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July 02, 2006

Agenda Drives Attacks on Times

FreeRepublic.com and Accuracy in Media are planning a demonstration Monday in front of the Washington, DC bureau of the New York Times in protest over the newspaper's report about the Administration's banking surveillance of US citizens without the required Congressional oversight. Of course, the two wacky right-wing media groups don't couch it in those terms.

In fact, they say Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Executive Editor Bill Keller and reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau should be criminally prosecuted for treason (meaning executed) for "giving aid and comfort to al-Qaida."

FreeRepublic.com has a well-deserved reputation for brutal behavior in an effort to keep the public mis-informed so as to benefit the right wing. For example, when a restaurant owner notified authorities that Jenna Bush, while under age, had attempted to illegally purchase liquor, FreeRepublic.com published the restaurant owner's name, home address, date of birth, drivers' license number and registration, physical description, and even information about her baby on its site and advocated violence toward the restaurant's patrons and physical destruction of the restaurant.

Even worse, when Andy Stephenson (a Seattle voting activist who worked with Bev Harris of "Black Box" to uncover the election theft problem with voting machines) was dying of cancer, FreeRepublic.com went on the attack. They spread the rumor that he was faking his cancer to line his own pockets, interfered with efforts to raise funds to help with his treatment, delayed his treatment, interfered with his Medicaid benefits, filed complaints against him, and when he finally died accused him of faking his own death.

These two groups are headed up by some seriously wacky and even dangerous individuals. Accuracy in Media is particularly egregious in this regard. The group has been vigorously defensive of former Senator Joseph McCarthy, for example. Funding comes from Richard Mellon Scaife, Mobil Oil, Union Carbide, Adolph Coors Foundation, and Texaco.

It's Board of Directors includes a number of people with backgrounds in government intelligence, including the CIA. Many were involved in black ops activities in Nicaragua. Here is just a sampling from their resumes:

Bernard Yoh …is/was a professor of psychological warfare at the Air Force University in Montgomery, Alabama. He was a hitman for the Shanghai police during the Sino-Japanese war and organized the South Vietnamese counterinsurgency forces during the Vietnam War. …[He] contributes regularly to the Unification Church publication Rising Tide and is a strong supporter of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and the South Korean government. […]

Adm. Thomas H. Moorer was the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under president Richard Nixon. In that position he had Naval Intelligence agents tap Henry Kissinger's phone and remove documents from Nixon's desk. … Moorer is the vice president of the American Security Council.

Clare Booth Luce was … a member of Ronald Reagan's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. … [She] is a Dame of the Knights of Malta. She was a director of the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund, a fundraising group set up in 1985 by the Washington Times, a paper owned by Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, to provide funds to the contras. Luce was on the Board of the Washington Times. […]

Ellen Garwood, heir to the Clayton Anderson fortune, donated much of the amount needed to buy a helicopter for the Nicaraguan contras. She has also donated a large amount of money to their cause. […]

Midge Decter is a Heritage Foundation trustee, was also on the Board of Directors of the now defunct Nicaraguan Freedom Fund. […]

William Simon was … the chair of the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund and is a member of the Knights of Malta.

Dr. Edward Teller created the HBomb.

Eugene Wigner, a physicist, recieved a $200,000 "Founders Award" from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

Shelby Cullom Davis is a trustee of the Heritage Foundation.

[Accuracy in Media] has been a prominent supporter of the Chilean Lobby in the past. The Chilean Lobby supported the military government under Augusto Pinochet that came into power through a coup in 1973. […]

Why are these people organizing a protest of The New York Times? Because the information the paper continues to reveal is interfering with their agenda. And their agenda is not one the American public would likely embrace.

Posted by Becky at July 2, 2006 01:26 PM