NEW: Military "Blind Hatred" Research Reveals Media Manipulation / Complicity in 9/11

 

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

CREATING BLIND HATRED: 9/11 MEDIA MANIPULATION MILITARY RESEARCH AND PLANNING

Can we trust the visual record of September 11 that we all witnessed on television?

Should researchers in the 9/11 Truth community dismiss the role of the mainstream media in carrying out psychological warfare against the American people, or should they consider witting and unwitting media cooperation in the events of September 11, 2001?

[First Working Draft, By Fred]

 

Part one of this paper examines research commissioned by the Pentagon and British Ministry of Defence before September 11, 2001 and explores the possibility that this research may have been used on September 11 and in the subsequent overseas military deployments.

Pre-September 11 Planning-- Phase One: Research and Rationale

Three topics were of great interest among military psychologists and PSYOP specialists before 9/11:

  1. Understanding what factors generate public support for a war,
  2. Learning how to use mass-media to create “blind hatred” against an enemy, and
  3. Discovering the most effective techniques for manipulating public opinion in favor of military action.

The stated goal of much of this research was to understand the best methods to manipulate the media and the general public in order to bring about a military deployment.

Here is an example of military research to determine the feasibility of media manipulation by the military:

The title of this paper, ‘Manipulating the Media’, is not a personal choice, but simply the working title that I was originally given.

The issue is whether the Western media, most obviously that of the United States, can be manipulated in order to bring about a military deployment; and if so, how this can be done.

- MANIPULATING THE MEDIA

Stephen Badsey British Ministry of Defence

Now, why would the Ministry of Defence conduct this research? To settle a friendly bet between two generals? To amuse the Queen? Or was the purpose of this research to learn how to manipulate the media in order to bring about a military deployment? Please decide for yourselves.

Many 9/11 researchers accept the premise that the 9/11 attack served as a pretext for an invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. However, some researchers dismiss direct media involvement in the 9/11 attacks. This paper will show how government-funded research could allow the military to mobilize public opinion through direct manipulation of the mass media. Moreover, this paper will demonstrate conclusively that the military, hand-in-hand with the media, enabled the necessary conditions for the execution of a complex covert psychological operation against the American people.

Applied Research: How to Create Public Support for a War

According to research commissioned by the US military, there are two conditions which determine public support for military action.

“Public support of the American people rests on two conditions: their belief in the justness of the cause at stake, and their trust and confidence in the leadership engaged in that pursuit”

- “MASS MEDIA APPLIED AS A PRINCIPLE OF WAR” Joint Pub 1

If the September 11 attacks were designed in part to create a "just cause" for military action, then the attacks worked as planned. The operation was so successful that even Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama said that the USA had the right to “defend itself” militarily. Immediately following the operation, the supposedly liberal New York Times and Washington Post marched in lockstep with the military planers.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), noted on November 2, 2001 that 44 columns in the Washington Post and New York Times stressed a military response, with only two that suggested diplomatic and international law approaches.

- “Warning: Media Management Now In Effect” By Danny Schechter, November 14, 2001

What about the second condition necessary for public support for a war, namely trust and confidence in the leadership? Did the September 11 attack create trust and confidence in the leadership of the USA? A follow-up study in a leading military journal suggests it did, just as military public-opinion research suggested it should.

“Invariably, the popular response to a President during an international crisis is favorable, regardless of the wisdom of the policies the President pursues.” …This counterintuitive movement of public attitudes—backing the President when his policies may have been unwise or even unsuccessful—is what intrigues public opinion researchers. When things go badly, or the outcome is unclear, the public’s positive response needs to be accounted for.”

The most important factor in tapping and shaping the “blind hatred” for an enemy that underpins public support for a conflict is aggressive, decisive national policy as reflected in bold actions to achieve clear, specific political and military objectives.

-“War Policy, Public Support, and the Media” Parameters, Summer 2005

Now, at this point we have established that if the events of September 11, 2001 had been designed to mobilize US public opinion, the operation worked as planned.

Let us now consider what tools and techniques the masterminds of psychological warfare have at their disposal to manipulate the media and public opinion.

Applied Military Research: What Tools Work best for “Winning CNN Wars”?

