Government by Propaganda

...Senator J. W. Fulbright December 4, 1969 The Real Songmy Culprits Of the millions of words that have been spoken and written here and abroad about the massacre perpetrated by American soldiers at the South Vietnamese village of Songmy, none strikes us as so tragic as those uttered by the mother of Paul David Meadlo, the twenty-two-year-old former GI who told CBS news that he had killed thirty-five or forty men, women, and children...

...Their work, Senator Fulbright reported, includes such enterprises as these: % A continuing program of highflying junkets for journalists and prominent businessmen, politicians, and civic leaders, designed to make friends and influence people in behalf of the military point of view...

...We suspect Colonel Collins is taking on an assignment that will prove even tougher—and considerably less rewarding—than flying to the moon...

...Shows effective tactical air power with Spanish-American cooperation...

...The list of culprits is much longer than the Army's roster of commissioned officers...

...The carefully doctored script features the finding of Dr...

...policy, and concluded: "Such atrocities were and are the logical consequences of a war directed against an enemy indistinguishable from the people...

...George Gallup, the pollster, of widespread support for the President's November 3 Vietnam speech, and omits Dr...

...No lieutenant, captain, or colonel is responsible for making murderers of the "good boys" who have been dispatched to Vietnam to do murderers' work in our names...

...We should be proud of our country," says Lieutenant Colonel James E. Shaw, the chief chaplain of the American Division, "because the American Division's rules of engagement are based on Judeo-Chris-tian traditions and are moral, unlike those of the enemy...

...One film is Exercise Pathfinder Express, described as follows: "Depicts largest airborne training exercise in Europe...

...The obsession with media and manipulation that characterized President Nixon's 1968 campaign (and that was so graphically detailed in Joe McGinniss' revealing book, The Selling of the President), is rapidly being translated into highest national policy...

...Information Agency has dropped all pretense to objectivity in presenting the news...

...Signs of the new brainwashing campaign abound at every hand...

...According to information supplied me," Senator Fulbright said, "official film produced by the military departments and released last year to the media totaled 35,420 feet and was included in 284 separate news-film stories...

...Colonel Collins, whose complex duties in the space program have apparently left him with ample time to ponder the intricacies of the Vietnam question, says domestic dissenters "have oversimplified the conflict...

...In the Defense Department and in each of the armed services, an army of publicists totaling at least 2,800 civilians and military men—again the estimate is conservative—is employed to peddle the Pentagon's views to the public...

...In view of the concern of many members of the Foreign Relations Committee over U.S...

...We must remember," says Representative Roy A. Taylor of North Carolina, "that war is war and at best it is destructive, cruel, and stupid...

...The list surely includes the name of Lyndon B. Johnson, who told the troops at Camranh Bay in 1966 to "come home with that coonskin on the wall...

...The real significance of Vice President Agnew's famous speeches attacking the news media, we believe, was that they marked the beginning of a bare-knuckled campaign to establish the Administration's propaganda as the truth, the whole truth, and to make it clear that Herblock in The Washington Post "That'll be $27,000,000 just for the anesthetic" any who have the temerity to challenge the official line will risk public obloquy, if not censorship and repression...

...It surely includes Richard M. Nixon, who declared on his ceremonial visit to Vietnam last summer that the war "may have been one of America's finest hours...

...In signing on with the Federal Government's huge and growing propaganda apparatus, the astronaut is joining an effort almost as elaborate as the one he leaves behind...

...An answer of sorts will come, we suppose, from the court martial proceedings now in preparation and from the various official inquiries under way...

...There are the Gott mit Uns clergymen who profane their faith by praying for "victory...

...Army, and Spanish troops in hypothetical combat situation...

...But he will have much help in his new job...

...He plans to set'the record straight, using some of the skills he acquired at Houston...

...PROGRESSIVE "you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" Government by Propaganda Those young Americans who count themselves among the vocal minority that is less than content with the war in Vietnam and other aspects of American foreign policy can look forward to quick relief in the new year...

...Meadlo told reporters, "and they made him a murderer...

...General William C. Westmoreland averages six speeches a month— "quite a schedule," the Senator observed, "for a professional soldier whose mission was to act as Chief of Staff of the Army...

...Gal-lup's finding that this support is contingent on the assumption that American troops will be rapidly withdrawn from Vietnam...

...Abroad as well as at home, the propaganda machinery is moving into high gear...

...But there are more, many more, on the list of those who must share in the responsibility for the murders at Songmy...

...The Pentagon's propaganda apparatus functions not only in behalf of the total military establishment, but permits each service to wage its own competitive propaganda drive at public expense...

...Nor will these investigations tell us who made murderers of all the other Americans who took part in those atrocities about which we have not yet heard, and those about which we will probably never hear...

