Whether Russia, China or the USA: To understand the geopolitical reporting of Western media, one must know the key role of the American Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) .
The following study shows for the first time how the CFR created a largely closed, transatlantic information circuit in which almost all relevant sources and reference points are controlled by members of the Council and its partner organizations.
In this way, a historically unique information matrix was created that is clearly superior to the classic government propaganda of authoritarian states, but is increasingly losing its effectiveness due to the success of independent media.
How the CFR controls the geostrategic information flow
September 2017
"We are now an empire, and when we act, we create our own reality." ( S ) — Karl Rove, former director of the U.S. government's Office of Strategic Initiatives
The origins of the Council on Foreign Relations lie in the so-called "trauma of 1920" : After the First World War, the USA could have assumed the global leadership role for the first time - but the Senate decided against joining the League of Nations and the war-weary population elected Warren Harding, a president who promised a "return to normality" and wanted to deal first with the affairs and problems of America and the Americans.
In order to avoid such a setback in the future and to "awaken America to its global duties ," internationally oriented bankers, entrepreneurs and politicians founded the cross-party CFR in the financial and commercial metropolis of New York the following year. With the cooperation of leading academics and publicists, including Archibald Coolidge ( The United States as a World Power, 1908) and Walter Lippmann ( Public Opinion, 1922), ideas for an active foreign policy were to be developed and made popular with the public.
The Council's breakthrough came during World War II, when CFR experts formulated the American war strategy and the principles of the post-war order as part of the War and Peace Studies - including the statutes of the UN, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In doing so, they followed the guidelines of CFR founding director Isaiah Bowman, according to which the USA must in future "guarantee global security" while avoiding "conventional forms of imperialism", which is why the exercise of American power must be given an "international character" ( Shoup & Minter , 1977:169ff).
In this way, just 170 years after the Declaration of Independence, a global American Empire was created , whose key positions have since been almost exclusively occupied by the now almost 5,000 representatives of the CFR (see the following figure and list by administration ). The news magazine Der Spiegel once described the Council as the "most influential private institution in America and the Western world" and as a "politburo for capitalism".
1945 to 2017: CFR members in key positions in the American Empire
With the Second World War, the American sphere of influence expanded for the first time to (Western) Europe and East Asia (especially Japan). In order to build up local elites in these regions and to include them in its own planning, the Council had to expand its network: for Europe, CFR member Charles D. Jackson , Eisenhower's assistant for psychological warfare, launched the so-called Bilderberg Group in 1954 , while for East Asia, CFR President David Rockefeller and CFR Director Zbigniew Brzezinski additionally founded the Trilateral Commission in 1972 .
Both organizations aim to discuss the key geostrategic challenges and develop a cross-country and cross-party consensus. Former French Prime Minister (and Bilderberg participant) François Fillon may not have been wrong when he stated in 2013 : "It is the Bilderbergers who govern us."
2. The CFR matrix
The successful implementation of a geopolitical strategy – in times of peace and especially in times of war – would be unthinkable without the effective influence of public opinion. Authoritarian states usually rely on direct government propaganda for this, which often quickly loses credibility.
The Council took a more intelligent approach: with its now almost 5,000 members, it built up an apparently diverse and independent information system in which, however, almost all relevant sources and reference points are controlled by members of the CFR and its partner organizations. In this way, a historically unique "propaganda matrix" was created, the elements and functioning of which are described below.
"The importance of the CFR is not easy to overstate. It is the most important non-governmental foreign policy organization of the United States. Its central role is to define the accepted, legitimate, and orthodox parameters of discussion of U.S. foreign policy and related issues. () The CFR thus corresponds to what the Soviets called the top level of the nomenklatura."
Princeton professor and former CFR member Stephen F. Cohen, The Nation , 2018
Embedded media
Whether newspapers, magazines, radio or the Internet: The Council on Foreign Relations has always been careful to integrate owners, editors-in-chief and top journalists of the leading media into its structures.
