Who is walter pincus

Skip to main content. Thursday, November 4, - pm. Washington , DC Non Fiction. By Walter Pincus. Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations. Published: Diversion Books - November 2nd, This was again untrue and Walsh argues in his book, Firewall , that Bush was using Pincus to spread disinformation on the investigation. As Walsh pointed out: "Of all the sideswipes that we suffered during this period, the false report that we were considering indicting the nation's still-admired former president hurt us the most.

Walsh was attacked by the right-wing media of carrying out the "biggest witch hunt in America since Salem". The leader of the Republican Party in the Senate, Bob Dole , made a speech where he called on Walsh to close down the investigation. He criticized Walsh's "inability to understand the simple fact that it is time to leave Iran-Contra to the history books". Walter Pincus also led the attack on Gary Webb when he published his series of articles on CIA involvement with the Contras and the drug industry.

This included information that Pincus had been recruited by the CIA when he was at Yale University in order to spy on student groups at several international youth conferences in the s. Later, Geneva Overholser, the Washington Post ombudsman, criticized Pincus and other reporters working for the newspaper: "A principal responsibility of the press is to protect the people from government excesses.

The Washington Post among others showed more energy for protecting the CIA from someone else's journalistic excesses. He interviewed Pincus and asked him why in October, , he had not reported on the CIA's inspector general report admitting the agency worked with drug dealers throughout the s. Pincus was unable to explain why he and other mainstream journalists completely ignored this report that helped to support Webb's case against the CIA. That's obvious and it's really a nauseating and very discouraging story, because as a journalist, the only thing you have is your credibility.

When that is shredded, there's no way to rebuild it This is an outstanding case where three of the major newspapers in the country decided to take out somebody, a competitor whose mistakes seem by any measure to be very minor. Pincus eventually admitted that he had carried out covert operations for the CIA in the s and s. However, he denied being a CIA asset later in his career. Pincus also became involved in the Valerie Plame case. In October, he wrote an article where he claimed Plame worked for the CIA and had been responsible for sending her husband, Joe Wilson , to investigate reports that Iraq's government had tried to buy uranium in Niger.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald issued a grand jury subpoena to Pincus on August 9, , in an attempt to discover the identity of the government official who told him about Plame and Wilson.

Pincus gave a deposition to Fitzgerald on 15th September. Afterwards he issued a public statement that claimed that Fitzgerald had dropped his demand that he should reveal his source.

However, it is generally believed that his source was Richard L. The social connections with journalists were a crucial part of the CIA's propaganda machine.

Chief among CIA friends were the Alsop brothers. Joseph Alsop wrote a column with his brother Stewart for the New York Herald Tribune and they occasionally penned articles at the suggestion of Frank Wisner, based upon classified information leaked to them.

In exchange, they provided CIA friends with observations gathered on trips abroad. Such give-and-take was not unusual among the Georgetown set in the s. Ben Bradlee, while working for the State Department as a press attache in the American embassy in Paris, produced propaganda regarding the Rosenbergs' spying conviction and death sentence in cooperation with the CIA It was a social thing, my dear fellow.

Cord Meyer developed and nurtured his own friendships among journalists. He seconded the nomination of Washington Post writer Walter Pincus for membership in the Waltz Group, a Washington social organization.

Cord also maintained friendly ties with William C. Baggs of the Miami News and foreign-affairs writer Herb Gold. Cord's ties to academia served him when he needed favors from publishers and journalists. In some accounts, he and Time writer C. Jackson together recruited Steinem.

He was also close to Chattanooga Times writer Charles Bartlett throughout his life. Joseph B. Hayes was their chairman by Years earlier when Hayes was vice-president for radio and television at the Post, he was appointed by Kennedy to a secret CIA propaganda task force. Friendly left the Post soon after Bradlee came on board, and Hayes left when Johnson appointed him ambassador to Switzerland in But poor Bradlee claims he didn't know that Cord Meyer was a globetrotting CIA destabilizer in the fifties, just as he knew nothing about CIA links when he took time off from the Post to work as a propagandist for the U.

His assignment was to place stories in the European press to discredit the Rosenbergs, who had been sentenced to death, and Bradlee followed orders. Benjamin Bradlee: from Post reporter to embassy propagandist, then on to Newsweek and back to the Post as executive editor, without breaking stride. The point of Davis' book is that this pattern is repeated again and again in Post history; she calls it "mediapolitics" - the use of information media for political purposes.

Unlike Bradlee, Katharine does not seem as sophisticated or conniving; she was apparently completely sucked in by such charmers as Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, and even Henry Kissinger, who took her to the movies. She supported Nixon in and , changed her mind about him later, but has yet to waver from the anti-Communism that kept the Post from criticizing US policy in Vietnam.

Her idea of an awkward situation is asking Nixon for National Guard protection during anti-Vietnam demonstrations in Washington; Lyndon never made her ask. The demonstrators had to be duped -- after all, she had taken the time to get her facts straight with a trip to Vietnam in , where she shopped for blue and white china, and had access to all the assorted power brokers and opinion makers who showed up at the masked ball that Truman Capote gave for her. Between Bradlee and Katharine, with journalism such as this it's a wonder that the Vietnamese people survived.

The elitist conservatism and intelligence connections of the Post are as important today as they ever were; Katharine and Bradlee are still in control. Davis could have remarked on the current New Right editorial line in the Post, or added the fact that former editorial page editor Philip Geyelin joined the CIA for a year in , while on leave from the Wall Street Journal, but found the work boring and went back to the Journal.

And she also doesn't mention that Walter Pincus, a Post reporter who still covers intelligence issues, took two CIA-financed trips overseas to international student conferences in , and waited to write about them until when reporters everywhere were exposing CIA conduits. Informed readers of Geyelin who stills does a column and Pincus can learn much from they way these writers filter history.

This may qualify them as good journalists among their colleagues, but for the unwitting masses it simply amounts to more disinformation. The CIA connections that Davis does mention are dynamite.