"The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media" William Colby, Director of CIA 1973-1976

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[–]DffrntDrmmr 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Alleged quote:

'"The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media." --Former CIA Director William Colby‘

Chronology:

1) William Colby CIA Director 1973-1976.

2) Colby dies April 1996.

3) Quote first appears in David McGowan’s 2000 book “Derailing Democracy”, Common Courage Press, 4 years after Colby’s death.

4) April 2011 Google search Of Colby’s quote results in 423,000 hits

A. Did Colby say that quote?

1) There is no primary source or other earlier source extant but McGowan’s for this quote.

2) The quote appears prominently in his introduction (p13) , with no first source attribution.

3) Over 200 other quotes are cited in this book with first source attribution, but not Colby’s.

4) In this book another McGowan unattributed quote (p33), of Lincoln, is a lie. http://www.snopes.com/quotes/lincoln.asp

5) A search of McGowan’s conspiracist web site does not result in any mention of this Colby's quote. He avoids bringing up his most referenced Colby citation.
http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/

The preponderance of the evidence shows the Colby quote is a lie and that those who repeat it as true, after knowing the provenance, are frauds.

B. Does the CIA or Government own the MSM?

1) The CIA didn’t own The New York Times when they published the Pentagon Papers.

2) The CIA didn’t own the Time, The New York Times, The Washington Post when they published the Watergate Break-in and Scandal.

3) The CIA didn’t own the Washington Star, New York Times when they published the Tuskegee Experiment scandal.

4) The CIA didn’t own Rolling Stone when they published Woodward and Bernstein’s CIA/journalists Cold War connections article.

5) The CIA didn’t own The New York Times when they published the Iran-Contra Affair

6) The CIA didn’t own the Main Stream Media when they published Nixon’s Secret Bombing of Cambodia, My Lai Massacre, CIA involvement in Bay of Pigs Invasion, 9/11 government incompetence.

Some journalism Pulitzer winners and finalists:

1) "Pulitzer Prize awarded to Dana Priest of The Washington Post for her persistent, painstaking reports on secret "black site" prisons and other controversial features of the government's counter-terrorism campaign."

2) "2005 Dana Priest The Washington Post. For her determined, deeply sourced and insightful coverage of United States intelligence operations."

3) "2004 Barton Gellman The Washington Post For his authoritative and provocative coverage of the search for forbidden weapons in Iraq."

The preponderance of the evidence shows that neither the CIA nor government own the MSM.

Source: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=207647

[–]JasonCarswell 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Interesting copypasta.

I have Derailing Democracy, The America The Media Don't Want You To See, a used copy from the Tuscon Pima Public Library. I got it last year but haven't read it yet as it's limited and dated from ©2000, so it's pre-9/11 and about the Seattle riots, etc.

Sad to hear that McGowan may have made that quote up, but it seems awfully odd that he would start off his book like that.

However...

It's worth noting, McGowan's introduction ends at the bottom of page 12, signed January 2000.

Page 13, still under the "Introduction" page header, has just two quotes at the top:

"You know the one thing that is wrong with this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say." President Clinton

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." Former CIA Director William Colby

A 3) In the "Source Index" on page 222 featuring A-F, with admittedly sparse non-internet details only lists the page numbers, right below the 5 for Clinton is the one and only for Colby. Likewise in the "Subject Index" on page 226 featuring all of C and bit of D, is 3 for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) including "and the media".

These are just indexes listing the page numbers for all the quotes and topics. There are no "first source attributions" for any of them, a very wrong statement by the original poster, so...

the Colby quote is NO DIFFERENT than any of the other quotes

...in this regard. They all suck for citations equally, at least if you want to measure up to encyclopaedic standards.

 

A 4) Interesting too about the good but allegedly fake Abraham Lincoln quote, debunked on Snopes:
" As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless. "

 

A 5) Bad link?

 

A 1) I haven't even bothered to try and verify this copypasta from 2011: "There is no primary source or other earlier source extant but McGowan’s for this quote."

 

One could also argue that the quote is wrong because in the USA slavery is only allowed in the prison system, and to "own" someone would be illegal. Why would the CIA do anything illegal?

 

As Corbett recently reported in The CIA's Global Propaganda Network - #PropagandaWatch
/s/politics/comments/28xd/a_new_york_times_report_on_the_cias_mighty/?ref=search_posts
/s/conspiracy/comments/28lc/the_cias_global_propaganda_network_propagandawatch/?ref=search_posts
You don't need to purchase the whole corporation, as that would actually be a hassle. All you need is a handful of the powerful people.

You don't need to own the media if you control them.

 

That was an interesting read and a nice find on that skeptics forum, posted by BasqueArch.

The next post is by Oystein who says, "Cool. Wrong subforum?"

Followed by BasqueArch again, "The government control of the MSM is accused by Conspiracists to explain the lack of sympathetic 9/11 Truther exposure"

And that gets to the crux of this whole episode...

As if access to the MSM hadn't been dominated by propaganda of the "official" narrative and blocked to all Truthers, skeptics, and contrarians.

And on it goes... http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=207647

[–]DffrntDrmmr 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Interesting copypasta

I wouldn't call it "copypasta," though.

Reading the quote, I thought: "That doesn't sound like something a former CIA Director would say (even if it were true). I bet if I googled that quote it's not accurate."

Sure enough, it's not.

The only report of this quote seems to be from this one author, who offers nothing to substantiate his claim.

As noted in Snopes (referring to a different quote): Why have these words been put in a deceased person's mouth? In a general sense, the reason is because dead people make great commentators on modern-day politics: They can’t be questioned about the legitimacy of their comments, interrogated about what they meant, or asked to elaborate about the subject at hand.

Thanks for the additional insight and checking your copy of the book.

[–]JasonCarswell 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

But you did copy it from that forum. Who ever they were, they clearly had a bias.

People say stuff and admit stuff all the time.

I don't trust Quora for shit (like Snopes), but here's another similar statement.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false" ~ CIA Director William Casey

https://www.quora.com/Did-CIA-Director-William-Casey-really-say-Well-know-our-disinformation-program-is-complete-when-everything-the-American-public-believes-is-false?

Now that quote was not meant for public consumption but if you can believe Greg Smith and Barbara Honegger (who's intelligence, but has a great theory about the Pentagon being full of explosives on 9/11 as well).

FYI: I used a camera to photograph the pages (which I will soon link), then I used Google Drive and Google Docs to OCR them. I have yet to actually go through the whole text and reformat it as it was on the page. Eventually this will all actually look good: https://infogalactic.com/info/Derailing_Democracy_Introduction It starts terrifically (haven't read all of it yet), so I figured, hey, maybe worth cleaning up and sharing.

Yes, unfortunately a lot of dead celebs get a lot of misattributions - especially Mark Twain and Emma Goldman - ie. "If there's no dancing at your revolution count me out" or "If voting were effective they'd make it illegal".