First, consider unclassified research into the The Psychology and Sociology of Visual Persuasion. Published military research indicates that:

  • Film or video messages are markedly effective (and preferred to less vivid media) in teaching factual knowledge, are accepted as accurate, and are not perceived as propaganda.
  • Emotional (fear-inducing) appeals are persuasive when they are truly frightful, suggest effective actions to reduce the fear-arousing threat, and the recipients believe that they are able to perform the suggested action.

Ask yourself if you witnessed September 11 with your own two eyes or if you relied on filmed or video messages of the attacks to learn about what happened on that day. Now consider whether or not you considered the events of 9/11 to be truly frightful or not. Did the media broadcast these frightening images over and over again?

Applied Military Research Question:

Through which media should persuasive video fear-inducing appeals be deployed?

Military information warfare research indicates that television news is the most effective channel for distributing psychological propaganda in support of military objectives.

Sociologists advise that compelling video messages must be crafted into the framework of the television news media.[26] The credible news frame defines the characteristics of believable news stories: reports must have subframes that are personalized, dramatized, fragmented, and normalized.[27] News media focus on a personalized actor subframe--individual leaders, spokespersons, exemplars of the political actions.[28] Media images convey a dramatized story subframe: beginnings, action style, plot lines and sub-plots, settings and scenery, rising and falling action, major and minor actors with major and minor motives, climax and anti-climax, and endings that close with a chorus (journalists, politicians, experts, the public, or all four) interpreting the moral lessons of the drama

Please remember that you are reading military research, and not lessons for acting class or a school play. This applied military research is focusing on how to craft believable (although false) news stories and says that this propaganda must be depicted as television news.

Psychologists and Sociologists have been working for the military to teach PSYOP teams how to manipulate the media, how to mobilize public opinion, and how to craft and insert believable false messages into television news.

People like pictures, and the believability of video makes pictures more convincing than words: moving pictures "seem utterly real”… People tend to believe what they see on video as positive proof.

-“Winning CNN Wars” Parameters, Autumn 1994

Thus far we have established that throughout the 1990’s military researchers laid the groundwork for the media manipulation which would facilitate the September 11 attacks, and that they determined that television news was the preferred message for delivering covert propaganda to generate public support for military action.

Next the military researchers considered historical examples of false news stories and their effectiveness from a financial viewpoint.

Cost and benefits from past examples: Effectiveness of fake stories and their aftermath

One key lesson learned from the first Gulf War was that propaganda was often more effective than actual military capabilities in warfighting. Military planners realized that money spent manipulating the media was could be far more effective than money spent on advanced weapon systems.

A widely cited example in military media research before 9/11 is the oustandingly successful Kuwati Incubator hoax:

In 1990 the Kuwaiti government, its country under Iraqi occupation, spent US$10.8 million chiefly through the Washington public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, on a propaganda campaign aimed at elite and general American public opinion. This included the notorious televised testimony to the Congressional Caucus on Human Rights on 10 October 1990 by a Kuwaiti girl that Iraqi soldiers had thrown babies out of their incubators. The story, briefly taken up by Amnesty International and repeated by President George Bush, was a fabrication, and the girl was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador. Before this could be publicly revealed, a special audio-visual presentation on Iraqi atrocities was given to the UN Security Council, just two days before Resolution 678 authorising the Gulf War was passed.

The positive results of fake news stories planted into the Western news media resulted in the successful mobilization of public opinion and in congressional and UN support in favor of military action. In other words, the fake incubator operation was a stunning success and a model for future psychological operations.

Risks associated with Fake News Stories: Insignificant

Military planners are well aware that hundreds of media outlets will cover fake stories as front page news or top stories, and also that years later, after the story is proven to have been a lie, the mass media will devote little or no coverage to this fact.

A post September 11 example is the Jessica Lynch story:

In the fourteen days after her rescue, Lynch drew 919 references in major papers, according to a Nexis search. In that same period, General Tommy Franks, who ran the war, got 639 references, Vice President Dick Cheney 549, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz 389. She stood with the giants.

But on May 15, a revisionist BBC report aired interviews with Iraqi doctors who said no Iraqi troops had been in the hospital during the raid and they had been trying for days to release Lynch to U.S. Marines. NBC News, Time, the Chicago Tribune, and other American outlets began raising questions as well.

