DC PR Firms drove the memogate scandal?

" I haven’t got one single call from Carl Rove or anybody at the right wing conspiracy headquarters".

It takes a little while to receive the secret password and the decoder ring... what with all the security checks Jim has to run!
;-)

LLS

>the secret password and the decoder ring...

Be.... sure..... to..... drink..... your..... Ovaltine.... Arrrgggg

loved that movie.
msl

(Did you type your app on a Selectric? Rove shit-can's em if you don't)

I registered here at Freerepublic almost two weeks ago and I haven’t got one single call from Carl Rove or anybody at the right wing conspiracy headquarters. I am really starting to feel left out…

I'm sorry, you can't be allowed access to higher-level ops until you have your cranial implant.

When are you scheduled?

Breaking News story to the MSM. They have twice this election cycle been shown for what they are and they are incensed that amateurs are intruding into the field of professionals. And they still refuse to admit the fact that the upstarts did better investigative work than they did.

It is big news that republicans support the President, much more important than the $millions of a foreign billionaire admittedly designed to defeat the president.

Karl Rove could not have created a better environment for the reelection of the president so he used his powers to activate Terry McAuliff's accumen to field a stable of people so distasteful that every thing they say or do deducts points from their candidate.

Oh, by the way, the volunteer services of CBS and Dan Rather should not be punished, but applauded.

That guy down in Texas who sells bull semen to support his document business and his trips to Kinko's is another Rove creation, and he does not even know it.

That scream from Howard Dean; Don't even ask. And finally, after a thorough search, there was not a better matchup for the contest than someone who had so thoroughly discredited himself in the only two things he has done in his life, the Navy and the Senate, that he could not help imploding.

Karl, so far, so good.

OK, this is the second time today that I've posted an article a second time because people won't obey the rule to use the real title and not one they make up. How about an additional to the search feature to let us search on whether a particular URL has been posted? It wouldn't catch all dupes, but it'd be better than the situation we have now.

What "drove" the scandal was the scandal -- a supposedly nonpartisan news service getting caught red-handed perpetrating a hoax to smear the President of the United States. This is a sickening departure from CBS's professional responsibility, an affront to American self-government and a flagrant violation of the principles of fair play.

Everyone understands this kind of arrogance and deceit. The whole country took notice quickly. No PR firms were needed.

The PR firm may well have passed the story on to Drudge. I don't doubt it. But it was hardly necessary. Drudge monitors FR, and probably about ten thousand freepers passed the story on to him too.

To give him credit, Drudge was crucial. He's the guy chiefly responsible for moving it from the internet to the mass media.

"After the CBS story aired, [CNS] called typographical experts, got them on the record that these papers were fishy, and posted a story by 3pm Thursday," said CRC SVP Keith Appell.

The story was largely over by Thursday morning. 3 pm Thursday? Please.

The bottom line is that the PR firms acted like investigative reporters and the news reporters acted like PR firms.

These two guys started it all!

bttt

Love that pic!

>bttt

?

bttt means bump to the top and is also used as a place marker/keeper. :-)

There are archived threads that explain most of FR slang and short hand,but when in doubt,just ask what something means.

Hey!

I've been here for almost 4 years now and I DIDN'T get a decoder ring...Help me, OBE-one, you're my only hope!

153. OEC Vol 6, item 256<

HCO Policy Letter
August 13, 1970
PR Series No. 1
Liabilities of PR

In this first of his public relations (PR) series letters, Hubbard wrote that the majority of the data accumulated on PR in the twentieth century indicated it was a subject that should be approached with caution. It could even be dangerous, he continued, when used by unscrupulous or inexpert people, for instance. Part of the liability, he wrote, was that PR dealt with the human mind and the human mind was not completely understood.

He further stated that all prior knowledge of the human mind had been contaminated by the teachings of Professor Wundt of the University of Leipzig in 1879, who he alleged to have

declared Man a soulless animal subject only to stimulus-response mechanisms and without determinism.

More perversions, he wrote, were added by Sigmund Freud with the "Libido Theory." Freud, Wundt and others supposedly not only hindered the study of the mind, but spread their "strange mental ideas" through the mass media, which he described as "Press, Radio, Television, Magazines and in lobbying parliaments."

