Paul Klein's CIA business partner in the former communist bloc, Mark Palmer, did us the great service of outlining the important political function of imperialist TV enterprises (like the ones he worked on with Paul) for "democratizing" foreign states. Let's take a look inside! 
But first! A refresher on the Klein family's links to Palmer. The Kleins helped Palmer's Central European Media Enterprises install a broadcasting empire in the former Eastern Bloc on behalf of billionaires like Ron Lauder. Also partnered with Palmer's CIA foundation, CECHE
Alrighty, back to business. Palmer tells us about the lodestar guiding his entire career: anti-communism.
"Stalin, Hitler, Mao and others committed the worst crimes against humanity in the short history of our species." Is that in ascending or descending order?
"Stalin, Hitler, Mao and others committed the worst crimes against humanity in the short history of our species." Is that in ascending or descending order?
Palmer believes television is essential to "democratic growth" (think economic growth, but for Freedom and Democracy™). Democratic growth encompasses all the stages of a color revolution from the early planning stages to the regime change to consolidation of power.
As Palmer is never shy to admit, he would know! In Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland and more, Palmer was a CIA gardener, watering the seedlings of democratic growth. From Solidarity to Central Euro. Media Enterprises (with the Kleins), his experience covers every stage of dem. growth
So important is TV in establishing a beachhead in the enemy camp, Palmer includes setting up a global TV/radio fund as a plank in his "action agenda". Whether it's North Korea, China, Iran, Afghanistan, or Africa, Palmer's message is clear: the medium is the weapon!
If you weren't reading along carefully (shame on you!), you prob missed this juicy detail. In earlier stages of a regime change op, when explicit political confrontation is not viable, Palmer recommends tactically using subjects like health and environment to secure a foothold
Hence, his CIA-NGO: The Center for Communications, Health and the Environment (CECHE), with whom the Kleins were proud partners. Palmer it must be said was way ahead of his time (see his example from Hungary), creating a blueprint for environmentalism as a tool for regime change
I dont know bout yall but I find it fascinating that one of the most vocal twitteristas on global health imperialism and astro-turfed environmentalism worked with an innovator in these domains. Just goes to show the value of Professional [CIA] Experience!
Under Reagan, Palmer was a key member of Project Truth, an ambitious anti-communist "counter-propaganda" effort. PT recognized the importance of TV for psywar but before we get to that, check out the winners Palmer was working with.. what a squad!
archive.org/details/Projec…
archive.org/details/Projec…
The USSR, Nicaragua, Poland, Afghanistan, and Southeast Asia, were among the many targets of Project Truth's information war, a war was increasingly waged through teevee screens
Project Truth was Project Democracy's predecessor, established by the infamous NSDD 77 of which Palmer was a leading architect. NSDD 77 "laid out a comprehensive framework for ... psychological warfare." Also established NED (Palmer was a co-founder).
consortiumnews.com/2017/03/25/how…
consortiumnews.com/2017/03/25/how…
Bear with me I promise we'll get back to Palmer's thoughts on TV in his how to colonize the entire planet book, but this is also a story about Paul Klein, so we need to briefly return to Barry Zorthian, head of PSYOPs in Vietnam. Remember this report from Zorthian's office?
Aint it interesting that Paul partnered both with the man described as an architect of a "comprehensive framework for psychological warfare" under Reagan and a man who held the job title US Mission Coordinator for Psychological Operations in Vietnam?
Palmer and Zorthian, leading theorists and practitioners of psychological operations, both with keen interests in modernizing the application of TV to psywar, join forces with Paul Klein, legendary TV exec, chief of research and audience measurement and then programming at NBC 🤝
Palmer's understanding of TV and the findings in Zorthian's TV in Vietnam report are actually very complementary. While Palmer highlights the role TV has to play in "democratic growth", Zorthian's team uses the old-fashioned language: nation building and pacification
In light of their connection to Paul Klein, it's notable they both stress the role of entertainment programming. First Palmer: entertainment is the hook, a way of drawing in more eyeballs to the "independent" network and away from the dreary programming of the target's state TV
The Zorthian report, which served as the basis of TV psyops in south Vietnam (where they built a broadcasting infrastructure from scratch), touches on this too. But it also adds that US entertainment can peddle an image of US culture that pacifies resistance to the US occupation
If the projection of US culture bits sound like the CIA's Congress for Cultural Freedom (including the emphasis on touring "cultural artists"), that's no coincidence. Here's Duke Ellington pictured with Zorthian and his kids in India during his '63 State Dept tour.