In the US, almost all well-known media outlets were actually founded by CFR representatives or bought up decades ago (see figure below). This was possible because running an influential media outlet previously required significant financial resources and access to political decision-makers - and the Council and its members have both like no other group. Even modern Internet companies such as Google and Facebook are integrated into the Council's network at the highest level - and sometimes also participate in its international operations .
The traditional media in (West) Germany were founded after the war in an Allied licensing process and staffed with carefully selected publishers and editors-in-chief - structures that have survived to this day through family and other relationships. In addition to the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission, the integration and socialization of the leading German media people takes place in particular via the so-called Atlantic Bridge , which was founded in 1952 by CFR and World Bank President and High Commissioner for Germany, John J. McCloy , together with CFR member and banker Eric Warburg - the grandson of CFR Director and Federal Reserve initiator Paul Warburg.
Even officially neutral Switzerland has been integrated into the transatlantic economic and security architecture since the Second World War and has benefited greatly from it. Therefore, overly critical media reporting that deviates from transatlantic standards - which could quickly be classified as "hostile propaganda" and lead to undesirable political or economic complications - is not in the country's interest.
In geopolitical and imperial affairs, the established Swiss media also largely report in accordance with CFR and NATO . This conformity is encouraged by the increasing media concentration, which has led to over 90% of the Swiss market now being controlled by just five media companies. The structural integration of these publishers takes place primarily via the Bilderberg Group and through increasingly close cooperation with German Atlantic Bridge media.
NATO-compliant: The Tagesschau of Swiss television SRF
In the following graphics, the media networks in the USA, Germany and Switzerland described above are presented graphically for the first time using the official lists of members and participants (see appendix). As can be seen, they essentially include all so-called "mainstream media". This term, which is both derogatory and presumptuous, can be understood as a euphemism for CFR-compliant publications.
The above media - as well as a few other, smaller publications - form the inner ring of the information matrix. They suggest to the population an apparent diversity of information, but in reality they convey a largely homogeneous and CFR-compliant view of world events. To do this, the media has an extensive range of tools with over two dozen different methods at their disposal, ranging from tendentious language to selective choice of topics and ignoring context to the occasional false claim.
"The membership of these journalists in the Council, whatever they may think of themselves, is a confirmation of their active and important role in public affairs and of their ascension into the American ruling class. They do not just analyze and interpret U.S. foreign policy; they help to make it. () They are part of the establishment, whether they want to be or not, and they share most of its values and views."
Richard Harwood , former senior editor and ombudsman of the Washington Post
However, to ensure the long-term coherence of this media matrix, an outer ring is also required to provide the media with appropriate information, perspectives and patterns of interpretation. This outer ring consists of transatlantic governments, military, intelligence services, NGOs, think tanks and experts, as well as news and PR agencies, all of which are in turn integrated into the extensive network of the CFR, as the following sections show.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
While propaganda in authoritarian states usually comes directly from the government (and is therefore easy to see through), the so-called non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play a special role in the CFR matrix , as they suggest to the population that they are distant from the government and therefore have greater independence and credibility.
While these NGOs sometimes carry out useful, but mostly inconsequential work during the year (e.g. writing reports on the international human rights situation), their geopolitical function is always used when it is necessary to prepare a regime change or to legitimize a military intervention on humanitarian grounds.
As early as 1991 , Amnesty International publicly "verified" the "incubator lie" invented by an American PR firm , thereby making a significant contribution to the launch of the Gulf War. AI and HRW also called for "humanitarian" military interventions in the Balkans, Afghanistan ( "NATO: keep the progress going!" ) and Libya on the basis of questionable or even false claims .
In the Syrian war, after the poison gas attack in the summer of 2013, Human Rights Watch quickly had a report to hand that was intended to prove that the Syrian government was responsible and thus justify NATO intervention. In a later analysis by MIT researchers, however, the report turned out to be fabricated , but this should not be a reason for CFR media to be skeptical in the future.
