Presswatch/Sid's Seizures

...21, 1985, and is addressed 'to the citizens of the Soviet Union.'" This report produced a minor sensation for a couple of days, but no one observed that this sort of thing has been a staple feature of KGB disinformation since the first days of the Bolshevik Revolution...

...His most recent transgressions were committed at the expense of Prodemca (Friends of the Democratic Center in Central America), an anti-Sandinista organization headed by my old friend Penn Kemble...

...governmentfinanced agency...

...This was done by provoking one of the NED's top congressional supporters, Rep...

...If one looks at the facts carefully, it turns out that Prodemca behaved with exemplary propriety...

...Fellow Americans...

...After a day's rest, Blumenthal attacked again on the 21st ("Nicaraguan Opposition Newspaper Worried About Source of U.S...

...But Mr...

...A word which originated with the most benighted opponents of the French Revolution...

...Calero's unbridled enthusiasm, which apparently inspired him to declare a change of citizenship . . . While sitting in their corner and wearing their snazzy pointed hats, Blumenthal and the editors should write one hundred times, "We are all citizens of the Americas...

...conunanders, even though he takes few prisoners, and commits the occasional journalistic equivalent of the My Lai massacre...

...Should we not be wary of an author who puts his name to such ravings...

...If only the Post had someone that searched as intently for the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Sandinistas as Blumenthal does for the imaginary violations of propriety by the opponents of the Managua regime, we might have something approaching balanced coverage...

...If they spent one cent of government money [on the ads]," Mica responded to a query from Blumenthal, "we'll throw the book at them...

...In late July, there emerged in the Soviet Union an "underground document" that, in the words of the New York Times (and reported in every major newspaper in the country), "says the Soviet Union can halt what it calls a backward slide only by democratizing its society and allowing a political opposition...

...In reality, the entire operation was run by Soviet intelligence (at the time known as the OGPU), with a dual purpose...

...To Lewis Lapham, editor oi Harper's: Do you have to continue to publish articles by people who maintain that the efforts to protect the Western world from international terrorism are either misguided or, worse, an effort to drive us into the hands of dark reaction...

...Occasionally, even, the zeal and idealism of the rank-andfile would be fanned and then promptly neutralized by what seemed to them like useful "clandestine action...

...What the Post, beginning with Blumenthal's articles, and continuing with others in the summer (this time attacking Prodemca for sponsoring fact-finding trips to see the contras at first hand for congressional staffers, journalists, and opinion leaders), had done was to grant a certain legitimacy to the Sandinistas' repression...

...These now became all the easier to observe and control, inasmuch as they willingly accepted what they regarded as elementary rules of conspiracy, i.e., iron disciphne and blind obedience to the "initiated few" (all of whom were, of course, trusted agents of the OGPU...

...The article goes on to point out that F^odemca has financed [ads supporting military aid to the contras...

...That's a pretty good result for Blumenthal, who generated the controversy out of thin air: there was no evidence that NED money had been used for the ad, and Kemble had told him that...

...The alleged crime of Prodemca is contained in the headline: that government money (from the National Endowment for Democracy—the NED) was being used both to fund La Prensa, the sole publication critical of the regime in Nicaragua, along with a private human-rights organization there, and also to place advertisements in the American press (notably the New York Times and the Post itself), calling for support for military aid to the contras...

...Less Controversial Conduit Eventually Was Found"), this time reinforcing his earlier insinuation that Prodemca had done wrong by writing that Prodemca's funding—and support for military aid to the contras—had "provoked anxiety among the editors of La Prensa...

...The NED grant for La Prensa (which was used to buy supplies for the newspaper and ship them to Managua) began more than a year before Prodemca decided to express its support for military aid...

...Caveat lector...

...Blumenthal—that great expert on the Americas, you'll recall—has different instructions...

...Dan Mica of Florida...

...When this decision was taken, both NED and La Prensa were informed, and were asked if, as a result of this decision, they wished to terminate Prodemca's role in support for the newspaper...

...All interested citizens should go back and read the classic work by Geoffro' Bailey {The Conspirators), which contains the best published account of the infamous "Ti-ust," which was established by Soviet intelligence in the early 1920s...

...As usual, we don't know if the Soviets are playing this old game on us again, but the readers of our newspapers certainly should be reminded, that this sort of thing has gone on repeatedly with our Bolshevik comrades...

...Should we not be wary of a term with which rulers fool themselves and by which history is abolished and language debased...

...The Thist was purportedly an organization of anti-Bolshevik Russians, who both gathered sensitive information inside the Soviet Union (and passed it to Western intelligence services), and conducted operations of sabotage against the Bolshevik regime...

...a word featured constantly in the anti-partisan communiques of the Third Reich...

...The first eight words of the quotation appeared in a box in the center of the article, conveying the impression that Prodemca was deliberately deceptive...