Another thing Palmer and Zorthian agree on is the importance of "independent" TV networks. What Palmer means by independent is: wholly dependent on imperialist capital backed by the US gov, and managed by local anti-communist cadres, trained up by an army of US consultants
The benefits of such an arrangement go without saying. Palmer's own ventures with the Kleins illustrate the US gov/capital collab he describes. While he installed a media empire for his "eight gorillas", his CIA-NGO, CECHE, was training the pool of future TV managers/specialists
As a classified report in the middle of a counter-insurgency war in Vietnam, the Zorthian report is much more explicit. It's only the appearance of independence that must be maintained for tactical reasons. Covert US control is to be exercised through such mechanisms as...
a "discreet" board of censors, "judicious withdrawal of technical support, subtle personal persuasion by advisors, and offering attractive alternatives." And in line with Palmer's playbook, through US professionals training and advising the Vietnamese staff.
Where did the US TV industry pros come from? As Richard McCarthy recounts, "top names from American commercial TV came out to help" the counter-insurgency program, lending their expertise to the fledgling TV operation
adst.org/OH%20TOCs/McCa…
adst.org/OH%20TOCs/McCa…
Well, in what is quite the coincidence, these top names came from Paul Klein's NBC. "They enrolled the creative energies of a succession of US consultants, mainly from NBC."
(a lot of gems on this page from the book "The Cold War and the United States Information Agency")
(a lot of gems on this page from the book "The Cold War and the United States Information Agency")
Such collaboration isn't unique to NBC but in retrospect it isn't so surprising that NBC would make such a contribution to counter-insurgency PSYOPs in Vietnam. In 1968, just as Zorthian returned to the US, NBC was debuting a show that would serve the counter-insurgency at home
The show? Julia. Put on air by none other than Paul Klein. There's a good chapter on Julia as pacification programming running parallel to COINTELPRO in the book "Nervous Laughter", so I'll lay out some of the author's analysis below
The critical context for the psyop that was Julia is the rising black militancy of the period. Or as Jacob Levich put it in an article on Sesame Street (another Paul Klein project-we'll return to this): an era of "urban insurrections and African-American revolutionary sentiment"
In the face of a growing black power movement, Julia entered the screen, depicting a depoliticized, mild mannered middle class black woman, with a "quiet sense of ethnic pride." The show preached the doctrine of self-help, erasing any inkling of systemic racism
Julia was a watershed bc it didn't merely rehash the ethnic sitcoms of yesteryear. Part of its impact came from its "concession" to the black underclass in allowing some room for "black pride", thereby providing more effective counter-programming against black militancy
As such it meshed perfectly (remarkably so, really) with the CIA's aims, as stated in a December 1967 memo, to de-fang black power by collapsing it into "laudable efforts of economic 'self-help' and 'pride of race'". What was that from Zorthian again, the Amernian word for CHAOS?
Intermission:
That Julia would not permit herself to be on welfare is maybe the least surprising thing of all from a show Paul Klein put on air
That Julia would not permit herself to be on welfare is maybe the least surprising thing of all from a show Paul Klein put on air
"I thought the show was a piece of shit, but I thought since it was **acceptable to middle-class blacks**, that adults would rationalize their way to view it. Besides Diahann Carroll was my neighbor."