Journalists are disinclined to puncture "feel good" stories, especially those that they themselves have sent aloft.

The public heard less about them than about the broken bones of Jessica Lynch, damsel in distress. Her dramatic rescue was very likely the one memory most Americans had carried away from the war with Iraq. How awkward to have to tell them she was a truck crash victim saved by the enemy and not actually rescued by the same commando unit that did not actually find those elusive weapons of mass destruction. But that's what happens when you write first and ask questions later.

--- 2003 Columbia Journalism Review at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism

After the mainstream media sold the public on the War on Terror, and they pledged to support the president and the intelligence agencies, are they going to tell us all that they lied and even willingly assisted in a covert operation against the American People?

Moral Permisibility of Covert Fake News

[insert graphic]

Theoretical Consideration: Using the Availability Heuristic:

A key factor to understand with September 11 is the “Availability Heuristic”. Scenarios that are repeated over and over again seem more likely than scenarios which are infrequently discussed. For example, you’re thirty times more likely to be killed by falling airplane debris than killed by a shark, but most people think that shark attacks are more common than being hit by falling airplanes (because the mass media love to talk about shark attacks). Similarly, people tend to over-estimate the risk of becoming a victim of terrorism, or of being raped or murdered, because of the disproportionate time that television spends covering these topics.

PSYOP planners use this availability heuristic to their advantage, since the retraction of a fake news story is not a front page event but is buried in fine print.

Since most of us have little experience with planes crashing into buildings (whether pentagon-shaped or not), or with the effects of exotic high-tech weaponry, we tend to believe what has been presented to us, especially if we were traumatized by frightening imagery. Remember:

People like pictures, and the believability of video makes pictures more convincing than words: moving pictures "seem utterly real”… People tend to believe what they see on video as positive proof.

Is it possible that even the nice people at NIST will take the visual record presented by the mass-media as positive proof and modify their models until they fit what they observed on TV?

Now that we’ve learned that military research has determined that fake video news is an effective tool for generating blind hatred of an enemy, let us examine the operational considerations of a coordinated psychological attack using the mass media.

September 11 Planning Phase Two: Operational Planning for the Psychological Attacks

Military research indicates that “Winning CNN wars” requires leaders and the public to play out political fantasies on a stage of televised realities. In other words, if you watch TV news during a CNN war, you’re putting yourself inside “the Matrix”. According to published military research, funded by the American taxpayers:

The use of images, cultural symbols, even fantasies to create or reinforce the realities that they signify has strong psychological roots as well as significant political efficacy.

In the era of CNN wars, leaders and the public play out political fantasies on a stage of televised realities. Late-breaking video news sustains our involvement and opportunities to interact with the images (if only vicariously) and thus maintains our participation. We decide our loyalties and commitments against image backdrops of ongoing events: testimony of Iraqi soldiers stealing incubators and leaving Kuwaiti babies to die, Patriot missiles destroying Scuds, Yeltsin atop a Soviet tank, dead Ranger heroes being desecrated. We can fancy ourselves in our own TV versions of Casablanca, living amidst wars, coups, and revolutions, and we decide to support (or not) real heroes, causes, and sides. To use the dialogue of images in the operations of future CNN wars, then, is to lead with image-filled stories, shaped around the TV scenes we all see--to provide compelling pictures formed with persuasive signs and symbols.

Notice that the military theorists and strategists are advising military commanders on “which stories to lead with” and “how to create compelling fantasies.” Were you aware that the military invests its R&D budget in creating compelling fantasies?

If you have read this far, perhaps now it is becoming clear to you why Fox’s “The Lone Gunman” aired six months prior to 9/11. Is it possible that military planners wanted to test whether or not they had created a compelling fantasy? Is it possible that this “fictional” TV episode would provide cover for a real psychological operation that was about to be unleashed? Who do you think had better access to Hollywood prior to 9/11: Osama Bin Laden or the US Military?