In addition, Hubbard wrote that it was usual for inexpert use of PR to bring an employer "into decay."

Hubbard used the Nazis and Stalinists as examples of unscrupulous "cliques" that were "enormously assisted by PR techniques." In this regard, he wrote

Using PR techniques to bring about disrepute of their imagined enemies unscrupulous persons have brought about an atmosphere of war, crime and insanity on the planet.

Apparently the phrase "black PR" is used to describe the above use of public relations. In addition, Hubbard wrote that this was the type of public relations that was currently most used. The practitioners of this PR were said to define what they did as "a nicey-nicey way of bringing good works to public notice and that is their favorite definition." The fact of the matter, Hubbard wrote, was that "10 times as much PR work" was done by these PR practitioners to get rid of their employer's real or imagined enemies than were actual "good works."

The daily routine of a working PR man, Hubbard wrote, consisted of

[b]ribing newspapermen and "free lance writers" to write horrible lies about a competitor, bribing or lying to Congressmen or ministers or members of Parliament to get a law passed to enable a fast buck to be made and countering the ploys of the other firm's PR ...

Hubbard stated that this reality was quite different from the subject as taught by professors. "It's a PR world," he wrote, and he wrote that the bad news of the 20th century that his audience had read about in newspapers and seen on television was the product of public relations. He also correlated the "decline of the British Empire" to its establishment of information offices for PR.

Hubbard also stated that PR employees were often "degenerate," but that the sheer volume of their work served to overwhelm the helpless population with lies. The outcome of this, Hubbard wrote, was a prevalent mood of "dismay and contempt across the world."

Hubbard then used his above statements to justify the cynicism in public relations. He warned his readers that sometimes public relations personnel would be dealing with "some pretty questionable characters," and that they should be aware that PR done by the "bad hats" resulted in "hate and decay." The reason for his warning, Hubbard stated, was to prevent his readers from being disillusioned.

PR could properly be described, wrote Hubbard, as a partially workable technique that was capable of changing "states of mind in different types of audiences or publics." In this regard, it could sometime be misused. To prevent this sort of misuse, Hubbard wrote that he had done further study on the subject in order to "find out what was wrong with it." His findings were that PR was dangerous, was prone to failure and could be turned against one by the competition.

For this reason, Hubbard wrote that the standard texts of public relations would have to be modified in ways to be shown in later letters.

L. RON HUBBARD
Founder
Copyright 1970
by L. Ron Hubbard

154. OEC Vol 6, item 257
HCO Policy Letter
August 13, 1970
PR Series No. 2
The Missing Ingredient

The ingredient that was missing in public relations, Hubbard wrote, was Scientology's understanding. Once this concept of understanding was brought into harmony, then ideas could be communicated. He set this in contrast to "older PR practitioners, who he wrote

used circus exaggeration or black propaganda. They sought to startle or intrigue and the easiest way to do it was with exclamation point "facts" which were in fact lies.

Hubbard said typical examples of PR were practiced by Stalin, Hitler, the U.S. president, and the mental health industry. He emphasized this by stating their stock-in-trade was "black bald-faced lies."

The tremendous power of newspapers, magazines, radio, TV and modern "mass media" communication is guided by the PRs of special interests and they guide with lies. Thus PR is corrupted to "a technique of lying convincingly".

This situation, Hubbard wrote, was due to society's failure to use Scientology's concept of understanding. To rectify the situation, he created a "law," which stated "Never use lies in PR." Hubbard added that it was not a good idea to exaggerate. Hubbard then stated that it was not a good idea to tell the entire truth, either. He wrote,

Tell an acceptable truth. Agreement with one's message is what PR is seeking to achieve. Thus the message must compare to the personal experience of the audience. So PR becomes the technique of Communicating an acceptable truth - and which will attain the desirable result.

PR could have two purposes, Hubbard wrote. It could be used to achieve what the group wanted, or it could be used to "cancel out" lies of other groups. Hubbard termed the latter type as "defensive PR."