HRW Director and CFR member Kenneth Roth on Deutsche Welle
In the East African country of Eritrea, which has resisted American claims to hegemony since its independence from Ethiopia in 1993 , Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were even caught red-handed in a regime change operation in 2011 : on a secret mission, employees, some of them disguised as nuns, infiltrated the country to set up a covert network that would later trigger nationwide protests on command. An intercepted letter from Amnesty's director for "Special Programs in Africa" states: "Our goal is for the regime of Issayas Afewerky to falter and be overthrown by the end of the year."
A White Helmets employee points to the UN aid convoy that burned down under unclear circumstances near Aleppo on September 20, 2016, and blames Russia and Syria.
Of course, there are also numerous honest and independent NGOs that are seriously committed to peace and human rights. However, these are usually equipped with far fewer resources and are rarely featured in CFR media - especially not at geostrategically decisive moments.
Box 1: The Nobel Peace Prize. The so-called Nobel Peace Prize plays a special role in the definition of "good" and "evil". This is the only Nobel Prize not awarded by the Academy of Sciences of neutral Sweden, but by a commission of former politicians from NATO founding member Norway. The Nobel Peace Prize is therefore generally not awarded for the preservation of peace per se, but for the preservation of American peace - the Pax Americana . Personalities who have campaigned against NATO interventions that violate international law, for example, are therefore nowhere to be found on the list of prizewinners . Instead, you will find CFR representatives from Kissinger to Obama and their assistants in countries from Burma to Tunisia and Yemen to the EU.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner and President of Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi, receives the NED Democracy Award 2012 in the US Capitol. On the left is NED President and Council member Carl Gershman, on the right is former US Secretary of State and Council Director Madeleine Albright. Burma is part of the US encirclement strategy against China.
Think tanks and experts
Another important function in the CFR matrix is performed by the so-called think tanks and experts. They provide the media and the public with seemingly well-founded and objective assessments and analyses. In fact, however, almost all experts who are heard in CFR-compliant media are themselves integrated into the Council's transatlantic network - although this is usually not communicated to the public.
In the USA, this applies to the Brookings Institution , the RAND Corporation , the NATO-affiliated Atlantic Council , the Aspen Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), all of which are run by CFR cadres. The founder of the "investigative journalist collective" Bellingcat - which supplied CFR media with relevant analyses during the Ukraine crisis and the Syrian war - soon appeared as a senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council .
Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins and ZDF presenter Marietta Slomka received the 2015 Hanns-Joachim-Friedrichs Prize for outstanding television journalism. ( WDR )
In addition, there are dozens of professors of politics, economics and history as well as the presidents of most of America's elite universities who, as CFR members, ensure compliant research and teaching and are available to the media as experts (see first figure).
In Germany, the think tanks in demand in CFR media include the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) - co-founded by the CFR in 1955 and chaired by former Atlantic Bridge chief Arendt Oetker - and the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), founded by a BND intelligence agent on the advice of CFR director Kissinger . The SWP is mainly financed by the German federal government and headed by Volker Perthes, who is also a member of the Atlantic Bridge, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group and the DGAP, making him one of Germany's leading transatlanticists.
SWP Director Volker Perthes in the ARD Tagesthemen (ARD)
The SWP is not only a think tank, but also a planning office: In 2012, for example, it organized a series of workshops with Syrian oppositionists and rebels in Berlin together with the "US Institute of Peace" - which is headed by former US security advisor and CFR member Stephen Hadley - to plan the period after the planned overthrow of the government ( Project "Day After" ).
With the exception of the ETH Center for Security Studies, there are hardly any geopolitical institutes worth mentioning in Switzerland . Swiss television and newspapers such as the NZZ therefore also like to use SWP experts and other German transatlanticists for their interviews and guest articles - although their relevant connections are usually not disclosed.
Independent experts – who often have more specialist knowledge than their transatlantic colleagues – have a difficult time in CFR media: Most of them are simply ignored, while particularly critical minds even have to expect defamation campaigns, as recently experienced by the German Islamic scholar and Syria expert Michael Lueders or the Swiss historian and expert on covert warfare Daniele Ganser .
Military
The military of the USA and NATO states is also an integral part of the CFR matrix and plays a crucial role, especially in times of crisis and war.
