Psychological warfare from it's inception has also targeted the people of the United States.
Part Seven
So the journal itself was, although it didn't present itself in these terms was a propaganda organ. On the third level what one sees, is a very close inbreeding between the senior editors and the editorial board of the journal on the one hand, and the intelligence agencies on the other hand. The founder of the journal back in 1937 was a man by the name of DeWitt Poole, who was then on sabbatical from the state department. His specialty was anti-communist propaganda. That's what he did for a living. Moving in to the post war period, he eventually became senior executive with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty operations that were founded by the CIA.
In the Public Opinion Quarterly, there were a series of interesting reports, that presented itself as if it were simply communication research. The title, 'Political Extremists in Iran: A Secondary Analysis Of Communications Data'.
Who were these extremists?
Well what was going on was the Voice of America was paying a very well known very liberal think tank in New York, called the Bureau of Social Research, to study dissident groups in the middle east. This particular study that we're discussing looked at so called extremists in Iran. Those people were supporters of Mohammed Mossadeq. Who at the time was the leader of Iran but he was out of favor in the west. He was out of favor because he had this extraordinary idea, shocking idea, that Iran should control it's own oil resources.
This did not go down very well with the Americans, or with the British. Eventually they engineered a coup d'etat that overthrew Mossadeq and his supposed extremist followers; and installed the Shah of Iran. So what you see in the academic journal, is an article that has lot's of footnotes, and it has the vocabulary in it, it has the whole sort of image of heavy academic research, but what it is in truth is a report on applied political covert operation.
You see that same sort of three level pattern here. Where you have articles that are officially and literally about psychological warfare on how we can convince the Japanese in Sipon to surrender in World War II, an official psychological warfare study. Then you have the next level of propaganda to social scientists to convince them to tow a particular line. Then you have this third level where the publications of social science themselves become tools for intelligence gathering; or as illustrated in this particular case, as elements of covert operations.
One of the effects between mass communication research and psychological warfare was a sort of internal purge of dissident voices, so to speak. Not by the government but by the recipients of this government largess or positive feedback.
What one saw, was in the early cold war, they talked about psychological warfare straight up. They were pretty frank about the whole thing. By the 1950's they realized that if they talked about psychological warfare against the Italians, the Italians may not like that very much and they may take exception to it.
So the rhetoric of the field began to change and there was an example coming out of Columbia University, in which a long bibliography of what psychological warfare was, examples of it, definitions, case studies, and so forth, had been prepared secretly during the early 50's and then eventually published in 1955 or 1956. And the only difference between that and the 1953 version; was that the title had been changed. The new title was 'International Communication'.
The rhetoric of the field was changing but the content of the field was not changing; or at least the content of the field was developing along the same lines that it had developed earlier.
This is the way that the relatively straightforward use and discussion of psychological warfare as a form of violence and social control; became communication, international communication, even sometimes conflict resolution. And portrayed in these much more cushioned terms. That tends to isolate the people who are using them from the realities of the world that they are in the process of creating.
This series is drawn from an interview of Christopher Simpson, the author of 'The Science of Coercion', by Dave Emory. Download interview - Part One - Part Two
This is the final installment of an original series from No Agenda News. Read part six here.
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