years and years, from the original Surgeon General's finding in 1964, the tobacco companies kept the issue alive, knowing full well the self-justifying rationale of the addict would keep smokers smoking and filling their company coffers with the blood money of helpless addicts.

They used these schemes for one reason: they worked.

[Supersedeas]

14. and continue to work. Stonor Saunders book will be something to follow

Surely, no one believes that the "Cultural Cold War" has really ended.

[WingDinger]

4. Read an Orwell book on his thoughts and motivations. He was talking wartime capitalism, not communis

They hacked his message.

[yurbud]

5. it's a good thing they are legally barred from domestic activities.

otherwise they'd really cut loose.

[Ichingcarpenter]

6. Yeah, like their work in New York lately didn't do domestic Shit

LOL....

[fishwax]

7. sounds like an interesting book

:kick:

[MilesColtrane]

8. I blame Langley for Lady Gaga.

[Ichingcarpenter]

9. Actually I blame the CIA and FBI for John Lennon's death

Oh no..... I said something as inane as your comment.

Maybe we are eating to much red meat and its not brain food anymore i........... Yes Lady Gaga thinks too much.
the Pope doesn't like her either.

NOW WHAT THE FUCK WAS YOUR POST ABOUT?

[MilesColtrane]

10. ...about six words long.

[DrunkenBoat]

11. Not to mention intelligence connections to things like Google, etc.

Not to mention intelligence connections to drug culture, psychedelics & harder drugs.

Basically the entire culture is guided & prodded into directions desired by the PTB, for purposes we "little folk" don't really comprehend. Except the general items of money & power.

[Ichingcarpenter]

12. This is the thing that most don't realize

How much is really propagandized and manipulated.

Many think the CIA is just for foreign shit. ITS NOT.

And now the USA has General Betray Us as its head
You think his time in the Defense Department was great?

Just wait, with the collected connections that homeland security brought. his power and connections will
bring more of his shit and lies....

I studied that fucker during the Iraq war... what he was in charge of, what he did, who he did it to.

That fucker, should scare the shit out of Americans.
Pat Tillman was killed because of these fuckers.

DON'T PANIC.

[DrunkenBoat]

13. The more you learn, the more you wonder what the hell is going on.

After reading Acid Dreams & other work on the topic, I thought back to those days, when we all thought we were so forward-thinking compared to our backward parents...

What a bunch of stupid suckers. We all got played. And still are being.

"Youth culture" is a product of "Spooks R Us" inc.

[Ichingcarpenter]

15. Yeah, the Matrix we thought we lived in

has been destroyed to some of us.

I don't like it, but the longer i've been on DU, which is longer than my ichingcarpenter handle which was a new handle has woken me up to a reality that is made me awaken from 'this American dream' that we all wanted to believe in.

Once that facade is broken by truth, then our shattered dreams are just shards that cut us like a knife.

The only thing I search for now is the truth in the time I have left on 'this planet'.....lol

I find the truth of our reality much more interesting
than the fairy tales of our dreams of what we think is real to keep us pacified in a world of circus and bread.
The amount of bread is getting less but the circus is expanding.

We can do this, We can change the reality
these fuckers want us to think is true with jingoistic bullshit and outright lies.

There is a World wide awareness going on in revolt
hopefully it will be in time.

[DrunkenBoat]

16. definitely.