The CFR has maintained its own officer training program for decades, and it is estimated that around 75% of all senior US military officers have been trained by the CFR - including almost all Chiefs of Staff, NATO Supreme Commanders and area commanders since World War II (see first figure and list per administration) . In this way, the Council has built up an ideologically trained, imperial military force, the likes of which are otherwise almost only seen in totalitarian regimes.
Ulrich Tilgner, the long-time Middle East correspondent for ZDF and Swiss television, described the interaction between the media and the military in retrospect of the Iraq war of 2003 as follows:
“With the help of the media, the military determines public perception and uses it for their planning. They manage to raise expectations and spread scenarios and deceptions. In this new type of war, the US administration's PR strategists fulfill a similar function to that of bomber pilots. The special public relations departments in the Pentagon and in the secret services have become combatants in the information war. () The American military deliberately uses the lack of transparency in media reporting for their deceptive maneuvers. The information they spread, which is picked up and disseminated by newspapers and radio, cannot possibly be traced back to the source by readers, listeners or viewers. This means that they are unable to recognize the military's original intention. ... Journalists are thus used as a means of misleading the enemy. Information becomes a component of warfare: information war.” (Tilgner, The staged war , 2003/2007, p. 132ff)
Tilgner's assessment was confirmed by Tom Curley, the former head of the American news agency Associated Press . In a 2009 lecture, Curley revealed that the Pentagon alone employs 27,000 PR specialists who produce propaganda and disinformation with an annual budget of almost $5 billion. In addition, high-ranking US generals had threatened that the AP and he would be "ruined" if the reporters were to report too critically about the US military. Despite this - or because of this - CFR media usually adopt the statements of the US and NATO military completely uncritically.
The symbiosis between the military and the media thus extends far beyond the notorious "embedded journalists." Independent investigative journalists, on the other hand, have a difficult time: According to Wikileaks documents, NATO members classify them as one of the greatest security risks - and treat them accordingly .
Members of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff on a CFR podium, 2013.
Secret services
Since World War II, almost all CIA directors have been members of the Council. The CIA's predecessor organization, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) , was founded and led by CFR members Allen Dulles and William J. Donovan. In this respect, the CIA should be seen more as a covertly operating arm of the Council, and less as a classic secret service reporting exclusively to the US President.
CIA and CFR Director Allen Dulles (left), who was fired by Kennedy after the failed Cuban invasion and later co-chaired the commission of inquiry into Kennedy's assassination.
This also puts the well-known Operation Mockingbird in a slightly different light. In the mid-1970s it became public knowledge that the CIA had confidants in almost all US media and supplied them with information or disinformation. However, the heads of these media had long been involved in the Council and sat at the same table as the directors of the CIA - so one cannot really speak of subversive infiltration of otherwise independent media. The program was ultimately ended by CIA and CFR director George HW Bush - at least that is what the newspapers said at the time.
Former CIA officer and whistleblower John Stockwell said of his work in the Angola war: "The basic goal was to make it look like enemy aggression. With that in mind, we wrote suitable stories and placed them in the media. A third of my team on this mission were PR experts whose job it was to invent news and place it in the press. Editors in most Western newspapers are not too skeptical of reports that conform to popular beliefs and prejudices. Some of our stories ran for weeks. But it was all made up."
The case of Otto Schulmeister is an example of how some top German-speaking journalists work closely with secret services. Schulmeister was the editor-in-chief of the Presse for many years , one of Austria's most traditional daily newspapers. He maintained close contacts with the CIA and was constantly supplied with "material" by the secret service. CIA headquarters was pleased with the good cooperation, as can be read in his recently declassified dossier : "Material handed over. An editorial appeared according to our instructions."
What is special about secret services like the CIA is that they are not only active in gathering and processing information, but also carry out covert operations. For example, during the Cold War, British and American secret services together with NATO organized dozens of bomb attacks in Western Europe, which were then blamed on communist and Arab groups ( Operation Gladio ). CFR-compliant media always spread the official narrative and did not ask critical questions - a mechanism that can still be observed today.