In this regard he mentioned Sun Tzu and his book on warfare. The concept he imparted was that of killing an enemy agent who told lies. Hubbard called this concept the "dead agent caper." He thought it was the proper defensive action to be used upon one's enemies. As an example, he gave Scientology and its enemy - psychiatry. He wrote that Scientology's documentation of its enemy's lies was the model that should be followed. To illustrate, he wrote

In the war between psychiatric hostile PR and the truth of Scientology, the "dead agent" caper has a field day. Psychiatric PR has been lying for 20 years. Documented, the fact of these lies are lies is killing off psychiatry. You understand, it's not one PR's word against another's. It's one PR's documents against the other PR's lies! That is correct defensive PR.

In finding acceptable truth, Hubbard stated that surveys were to be used. He also wrote that imagination was a necessary ingredient as long as one's imagination was "devoted to how the truth is made acceptable." In that regard, imaginary statements were "quite useful" as long as they were "not passed off as truth."

Hubbard concluded by writing that PR, as practiced by those who did not have the correct understanding of what a mind was, would fail. Even those who did have the correct understanding would be under strain.

L. RON HUBBARD
Founder
Copyright 1970
by L. Ron Hubbard

155. OEC Vol 6, item 258
HCO Policy Letter
August 13, 1970
PR Series No. 3
Wrong Publics

In this third letter of his public relations (PR) series, Hubbard let his readers know that public relations used a special definition of "public" that was not in the dictionary. He wrote that in 1911 "public" was used by the early PR professionals to mean "a type of audience" that had a common interest. Addressing the wrong public accounted for about 99% of PR errors.

The PR professional was said to get to know a distinct public by taking a survey and studying reactions. He then could plan communication accordingly, with potentially a different message going to each public. If this were done, the desired result would occur. Hubbard stated that the desired result could be "moulding public opinion."

L. RON HUBBARD
Founder
Copyright 1970
by L. Ron Hubbard

156. OEC Vol 6, item 259
HCO Policy Letter
October 9, 1970
PR Series No. 4
The PR Personality

Hubbard made a point in this letter that public relations personnel must primarily be able to confront, organize and work. He called being charming, brilliant and inspiring "delusory requirements."

L. RON HUBBARD
Founder
Copyright 1970
by L. Ron Hubbard

157. OEC Vol 6, item 260
HCO Policy Letter
November 18, 1970
PR Series No. 5
PR Definition

Hubbard gave another definition in this letter regarding "the duty and purpose of a public relations man." Those duties included: (1) interpreting management policy for the publics, (2) advising management in the creation of policy, and (3) getting the public to understand and accept the company.

L. RON HUBBARD
Founder
Copyright 1970
by L. Ron Hubbard

158. OEC Vol 6, item 261
HCO Policy Letter
May 11, 1971
PR Series No. 6
Opinion Leaders

In this letter, Hubbard stated that "some unsung PR man recognized the fact that the 'general' public was made up of smaller groups." He also wrote these groups had opinion leaders, and that other members of the group accepted the interpretation of the opinion leaders. He wrote that their opinion

will have been pre-formed by the opinion leaders. This makes it look like there is mass public opinion without opinion leaders.

He then cautioned that many "PR people" did not pay enough attention to existence of opinion leaders. In this regard, Hubbard cautioned that not all important people were opinion leaders. He named by way of example "Goodrich," the head of the FDA. He alleged that this person was important in that he had worked for the agency for 32 years, but that his people would disagree with him. "Goodrich" could still be useful, Hubbard wrote, in that he could still "be used to oppose something you wanted popular."

More useful than politicians, Hubbard wrote, were celebrities. Even then, their opinions had to be congruous or else they ran the risk of being rejected. As an example he stated that, in the 1930s, the communists had attempted to use Paul Robeson to further their cause. That failed, according to Hubbard, because Robeson was African-American. An example given by Hubbard of successful PR by the communists was that of Bertrand Russell. Russell's statement "Better red than dead" was a "classic PR caper," according to Hubbard, in that it was "the proper use of a foreign opinion leader by a large group."

Hubbard warned of prejudice towards the views of others, particularly opinion leaders, in obtaining success. Prejudice was a nuisance in that it could cause PR people to ignore opinion leaders, and thus risk losing a chance of getting their idea across.

