October , 2010 -- How CNN was taken over by FDDC and the neocons....
The demise of CNN and its hostile takeover by DOD's FDDC and neo-conservatives who turned CNN News into an echo chamber for Israel supporters and neocons and Headline News into a tabloidish concoction of crap news was brought about by a concerted effort by Time Warner executives to embarrass CNN founder Ted Turner and force him out of the corporate leadership, according to informed sources in Atlanta who spoke to WMR.
Ted Turner made his professionally-fatal mistake of merging CNN with Time Warner in 1996. Turner resigned as vice chairman of the merged AOL Time Warner in 2003. Turner lost some $7 billion in stock after the merger in 1996 but his financial losses would soon grow larger.
In 1998, Time Warner, according to our Atlanta sources, convinced CNN to run a story about Operation Tailwind, a covert U.S. military and South Vietnamese Montagnard incursion into Laos from September 11 to 13, 1970, that was designed to put pressure on North Vietnamese troops during a Laotian Army offensive. CNN ran a "Newsstand CNN & Time" story called "Valley of Death." The piece was narrated by CNN correspondent Peter Arnett with lead CNN producer being April Oliver. The investigation was conducted in cooperation with Time magazine. CNN reported that US forces used sarin gas in Laos between 9/11 and 9/13, 1970. CNN also reported that 100 Laotian villagers were killed by a US sarin gas attack.
WMR has learned that in an operation similar to the setting up of CBS News's Dan Rather in the George W. Bush Texas Air National Guard AWOL story, bogus elements were introduced into an otherwise legitimate story on Operation Tailwind. Moreover, according to our sources in Atlanta, the false elements were known to certain executives of CNN and Time Warner with the intention of weakening CNN to the point where its executive management could be fired and replaced with those who would steer the pre-eminent news network to the right in all respects, including strong support for Israel in its Middle East coverage. It was CNN-US President Rick Kaplan who pushed the Tailwind story over the objections of several CNN news veterans. Kaplan is now the executive producer of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric in the anchor chair once occupied by Rather.
As with the CBS 60 Minutes story on Bush's AWOL status that was reported by Rather, CNN named an investigation panel to examine the facts of the story after the Pentagon stated that no sarin gas was ever used and the story was false. Ultimately, CNN agreed that there were several factual errors in the story and issued a retraction. Some military experts suggested that while CS tear gas may have been used in Tailwind, sarin was somehow substituted in the story, resulting in the controversy and retraction. Former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Thomas Moorer claimed he was erroneously quoted about sarin being used in Laos.
Producers Oliver and Jack Smith were fired after the retraction and Arnett left the network after being formally reprimanded. Arnett briefly joined HDNet, the same network that hired Rather after his departure from CBS News. CNN President Tom Johnson left CNN a few years later.
CNN was faced with law suits from Tailwind veterans. Turner, who lost several billions in stock after the merger with Time Warner in 1996, saw the company's stock take a further hit as a result of the Tailwind debacle. The stock value loss weakened Turner's financial interest in the firm, making it more vulnerable for a buyout. Turner would see Time Warner and its chairman Gerald Levin, a heavy donor to Jewish causes, exercise more control over the editorial direction of CNN. After the disastrous Time Warner merger with AOL in 2000, CNN, as it was originally envisaged by Turner when he founded the world's first global cable news network, was a thing of the past. CNN's editorial direction saw correspondent Wolf Blitzer, formerly a public affairs spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), assume dominant anchor responsibilities for CNN's influential Washington bureau after first becoming a CNN anchor in 1999 and moving up the ranks to hosting the three-hour Situation Room in 2005....
The recent firings of CNN Middle East editor Octavia Nasr and news anchor Rick Sanchez capped off the slow drift of CNN to becoming a propaganda outlet for DOD/FDDC, Israel and the Israel Lobby in the United States. CNN announced that in its move to help rehabilitate former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, forced from office over a prostitution scandal, he would co-host a program in Sanchez's time slot.... CNN Washington is now essentially a Blitzer and Spitzer operation.
The lesson of the demise of CNN is a textbook case of how special interests have and will continue to dictate news content and reporting in the United States. After the recent verbal attack by Broadcasting Board of Governors chairman Walter Isaacson, the managing editor of Time during the Tailwind episode and, from 2001 to 2003, the chairman and CEO of CNN, on the expanding independent global news networks of RT [Russia Today], Telesur of Venezuela, Iran's Press TV, and a planned Chinese network as "enemies" of America, these and other embryonic networks like Turkey's TRT English network, should take note of the downfall of CNN and the players who engineered it.... Forewarned is forearmed....Notice here how Al-Jazeera is not part of Isaacson's criticism..., because Al-Jazeera has been totally co-opted by the criminal elites long ago....
The Isaacson attack on RT, Telesur, PressTV, and China's new CNC Xinhua World was no slip of the tongue.... Sunstein and "Company" are moving in on these independent news networks pronto.... I fear RT may be the first to come under "control." Telesur has a small presence in Washington and will be easy to deal with, especially since they share office space with AP TV. PressTV of Iran is in the strongest position to withstand the assault but because of US sanctions on Iran they have to work through a Danish company -- and Denmark has its former PM as NATO Secy General, and it is a MOSSAD outpost par excellence.... Without a third-party pass-through, PressTV would have no chance of renting satellite time in DC. Xinhua News is too new and does not have any convenient commercial broadcast outlets yet in DC or NYC....
Wikileaks/DOD/CIA/DIA... is nothing but cointelpro
Another timely distraction to let the thieves get away, catch their breath and make some more sinister plans....
It's genius if you think about it. The full twofer: not only can you push your own utter disinformation, but should another Daniel Ellsberg turn up, wikileaks will be his first port of call....LOL. Remember back in 2003 in the run up to Iraq and people were saying the US had learnt nothing from Vietnam? Bullshit! Clearly they didn't miss a trick....