Attack on Bologna train station, 1980: A Gladio operation
In this way, the Council's network can direct an entire chain of events from covert operations to media coverage, creating an artificial reality that can manipulate the public almost at will. Or as former CIA director and Council representative William Casey once put it : "Our disinformation program will not be complete until everything the public believes is false."
Box 2: The SITE Intelligence Group. When a new Al-Qaeda video appears or the mysterious terrorist group ISIS claims responsibility for an attack, CFR-compliant media usually learn about it from the same source: the Israeli-American SITE Intelligence Group . What is special about SITE: The organization is not only usually the first to receive such information, it is sometimes also involved in its production. In 2011, for example, it emerged during a Munich court case that SITE, together with US intelligence services, had helped set up the Al-Qaeda platform Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) in Germany . Excerpt from an ISIS video published by SITE. In 2014, the terrorist group invaded Syria and Iraq via NATO member Turkey and NATO partner Jordan , provoking a military intervention by the US alliance in these countries.
Governments
Until the surprise election of Donald Trump (see: Trump, the media, and geopolitics ), the Council filled almost all key positions in the US government for decades and provided several hundred top officials and advisors to each administration - whether Democratic or Republican . Former US Senator Barry Goldwater once said : "When we change presidents, it means that voters want a change in national policy. () So far, there has always been a major turnover in personnel, but no change in policy, because one CFR member replaced another."
Other governments in the US sphere of influence usually have little influence and leeway when it comes to geopolitical or imperial matters. Werner Weidenfeld, the German government's long-time coordinator for German-American cooperation, explained this in an interview as follows: "If we disagree [with the Americans] on a serious issue, then intelligence material comes to the table that incriminates Germany, and [it is said:] either you go along with it or it's your turn." (see video)
Video : Werner Weidenfeld: »Either you join in, or it's your turn.« ( 2013 )
Even officially neutral Switzerland cannot escape geopolitical constraints: for example, if the Confederation did not participate in the US-initiated sanctions against Russia, Syria or Iran, then there would be sanctions against Switzerland (as was already threatened in the context of the Hotz-Linder Agreement ) - with devastating consequences for the Swiss economy and society. State-supporting media are accordingly cautious in reporting on such topics.
"Those of us who worked on Kennedy's campaign were tolerated in the government and allowed to have a say, but foreign policy was still in the hands of the people at the Council on Foreign Relations."
John Kenneth Galbraith, Harvard economist and Kennedy supporter Quote from: The Best and the Brightest , p. 60
Within the matrix, governments perform various tasks. On the one hand, they have of course always been among the main actors in the direct dissemination of propaganda. In comparison to authoritarian states, democracies benefit from the fact that their governments, which are "burdened" by propaganda, are replaced every few years by new successors with a new vote of confidence - although the change of government usually does not change the geopolitical balance of power and mechanisms (see figure).
Approval ratings for US presidents since 1946 (Gallup / USA Today)
Even more fundamental, however, is the state's influence on the education system, through which a population's worldview and view of history are shaped in the long term. Historiography in particular is an essential instrument for defining "good" and "evil" and shaping the self-image of countries. And although everyone knows that "the victor writes history," few are aware that this is actually the case.
CFR media – as well as the online encyclopedia Wikipedia – ensure that imperial historiography remains present in the public eye, while critical historians (»revisionists«) often fare even worse than their colleagues in journalism. George Orwell's dictum applies: "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past."
Box 3: The UN. The Syrian government's poison gas attacks are documented by a "very serious UN report," wrote the ombudsman of Swiss television in his response to a viewer who accused the SRF of one-sided reporting. But American investigative journalists came to the opposite conclusion: the UN report on the use of poison gas in Syria has serious flaws, ignored manipulations and is ultimately based on claims by anti-government militias. - Why is the UN publishing such a questionable report? Possibly because the leading UN Department of Political Affairs is headed by a US diplomat who previously served in the Occupation Authority for Iraq (CPA), while the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which was commissioned by the UN to investigate, is headed by a Turkish diplomat who was previously a NATO official (and Bilderberg participant) . UN reports should therefore always be examined critically - especially since CFR media are unlikely to take on this work for obvious reasons. (For more on the role of the UN, see here and here ).
