When Chinese Communists first took over in the 1950s or so, I think the Yugoslavs had written a book about China.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
That was a little bit of a speech by Murray Rothbard that he gave here in Austin, Texas, back in, I think, 1989 or maybe 1990, about the then-current fall of the Soviet Union.
And our guest right now is Ken Silverstein, contributing editor to Harper's Magazine.
And he's got an article here in Salon.com called, Neoconservatives Hype a New Cold War.
Here a generation after the end of the actual Cold War, when the Soviet Army has then ceased to exist, we're still picking a fight with them.
And why?
A very interesting story.
Welcome back to the show, Ken.
How's it going?
It's been a while since we've spoken.
Pretty well.
Thanks for having me on.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
A very interesting piece about the same old neoconservative echo chamber that I guess we've been talking about for a decade now, that everybody knows about now, only in this case specifically focused on Georgia and Russia and kind of shades of the first Gulf War.
A lot of emphasis here on marketing firms, basically public relations firms, handling the business of foreign governments in this country.
Right.
I mean, I've been to pieces about a particular lobbying firm in Washington that works very closely with journalists writing about Georgia and Russia and the way that the lobbyists who work for the Russian government are influencing the media, the stories, newspaper stories, magazine pieces published here.
And now you say in this article that it was difficult for you to write this article, even though this has been a specialty of yours.
I think a lot of people probably have heard of your undercover work on Uzbekistan's public relations efforts, right?
Well, Turkmenistan.
No, it was difficult only because, and I wrote this in the piece, I live in Washington.
I've lived here for a long time.
I ended up knowing some of the people I was writing about, which is never very comfortable.
I like some of the people I was writing about, and that's never pleasant.
And as I said in the piece, that's exactly why Washington reporting of any sort can be so perilous because, you know, politicians and journalists and public relations people all know each other.
And they, you know, it's hard to write when you're, you know, you go out for drinks with people and you have friendships and your kids go to the same school.
It's hard to write about people.
So in some ways, I mean, it was an unpleasant experience to write about people I knew.
But, you know, I got into the piece.
I didn't realize when I started that I knew some of the people I would be writing about.
And when I did, in the end, you can't say, oh, well, I know them.
I'm not going to write about it.
But, you know, I went ahead and did it.
And God knows, I guess I'll probably lose some friends.
But, you know, when I said it was difficult, that's what I meant because it's never pleasant to write about people you know.
Well, and that may be an indicator for those of us who don't live in Washington, D.C., of why we don't see pieces like this very often from others.
I think so.
I think certainly journalists don't like to write about each other.
And there's, you know, people are, it's sort of like the police.
You know, there's a thin blue line.
I think it's very difficult.
Well, actually, that sounds a little bit overly dramatic.
I'm not trying to suggest in some way that my writing this piece is all that heroic or anything.
But I just think that, like in any profession, people are not comfortable writing about each other a lot of the time, and particularly when you have social friendships.
So, yeah, I mean, and then when you extend that to the lobbyists and journalists knowing each other, and, you know, Washington, everybody knows each other, and everybody's chummy with each other, and I think politicians are way too close to reporters who cover them in general.
So that way, too, in terms of political coverage, I think the town is way too chummy.
All right.
So now to the point here.
What is Orion Strategies?
It's a lobby shop that is headed by a guy named Randy Scheunemann, who was one of the primary advocates, public advocates, for the Iraq War.
He was a former advisor to Rumsfeld, and he was the founder and president, I believe, of the Committee to Liberate Iraq.
And his chief media handler, a guy he hired, is Michael Goldfarb, who was a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard, and was, you know, I mean, it's basically a neocon lobbying shop.
Well, now, there were, were there not at least suspicions or at least some circumstantial evidence that he actually played a part in green-lighting the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia in 2008?
I have no idea.
I mean, I wouldn't want to speak on that at all because I have no knowledge of that.
Well, I should have brought it up without a footnote in front of me.
But go ahead, I'm sorry.
Well, he's not, I mean, he wasn't even in government at the time, so I don't know how he...
But he was working for John McCain.
Right.
But, I mean, I refer to that in a piece, but I'm not sure how we get from there to green-lighting a military operation.
So, I mean, in any case, I can't speak to that because I don't know anything about it.
Okay, that's fine.
Just skip it.
Yeah.
But in any case, he runs this PR firm with Michael Gold from the Weekly Standard.
Well, yeah.
He was still writing for the Weekly Standard, which is sort of curious, too.