Maybe ur thinking, despite quotes like ⬆️where Paul explicitly acknowledges the political character of the show, or him pushing Julia to appease critics of TV as a "lily-white medium", this was at worst a cynical business decision, not witting participation in pacification. Well,
this is where we must return to the Ford Foundation, Sesame Street and Paul. You see, Paul almost simultaneous to his putting Julia on air, became involved in the dev of another major black pacification effort, Sesame Street, alongside some of the US's leading lights in psywar
With Sesame Street, you can't twist Paul's involvement as merely a cynical business choice. Paul joined Children's Television Workshop BEFORE he took his sabbatical from NBC. This was an extracurricular project for Paul, a well paid NBC VP who didn't need skimpy Ford consulting $
The piece on Sesame Street by the partner of Paul's daughter focuses on Carnegie's role, but lets not marginalize Paul's Ford Foundation. According to the creator, Joan Ganz Cooney, it was Ford who drove the push for targeting "ghetto children"
Paul's sabbatical from NBC (~'70-'76) was an eventful time. Developed HBO with Zorthian, started his own company (w. Zorthian's Time and Schroder Capital); consulted for CTW, PBS, CPB (chaired by the creator of US Army Office of Psychological Warfare) and the Ford Foundation
Is it becoming clearer why a Phoenix Program psyops coordinator, recently returned from Vietnam, might find Paul a good match? Look at the Zorthian report on TV for counter-insurgency: infiltration of hard to reach places with TV, urban stability, educational youth programs...
...edu programs to reduce tensions and dampen resistance, anti-communism, even as with Julia the concessionary acknowledgment of the dispossessed (here, labor) carefully crafted to preclude organized militancy. Halfway across the world Klein was implementing the Zorthian playbook
*Oops! Forgot to include Paul joining CIA assets Clay Felker and Gloria Steinem at NY Magazine as a contributing editor in the list of his NBC sabbatical activities
Or perhaps Zorthian just done running a huge TV psyop prog in Vietnam, which shipped in receivers from RCA (NBC's parent co) and an army of NBC consultants, linked up with Paul whose ties to intelligence figures would span decades cuz he really just liked Paul's hotel TV idea🤷♀️
By request, sources or links to all the material in the thread if not already provided. Roughly in order:
1. "Klein Cleans Up", Paul F. Young, Variety, 6/13/94
2. "Paul Klein, irascible TV visionary", Richard Lindheim, Electronic Media, 7/20/98
3. web.archive.org/web/2017112018…
1. "Klein Cleans Up", Paul F. Young, Variety, 6/13/94
2. "Paul Klein, irascible TV visionary", Richard Lindheim, Electronic Media, 7/20/98
3. web.archive.org/web/2017112018…
cont...
4. web.archive.org/web/2018082311…
5. web.archive.org/web/2017070310…
6. web.archive.org/web/2020073016…
7. "A Faustian Bargain: US Intervention In The Nicaraguan Elections And American Foreign Policy In The Post-cold War Era", William Robinson
...
4. web.archive.org/web/2018082311…
5. web.archive.org/web/2017070310…
6. web.archive.org/web/2020073016…
7. "A Faustian Bargain: US Intervention In The Nicaraguan Elections And American Foreign Policy In The Post-cold War Era", William Robinson
...
cont...
8. "CIA to Europe: Take the missiles!", CounterSpy, Jun-Aug, 1983 (web.archive.org/web/2019081916…)
9. web.archive.org/web/2020073016…
10. "Music is my Mistress", Duke Ellington
11. "Branding Democracy: US Regime Change in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe", Gerald Sussman
...
8. "CIA to Europe: Take the missiles!", CounterSpy, Jun-Aug, 1983 (web.archive.org/web/2019081916…)
9. web.archive.org/web/2020073016…
10. "Music is my Mistress", Duke Ellington
11. "Branding Democracy: US Regime Change in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe", Gerald Sussman
...
12. web.archive.org/web/2019080818…
13. "Up the Tube: Prime-Time TV and the Silverman Years", Sally Bedell
14. web.archive.org/web/2019082413…
15. Letter from Paul Klein to the Ford Foundation, Dec. 6, 1973
16. "Commercial Culture: The Media System and the Public Interest", Leo Bogart
...
13. "Up the Tube: Prime-Time TV and the Silverman Years", Sally Bedell
14. web.archive.org/web/2019082413…
15. Letter from Paul Klein to the Ford Foundation, Dec. 6, 1973
16. "Commercial Culture: The Media System and the Public Interest", Leo Bogart
...
Sorry missed one
18. "Life in a Film Can", Larry Revene
18. "Life in a Film Can", Larry Revene