The American UN ambassador presents pictures of victims of an alleged poison gas attack by the Syrian government; April 2017 (AP).
Hollywood
In addition to the traditional media, the film industry in Hollywood is also an integral part of the CFR matrix, especially since the heads of all well-known film studios - from Disney to Universal to 20th Century Fox - are involved in the Council. It is therefore not surprising that Hollywood is releasing one propaganda film after another, from American Sniper to Zero Dark Thirty, and thus - in addition to school lessons - influencing the world view and history of broad sections of the population in a more or less subtle way.
The film studios do not act independently of the other actors in the CFR matrix: According to recently published documents, the Pentagon and the CIA have edited the scripts of at least 800 movies and over 1,000 TV productions down to individual dialogues and characters in order to convey the desired messages and stereotypes to the audience. This effort is particularly worthwhile when the respective film production wins an Oscar at the end of the year - as was the case recently with the "documentary" about the ominous White Helmets in Syria.
"The motion picture is one of the most powerful propaganda tools at the United States' disposal."
But not only film studios, but also some of the most famous Hollywood stars are members of the CFR and are involved in its international projects. When Angelina Jolie flies to Libya to show solidarity with the NATO revolutionaries and to praise them for their efforts , or when George Clooney campaigns for the division of the (oil-rich and China-friendly) Sudan under US supervision (because of the starving children) , then CFR media reports on it in detail - and fails to mention just one thing: that these actors are also members of the Council.
Clooney in (South) Sudan in 2012, Jolie in Libya in 2011. (Abaca/Reuters)
News agencies
News agencies play a special role in the information matrix . The former managing director of the Austrian news agency APA described their function with these words: "News agencies are rarely in the spotlight of public interest. Nevertheless, they are one of the most influential and at the same time one of the least known media genres. They are key institutions with substantial importance for every media system. They are the invisible nerve center that connects all parts of this system." (Segbers 2007, p.10)
In fact, when it comes to international events, almost all of the text and images used by CFR media come from just three global news agencies: the American Associated Press (AP), the British-Canadian Thomson-Reuters , and the French Agence France-Presse (AFP). Even international correspondents mostly have to rely on these agencies for their work, as long-time Dutch war correspondent Joris Luyendijk impressively described in his book "Of Images and Lies in Times of War . "
“Putin threatens,” “Iran provokes,” “NATO concerned,” “Assad stronghold”: similarity in content and language of geopolitical reporting based on agency reports.
On the one hand, the dominance of the three global agencies means that CFR media from Vienna to Washington mostly contain roughly the same information – and the same information is missing. On the other hand, the central distribution of information makes the work of those actors who want to feed propaganda and disinformation into the global media system at crucial moments easier.
Reuters war correspondent Fred Bridgland described this in a remarkable report on Britain's Channel 4 as follows: "We based our reports on official reports. It was only years later that I learned that there was a CIA disinformation expert in the US embassy who was making up these reports that had no connection to reality at all. () But honestly, no matter what the agencies publish, the editors pick it up anyway."
While Reuters and AP are directly integrated into the Council, AFP belongs to the French state, which in turn is integrated into the transatlantic structures via the Bilderberg Group and NATO. In effect, the global agencies act as a kind of "propaganda multiplier" with which CFR operators and their partners can spread the desired messages worldwide (see in-depth study ). In doing so, they benefit from the fact that the agencies normally work in an absolutely serious manner and therefore enjoy an excellent reputation.
The propaganda multiplier
It was only thanks to the three global agencies that the dubious reports of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights or the questionable Ukraine analyses by Bellingcat reached hundreds of international media outlets and thus a global audience of billions.
The images of the burnt-out UN aid convoy near Aleppo in September 2016 and the "poison gas attack" on Khan Sheikhoun in April 2017 - both events remain unsolved to this day - also went around the world and caused massive diplomatic and even military reactions. In both cases, the photos came from the same two agency photographers embedded in US-supported militias .