Ending with that thought, Hubbard then switched back to politicians. Apparently this was to demonstrate that public relations could backfire if improperly used. He wrote

Hiring more and more police and spies for more and more government police agencies, the government is becoming less and less popular. "Patriotism" and "idealism" are now considered dirty words. Why? How did this get this bad? Well, one reason is that government PR is continually recoiling on the government. Either they don't hire good PR men or if they do, they don't take their advice. Or their PR men don't know their subject or aren't permitted to practice it.

Apparently Hubbard felt the cause for bad PR in government was "a violent disregard of the subject of opinion leaders." Rather than use opinion leaders, Hubbard said, the government resorted to using money or force to get itself accepted. Hubbard said once the people in government got what they wanted, they abandoned the opinions of the opinion leaders who put them in power. He wrote

Men like Hitler went so far in reverse in handling this problem as to finally slaughter even their adherents.

The solution to this, Hubbard wrote, was to combine the power of money, force and opinion leaders. That, to his way of thinking, would be a more optimal means to reaching an end. He wrote that the U.S. government was not abiding by that. Instead the government allegedly sent agents after each opinion leader to "hound him, annoy him, discredit him."

This, according to Hubbard was

traceable directly to this fantastic omission in their PR technical expertise. They not only do not seek the favor of opinion leaders, they actively harass and seek to destroy them.

Because of the negative reaction thus supposedly incurred from opinion leaders, the government had no choice but to rely on its money and its force. Hubbard perceived this condition as an obstacle to "survival."

As another example of a group that ignored opinion leaders, Hubbard gave the mass media. The mass media's mistake, stated Hubbard, was that they never bother to find out "who the opinion leaders are." Instead of finding out how the opinion leaders were, wrote Hubbard, newspapers quoted only other newspapers as if they were the opinion leaders. The demise of newspapers was alleged to have begun with "Willy Hearst" with his "1890 yellow journalism and scandal mongering." Hubbard wrote that the newspapers eventually printed scandals about all the important opinion leaders. As a result, opinion leaders supposedly told their followers not to believe the newspapers. This, in turn, would cause the newspaper to fail. As an example Hubbard gave the "London Daily Mail." To sum up,

The good will of the opinion leaders is necessary for survival. Not the good opinion of the masses! Since that cannot be reached.

Hubbard then went back to discussing the government. He stated that there was no difference between the U.S. government of the day and the Okhrana, the secret police in Russia prior to 1917.

Almost amusingly, the US government has taken over the exact operational pattern of the Okhrana. You can hardly get to your desk through the government forms and mobs of spies urging the staff to commit crimes so they can be arrested or holding out bribes to falsify the tax reports. All one has to do is mention the US government in a pop program and he'll have 3 army sergeants from G-2 pushing the band out of the way. That's the way it was in pre-1917 Russia just before the opinion leaders decided NO in one final blood-bath. So as I said earlier in this series PR is dangerous stuff if one doesn't really know it and if one only applies half of it.
Omitting the opinion leader is bad enough. Seeking to destroy him is far far worse.

Hubbard expounded further on "anti-opinion leaders," which he said were formed out of neglect:

As a rule, only that dissident person should be removed who is speaking in your name and on your lines and using your power to do you down. And then he can only be removed off your lines as you are under no obligation to finance or empower your own opposition. That's suicide. He is not an opinion leader but a traitor for he owes his power to you.

Here is a peculiar element of doubt injected by Hubbard into using force:

Perhaps there is no excuse whatever to use force to enforce an opinion.

Hubbard also made a little disclaimer about keeping the peace in favor of what he terms "Survival" (with a capital "S"):

Peace is not necessarily a target of PR. Survival is. And Survival requires some control of opinion. When this becomes control of numbers of people PR is only accomplished through opinion leaders.

