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Bought Journalists: English translation of postscript to Udo Ulfkotte’s suppressed book

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 organisations.
That’s it: the network of big business, media and think-tanks which many journalists in leading media organisations, CEOs, politicians and academics have become entangled.
Are they all just in it for fun? Is it then a conspiracy theory, if I am personally convinced that high-level brainwashing is being carried out by the many individual cells of the Transatlantic Policy Network and the organisations in its periphery? That the point of view of the members and friends of these many lobby organisations, the recipients of their scholarships and the ones who carry out research for them is so cleverly shaped and narrowed until it becomes a perfect medium for the ideas of the multinationals, the secret services and US interests and that their ideas and strategies appear to them as if they were their own?
The ideas shaped in this way are then cast out like spawn into countless numbers of publications and other communications media and sold as the products of their own independent thinking.


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Deschutes
Deschutes
Aug 5, 2019 8:08 PM

It is quite an amazing feat that 5 years after the publication of the original German version of this damning book that names the names and blows the lid off the massive CIA influence over leading German journalists and media outlets–there is NO English version available. It has been privished. That is to say, the CIA made a deal with/bribed the Canadian publisher of the English version to never publish it. I can’t believe somebody who actually has an English copy of this great book has not scanned and uploaded a PDF of it!? Like the WTF? Stop hoarding your English copy you bitch and get word out already, jesus christ! I mean, what good is hoarding your very own copy of this book–when the only good it will do is when it is released to the public.

John Watwood
John Watwood
Feb 6, 2018 2:16 PM

I notice that everything is laid on the laps of the CIA. Everything is run out of the Pentagon, and similar in Britain though I forget the alphabet letters of that organization at this time. All the alphabet soup agencies works independent and yet together along with corporations for ‘the greater good’ under the umbrella of the Pentagon and UN’s IMF. In 1996 is when media became completely(nearly so) monopolized and conglomerated into the hands of the few. Blaming just the CIA is not only shortsighted, it is wrong. CIA via Pentagon, Pentagon is government, is controlled by those who control the currency and the ‘debt'(IMF private share holder families) and the UN. There are 17 ‘Intelligence’ in the US alone that we know of and do the same works to ensure the continued hierarchical power structure. Journalists don’t have to do any of it, they do so to: go along to get along, hang out with ‘elites'(ego, social standing, ergo), and for a paycheck and a pension. All the journalists have to do is to unite, refuse, and walk away and the MSM will come to a crashing halt. Same with Doctors and vaccines or any other industry. People just saying no all together or enough of them. But here’s a good place to go to see the inter-connectedness: theyrule.net. Sort of a rant, but it is a web that all strands leads to the heart and crux of it all.

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 5, 2018 7:00 PM

Jeanne d’Arc 2018
https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/free_ahed_global_loc/?kZhiJmb
[Off topic –unless one widens the discussion: from an unbought journalist to an unbought medium through which to post this young face through which there shines the courage of an unbought soul. “And if the salt loses its savour, wherewith then shalt the world be salted?]

Admin
Admin
Feb 5, 2018 11:38 PM
Reply to  vexarb

Avaaz are not unbought.

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 6, 2018 6:41 PM
Reply to  Admin

@Admin. Many thanks for.that terse call to caution. And such self-effacing modesty; I had to go to Google to find Off-Guardian’s incisive probe by BlackCatte. Well done, another Soros wolf with its fleecy overcoat ripped off.
https://off-guardian.org/2015/07/18/avaaz-clicktivist-heroes-or-soros-wolf-in-woolly-disguise/
But I hold to my contention that the girl herself is unbought, a potential Joan of Arc. Though why a Soros Soft Left mind control outfit should want a potential St.Joan let loose on the IDF is a tough question. Perhaps they think she is less dangerous to armed soldiers as an unarmed girl walking “free” near her home under the watchful eye of the IDF than as an imprisoned martyr and a rallying cry for an armed Intifada?
And now I have a further puzzle: is Off-G unbought? Certainly not by me: I have not even madea donation.

