news

Snippet
Udo Ulfkotte’s book “Bought Journalists” (Gekaufte Journalisten) was scheduled for
publication in English in May 2017 under the title “Journalists for Hire”. However it seems
the publication was delayed and then cancelled and to date no copies of the book are
available in English. OffG is publishing a number of “summaries” of the contents made for
us by ChrisG. Here, in addition, is a translation of the book’s Postscript, by Sapere Aude.
We don’t have any rights in this work, but make this available under fair use Carl Bernstein
is the American reporter who exposed the Watergate Affair and thus brought about the
resignation of US President Nixon. Bernstein is a Pulitzer prize winner. He is a
“heavyweight” in the field of journalism. After he left the Washington Post in 1977, he spent
six months working on a single text: an article on journalists’ cooperation with the CIA. His
report was published in Rolling Stone. In that article, Bernstein revealed that around 400
American journalists were actively working with the CIA. The New York Times even had a
contract with the CIA under the terms of which journalists could be “loaned” to the CIA at
any time. The best-known lead article writers and commentators in the US were thus on the
books of the CIA, including publishers and top editors – and also foreign journalists. At the
latest since this revelation in 1977 it has been clear that the CIA recruits journalists and
leading staff in media companies worldwide or employs them as informants. What does that
mean for us in Germany? One example: the SPD politician Manfred Lahnstein was the
Federal Finance Minister in 1982 and from 1983 to 2004 worked for the Bertelsmann media
conglomerate, becoming finally a “special representative of the board”. Lahnstein was also a
member of the Trilateral Commission. And since the mid-1990s he has been chair of the
Board of Trustees of the foundation that owns the newspaper Die Zeit. Lahnstein’s name
also surfaces in the estate of the former CIA agent Robert Trumbull Crowley as a CIA
informant. Lahnstein is one of 2619 names of apparent/alleged CIA informants. Robert
Trumbull Crowley died in a Washington hospital on 8 October 2000. He was the deputy
head of operations for the CIA and head of the Clandestine Operations Division. It is
possible that the people named in his list were not aware that they were being ‘run’ as CIA
informants. In August 2014, I wrote to Manfred Lahnstein at Die Zeit to ask him whether he
knew that – like other Germans – he was on the CIA list of informants. And clearly at the
time he was responsible for media at Bertelsmann – because the list included his then
address in Gütersloh. Lahnstein’s reply to me expressed obvious surprise: Thanks for the
tip. I had no idea I am convinced that Lahnstein was telling the truth. My research revealed
that in the past members of the Trilateral Commission appeared almost automatically and
without their knowledge on the CIA list of those who were close to US secret services or
who actively supported them. Lahnstein could have got onto the CIA list just by being a
member of the Trilateral Commission. The message is: stay well away from transatlantic
organisations! It is inexplicable why, despite this, our journalists still continue their
membership of such organisations. Because at the latest by 2006 they ought surely to have
known what goes on there. In 2006 the TV program Arte broadcast a documentary “Benutzt
und gesteuert” [“Used and manipulated”]. The documentary revealed to an astonished
public how the CIA was trying to influence the editorial departments of German publishers
and TV and radio programmes through camouflaged organisations. It was clear: writers,
musicians, the staff of publishers and public radio stations – many of these were being
‘remote-controlled’ from Washington. And magazines – such as the literary magazine Der
Monat [The Month] were being co-financed by the CIA. When this became known as a
result of an article in the New York Times, Die Zeit simply bought out Der Monat. All of this
was never a secret. It was just that no-one wanted to see it. As early as 1996 the CIA had
publicly stated that it was increasing its recruitment of journalists. And where does one find
the best contacts? In the many transatlantic organisations – because the CIA is usually
represented at their meetings. Many of those whom I have named in this book will now likely
maintain that they did not know what was happening around them. They will claim that they
were too stupid, too naive or too incompetent. But it’s all so transparent: the leading people
on the transatlantic campaigns are members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
The CFR is intimately connected to the CIA. And the CFR has many offshoots – such as the
German Council on Foreign Relations (better known to Germans as the Deutsche
Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik (DGAP) – whose godfather at its founding was the CFR.
Almost all the pro-American lobby organisations are linked through the Transatlantic Policy
Network (TPN) – which is a lobby organisation representing European and American big
business, media and think-tanks. Its list of member companies includes: Allianz, AT&T,
BASF, Bertelsmann AG, Boeing, BP, Caterpillar Inc., Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Daimler AG,
Dell, Deutsche Bank, Dow Chemical, Ericsson, Facebook, GE, Hewlett Packard, HSBC,
IBM, Nestlé, Oracle, Pfizer International, SAP AG, Siemens AG, S.W.I.F.T., Syngenta and
UPS. And then there’s the list of the think-tanks which are also linked with the
aforementioned multinationals under the umbrella of the Transatlantic Policy Network:
AmCham EU (The American Chamber of Commerce to the EU), the Aspen Institute –
Berlin, the Aspen Institute – Italy, the Atlantic Council of the United States, the Brookings
Institution, BRUEGEL, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace [!!], the Centre for
European Policy Studies (CEPS), the Chamber of Commerce of the United States,
Chatham House, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS), the DGAP, the European Policy Centre (EPC), the European
Round Table of Industrialists (ERT), the European-American Business Council, the
European Institute, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Institut Français des
Relations Internationales (IFRI), the TransEuropean Policy Studies Association (TEPSA),
UNICE and the US Council on Competitiveness. And finally the “Atlantik-Brücke” and its
partner organisation The American Council on Germany, plus the Rockefellers’ Trilateral
Commission. There are prominent politicians in almost all of the above-mentioned