Unprivileged Belligerent: Pentagon Kills The Radio Star

Experimental unconventional warfare has been a term used to hide clandestine movements of troops and agents within a geographical area. It first involves Intelligence collection provided through the auspices of informants that are embedded in what can be called unstable or hostile areas.

During the Vietnam War, from 1965 to 1972. The Phoenix Program was a CIA-designed and coordinated infiltration of the political infrastructure of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, also known as the Viet Cong Communist Army.

During this operation the CIA had been covertly infiltrating Viet Cong strongholds and creating what can be called execution lists of those who were considered subversives or dissidents.

One of the tactics included parading innocent Vietnamese citizens around their village with a bag over their head and a leash around their neck, terrorizing those who occupied the small villages. The Vietnamese citizen on the leash would then be instructed to indicate which house the Viet Cong informer might live.

The next day, The CIA’s Provincial Reconnaissance Units would kick the door down and kill everyone inside, women and children included.

In South America, there was an experiment that took place in 1973 where the United Sates took part in an operation where civil upheaval and civil discord was used to facilitate an exchange of power.

The power that was exchanged was economic power, political power, and power over the people where lives were controlled with the aid of a secret national security apparatus. The enforcers of the new experiment were clandestine intelligence operators that were later revealed to be CIA operatives. Their objective was to create a common enemy or ideology, then round up dissidents, and then place them in internment camps where they were either tortured or killed.

This experiment of power exchange and government overthrow took place on September 11th. Not September 11th, 2001, but September 11th, 1973.

The interesting thing about this government experiment is that prominent figures in both the George W. Bush administration and the Obama Administration were involved with this experiment. There is a compelling argument that these men are still calling the shots and pulling the strings in a similar experiment being carried out in the United States.

This Experiment was called “Operation Condor.” It was a destabilization exercise that affected Chile and later Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

In 1973 the CIA was urged to create covert operation to prepare a preemptive military coup. The idea was to move troops and death squads into these countries and eventually use them to round up and kill alleged subversives and enemy combatants.

The man who was involved in these operations of course was Henry Kissinger.

Kissinger declared, “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.” But he and CIA Director Richard M. Helms blocked the proposed pre-election coup as unworkable. More time was needed, they argued.

Allende of course won the election.

The Director of Central Intelligence told the group that President Nixon had decided that an Allende regime in Chile was not acceptable to the United States.

The US involvement in coup planning began even before Allende’s election victory, under the codename FUBELT, with action plans prepared for Kissinger’s consideration. One group of officers working under CIA direction carried out the assassination of General Rene Schneider, a pro-Allende officer, in an unsuccessful attempt to spark a full-scale coup before Allende could take office.

The CIA set up a fascist organization called Fatherland and Liberty, headed by a former public relations man for Ford Motor Company, Federico Willoughby McDonald, who became Pinochet’s press secretary after the coup.

Interesting how “Fatherland” and “Homeland” have a nice ring to them about now.

The CIA helped the military in Chile draw up lists of those to be exterminated. On September 10, 1973, the day before the junta struck, the names of 3,000 high-level and 20,000 mid-level leaders of popular organizations — trade unions, student groups, tenants’ groups, peasant committees, civil rights and civil liberties groups, left-wing political parties — were distributed to the death squads. Virtually all those who did not flee the country were hunted down and murdered.

If anyone remembers the movie Missing, starring Sissy Spacek or the book The Execution of Charles Horman, you will recall the story of Horman. He was a Harvard graduate and an American journalist documentary filmmaker with left-wing sympathies and became one of tens of thousands of workers and intellectuals named on death lists drawn up in the period of the coup, with the assistance of US intelligence operatives.

Artists, political cartoonists and journalists that were not sympathetic to the coup were rounded up and executed. Many were found dead in their homes while others were rounded up and tortured.

Many never returned. Horman had inadvertently been given sensitive information about U.S. involvement in the coup while chatting with a U.S. Navy engineer, which could have led to his secret arrest and execution. The efforts of his family to find him were met with foot-dragging at the U.S. Embassy in Santiago.

The Condor plan was actually nicknamed “The Dirty War” because it was manufactured to weed out outspoken individuals that were seen as threats to the progress of state sponsored terror and power grabs.

As I have said before, in a dirty war you begin to see journalists and editorial cartoonists, comedians and artists being told to back off or face some serious threats and consequences. In the dirty war in South America many journalists were either killed, suicided, or were disappeared.

Back in February, I warned my audience that there would be a slew of Journalists quitting, retiring or being fired because they would be told to comply with “safe zone” programming and news reporting.

Those that could not handle the changed would be asked to leave or would voluntarily leave because they did not want to have to deal with the consequences of what they say or report.