Admin
Admin
Feb 6, 2018 7:25 PM
Reply to  vexarb

We have no undeclared backers or income at all. Our only financial support comes from readers who donate to us through Patreon or PayPal. We’ve been asked to feature paid-for content and have been approached by slightly shadowy people asking us if they could “help” us, but we aren’t interested in any of that. We run this site as an open platform for facts and opinions barred from the mainstream, not to support special interest groups or covertly promote their agenda.

Vera
Vera
Feb 6, 2018 8:34 PM
Reply to  Admin

Oh come on, everyone knows Catte is Vladimir Putin’s gf

Adrian E.
Adrian E.
Feb 5, 2018 11:08 AM

I read the German version of the book, and as far as I remember the mechanisms about which it is alleged that Ulofkotte does not recognize them are rather his main emphasis – in general, journalistst don’t have to receive direct commands, just those who adapt to what is expected from them tend to get ahead.
Yes, Ulofkotte also writes about suspected cases of direct interference by transatlantic foundations, but neither is that a contradiction to this Darwinian selection process nor is it true that Ulofkotte rejects or ignores the fundamental role of that selection process.

rogerglewis
rogerglewis
Feb 5, 2018 10:12 AM

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Udo_Ulfkotte
His views of how the media is controlled is outdated and incomplete and seems to rely of declassified documents from Operation Mockingbird. It is incomplete because researchers such as Herman and Chomsky[18] , Krüger[19] , Müller[20] , Lueg[21] , Jaworski, Stern and Stremme[22] , Husting and Orr[23] have shown that direct control of journalists is a rare exception today. Instead control is represented by a kind of Darwinian selection process. Those “fittest for the job” survive by a top-down controled process influenced by their socialization, schooling, class conciousness, higher education, etc.

Harry Stotle
Harry Stotle
Feb 5, 2018 4:42 PM
Reply to  rogerglewis

The two are not mutually exclusive – in other words although conformity is an important ingredient in the selection process (nicely illustrated in the clip you link to) this does not preclude intelligence agencies exterting influence over reportage from the Middle East, for example, not least because few western journalist are brave enough to venture into the war zone.
At the same time there is no disgust amongst so-called respectable journalists when those responsible for mass murder are regulalrly given a platform to espouse their unwanted rhetoric, or are lionised by in-house sycophants – some of the shite churned out on Blair, Obama, and HRC has been almost laughable.
It gets a bit repetitious saying so, but the lack of media curiosity after 9/11, up to and including censorship of alternative narratives tell us all we need to know about where they are coming from and that the only space where people are prepared to speak truth to power are sites like Off-G – sad, but true.

rogerglewis
rogerglewis
Feb 5, 2018 4:50 PM
Reply to  Harry Stotle

True enough Harry, I have a lot of time for Wiki Spooks and also project Voltaire. I am always wary of COntrolled opposition though and of course as in medi evil times when witches were drowned to see if they were guilty perhaps Mr Ulfkotte’s is a posthumous pass.
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2017/10/controlled-opposition-glossy-anarchy.html

John Watwood
John Watwood
Feb 6, 2018 2:02 PM
Reply to  rogerglewis

I will check out this web site. And I agree with your analogy.

John Watwood
John Watwood
Feb 6, 2018 2:00 PM
Reply to  Harry Stotle

I absolutely concur. And by doing so, being compliant to a conglomerate narrative and propaganda, are herding themselves to their own demise. Along with the rest of us.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Feb 23, 2018 6:26 AM
Reply to  rogerglewis

Absolutely. It is exemplified by the Murdoch cancer-there, ANY sign of ideological unreliability is career destroying. You don’t necessarily get sacked on the spot, although that is common enough, but side-lined until you go bonkers.

Deschutes
Deschutes
Aug 5, 2019 8:17 PM
Reply to  rogerglewis

Your post reveals how little you know about Ulfkotte, his work in journalism covering decades, not to mention I doubt you even bothered to watch his RT interview. Go and watch the RT interview so you know at least a tiny bit before dissing him.