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Benjamin Carlson Profile picture
@bfcarlson
Dec 9, 2022 • 8 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
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The CIA has run psyops on the American public for years.

In this 1983 clip, ex-agent Frank Snepp explains how the CIA did it in Vietnam. @Snowden highlighted a clip of this interview as the most important of 2022.

Here is the full discussion.

1. Spreading Disinformation
@Snowden 2. Exploiting Leading Journalists

The CIA courted reporters from the New Yorker and top newspapers to build trust.

Agents gave false facts wrapped in truth to create desired narratives.
@Snowden 3. Trading Intelligence

The CIA collected information from journalists in exchange for giving information. This was a "frequent transaction." Snepp says,
@Snowden 4. The Echo Chamber

The CIA worked to ensure that the lies planted with elite reporters could not be confirmed.
@Snowden 5. 'Propagandizing the Public'

Snepp left the CIA after Vietnam to criticize its propaganda.

The Agency sued him for exposing secrets, winning its $300,000 lawsuit.

America's only 'victory' in Vietnam, Snepp said, was weakening the First Amendment.
@Snowden Since then, technology has allowed intelligence agencies to more subtly manipulate the information we consume.

A stream of high-ranking FBI and CIA officials have taken prominent posts in media and tech.

The control is more overt.

Is it effective?
@Snowden More importantly: What is the objective?
@Snowden Found this interesting?

My mission is to empower people to become independent of the forces that want to control them.

If you'd like to continue the conversation, please follow me @bfcarlson and consider giving the first post a RT. Thanks.

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More from @bfcarlson

Benjamin Carlson Profile picture
Jun 13
‘Don’t drink the kool-aid’

I used to think this was a way to warn simpletons against scams

But I’ve just gone down a rabbit-hole on Jonestown

What made 909 people -knowingly- drink poison?

Lessons on how a mind virus can infect almost anyone—and turn fatal: Image
Briefly: Jim Jones was a charismatic preacher who believed in socialism and anti-racism.

In the 1970s, he found fertile ground for his social gospel in California, where he soon drew thousands of followers.

A political activist, he won the support of the Mayor of SF and elites. Image
As critics emerged, Jones grew paranoid.

His fears of "fascism" threatening his increasingly authoritarian church led him in 1977 to move the congregation deep into the jungle of Guyana.

That's where the real brainwashing began.
Read 22 tweets
Benjamin Carlson Profile picture
May 23
Paradoxes of storytelling:

1. The paradox of censorship: The more authorities try to suppress a story, the more irresistible it becomes.
2. The paradox of expertise: The more a storyteller knows about a subject, the worse he usually is at talking about it.
3. The paradox of presence: Characters you never see, events you never witness—the absences in a story are often its most important elements.
Read 17 tweets
Benjamin Carlson Profile picture
Apr 15
71 yrs ago, Allen Dulles, launched the CIA's mind control program MKULTRA.

In 1953, Americans were shocked by Soviet/Chinese brainwashing of US soldiers in Korea.

The response: a top-secret, and ultimately twisted, effort to "control human behavior."

This is the story: Image
The CIA, founded 1947, had two missions: stop attacks on USA, and halt Communism's advance.

Two years later, the USSR blew up its first nuke, catching the CIA by surprise.

By 1954, a secret report urged: US must give up fair play & learn to 'subvert, sabotage, and destroy.' Image
Then came the Korean War.

GIs came out of prison camps brainwashed: loyal to enemies, confessing to false war crimes, refusing repatriation.

With drugs, propaganda, and new techniques, the Communists seemed to have mastered mind control.

What could be done? Image
Read 12 tweets
Benjamin Carlson Profile picture
Mar 12
How do you incubate a mind virus? How do you cause a culture to self-destruct? In 1984, this KGB defector exposed the 4-stages identified by Soviet intelligence as the necessary steps to cause the psychological implosion of American society.

Stage 1: Demoralization (15–20 yrs)
85% of KGB action was not spying, but ideological warfare. The aim was to change Americans’ perception of reality so that “no one is able to come to sensible conclusions.” This loss of reality then weakens the family, community, country — and the self.
“A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. … When a military boot crushes his balls, then he will understand. But not before that.”
Read 11 tweets
Benjamin Carlson Profile picture
Mar 2
Marshall McLuhan, who died in 1980, was one of the most prophetic thinkers of last century.

When I wrote about him a year ago, I was stunned at the viral response.

The editors at @TheFP asked me to go deeper—and my amazement grew.

Here are 6 astonishing things McLuhan got right about our world:
We live most of the time outside our bodies.

"When you’re on the telephone, or on radio, or on TV, you don’t have a physical body," he says here in 1977.

"You’re just an image on the air. When you don’t have a physical body you’re a discarnate being. You have a very different relation to the world around you."

By spending most of our time online, we relate to the world not as creatures of flesh and blood—but as floating images.
Our identities are porous.

When we relate to one another as massless images, instantaneously around the world, we detach from our private selves, and are submerged in other people's cares, concerns, histories.

The electronic age "has deprived people, really, of their private identity," he says.

"Everybody tends to merge his identity with other people at the speed of light."Image
Read 8 tweets
Benjamin Carlson Profile picture
Feb 13
Two years ago I quit alcohol.

It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

If you’re thinking about quitting, here are 11 things I wish someone had told me long ago:
1. When you quit, you will feel better. But the better you feel is only partly about health.

It is also moral.

You will prove yourself capable of one hard thing, and that will become the foundation of so much more.
2. Your relationship to alcohol is romantic. You felt chosen by it. You fell in love with it.

You once reveled in how it made you feel.

When a romance goes wrong, you can’t end it by degrees.

You must part.
Read 13 tweets

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