THE WELL OILED MEDIA

Where are the moderating voices, the views of those who stand against the momentum of war, who challenge the self-serving rationalizations of empire? You are unlikely to find them in the major media.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is headed by Bob Coonrad, formerly deputy managing director of the U.S. propaganda station Voice of America. At the helm of National Public Radio is Kevin Klose, formerly director of the International Broadcasting Bureau, which oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and Radio and Television Marti. (Klose in September 2002 was in Rhinebeck, New York, arguing the necessity of attacking Iraq.) The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is Michael Powell, son of the secretary of state.

(March 2003: Clear Channel, the Texas-based owner of more than 1200 radio and 36 television stations in the USA, with its own syndication and tour management divisions, has been organizing rallies in support of invading Iraq. They also maintain and enforce a list of banned songs and musicians for their stations. Vice chairman Tom Hicks made George W. Bush a multimillionaire by buying the Texas Rangers baseball team from him. As one of the creators and the first chairman of the University of Texas Investment Management Company (with Clear Channel founder Lowry Mays on the board) when Bush was governor, he turned over the control of its funds to companies close to the Bushes, including The Carlyle Group mentioned below. Clear Channel's growth has depended on continued deregulation and lax oversight by the FCC and has its own lobbying office in Washington.)

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Oil companies often share board members with the media. The director of Texaco (recently merged with Chevron), former senator Sam Nunn, is also on the board of directors of GE/NBC (GE is the nation's sixth largest defense contractor). Texaco board of directors member Charles Price sits on the New York Times/Boston Globe board of directors. Corporate board member William Steere is on the board of directors of Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal. A member of the Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal corporate board, Rand Araskog, also sits on the board of directors of Shell Oil.

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Robert Oakley, U.S. ambassador to Pakistan in the 1980's and instrumental to the CIA support of the Afghan Mujahedin (in which Osama bin Laden became a commander), now works for Unocal. One of the Mujahedin's leaders, Hamid Karzai, was the main intermediary between the Mujahedin and the CIA. He later became a top advisor to Unocal and after the ending of Taliban rule in Afghanistan was installed as prime minister. Henry Kissinger also works for Unocal. Secretary of the Air Force under the elder George Bush, Donald Rice, is on Unocal's board of directors. (Rice is also a former president of the military think tank RAND.) Another board member is Charles Larson, former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Navy's pacific command. Former RAND employee and Unocal advisor Zalman Khalilzad is now the National Security Council's advisor for southwest Asia. Afghanistan-born Khalilzad was also an advisor to the state department in the 1980's and is a close associate of Vice President Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

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