And, yeah, so they represent the government of Georgia.
They have a number of other clients, but their primary client is the government of Georgia, I think, in terms of the, they've gotten over a million dollars in fees since 2004.
And so their job is to go out and peddle the, you know, as it should be.
They're lobbyists.
I mean, there's nothing inappropriate in what they're doing.
I mean, they're going out and trying to sell the Georgian point of view.
And that also is not only the Georgian point of view, but it's also a critical view towards Russia, which, again, you know, may or may not, well, it's a legitimate point of view.
It's a legitimate position.
I don't happen to buy a lot of the specifics of their position, but Georgia is the mortal foe of Russia.
And so not only do they seek to put Georgia in the best light, but they put Russia in the worst light.
And I think they tend to exaggerate quite a bit on the pro-Georgia and the anti-Russia stuff.
Right.
Well, now, talk to us specifically about this series by Eli Lake about the reset this summer and the supposed, well, obviously it was a real bombing, but the supposed responsibility of Putin or whoever for it.
Well, Eli has written a number of stories.
You know, he's been frequently contacted by the lobbyists.
He talks to them.
He attends their event.
He dines and drinks with them, although I will say that Eli said that he picked up his share of the tab.
Not all the journalists did.
Not all the journalists had meals or drinks bought by the lobbyists.
And some of them flew off on a junket to Georgia, too.
Eli did not.
But in any case, I mean, he's written a number of stories that are, you know, very much in line with the line of the lobby shop and the Georgian government, of course.
And in terms of the bombing, he wrote a story at the Washington Times that talked about a bombing near the U.S. embassy in Georgia and reported that it was conducted by a Russian military officer, intelligence officer, and that it was basically a Russian operation, an official Russian operation.
And there's a lot of dispute about that.
I mean, in fact, he even in subsequent stories softened that in some ways and said that, well, there was a split within the U.S. intelligence community about whether this was a rogue operation or whether it was an official Russian operation.
There was no consensus on that.
And, I mean, the pieces strongly suggested that it was, you know, endorsed at the top.
And, in fact, he wrote a piece recently just last week at the Newsweek Daily Beast where he now works, which said flat out, you know, the Russians did it, Putin did it.
So, to me, it's problematic when you have reporters having very close relationships with lobbyists, being social friends and dining and drinking companions, whoever is picking up the bill.
But, particularly, in Eli's case, again, he said that he picked up his share of the bill.
Not all the journalists did.
But when you have these sort of close relationships and when you also have an ideological affinity, then, you know, I think you frequently conserve, you know, whether consciously or unconsciously, as a conduit for stories that may not be entirely solid.
I mean, they are, you know, opinion pieces as much as reported pieces.
And, in some cases, I mean, when you go on a junket to Georgia, which some of these reporters did, I mean, essentially, I don't understand even how that can possibly classify as journalism.
It's propaganda.
I mean, that's what it amounts to.
Well, and it's not really that plausible, is it?
People can accuse Vladimir Putin of all kinds of heinous things or whatever, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone accuse him of being stupid.
He's supposedly a scary KGB mastermind, not an idiot who would, you know, commit some small act of terrorism near close enough to an attack on an American embassy.
I mean, come on.
It seems to me that that definitely argues against it being an official Russian operation.
It's circumstantial, but it's certainly, I mentioned it in my piece as well, it seems like a very dumb thing to do.
But beyond that, I guess what I'd say is, you know, there's no proof that the Russians ordered this bombing at the top, as these stories suggested.
And the stories were sourced to, the initial story was sourced entirely to Georgian sources.
To me, you know, that's hard to go out with a story where you have sources who are clearly partial, quite impartial to put it mildly, to a point of view, and, you know, you get this sort of rote denial from the Russian embassy, but the story basically reaches a conclusion on the basis of information provided by the Georgian government.
I mean, I just don't see how that works.
I might as well cite Ahmed Chalabi.
Yeah, I mean, before Colin Pollitt, the UN, I mean, you know, the Iraq War, if nothing else should have taught us the danger of going with, you know, how safe it is to go with government sources, trusting government sources, whoever they are, whether they're American or Russian or Georgian.
You know, I don't see how it's safe to go out with a story on the basis of one point of view that's extremely partial.
Well, and I think you referred to this in your story, that at the time of the 2008 war, they were quite successful in confusing the narrative about who picked a fight with who first.
