Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [264]
32. The view expressed in Ambassador White’s cables was that the leftists acted to provoke a response by the security forces, a self-destructive tactic not supported by any evidence.
33. Quoted in Brockman, The Word Remains, p. 212.
34. See note 18. Time magazine did the same kind of misrepresenting as Treaster, but with a little more finesse: “From his pulpit, he regularly condemned the tyranny and terrorism that have torn tiny, impoverished El Salvador apart and brought it to the verge of civil war” (Apr. 7, 1980).
35. “Church in Salvador Now Follows the Middle Path,” New York Times, March 22, 1981.
36. For a more detailed discussion of Schumacher’s manipulation of the archbishop’s cautious remarks for an apologetic purpose, see Herman, Real Terror Network, pp. 178–79.
37. It is possible that this failure was based on an honest lack of knowledge of the event. Lack of knowledge, however, reflects in part a lack of concern, and a distorting perspective that removes certain questions from the focus of investigation.
38. Actually, this may be true. The killer may have been a contra assassin hired by the Salvadoran security forces.
39. For the numerous acknowledged attempts to murder Fidel Castro, and the CIA-organized murder of Patrice Lumumba, see Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations, 94th Cong., 1st sess., November 20, 1975, S. Rep. 94–465, pp. 13–180.
40. Graham Hovey, “Salvador Prelate’s Death Heightens Fear of War,” New York Times, March 26, 1980.
41. See Craig Pyes, “Who Killed Archbishop Romero?” The Nation, October 13, 1984.
42. Bonner, Weakness and Deceit, p. 178.
43. Stephen Kinzer, “Ex-Aide in Salvador Accuses Colleagues on Death Squads,” New York Times, March 3, 1984.
44. Craig Pyes, “Dirty War in the Name of Freedom,” Albuquerque Journal, December 18, 1983. In November 1987, Duarte announced new (and rather flimsy) evidence implicating D’Aubuisson, but no one associated with the reigning security forces, in the assassination. The announcement was a transparent effort to maintain his image as a “moderate,” holding the middle ground between extremists of right and left. It was carefully timed to coincide with a daring visit to El Salvador by two actual “moderates,” FDR leaders Rubén Zamora and Guillermo Ungo, who have lived in exile under threat of assassination in this terror state.
45. Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide (Boston: South End Press, 1985), p. 103.
46. Armstrong and Shenk, El Salvador, pp. 160–61.
47. In an article of February 11, 1982, datelined San Salvador, the Mexican paper El Día quoted D’Aubuisson telling two European reporters, one a German, that “You Germans are very intelligent; you realized that the Jews were responsible for the spread of communism and you began to kill them.” While the U.S. press played up the fabricated claims of Sandinista anti-Semitism, this statement of approval of the Holocaust was not picked up by the elite media.
48. “Peace Is Still a Long Shot in El Salvador,” New York Times, September 27, 1987, Week in Review.
49. This statement was left out of the edition of the report finally released to the public.
50. Report, p. 8.
51. Ana Carrigan, Salvador Witness (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 271.
52. Foreign Assistance Legislation for Fiscal Year 1982, part 1, Hearings before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 97th Cong., 1st sess., March 1981, p. 163. Letter from David E. Simcox, State Department, to William P. Ford, dated April 16, 1981. At the time Haig made his statement, the evidence was quite clear that the women had been raped, and killed by close-range shots from behind. Haig himself never apologized for this insulting lie, nor did he suffer any serious attack for this in the mass media, with the honorable exception of Anthony Lewis. This episode also appears to have had no noticeable effect on Haig’s reputation.
53. “We ought to be a little more clear about this than we actually