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What is behind the anti-American Jack Hitt, the man who embarrassed the New York Times
Gerard Jackson
Surprise, surprise ..— The New York Times finds itself embroiled reporting scandal. This time it was the ineffable anti-American Jack Hitt. In April 2006 he did a cover story centred on El Salvador’s anti-abortion legislation. He related the tragic story of Carmen Climaco who was given a 30-year sentence for having abortion. It was later revealed that Jack Hitt had lied and that the woman had been jailed for murdering her child. But why should anyone be surprised at Hitt’s dishonesty. Like all dedicated lefty journalists he has absolutely no respect for the truth — and that also goes for the moronic ‘Pinch’ Sulzberger.
Let us return to the tragic events of 9-11. Before the dust had even settled from the rubble that was once the World Trade Center Melbourne’s self-righteous
leftwing Age published a lengthy attack on President Bush’s national missile defence proposals. That the terrorist atrocities enabled Bush to muster more than enough congressional support for NMD was just too much for The Age which, like its sister rags theGuardian and the New
The article’s tone was appropriately set by the title Killers from outer space by Jack Hitt (Good Weekend 29 September 2001). Calling it something like Space defenders or Space shield would have conveyed the correct impression that it was a national defence system rather than a strategy to wage an offensive war. And that would never do, particularly at The Age where leftwing pathologies are endemic.
The ever-truthful Jack Hitt quoted Lisabeth Gronlund, a physicist with the UCS (Union of Concerned Scientists) who accused the Pentagon of trying to “weaponise” space, asserting that it was dangerous, expensive and unfeasible. How any missile defence could be dangerous if it was not feasible was a question that Hitt apparently thought was too simple-minded to ask. Naturally he quoted Gronlund’s criticisms of how NMD can be thwarted. (That similar criticisms could have been made against Britain’s pre-war radar defences never occurred to Hitt. But the vast majority of journalists are not that hot on history, especially where it’s in conflict with their political prejudices).
Hitt neglected to tell readers that the UCS is a leftwing anti-American organisation that distinguished itself during the Cold War by supporting the Soviet Union. A closer look at the UCS will confirm its hypocrisy and capacity for lying. Despite its title the UCS solicits membership by direct mail to the public, meaning any Joe Blow can join by merely paying the annual subscription fee. As far as I know, most of its directors are not even scientists
Some years ago Lichter and Rothman (political scientists) found that out of a random sample of 7,741 scientists only one was affiliated with the UCS. When they requested permission to poll the membership in an effort to find out how many were actually scientists the organisation refused.
UCS has an interesting political background. Although it was originally devoted to the cause of nuclear disarmament it became notorious for its pro-Soviet stance and venomous opposition to nuclear power. In the ‘70 the pro-Soviet and pro-Castro Helen Caldicott made the UCS’s ideology and political allegiance abundantly when she stated: “Scientists who work for nuclear power or nuclear energy have sold their soul to the devil. They are either dumb, stupid, or highly compromised. . . . Free enterprise really means rich people get richer. And they have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process. . . . Capitalism is destroying the earth. Cuba is a wonderful country.” (Strangely enough this one-time strident apologist for the late and unlamented Soviet empire never once condemned the Soviet’s own nuclear energy program).
In a vicious promotional blurb for a pro-Soviet propaganda film the UCS described it “as an expose of America’s top level corporate and banking links with fascism . . . in the effort to gain worldwide domination. It dramatically ties American bankers with our first strike policies and shows how nuclear stockpiling has secretly polluted the United States . . .America ? — from Hitler to M-X [missiles] indicts the United States as aggressor in today's international move to war . . .” The organisation’s transformation into an anti-nuclear, anti-American Soviet front caused large numbers to resign, reducing the its membership to a handful of diehards. (I don’t know its current size).
How it organises and uses petitions that its media mates then falsely publicise as representative of the views of the ‘scientific community’ is equally interesting. In 1975 it mailed an antinuclear petition to 15,000 scientists, subscribers to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a publication well-known for its antinuclear stance. Even so, it managed to collect only 2,300 names.
Nevertheless, the ideological likes of Jack Hitt still used this figure to falsely claim that scientists in general were urging a slowdown in nuclear energy, despite the fact that this number only amounted to 0.3 per cent of the total number of natural scientists in the US at that time. In 1989 it circulated a petition urging action against ‘global warming’. Most of those who did not initially sign were generally approached two times or more.
This tactic finally netted them 700 scientists, including some Nobel Laureates. However, it seems only four of the signatories at the most were involved in climatology. Incidents like this impelled Frank Press (president of the National Academy of Sciences) to warn members in 1990 about lending their credibility to issues on which they had no specialised knowledge, drawing particular attention to the UCS’s global warming petition.