On February 10th, 2015 I presented “Invasion of Disinformation” where I warned that we should keep our eyes on the changes that were about to take place in the media. The show was prompted by the sudden reprimand given to NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams. NBC Nightly News anchor, Brian Williams’ credibility plummeted after he acknowledged that he exaggerated his role in a helicopter incident in Iraq. At the same time Jon Stewart host and editorialist of the “Daily Show” on Comedy Central told his audience at a taping on February 10th, 2015 The Comedy Central show while being a comedic view of the news was considered a credible alternative source for editorialized and satirized news.

We were also told that David Letterman was leaving his show, and we also heard of several Journalists that were either killed or that died.

Bob Simon, a longtime correspondent for CBS’ “60 Minutes” and a CBS News veteran of more than 45 years, was killed in a car crash on the West Side Highway.

58 year old David Carr a columnist for the New York Times dropped dead in his office just a day after the Simon report. Carr had fell dead just after interviewing NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in a “Times Talks” episode which was captured on video for Google.

It was also announced that Ned Colt, a former NBC News foreign correspondent, has died. On “NBC Nightly News” tonight, Lester Holt reported that Colt “covered the world for NBC News for more than a decade starting in the mid-90s.” In 2004, Colt and his NBC News crew were kidnapped and held for three days in Iraq.

Lester Holt replaced Brian Williams at NBC.

After the deaths of these journalists, Attorney General Eric Holder addressed the national press club and warned reporters against coverage which “has a negative impact on the national security of the nation.”

Holder conceded that the US is not yet “in a time of war,” but cited censorship during World War II as an example of the government’s ability to clamp down on the press when they feel it necessary.

“In World War II, if a reporter had found out about that existence of the Manhattan Project, is that something that should have been disclosed?” Holder asked, by way of providing an “example” of the need to limit media coverage.

At the same time, Holder’s assessment of the US as not “in a time of war,” seems to contradict his own comments just a month ago in Paris, when he declared the US to be at war with “radical Islam,” and declared the US “determined to take the fight to them.” Holder made the comments in response to questions about the Justice Department’s hostility toward journalists covering national security matters, suggesting that the policy is only going to get worse as officials escalate the current crop of wars.

The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the freedom of speech individually and for the media, stating that “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.

The World Press Freedom Index spotlights the negative impact of conflicts on freedom of information and its protagonists. The ranking of some countries has also been affected by a tendency to interpret national security needs in an overly broad and abusive manner to the detriment of the right to inform and be informed. This trend constitutes a growing threat worldwide and is even endangering freedom of information in countries regarded as democracies.

In an unstable environment, the media becomes a strategic goal and target for groups or individuals whose attempts to control news and information violate the guarantees enshrined in international law, in particular, article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1977 Protocols Additional 1 and 2 to the Geneva Conventions.

However, it seems that the Pentagon is issuing protocols for how Journalists, commentators and talk show hosts should act during wartime.

Last time I checked we were not at war, however I have been saying that we seem to be heading that way.

The Pentagon has released a book of instructions on the “law of war,” detailing acceptable ways of killing the enemy. The manual also states that journalists can be labeled “unprivileged belligerents,” an obscure term that replaced “enemy combatant.”

The 1,176-page “Department of Defense Law of War Manual” explains that shooting, exploding, bombing, stabbing, or cutting the enemy are acceptable ways of getting the job done, but the use of poison or asphyxiating gases is not allowed.

Surprise attacks and killing retreating troops have also been given the green light.

But the lengthy manual doesn’t only talk about protocol for those on the frontline. It also has an extensive section on journalists – including the fact that they can be labeled terrorists.

I am sure that as we prepare for so called war the call has also gone out to independent journalists, editorial cartoonists, comedians and artists.

“In general, journalists are civilians. However, journalists may be members of the armed forces, persons authorized to accompany the armed forces, or unprivileged belligerents,” the manual states.

The term “unprivileged belligerents” replaces the Bush-era term “unlawful enemy combatant.”

The Pentagon did not specify the exact circumstances under which a journalist might be declared an unprivileged belligerent.

Last year you may remember the failed attempt by the State department and the FCC to try and control news content and editorial bias.

The FCC proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country. With its “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” or CIN, the agency wanted to send researchers into news rooms to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run.

The purpose of the CIN, according to the FCC, was to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters about “the process by which stories are selected” and how often stations cover “critical information needs,” along with “perceived station bias” and “perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.”

Needless to say the plan was tabled, however now the issue has once again reared its head because a war is now in process.

The Obama administration has gone to great lengths to curtail subversive material online by pushing a contaminated version of Net Neutrality, and now with war on the horizon we are seeing that the Pentagon will see to it that outspoken journalists and maybe even talk show hosts like me will toe the line when it comes to imparting what is seen as sensitive information.

It is a matter of the Pentagon kills the Radio Star.

Text – Check out Ground Zero Radio with Clyde Lewis Live Nightly @ http://www.groundzeromedia.org