11 Kasım 2009, Çarşamba
saat: 21:45
"Govern the sentiments of mankind and you govern mankind. Govern their fears, govern their hopes, determine their fortunes, get them together in a concreted masses and the whole thing sways like a team. Once get them suspecting one another, once get them antagonizing one another, then society itself goes into pieces."
(Woodrow Wilson, Sioux Falls, September 8, 1919)
The most common form of a propaganda project is simply the development of "assets" in media organizations who can place articles or be asked to write them. The Agency provided to its field Station several kinds of guidance about what sorts of propaganda were desired. For example, one CIA project in Chile supported from one to five media assets during the seven years it operated (1965-1971). Most of those assets worked for a major Santiago daily which was the key to CIA propaganda efforts. Those assets wrote articles or editorials favorable to U.S. interests in the world (for example, criticizing the Soviet Union in the wake of the Czechoslovakian invasion); suppressed news items harmful to the United States (for instance about Vietnam); and authored articles critical of Chilean leftists.
The covert propaganda efforts in Chile also included "black" propaganda -material falsely purporting to be the product of a particular individual or group. In the 1970 election, for instance, the CIA used "black" propaganda to sow discord between the Communists and the Socialists and between the national labor confederation and the Chilean Communist Party.
Press placements were attractive because each placement might produce a multiplier effect, being picked up and replayed by media oulets other than the one in which it originally came out.
In addition to buying propaganda piecemeal, the Station often purchased it wholesale by subsidizing Chilean media organizations friendly to the United States. Doing so was propaganda writ large. Instead of placing individual items, the CIA supported -or even founded- friendly media outlets which might not have existed in the absence of Agency support.
By far, the largest -and probably the most significant- instance of support for a media organization was the money provided to El Mercurio, the major Santiago daily, under pressure during the Allende regime. The support grew out of an existing propaganda project. In 1971 the Station judged that El Mercurio, the most important opposition publication, could not survive pressure from the Allende government, including intervention in the newsprint market and the withdrawal of government advertising.
A CIA project renewal memorandum concluded that El Mercurio and other media outlets supported by the Agency had played an important role in setting the stage for the September 11, 1973, military coup which overthrew Allende.
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