Given the history of infiltration of the media by the intelligence services, what’s the likelihood that similar (and more advanced) methods are still being used?
If you want a real insight into what goes on behind the scenes, look into Brian Crozier:
The intelligence expert Brian Crozier, who has died aged 94 after a long illness, was the ultimate cold-war warrior: a political vigilante who unashamedly cultivated a close, mutually beneficial, relationship with MI6, MI5 and the CIA, successfully courted Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and praised the dictators Pinochet and Franco.
In the 1960s, at MI6’s suggestion, Crozier was approached by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a CIA-funded agency that financed publications around the world, including Encounter magazine in Britain.
In 1966, with the help of CIA funds, he set up a British-based agency, Forum World Features, and later founded the Institute for the Study of Conflict. He also contributed to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Information Research Department (IRD), a shady organisation whose unattributable reports distributed to susceptible journalists and MPs were designed to highlight the dangers of communist subversion. The IRD was disbanded by David Owen soon after he was appointed foreign secretary in 1977.
That year, continuing in his role of what British intelligence agencies call “an alongsider”, Crozier set up a new group, “The 61”.
and his work at Forum World Features and Le Cercle:
Forum World Features was a London based CIA propaganda operation which operated as a professional news service from 1965 to 1975. It was run by the anti-communist crusader, later European Chair of Le Cercle, Brian Crozier.
Forum World Features was part of a world wide CIA propaganda operation overseen by Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA agent who had engineered the overthrow of the democratic government of Iran in 1953.
The Australian born journalist Brian Crozier was appointed chairman of the company. He was a fervant anti-communist who had worked for the Economist and the BBC. Crozier was assisted by John Tusa – later to be the main presenter of BBC Newsnight, then go on to become head of the BBC’s World Service. Tusa, who was reportedly unaware of the CIA connection, resigned after an argument over editorial policy.
Among many other achievements in the shadows, Crozier via the global network of Le Cercle, with extensive support in MI6 and the CIA, was said to be instrumental in getting both Thatcher and Reagan elected…
The Langemann Papers (November 1979) quote a planning paper by Brian Crozier about a Cercle complex operation “to affect a change of government in the United Kingdom (accomplished)”.
This may be a reference to the success of the “Shield” group which Crozier set up in 1976, probably with the express purpose of getting Margaret Thatcher elected, a year after she was invited to the Bilderberg meeting by Labour’s Dennis Healey.