Manipulating the Media in Real Time: Technological considerations for a false reality

US forces must be capable of responding to media demands for instantaneous information, and of using the rapid transmission of data to its advantage. This magnifies the importance of tending to image considerations. . . . But it also suggests the need for greater information dominance and for some thought about how modern, real-time news reporting can be used to US advantage in future military operations.

People like pictures, and the believability of video makes pictures more convincing than words: moving pictures "seem utterly real”… People tend to believe what they see on video as positive proof.

-“Winning CNN Wars” Parameters, Autumn 1994

From Planning to Execution:

September 11 Phase two: Putting the Media Operatives in Position

On September 11, 2001, there was direct cooperation between the TV news organizations and the Military. 9/11 Truth researchers ignore this cooperation at their own peril. Television news networks have agreements in place with the military not to reveal covert operations.

Example of Witting Media Collaboration with the Military

Long before September 11, the US military had learned the value of using Western media as a tool in war. This included the broadcast of completely false stories, with the media as a witting ally. In numerous documented cases the US media knowingly broadcast false information in support of allied operations. For example, in the first Gulf War:

Several members of the press were fully briefed before the ground offensive that the amphibious landing was an allied deception. The Marines briefed the press to prevent them from inadvertently blowing the story by naively covering it. The witting members of the press, sworn to secrecy, maintained the security of the deception and supported it with continued press coverage of the practice Marine landings.

 

If history serves as a guide, there is every reason to suspect that certain key members of the media would have been at least partially informed of any covert military action unfolding on September 11, 2001. These members of the media would be sworn to secrecy and risk great personal consequences (e.g. torture and death) if they were to speak out.

Embedded Reporters, Embeded PSYOP warriors:

Most researchers are familiar with the concept of “embedded reporters.” Emedding is when a journalist travels with a unit of a military organization as a member of that unit. What many researchers ignore is the fact that there are covertly embedded military psyop specialists embedded in the news media organizations themselves. Open source intelligence reveals that these operatives were in place before the September 11 attacks.

CNN 's history of voluntary cooperation with PSYOPS troops is also worth considering. In March 2000, FAIR and international news organizations revealed that CNN had allowed military propaganda specialists from an Army PSYOPS unit to work as interns in the news division of its Atlanta headquarters.

As FAIR reported at the time (3/27/00), some PSYOPS officers were eager to find ways to use media power to their advantage. One officer explained at a PSYOPS conference that the military needed to find ways to "gain control" over commercial news satellites to help bring down an "informational cone of silence" over regions where special operations were taking place.

Why would the military want to learn how to gain control over the news in order to generate an informational cone of silence? Why the emphasis on special operations in 2000? Isn’t it curious that this embedding activity was taking place during a time of great prosperity and peace, when no one could have predicted that terrorists would attack buildings with airplanes?

September 11 Groundwork in Place, From Planning to Action:

Next let’s consider what happened on the morning of September 11. Let us consider the possibility that there was a reason the military hired psychologists and sociologists to learn how to manipulate the media, and that this research was not purely theoretical.

Is it possible that on the morning of September 11th, the embedded psyop teams sprang into action? Did the mass media outlets knowingly or unknowingly air carefully crafted persuasive visual communication designed to manipulate the American public and sway world opinion in favor of military action?

Phase Three: Deliberate Infliction of Deep Psychological Wounds, AKA “Shock and Awe”

In the next part of this series, I will explain why the military released Abu Ghraib photos of torture to run as the lead stories across all networks, and why they encouraged a national debate about torture and secret prision camps. I'll examine why they love to talk about beheadings and bone fragments. Stay tuned!

 

Fred

the military, like most bureaucracies, prefers to do its business behind closed doors - all the more so because the nature of its business is so often shocking to the sensitivities of the public, on whose support it must rely

-"NO BAD STORIES" The American Media-Military Relationship

Naval War College Review, Winter 2002

The most important factor in tapping and shaping the “blind hatred” for an enemy that underpins public support for a conflict is aggressive, decisive national policy as reflected in bold actions to achieve clear, specific political and military objectives.

-“War Policy, Public Support, and the Media” Parameters, Summer 2005

Amazing!

Amazing!

wow fred is way awesome! go

wow fred is way awesome! go fred go!

Lack of interest surprising

This is amazing work. I'm surprised not to see more comments.