...They told how they had seen Quangngai province "utterly destroyed" as a matter of official U.S...

...His prime function appears to be to make joint radio and television appearances with hawkish Congressmen, in the course of which he praises their position and attacks the patriotism of Congressional doves...

...Portrays paratroopers in mass assault to secure airfield...

...well over 3,000 minutes on the radio and more than 4,000 column inches of news coverage in local newspapers...

...But none of these investigations—important as they may be to help us understand the facts—will get to the truth, the whole truth, about who made murderers of Paul David Meadlo and his buddies in Company C of the First Battalion, Twentieth Infantry...

...A series of touring Army exhibits that were viewed by some 13.5 million Americans in one six-month period and garnered, according to official reports, "508 minutes of television coverage...

...It surely includes all those aging patrioteers whose courage knows no bounds when it comes to sending young men off to fight their wars...

...A more ambitious USIA production on Vietnam, ninety minutes long and in full color, is now in production at a cost of $200,000...

...In Washington an Army Major, James N. Rowe, who spent five years as a prisoner of the Vietcong, has been put to work on Capitol Hill, with the Pentagon's authorization and blessing, as a roving lobbyist for the war...

...Who are "they...

...Twenty-four of the films were cleared for public showing...

...Orville and Jonathan Schell, two journalists who have reported sensitively and compassionately from Vietnam, wrote recently to The New York Times to dispel the "possible misapprehension . . . that the tragedy of Songmy is an isolated atrocity...

...Their doubts will be dispelled and their enthusiasm kindled by no less a personage than Colonel Michael Collins, the command pilot of Apollo 11, whom President Nixon has designated to be his Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs...

...This, it seems clear, is what Administration spokesmen mean when they talk of the need for having the nation "speak with one voice...

...f A constant stream of packaged radio and television programs and films disseminated to the media and the public free of charge...

...Pictures Moron, Spain, center of activity, where men, equipment, and supplies are dropped in enemy territory...

...The gargantuan scope of these operations was revealed last month by Senator J. W. Fulbright of Arkansas, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a series of Senate speeches that received altogether too little public attention...

...Closes with proud forces marching before commanders...

...Meadlo was not asked, and she didn't say...

...Under the direction of Frank J. Shakespeare Jr., an ultra-conservative who suggested not long ago that television networks ought to consider "a man's ideology" before hiring him for news work, the U.S...

...This intrusion comes at a time when the Administration seeks to stifle dissent as well as to polarize and isolate individuals who are in disagreement with the President's Vietnam policy...

...Depicts bull fight and reception given by Spanish people in honor of participants...

...As Representative Charles Wilson, California Democrat, recently pointed out, Major Rowe's activities constitute an "intrusion of the military into politics [that] portends difficult and dangerous days ahead...

...I sent them a good boy," Mrs...

...The agency's proudest recent production is The Silent Majority, a fifteen-minute film designed to persuade audiences in 104 foreign countries that almost all Americans share the President's "certainty of the need for an honorable solution of the Vietnam war...

...If we can talk very clearly from a distance of a million miles in the space program," he asserts, "I would hope that some of that expertise and technique might be carried over toward opening up the lines of communication which we presently find somewhat constricted, particularly in regard to the youth of America...

...A daily Dial-a-Handout service through which any citizen can hear the latest Pentagon news release by calling OXford 5-6201...

...military involvement in Spain, I am sure that this film, showing our servicemen fighting alongside the Spanish forces in quelling a rebellion, will be of considerable interest...

...These efforts are strictly small potatoes, however, compared to the huge and costly propaganda operations maintained by the nation's military establishment to beguile and bemuse the American people—at their own expense...

...K A speakers' bureau that dispatches thousands of military officers around the country to sell the Pentagon line to Rotary luncheons, PTA meetings, businessmen's conventions, labor conferences and almost every other conceivable type of public gathering...

...In the past decade, Senator Fulbright reported, the Pentagon's budget for "public relations and public information" has multiplied tenfold and now stands at the staggering total of $27.9 million—a conservative figure, as the Senator noted, since it omits such costly overhead items as the cost of military aircraft used on propaganda missions...

...Thus the Army states that Death in the Afternoon In the last fiscal year the Air Force film facility had a budget of $10.9 million, and produced 148 films and thirty-six TV film clips...

...Under the distinguished, astronaut's direction, the State Department says, the Bureau of Public Affairs "will place increased emphasis On enhancement of its contacts with the youth of the country in recognition of the unprecedented attention young people have directed to the nation's foreign policies...

...Demonstrates USAF, U.S...

...There are the cynics who shrug that "war is hell," and after all, the men are under strain...