Ulfkotte is a serious mainstream journalist. Here he is on Germany's leading political talk show a couple of years ago. The book is a sensation in Germany, #7 on the bestseller list. Its political dynamite, coming on the heels of German outrage of NSA tapping of their phones. Check out the RT.com story on it in the video below.
Here at Russia Insider, it has long been apparent to us that there is something distinctly odd about the German media regarding Russia. We follow it, and it is much more strident than even the anglo-saxon media regarding Russia, while German public opinion is much more positive towards Russia than in other countries.
Another interesting thing about it is that it is very disparate. Some major voices are very reasonable about Russia, but most are negative, and some are comically apocalyptic. This is what one would expect if there was some financial influence ginning the system.
We've been talking about this for a while now. German public opinion is becoming more and more fed up with the what they increasingly believe to be a rigged media, and its starting to come out everywhere.
The allegations, while shocking, are consistent with the CIA's long and well-established history of media infiltration.
Operation Mockingbird, which began in the 1950s, was a secret CIA operation which recruited journalists to serve as mouthpieces for the American government. The program was officially terminated after it was exposed by the famous Church Committee investigations, but evidence of ongoing CIA influence over the media continues to accumulate.
Just last week Glenn Greenwald's (of Edward Snowden fame) new groundbreaking investigative website, The Intercept, charged that the CIA leveraged its considerable influence - some might even say friendship - with media in order to discredit Gary Webb, the fearless American journalist who uncovered CIA cocaine trafficking as part of the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.
From The Intercept (emphasis our own):
On September 18, the agency released a trove of documents spanning three decades of secret government operations. Culled from the agency's in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence, the materials include a previously unreleased six-page article titled "Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story." Looking back on the weeks immediately following the publication of "Dark Alliance," the document offers a unique window into the CIA's internal reaction to what it called "a genuine public relations crisis" while revealing just how little the agency ultimately had to do to swiftly extinguish the public outcry.It's as if Operation Mockingbird never ended.
Thanks in part to what author Nicholas Dujmovic, a CIA Directorate of Intelligence staffer at the time of publication, describes as "a ground base of already productive relations with journalists," the CIA's Public Affairs officers watched with relief as the largest newspapers in the country rescued the agency from disaster, and, in the process, destroyed the reputation of an aggressive, award-winning reporter.
Comment: In his book The German Card, Gerd-Helmut Komossa reveals the truth about post-war conditions, dictated by the US and its allies. The state treaty, dated May 21, 1949 and classified by BND as top secret, suggests restrictions of state sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany, introduced for a period until 2099. These restrictions include the provision that the winning coalition exercise complete control over Germany's mass media and communications; that every Federal Chancellor is to sign the so-called Chancellor Act; that the gold reserve of Germany is kept under arrest. In fact, all the German Chancellors, including Angela Merkel, pay their first foreign visit to the United States. The whole spectrum of German political parties is supervised by a special Washington-based controlling body, while local US-licensed media serve as a more sophisticated means of brainwashing than the Nazi propagandist machine.
Former German intelligence chief: In 1949 West Germany signed up to become United States vassal, NATO contemplated false-flag nuclear attack to 'cement' deal
U.S.-German secret treaty means Berlin is Washington's vassal until 2099