Disarming the U.S. on the “Information Battlefield”

Paul Goble, a specialist on international broadcasting and the propaganda war being waged over Ukraine, writes that “…as effective as [Vladimir] Putin’s disinformation campaign has been inside Russia, it has been even more successful beyond that country’s borders.” One problem, he says, is that the Western media treat Putin’s lies as just another point of view.

Another problem is that the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency that oversees all U.S. civilian international media, seems to be completely clueless as to how to win the information war and make sure truth triumphs over lies.

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Concerning the role played by the Western media, Goble contends that “…many Western outlets report what Moscow ‘says,’ while describing any Ukrainian government statement as ‘claims.’ Invariably, doing so is called objectivity but in fact it is anything but. Instead, it gives an opening to governments like Putin’s, which are prepared to lie and to spread their lies widely, confident that what they say, however untrue or outrageous, will be reported.”

This is one reason why the idea that Ukraine shot down the Malaysian plane, thinking it was Putin’s jet, has gotten so much attention in the West. It gets picked up as just another point of view, even though it is a blatant lie and was designed as such. Russia has a propaganda channel, Russia Today (RT), which broadcasts this disinformation inside the U.S. on a regular basis.

Showing his own receptivity to Russian propaganda, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul went on a new conservative news channel, Newsmax TV, to suggest that the government of Ukraine had shot the plane down. The former Republican congressman has been a regular guest on RT, and has wandered far from the days when he claimed to be an anti-communist.

Goble says many in the West fall victim to Moscow’s lies, “either out of a confusion between balance and objectivity, a conviction that all governments lie and that no one should be surprised, or a commitment to maintaining good relations with the Russian government no matter what it does.” It is not clear what motivates Ron Paul, but his acceptance of the Kremlin point of view makes a mockery out of his proclaimed devotion to liberty around the world.

All Accusations of Russia’s Invasion Into Ukraine Part of Information War – Lavrov

MOSCOW, August 26 (RIA Novosti) – All accusations of Russia’s attempts to escalate the crisis in Ukraine, circulating in Western media, are blatant lies and a part of an information war, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

Spy vs. spy: 2 famous defectors on Russian super-deception

Beware those who deride Anatoliy Golitsyn. In this case, we have a ‘defector’ who does noting to disprove Golitsyn, his theories nor predictions… 94% of which came to be true. This is essentially low-level slander and a character assassination from someone who wants to discredit. Mr. Pacepa is someone who spreads disinformation in order to cover up, whitewash or distract those who are concerned about threats originating from today’s neo-Soviet Union. He could also be a disinformationist himself. During Golitsyn’s time (and even today), it’s known that the Soviet Union had also dispatched numerous fake defectors in order to make true defectors hard to believe. The proven events alone as fact today should speak for themselves.

One of the hottest books of 2013 was written by Lt. Gen Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking Soviet bloc official ever to defect in Cold War history, whose explosive exposé of Soviet “disinformation” strategies was turned into a blockbuster film.

However, other defectors have also tried to make Americans aware of the serious dangers posed to the West by Russia, though it is increasingly portrayed as America’s friend and ally.

One such defector was Anatoliy Golitsyn, a spy who defected in 1961 and who made over 200 predictions about specific strategies Russia would employ to deceive the West – most of them supplied to the CIA in the form of “memoranda,” and later published in a book titled, “New Lies for Old.” According to intelligence expert and author Mark Riebling, 94 percent of these predictions have come to pass. Among them:

Liberalization of the Soviet bloc (including the apparent separation of independent republics from Moscow). “Glasnost” and “Perestroika” would be deployed as buzzwords to deceive Western media.

Reunification of Germany and the demolition of the Berlin Wall.