Paul Klein's CIA business partner in the former communist bloc, Mark Palmer, did us the great service of outlining the important political function of imperialist TV enterprises (like the ones he worked on with Paul) for "democratizing" foreign states. Let's take a look inside!

But first! A refresher on the Klein family's links to Palmer. The Kleins helped Palmer's Central European Media Enterprises install a broadcasting empire in the former Eastern Bloc on behalf of billionaires like Ron Lauder. Also partnered with Palmer's CIA foundation, CECHE

Alrighty, back to business. Palmer tells us about the lodestar guiding his entire career: anti-communism.

"Stalin, Hitler, Mao and others committed the worst crimes against humanity in the short history of our species." Is that in ascending or descending order?

Palmer believes television is essential to "democratic growth" (think economic growth, but for Freedom and Democracy™). Democratic growth encompasses all the stages of a color revolution from the early planning stages to the regime change to consolidation of power.

As Palmer is never shy to admit, he would know! In Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland and more, Palmer was a CIA gardener, watering the seedlings of democratic growth. From Solidarity to Central Euro. Media Enterprises (with the Kleins), his experience covers every stage of dem. growth

So important is TV in establishing a beachhead in the enemy camp, Palmer includes setting up a global TV/radio fund as a plank in his "action agenda". Whether it's North Korea, China, Iran, Afghanistan, or Africa, Palmer's message is clear: the medium is the weapon!

If you weren't reading along carefully (shame on you!), you prob missed this juicy detail. In earlier stages of a regime change op, when explicit political confrontation is not viable, Palmer recommends tactically using subjects like health and environment to secure a foothold

Hence, his CIA-NGO: The Center for Communications, Health and the Environment (CECHE), with whom the Kleins were proud partners. Palmer it must be said was way ahead of his time (see his example from Hungary), creating a blueprint for environmentalism as a tool for regime change

I dont know bout yall but I find it fascinating that one of the most vocal twitteristas on global health imperialism and astro-turfed environmentalism worked with an innovator in these domains. Just goes to show the value of Professional [CIA] Experience!

Under Reagan, Palmer was a key member of Project Truth, an ambitious anti-communist "counter-propaganda" effort. PT recognized the importance of TV for psywar but before we get to that, check out the winners Palmer was working with.. what a squad!

https://archive.org/details/ProjectTRUTH/mode/2up

The USSR, Nicaragua, Poland, Afghanistan, and Southeast Asia, were among the many targets of Project Truth's information war, a war was increasingly waged through teevee screens

Project Truth was Project Democracy's predecessor, established by the infamous NSDD 77 of which Palmer was a leading architect. NSDD 77 "laid out a comprehensive framework for ... psychological warfare." Also established NED (Palmer was a co-founder).

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/25/how-us-flooded-the-world-with-psyops/

Bear with me I promise we'll get back to Palmer's thoughts on TV in his how to colonize the entire planet book, but this is also a story about Paul Klein, so we need to briefly return to Barry Zorthian, head of PSYOPs in Vietnam. Remember this report from Zorthian's office?

Aint it interesting that Paul partnered both with the man described as an architect of a "comprehensive framework for psychological warfare" under Reagan and a man who held the job title US Mission Coordinator for Psychological Operations in Vietnam? https://twitter.com/paulkleinfancam/status/1287454422101045249?s=20

Palmer and Zorthian, leading theorists and practitioners of psychological operations, both with keen interests in modernizing the application of TV to psywar, join forces with Paul Klein, legendary TV exec, chief of research and audience measurement and then programming at NBC

Palmer's understanding of TV and the findings in Zorthian's TV in Vietnam report are actually very complementary. While Palmer highlights the role TV has to play in "democratic growth", Zorthian's team uses the old-fashioned language: nation building and pacification

In light of their connection to Paul Klein, it's notable they both stress the role of entertainment programming. First Palmer: entertainment is the hook, a way of drawing in more eyeballs to the "independent" network and away from the dreary programming of the target's state TV

The Zorthian report, which served as the basis of TV psyops in south Vietnam (where they built a broadcasting infrastructure from scratch), touches on this too. But it also adds that US entertainment can peddle an image of US culture that pacifies resistance to the US occupation

If the projection of US culture bits sound like the CIA's Congress for Cultural Freedom (including the emphasis on touring "cultural artists"), that's no coincidence. Here's Duke Ellington pictured with Zorthian and his kids in India during his '63 State Dept tour.

Another thing Palmer and Zorthian agree on is the importance of "independent" TV networks. What Palmer means by independent is: wholly dependent on imperialist capital backed by the US gov, and managed by local anti-communist cadres, trained up by an army of US consultants

The benefits of such an arrangement go without saying. Palmer's own ventures with the Kleins illustrate the US gov/capital collab he describes. While he installed a media empire for his "eight gorillas", his CIA-NGO, CECHE, was training the pool of future TV managers/specialists

As a classified report in the middle of a counter-insurgency war in Vietnam, the Zorthian report is much more explicit. It's only the appearance of independence that must be maintained for tactical reasons. Covert US control is to be exercised through such mechanisms as...

a "discreet" board of censors, "judicious withdrawal of technical support, subtle personal persuasion by advisors, and offering attractive alternatives." And in line with Palmer's playbook, through US professionals training and advising the Vietnamese staff.

Where did the US TV industry pros come from? As Richard McCarthy recounts, "top names from American commercial TV came out to help" the counter-insurgency program, lending their expertise to the fledgling TV operation

https://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/McCarthy,%20Richard%20M.toc.pdf

Well, in what is quite the coincidence, these top names came from Paul Klein's NBC. "They enrolled the creative energies of a succession of US consultants, mainly from NBC."

(a lot of gems on this page from the book "The Cold War and the United States Information Agency")

Such collaboration isn't unique to NBC but in retrospect it isn't so surprising that NBC would make such a contribution to counter-insurgency PSYOPs in Vietnam. In 1968, just as Zorthian returned to the US, NBC was debuting a show that would serve the counter-insurgency at home

The show? Julia. Put on air by none other than Paul Klein. There's a good chapter on Julia as pacification programming running parallel to COINTELPRO in the book "Nervous Laughter", so I'll lay out some of the author's analysis below

https://twitter.com/paulkleinfancam/status/1285949182981931008

The critical context for the psyop that was Julia is the rising black militancy of the period. Or as Jacob Levich put it in an article on Sesame Street (another Paul Klein project-we'll return to this): an era of "urban insurrections and African-American revolutionary sentiment"