ГУЛаг Палестины - Лев Гунин

would grant her his only TV interview, for Italian TV, undertaken within two years of the Village Voice episode - but his physical

assault ended their relationship as lovers.

(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 391)

Second character-revealing incident - how Kosinski had fun behind the wheel.

On the long straightaway crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge, he opened it up to 120, pure exhilaration for a boy who had been told

always to do things carefully, legally, and correctly. A little farther along they found themselves stuck on a two-lane road behind a

slow driver. As a man who would one day drive Formula One race cars, David was astonished at the fluidity and skill with which

Kosinski finally got around the recalcitrant ahead of him - and entertained mightily when Kosinski then slowed to a crawl and

used those skills to prevent the car from passing him. He was more than a little shocked, however, when Kosinski persisted with

the game in the face of an oncoming truck, causing the other car to run off into a ditch.

(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, pp. 150-151)

Third character-revealing incident - how Kosinski played a little joke on one of his students.

Kosinski looked at the young man severely. "You know, the very first time I saw you I got the feeling you were going to die

young," he said. "In the past twenty years I've had the same feeling about several people and each time I've had it, they died. Of

course, I could be wrong this time."

The young man, who was afraid of being drafted and sent to Vietnam, started to cry.

(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 287)

Fourth character-revealing incident - how Kosinski exposed Yale students to the intellectual contributions

of the Neo Charles Mansonists.

As part of the class, the Yale undergraduates were required to write about their own deaths. To stimulate their thinking, Kosinski

brought in members of the Process Church of the Final Judgement - a group of Satanists who arrived dressed in gray. They

saw themselves as having some sort of tenuous link with Charles Manson's Helter-Skelter family. Proselytizing in Kosinski's Yale

classroom, they urged the students to "accept and embrace evil within themselves." This notion was uncomfortably close to

Kosinski's own claim to Krystyna Iwaszkiewicz that he could achieve revenge upon his enemies because of a pact with the Devil

[...]. The classroom episode took an unexpected turn when a young Jewish student went off with the Satanists, prompting an

exchange with the student's parents over the pedagogical appropriateness of this classroom activity.

(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, pp. 300-301)

Fifth character-revealing incident - how Kosinski entertained his dining partners.

One day, when the three couples had planned to have dinner in the city, Rose Styron arrived first and was persuaded to be his

accomplice in a prank. Kosinski would hide in his apartment on Seventy-ninth Street, and the others would look for him. They

came, looked, failed to find, and began to grow cross; Sadri was ready for dinner, and didn't find the prank so funny. Kosinski

finally unfolded himself from behind the cabinets in his darkroom.

(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 262)

Sixth character-revealing incident - what Kosinski did to Marian Javits's dog - from which some might

conclude that Jerzy Kosinski was not only the kind of man that you would not leave alone with your

daughter, and not only the kind of man that you would not leave alone with your son - he was the kind of

man that you would not leave alone with your dog.

Marian Javits, in particular, was charmed by him, and she continued to be his friend even after his stories and eccentricities had

become familiar - this despite the fact that one of his eccentricities had to do with her dog. Lying in bed recovering from a leg

injury received while riding, she was startled when her dog ran furiously across the room, dripping urine. A moment later Kosinski

appeared at the door. Later a friend told her that Kosinski had been observed abusing the dog in a way that would engender such

behavior.

(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 263)

HOME DISINFORMATION 60 MINUTES 866 hits since 9May98

T.R. Reid Washington Post 9May98 60 Minutes gullibility

The program featured dramatic footage of a drug "mule" said to be smuggling several

million dollars' worth of heroin to London for Colombia's Cali drug cartel. The Guardian

reported, though, that the "mule" actually carried no drugs, that his trip to London was

paid for by the documentary's producers, and that many of the report's dramatic

moments were faked.

The instance of 60 Minutes credulity documented in the T.R. Reid Washington Post

article below occasions the following reflections, some of which demonstrate the

relevance of the article to Ukrainain affairs:

Successful Criminals Do Not Make Public Confessions. The 60 Minutes drug

smuggling broadcast whose title I will assume was The Mule shows individuals who

cooperate in a documentary exposing their own highly lucrative criminal activities

which is an incongruity. Successful criminals do not make public disclosure of their

crimes because this hastens their getting caught. I have discussed this self-evident

principle at length in Impossibilities of a TV documentary - whose focus is an ABC

television Prime Time documentary titled Girls for Sale featuring this same incongruity

of successful criminals disclosing their crimes, in this case the crime of employing

Slavic girls as sex slaves in Israel. One may say, then, that television news

sometimes demonstrates almost childlike insensitivity to incongruity, which is the same

as saying that it demonstrates almost childlike credulity, and that one incongruity

that it appears particularly insensitive to is that of successful criminals making

public confession of their crimes.

Television News Overlooks Many Diverse Incongruities. The earlier 60 Minutes

broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom is similar in that it was loaded with palpable

incongruities, though not the incongruity of criminals publicly confessing their

crimes. For example, while host Morley Safer is describing a pogrom which was supposed

to have taken place in Ukraine in July of 1941, the scene being shown is of bodies

lying on the ground in snow. Multiply this sort of incongruity a hundredfold - I do

not exaggerate - and you create the 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom.

The explanation may be different each time. In each case, some explanation of

such incongruities is called for, and in each case the explanation may be different.

In the case of the 60 Minutes story The Mule, the explanation seems to be that a

fraudulent story advanced the career of a documentary filmmaker. In the case of the

ABC TV Prime Time story Girls for Sale, my speculation is that the story was true and

that it advanced Israeli interests. And in the case of the 60 Minutes story The Ugly

Face of Freedom, it is evident that the story was false, my speculation being again

that it advanced Israeli interests.

