airmobile Fourth Psychological Operations Group, stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina

US Military PsyOps At CNN?




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#3. US Military PsyOps At CNN? From Brasscheck 2-27-00
Sightings Page: www.sightings.com...

Sam Smith of the Progressive Review passed along a summary of this very interesting article which appeared at: www.emperors-clothes.com...

ABE DE VRIES, TROUW, NETHERLANDS - For a short time last year, CNN employed military specialists in 'psychological operations'. This was confirmed to Trouw by a spokesman of the US Army . . . "Psyops personnel, soldiers and officers, have been working in CNN's headquarters in Atlanta through our program 'Training With Industry,'" said Major Thomas Collins of the US Army Information Service in a telephone interview last Friday. "They worked as regular employees of CNN. Conceivably, they would have worked on stories during the Kosovo war. They helped in the production of news" . . .

CNN is the biggest and most widely viewed news station in the world. The intimate liaisons with army psyops specialists raise serious doubts about CNN's journalistic integrity and independence. The military CNN-personnel belonged to the airmobile Fourth Psychological Operations Group, stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. One of the main tasks of this group of almost 1200 soldiers and officers is to spread 'selected information'.

American psyops troops try with a variety of techniques to influence media and public opinion in armed conflicts in which American state interests are said to be at stake. The propaganda group was involved in the Gulf war, the Bosnian war and the crisis in Kosovo. So far CNN has not commented on the allegations.

FROM AN EARLIER ARTICLE BY DE VRIES: Colonel Christopher St. John is Commander of the Fourth Psychological Operations Group. In a military symposium on Special Operations on that was held behind closed doors in Arlington Virginia in early February, Col. St. John said the cooperation with CNN was a textbook example of the kind of ties the American army wants to have with the media. According to a report in the latest edition of the French magazine "Intelligence Newsletter" the Kosovo experience was the focus at this symposium. In the Kosovo crisis there
was no military censorship of the kind that existed during the Gulf war. This time NATO tried to use more subtle methods to regulate the flow of information. The US Army leadership seems to have concluded that new and more aggressive measures in psychological warfare are needed. Not only do the psyops people want to spread hand-picked 'information' and keep other news quiet, the army also wants to control the Internet, to wage electronic warfare against disobedient media, and to control commercial satellites.

ARTICLES BY ABE DE VRIES
www.emperors-clothes.com...