The work of independent reporters, however, rarely makes it into the news when it comes to geopolitically explosive events. The Norwegian Jan Oberg was one of the few photographers on site in recaptured Aleppo in December 2016, but he was unable to get his pictures published in any media - they "did not fit the Western narrative" . And the long-time Middle East correspondent and Syria expert Karin Leukefeld was told that her reports could no longer be used because they did not adhere to the "relevant agency reports" .
However, heads of news agencies sometimes have completely different tasks due to their overview of the media landscape: During the Cold War, for example, the director of the Swiss news agency SDA was personally responsible for reporting Swiss journalists suspected of "left-wing leanings" to the federal police for filing and observation.
Did not fit into the “Western narrative”: pictures by Jan Oberg from Aleppo.
PR agencies
What governments, military and secret services cannot or do not want to do themselves is taken over by external PR agencies. For example, the well-known "incubator lie" (see above) was staged by the US agency Hill & Knowlton , by turning the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador into a nurse and preparing her for her false testimony before the US Congress.
The incubator lie: “Nurse” Nayirah before the US Congress, 1991
The Gulf War had only just ended and the incubator lie exposed, when the US agency Rudder Finn was already active in the Balkan wars and was preparing the journalistic ground for the subsequent NATO intervention (see Becker/Beham, Operation Balkan: Advertising for War and Death , 2008). The then director of Rudder Finn explained in a later interview why his company, for example, spread the false report about Serbian "death camps" in Bosnia:
"Our job is not to verify information. We are not equipped to do that. Our job is to accelerate the circulation of information favorable to us and to reach carefully selected targets. We did not confirm the existence of death camps in Bosnia, we only announced that [US magazine] Newsday had claimed them. () We are professionals. We had a job and we did it. We are not paid to be moral."
When the foreign editor of a Swiss weekly newspaper wanted to present these and other war lies to a German-speaking audience in the mid-1990s, well-known media companies from Germany and Switzerland immediately intervened with his publisher and ensured that he was temporarily not allowed to write anything more about Bosnia and that his dismissal was even discussed .
Thanks for the books: »Bana Alabed« and JK Rowling, Syrian War, 2016. (AP)
PR professionals were also in demand in the Syrian war. One highlight was undoubtedly the "seven-year-old Twitter girl Bana Alabed ," who assured the population of NATO countries in perfect English that the recapture of Aleppo by the Syrian army and Russia was not a liberation, but a new "holocaust." CFR media reported on the child for weeks .
Finally, it was announced that »Bana« is under contract with the British PR agency The Blair Partnership , which also employs Harry Potter author JK Rowling, who previously sent her some of her books for media attention. There were no gifts, however, for a German blogger who accused Stern magazine of »fake news« for uncritically spreading the Bana story : He was immediately sued .
Another specialty of PR agencies is so-called astroturfing , in which an artificial public movement is launched to achieve a political goal. Particularly popular are online petitions from supposedly humanitarian organizations such as Avaaz or Campact , which then suddenly demand a "no-fly zone" over Libya instead of supporting the rainforest .
Avaaz petition to establish a no-fly zone over Libya.
3. Journalists in the Matrix
A crucial aspect of the CFR matrix is that it also includes ordinary journalists. Many journalists may therefore believe in the narratives that are presented to them, while others may work like PR professionals and simply deliver their stories with the desired spin . Still others may even see conformity as a career opportunity for themselves.
But pre-selected sources, peer pressure and dependence on superiors and clients ensure that it is difficult, if not impossible, even for honest and intelligent journalists to break through the information matrix from within and introduce dissenting points of view when imperial affairs are concerned.
American journalists fare no better. Gary Webb , who in the 1990s revealed that the CIA imported cocaine from Colombia and used the proceeds to finance militias in Nicaragua, was defamed by the US media until his reputation was ruined and he committed suicide a few years later. Phil Donahue , who in 2003 was almost the only top US journalist to criticize the planned Iraq war, was summarily fired by MSNBC despite excellent ratings .