North American News May be Particularly Susceptible to Corruption. We have

three reasons for suspecting this, two of them coming from Reid's Washington Post

article below: (i) Reid describes London journalism as "furiously competitive" where "a

dozen newspapers and four TV networks regularly investigate - and savage - one

another's reporting" and contrasts this with the United States where "newspapers and TV

networks generally don't go on the attack against the other guy's story." (ii) The

British government's Independent Commission requires TV news to demonstrate "a respect

for truth," whereas in the United States, the accuracy of news reporting is not subject

to any official review. (iii) We see Israel Shahak repeatedly offering the observation

that North American news shows a unique degree of submission to Jewish control, as for

example in the following statement:

The bulk of the organized US Jewish community is totalitarian,

chauvinistic and militaristic in its views. This fact remains

unnoticed by other Americans due to its control of the media, but is

apparent to some Israeli Jews. As long as organized US Jewry remained

united, its control over the media and its political power remained

unchallenged. (Israel Shahak, Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and

Foreign Policies, Pluto Press, London and Chicago, 1997, p. 139).

CBS News Does Not Investigate Itself. Although an admission from 60 Minutes seems

imminent that its story of The Mule was fraudulent, CBS did not discover this fraud,

and is not undertaking any investigation of its own. Rather, there appear to be a

"series of investigations," possibly all British, including one by Carlton Television

which originally financed and broadcast the documentary, and including a study by the

British government. One may hypothesize, then, that CBS does not place high priority

on the acknowledgement and correction of its own errors, and that it will do so only

when forced to by public disclosure of these errors by some other agency. For this

reason, the acknowledgement by 60 Minutes that its story The Mule was entirely

fraudulent cannot be taken as offering hope that CBS is any closer to acknowledging

that its story The Ugly Face of Freedom was entirely fraudulent.

American Competence Gap? Mention has often been made in the Ukrainian Archive

of the existence of competence gaps as these relate to brain drains and gains. The

observation of a startling degree of credulity in the highest levels of the American

Press constitutes one such competence gap, although in this case it is not a gap that

leads to any brain theft from other nations, as the gap is largely hidden from the

American public. Perhaps the American public has its own competence gap - one in which

the people watching the news are as blind to incongruities as the people who are

broadcasting it.

Below are excerpts only. The complete Washington Post article is purchasable online

from the Washington Post by anyone who cares to first set up an account with the

Washington Post.

Acclaimed Expose Questioned as Hoax

British Drug Documentary Was Featured on "60 Minutes"

By T.R. Reid

Washington Post Foreign Service

Saturday, May 9, 1998; Page A01

LONDON, May 8 - That powerful expose on "60 Minutes" last summer about Colombian drug

runners was [...] quite possibly, false.

After a lengthy investigation, London's Guardian newspaper has charged that the

award-winning documentary "The Connection" [...] was essentially fiction.

The program featured dramatic footage of a drug "mule" said to be smuggling several

million dollars' worth of heroin to London for Colombia's Cali drug cartel. The

Guardian reported, though, that the "mule" actually carried no drugs, that his trip to

London was paid for by the documentary's producers, and that many of the report's

dramatic moments were faked.

[...]

When the report was shown on "60 Minutes," CBS reporter Steve Kroft said that the mule

had "no problem" slipping past British customs with the heroin in his stomach.

"Another pound of heroin was on the British streets," the "60 Minutes" report said.

But the Guardian, which says it found the "mule," reports that he actually swallowed

Certs mints, not drugs. It says the flight to London took place six months later, and

was paid for by the filmmaker. And it says the "mule" was actually turned back at

Heathrow because he had a counterfeit passport, and thus never entered Britain.

[...]

The documentary included a highly dramatized segment in which reporters under armed

guard were taken to a remote location for an interview with a figure described as a

high-ranking member of the Cali drug cartel. "60 Minutes" reported de Beaufort had to

travel blindfolded for two days by car to reach the scene of this secret rendezvous.

The Guardian [...] said the secret location was actually the producer's hotel room in

Colombia.

[...]

The British government's watchdog group, the Independent Television Commission, has

launched a study of its own. Unlike the United States, where government has no power

to police the content of news reporting, there are official regulations here requiring

that TV news demonstrate "a respect for truth."

CBS has not undertaken an investigation of its own, but will report to its viewers on

the results of the British investigations [...].

HOME DISINFORMATION 60 MINUTES 1254 hits since 20Oct98

Buzz Bissinger Vanity Fair Sep 1998 Old Liars, young liar

Trouble was, he made things up - sources, quotes, whole stories - in a

breathtaking web of deception that emerged as the most sustained fraud in modern

journalism.

The topic of lying in the media is of central importance on the Ukrainian Archive

because of the frequency with which the media uses the opportunity of reporting on

the Slavic world in general, and on Ukraine in particular, to instead calumniate

them. Three prominent examples are Jerzy Kosinski's career as Jewish-Holocaust

fabulist and Grand Calumniator of Poland, TIME magazine's wallowing girl photograph

of 22Feb93, and Morley Safer's 60 Minutes story The Ugly Face of Freedom, broadcast

over the CBS network on 23Oct94.

From such examples as the above, however, it is difficult to estimate the prevalence

of misinformation and disinformation in the media. It may be the case that

distortion and calumniation are limited to a few topics such as the Slavic world or

Ukraine, and that otherwise the media are responsible, professional, and accurate.

The value of studying the case of Stephen Glass, however, is that it suggests

otherwise - that perhaps the media operate under next to no oversight, that they are

rarely held accountable, and that only egregious lying over a protracted interval