And I guess it was in, I think, late November that the New York Times finally ran a piece saying, oh, yeah, you know what, maybe every other newspaper in the world had it right, and Georgia invaded Osetia and bombed Russian peacekeepers there before Russia moved a single soldier over the mountains or under them.
Yeah, I did link to the, you know, the Times piece, and certainly I think the storyline peddled at the outset was extremely favorable to Georgia and the subsequent events disproved a lot of the original reporting in which it was portrayed as a David versus Goliath story.
So, yeah, I mean, I think the Georgians in general, I mean, Russia's a long time, you know, the Cold War is over, more or less, I guess.
Anyway, the classic Cold War is over.
But Russia has long been associated in the American mind as the enemy, and I think that still lingers, and I think it's probably influenced the coverage to this day.
I mean, again, I'm not trying to apologize for Russia, because I think the Putin government, which essentially it is a Putin government, is extremely repressive, and I'm no fan at all of that government.
But it still, that doesn't mean that what the other side is saying is true either.
I mean, it's not quite as simple as that.
So, and I think a lot of...
Yeah, I mean, it's just like anybody wants to talk about the facts about Iran's nuclear program.
That doesn't mean they're on the side of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
It just means that, you know, they want to maybe discriminate between this percent enriched uranium and that percent.
Right.
All right, now, if you could please talk to us a little bit more about the media echo chamber and the different people at the Washington Post and wherever who pick this up and then cite each other back and forth over and over, just like the days before the Iraq War.
Well, I mean, it really is an echo chamber.
I mean, you have, basically you have the lobbyists contacting reporters and providing them, you know, with access to Georgian government officials and clearly providing tips and leads and themes.
And then the reporters go out and do their stories, which frequently are extremely one-sided and do not really, you know, reach conclusions that I think are not based on anything other than one point of view.
And then the other reporters who are sort of in this circle then go blog about the stories.
And Goldfarb, you know, on his Twitter has been pushing the stories.
I mean, that's nothing nefarious about that, but it's just funny.
It's like the lobbyists provide a lot of the sources and the tips.
And, you know, the lobbyists...
Shoyan used to work for McCain.
He's very close to McCain.
And then a bunch of these stories hunt McCain or people who the lobbyists work with.
And, you know, those stories originate with the lobbyists or at least the lobbyists are playing a role.
Sometimes I think they just purely originate from the lobbyists.
But the lobbyists are, you know, sort of helping create the stories, providing the sources, and then other journalists who they work with are pushing the stories, and the lobby shop then circulates them as well.
I mean, it's, you know, it's a little closed circle and a little echo chamber.
Do you have any indication what it is that drives Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan and the rest of this PNAT crew in their animosity toward Russia?
I mean, I'm no apologist for Putin either, but he's not Joe Stalin.
He doesn't occupy Eastern Europe or anything.
I have no idea what drives them other than I assume the fact that they've always seen Russia as a competitor and, you know, the Cold War enemy.
And, I mean, these are, most of these guys come out of the, you know, they have a Cold War background and they are, you know, they're long-time antagonists of Russia.
I mean, they're entitled to their point of view, and, you know, you can't begrudge them that because I may have a different point of view.
I also want to make very clear, I mean, I think Putin's government is highly repressive as well.
I mean, to compare him to Stalin is much worse, but it's not a question of whether, you know, the Russian government is a good government.
It's just a question of these lobbyists, you know, and this whole crew, the whole Cold War crew, I mean, they're entitled to their point of view, but I think their relationships with the media are somewhat inappropriate, and it influences origin, it distorts, you know.
I mean, reality is always going to be distorted, but I think the Georgian lobbyists are particularly successful at distorting reality.
Yeah.
Again, everybody, the article is Neoconservatives Hype, A New Cold War.
It's at Salon.com by Ken Silverstein, and it really is a very interesting portrayal of how consensus is formed in D.C., and, you know, no wonder, pardon me for speaking so broadly, but you people, meaning D.C. people, are wrong about everything, really.
It's just because everybody just agrees with each other, and it's like, I don't know, it reminds me of kids at the roller skating rink or whatever.
It's all about who's in crowd and which set of facts we like to pretend are real, this kind of thing, and to me it explains a lot more than just the attitude toward Russia and Georgia in this case.
Yeah.
Well, I certainly think so.
All right, well, I really appreciate this work, and I appreciate your time on the show.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Bye-bye.
Everybody, that's Ken Silverstein from Harper's Magazine.
This one's at Salon.com.
It's called Neoconservatives Hype, A New Cold War.
Check it out.
It's good.