Amber Lyon , who was commissioned by CNN to make a documentary about the US ally Bahrain and criticized the human rights situation, was denied broadcast by her own station , whereupon she left the station of her own accord. And Sean Hannity , who wanted to address the unsolved murder of DNC employee Seth Rich on Fox News , was faced with the withdrawal of several sponsors and the possible cancellation of his show - as well as angry comments from leading Council employees.
A taboo for CFR media: Did Wikileaks not receive the Democratic Party’s emails in 2016 from “Russian hackers,” but from DNC employee Seth Rich, who was murdered shortly afterwards?
Now, one might assume that in such obvious cases of abuse, the American Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) , which campaigns for the rights of journalists, would intervene. But that is not the case - because the directors and almost the entire board of the CPJ are themselves members of the Council on Foreign Relations.
After all, such journalists could receive an award for their work, such as the prestigious Pulitzer Prize . But here too, the wait is in vain, because the president of the Pulitzer Committee (currently a Washington Post editor) and various board members also come from the Council. In general, the awarding of prizes and awards is an effective means of determining what is "good" journalism and who is a "renowned" journalist.
The German investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Dirk Pohlmann described the situation with the following words after one of his geopolitically explosive film projects was stopped by ZDF at the highest level:
"It was a topic where you reach the limits of what you are allowed to report on. These limits exist, even in our so-called 'Free West'. You notice it when you enter them: then suddenly the headlights come on, the dogs start barking and you hear people coming closer. And then you know, OK, now I'm in the territory that was previously claimed not to exist: namely the mined territory of the limits of freedom of information."
Does this mean that critical journalism is not welcome in CFR-compliant media? On the contrary: Serious journalism is the basis for the credibility of traditional media, on the basis of which geopolitical (and other) propaganda can then be launched in a targeted and effective manner. Because the unsuspecting reader and viewer has little chance of recognizing or even suspecting the clever manipulation between two honest articles.
Of all the principles of propaganda, this is perhaps the most important in the long term: only media that appear trustworthy can abuse that trust.
4. Conclusion
For decades, the Council on Foreign Relations network had almost unlimited control over the flow of geostrategic information in NATO countries. Most people had no way of realizing that, despite the apparent diversity of media, they were actually in a tightly woven information matrix.
Why did and does the Council go to such lengths to deceive its own population? The late National Security Advisor and Council Director Zbigniew Brzezinski summed it up in his book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives : "Democracy is detrimental to imperial mobilization because the pursuit of imperial power runs counter to democratic instincts." (Brzezinski 1998, p. 20)
In fact, since the war against Spain in 1898, the United States has had to create a pretext for almost all of its interventions in order to morally legitimize the constant expansion of its own sphere of influence – which is ultimately what all empires strive for – and to win over its own population – especially since hardly any country has ever been so reckless as to attack the United States on its own initiative without good reason.
To this end, the United States created – as Karl Rove put it – its own “imperial” reality, which ranges from covert operations to media reporting and historiography and is staged and propagated by the members of the Council and its partner organizations.
This also makes it understandable why CFR media sometimes react so nervously to the success of Russian media such as Russia Today (RT) : These not only expand the vaunted diversity of opinion, but also destabilize the Council's comprehensive information matrix - at least where this serves Russian interests.
The Internet has also made it possible to distribute information in a decentralized and cost-effective manner, thereby bypassing the Council's gatekeepers . There are now a large number of reader-funded media and platforms in German-speaking countries that critically question the conventional narrative and enable new perspectives (see the Media Navigator ).
From the Council's point of view, such publications represent an increasing threat to its own sovereignty over information and interpretation. CFR-compliant media and Internet companies have responded to this by closing reader forums, censoring social networks, "cleaning up" search results and increasing surveillance . Illusion is thus followed by repression - the question remains whether this will help to regain the public's trust.
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and as already mentioned: everyone should read and listen with caution, as a lot of personal opinions of authors and speakers are always included in everything.... nobody should allow their thoughts to be controlled or influenced!
Note: And just by the way, everyone should be extremely careful on Wikipedia and first scroll down to see the last date of editing... in my opinion, more recent date changes should be handled with caution, because then it was certainly made to fit the current mendacious times...