...I've had it with NED and the grantee if this is what's going on . . ." Then, for extras, Blumenthal picked up a handy quotation from Aryeh Neier, the head of Americas Watch, who is an outspoken opponent of military aid: "Prodemca appears to be flying under false colors in portraying itself as a citizen's organization when it is actually a vehicle for distributing funds to anti-Sandinista organizations...

...As NED President Carl Gershman wrote to the Post, had the Endowment not sent money to La Prensa, it would have long since ceased to publish for lack of funds...

...This was surely absurd, for the Sandinistas would have had no trouble finding a suitable excuse to shut down a newspaper that had already been constantly censored and suspended many times in the past...

...But we are all Americans...

...Outside the USSR, masquerading as the Ttust, the organization served to keep an eye on the activities of [the regime's opponents] and thus effectively to neutralize them, while at the same time acting as a sort of clearinghouse, both for the Western and White Russian agents and propaganda coming into the country and for the information (or, more often as not, "misinformation") going out of it, most of which, for greater speed and security, traveled by Soviet diplomatic pouch...

...The crime had not been committed (as Kemble made clear in a letter to the Post published the next day, and as an internal audit of Prodemca carried out by USIA demonstrated), but Blumenthal did manage to achieve the real objective of the article: create some trouble for Prodemca...

...The statement, by a group calling itself 'Movement for a Socialist Renewal,' is dated Leningrad, Nov...

...Could it be that Prodemca's goal, which is the violent overthrow of our government, is also the goal of La Prensal lUnnermann's letter was the subject of a Post editorial on May 11, which, although criticizing the censorship of La Prensa, criticized the NED and Prodemca for "belatedly" realizing that "Prodemca's indiscriminate mixing of fimding and lobbying would be used by the Sandinistas to discredit the newspaper...

...Borges was a Latin American...

...Furthermore, since the existence of the Thist was a carefully kept secret even within the OGPU itself, by checking the latter's watchfulness against the "D-ust's internal security measures, it became possible to ascertain to what extent the secret police was able to prevent the establishment or survival of a genuine anti-Communist underground in the Soviet Union...

...We are North Americans, Calero is a Central American...

...As I said, when you're in charge of a battle, you needn't be bothered excessively by the niceties of the Marquis of Queensberry Rules of combat...

...a word which is a commonplace in the handouts of the Red Army in Afghanistan and the South African army in Namibia...

...The opening salvo came in a front-page story on March 19 ("Grantee of U.S...

...The notion that there was something wrong about La Prensa's receipt of money from Prodemca was subsequently used by Sandinista Ambassador Carlos Ibnnermann in justifying his government's closure of La Prensa in May: On March 19 . . . the Post published an article . . . (stating] that La Pre/wa is accepting funding from Prodemca, which in turn receives funds from the National Endowment for Democracy, a U.S...

...Tferrorism: A clich^ in search of a meaning") is one of the most meanspirited I can imagine...

...Thus, for instance, anti-Communist leaflets would be run off on OGPU presses, then distributed to bona fide Trust couriers, only to be immediately impounded again and stored, pending further use, in OGPU strong rooms...

...The final paragraph says it all: . . . What is frightening and depressing is that a pseudoscientific propaganda word like "terrorism" has come to have such a hypnotic effect on public debate in the United States...

...Endowment Funds Sandinista Opponents...

...Eventually, a less controversial conduit was found to replace Prodemca...

...Occasionally, too, when the rankandfile showed signs of restlessness, the leaders would rig yet another comedy: One group would urge a "rougher" policy viskvis the Soviet regime, while the other insisted on greater caution...

...Funds...

...The bottom line...

...As a result of the ensuing debate, the more fanatically minded or less gullible elements would be duly identified and, if need be, quietly liquidated...

...The article by Christopher Kitchens in your September issue ("Wanton Acts of Usage...

...Group's Advertisements Urge Aid for Rebels...

...The coveted dunce caps for the month go to Sidney Blumenthal and his hard-working editors at the Washington Post for Blumenthal's characteristic blooper on July 17: "I always feel elated," said Adolfo Calero, the Nicaraguan contra leader, "to be in the company of fellow freedom fighters and fellow Americans...

...He can count on full support from his Michael Ledeen is senior fellow in international affairs at the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies...

...La Prensa was in the position of Caesar's wife, and, wishing to avoid all appearance of misbehavior, felt it was the better course of valor to receive its money from someone else...

...Blumenthal doesn't have to worry about any real punishment from his bosses for this or his numerous other journaUstic sins, for he has been given the prestigious position as point-manincharge-of-special-operationsagainstneoconservatives, and is free to conduct his own sorties as he sees fit...

...In Bailey's words: On the one hand, inside Russia it helped identify and channel into the ranks of an OGPU-run organization such dedicated foes of the regime as Maria Schultz, who otherwise might have remained long undetected...