(Ironically, the organisation's petition was undermined by a Greenpeace survey that found that only 13 per cent of climatologists surveyed thought the greenhouse effect was already underway and unstoppable).
In spite of the in UCS’s despicable record and its obvious contempt for the truth journalists like Jack Hitt insist on according it respectability when it deserves only loathing. Unfortunately, Hitt also saw fit to interview Dan Smith, a so-called analyst with the CDI (Centre for Defence Information). According to Smith, and Hitt saw no reason to contradict him, the NMD is a threat to world peace. Moreover, it’s impossible for Americans to protect themselves.
Now who is this Dan Smith? He was an associate fellow at the Institute for Policies Studies, and organisation that is infamous for its pro-terrorist, pro-Soviet and pro-Castro activities. In fact, KGB agents frequented its headquarters at Q St, Washington, D.C. This is how Brian Crozier (a highly respected commentator on intelligence matters and a fellow of the prestigious Institute for the Study of Conflict and one of the world’s leading experts on the Soviet Union) summed up the nature of the IPS:
The IPS is the perfect intellectual front for Soviet activities which would be resisted if they were too originate openly from the KGB.
And the CDI? It’s nothing but an IPS front. It was pro-Soviet from its very inception, strongly opposed every major American military program while making
In 1981 LaRocque, the CDI’s director, visited Havana as Castro’s personal guest. In keeping with his pro-Soviet sympathies LaRocque made the ridiculous claim that Soviet influence on the Cuban military was “non-existent” and that the Soviet impact on the country was minimal. That the Cuban intelligence service (DGI) was under the direct control of a KGB general was a fact he deliberately ignored. (In 1968 the Soviets ordered Castro to replace the Cuban head of the DGI, Manuel ‘Barbarossa’ Pineiro, with a KGB general. So much for LaRocque’s brazen lie.) LaRocque went on to absurdly claim that the Soviets had no influence on “Cuban policy” in Africa.
In 1981, on instructions from the Soviet Union’s International Department, the CDI sponsored The First Conference on Nuclear War in Europe” in Groningen, Holland. This was part of the Soviet Union’s campaign to heighten Europeans fear of nuclear to an extent that ‘pacifist’ sentiments would force NATO to abandon its nuclear shield. To fuel fear of war LaRocque exclaimed at a public meeting in Holland: “If you dummies let us, we’ll [not the Kremlin] fight World War III in Europe.” To LaRocque and the rest of his pro-Soviet clique America was the enemy, never the Soviet empire.
To demonstrate his loyalty to the Soviets, LaRocque appeared on Moscow television on 5 June 1985 television to attack his country for not surrendering to Moscow’s arms demands. There was nothing exceptional in LaRocque’s behaviour as he had maintained intimate contact with Soviet officials in both Washington and Moscow.
Yet Jack Hitt as the nerve to present the leftwing anti-American CDI as a trustworthy organisation genuinely concerned with America’s security. Hitt then gave us the anti-NMD views of Michael Krepon of the Washington-based Stimson Institute. Needless to say, it too is linked to the notorious IPS. Now it’s no accident that every single critic of NMD that Hitt interviewed is connected with the IPS.
The representatives of these organisations didn’t approach him; either he approached them or his rag made the connection for him. Either way it’s a disgusting situation that demonstrates the pernicious influence of the IPS and its subversive network. It also demonstrates the vicious anti-American bigotry of The Age. That this rage should publish an article like this as the bodies of the victims of bin Laden’s terrorism were still being recovered from the rubble of the World Trade Center shows what an ideologically opportunistic and thoroughly repulsive rag it really is.
Ironically, however, if we ignore the opinions of the leftwing activists that Hitt interviewed his article actually, albeit inadvertently, lenTs strong support to the need and feasibility of a national missile defence system.
Gerard Jackson is Brookes’ economics editor.
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 16 April 2007
York Times, is obsessed with keeping America defenceless against a nuclear missile attack. So determined was The Age to discredit NMD it
even deceived its readers into thinking that the critical sources it used were honest and independent while in fact they were extreme leftwing organisations with a very nasty pro-Soviet history.
excuses for Soviet military expenditure. It even defended the Soviet Union’s brutal invasion of Afghanistan on the grounds that the invasion was “defensive” action. Not surprisingly, it also supported the use of Cuban proxies in Africa, even though the sole purpose of these troops was to impose Marxist-totalitarian on black states that would be every bit as vicious as Castro’s regime.