How much influence does CIA have on CBS?

I've read about CIA having clout at CBS. I just wonder how credible that is. Regardless I just find it interesting that 60 Minutes at CBS has been used as breaking ground via mainstream press for antiBush/WH details (e.g., Skull & Bones, Richard Clarke, Andy Rooney saying that US soldiers are not heroes, and now Woodward).

when? link?

Not on 60 Mins, but at a Buffalo newspaper. Still significant that a major CBS figure said this:

http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20040412/1057793.asp

We must support our soldiers in Iraq because it's our fault they're risking their lives there. However, we should not bestow the mantle of heroism on all of them for simply being where we sent them. Most are victims, not heroes.

My OPINION: Less than at Faux and CNN because the older the institution, the more difficult to parasitize from within and make ineffective.

Which explains quite nicely why Cable TV is the Pravda Wasteland of Misinformation that would serve the Soviets or ChiComs equally well with but a few minor name changes.

Cable TV and Corporate TV Pravda (almost indistingiishable from each other) are the mainstays of the New Totalitarianism of Bushevik/Putinvik "Managed Democracy".

However, compared to the arcane references on the net about Skull & Bones, it was a very superficial exposure to the Skull & Bones featuring interviews with two people wanting to expose it and others who poo-bah that organization as a gathering of dull politicians yakking up about shit and nothing of substance. Just call it a quick "foot in the door" exposee that would capture the attention of a minority.

<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5244.htm>

<http://www.prisonplanet.com/analysis_louise_01_03_03_mockingbird.html>

Excerpts:

"Starting in the early days of the Cold War (late 40's), the CIA began a secret project called Operation Mockingbird, with the intent of buying influence behind the scenes at major media outlets and putting reporters on the CIA payroll, which has proven to be a stunning ongoing success. The CIA effort to recruit American news organizations and journalists to become spies and disseminators of propaganda, was headed up by Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, and Philip Graham (publisher of The Washington Post). Wisner had taken Graham under his wing to direct the program code-named Operation Mockingbird and both have presumably committed suicide.

Media assets will eventually include ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International (UPI), Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service, etc. and 400 journalists, who have secretly carried out assignments according to documents on file at CIA headquarters, from intelligence-gathering to serving as go-betweens. The CIA had infiltrated the nation's businesses, media, and universities with tens of thousands of on-call operatives by the 1950's. CIA Director Dulles had staffed the CIA almost exclusively with Ivy League graduates, especially from Yale with figures like George Herbert Walker Bush from the 'Skull and Crossbones' Society."

....snip....

"The first tier of the nine giant firms that dominate the world are Time Warner/AOL, Disney/ABC, Bertelsmann, Viacom/CBS, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation/Fox, General Electric/NBC, Sony, Universal/Seagram, Tele-Communications, Inc. or TCI and AT&T. This is just the head of the octopus which has its second and third tier tentacles working together in unison or feigned division. This would include The Washington Post/Newsweek, The New York Times/Weekly Standard, Tribune Co., US News, Gannett/USA Today, Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, Knight-Ridder, etcetera. A good site to visit for more information is Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a public interest media watchdog group, at www.fair.org/index.html, www.fair.org/mediafiles/index.html and www.fair.org/extra/9711/gmg.html. Media propaganda tactics include blackouts, misdirections, expert opinions to echo the Establishment line, smears, defining popular opinions, mass entertainment distractions, and Hobson's Choice (the media presents the so-called conservative and liberal positions)."

whenever they need it