L. RON HUBBARD
Founder
Copyright 1971
by L. Ron Hubbard

159. OEC Vol 6, item 262
HCO Policy Letter
May 11, 1971
PR Series No. 7
Black PR

In this letter, Hubbard defined "Black Propaganda" as the covert use of public relations to destroy the reputation of a person or group. He wrote that it was an "intelligence technique" and that intelligence followed a different set of rules than normal public relations. To make this point, he wrote

PR IS OVERT. INTELLIGENCE IS COVERT. PR is at its best when it begins and ends overtly. Intelligence is best when it begins and ends covertly.
PR with an open demand by known authors [...] [Intelligence] recoils when the authors are then known.

Black Propaganda was not properly done, according to Hubbard, unless the people who brought about personal disparagement remained unknown. He indicated that in light of this desire to remain secret, Black Propaganda was undone by exposure. The point, apparently, was that when an "enemy" engaged in the Black Propaganda, his agency should then be exposed. Hubbard used this reasoning to explain why his customer would have to perform covert intelligence actions and overt public relations activities. The covert information gathering was to find out the enemy's secrets and the overt distribution of information was to expose the enemy's secrets. In revealing enemy secrets, Hubbard cautioned, it was important to gain the cooperation of the police, otherwise the operation might "recoil."

Hubbard introduced a section on "intelligence" with

By definition Intelligence is covert. Under cover. If it is kept so all the way it is effective. When Intelligence surfaces it becomes very ineffective. Threat and mystery are a lot of the power of intelligence. Publicity blows it.

To demonstrate his point, Hubbard gave examples concerning the Russians and the Germans in the Second World War.

The next section was on "Black Propaganda," which Hubbard stated was "developed by the British and German services in World War I into a fine art." He stated that the "British got the US. into World War I with Black Propaganda, despite a president elected on a peace platform." The problem with Black Propaganda, as Hubbard wrote, was that since it contained lies and half-truths, its originators could be discredited by their own work. Therefore it was important to be able to document one's claims as truth. The reason the enemy's information was allegedly ineffective was that "never at any time did its instigators (a) have any factual adverse data or (b) tell the truth." Because of the heroism and sacrifice of his customers, Hubbard wrote, nobody would believe the propaganda against them. The reason the customer would counter-attack was that they had documented truth, whereas the attackers supposedly did not. This would require "intelligence-like tactics" to discover who the enemy was, or more accurately, what Hubbard termed "a cross between PR and Intelligence."

Referring to the above, Hubbard wrote under a section titled "The Cross"

Anyone engaging in Black Propaganda is either using a wrong way to right a wrong or confessing he can't make it in open competition.

The final section of this letter is called "Protest PR" and stated that protest PR "is a legitimate method of attempting to right wrongs." As an example he gave the "slaves" who were freed in 1864 and who "became a key racial problem full of demonstrations and riots and social unrest."

If "protest PR" did not work, wrote Hubbard, then "subversive actions, general intelligence actions, Black Propaganda and other evils occur." He recommended exercising public relations early and intelligently, but then added that this was "not always possible."

L. RON HUBBARD
Founder
Copyright 1971
by L. Ron Hubbard

160. OEC Vol 6, item 263
HCO Policy Letter
May 28, 1971
PR Series No. 8
Too Little Too Late

Hubbard used this two-page letter entirely to make the point that successful public relations work consisted of advance preparation. He also wrote and emphasized this as a rule, as follows:

THE SUCCESS OF ANY EVENT IS DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL TO THE TIMELY PREPARATION.

To clarify this, he also added "poor preparation made too late gives an unsuccessful event." The rest of the letter emphasizes this point in various ways.

L. RON HUBBARD
Founder
Copyright 1971
by L. Ron Hubbard

161. OEC Vol 6, item 264
HCO Policy Letter
May 30, 1971
PR Series No. 9
Manners

In this letter, Hubbard wrote that good manners are accepted in society, and that bad manners are rejected. For that reason, a public relations team would have to be familiar with whatever was publicly considered to be good manners. He wrote that the essence of good manners was to make the other person feel important. To illustrate by contrast, he wrote

Arrogance and Force may win dominion and control but will never win acceptance and respect.

The reason the Nazis could not dominate the world, wrote Hubbard, was that "[t]hey just don't have good manners." To clarify this, he wrote that they did not know how to make others feel important and they did not have the Scientology understanding of communication. He explained that the Scientology understanding of communication included learning "good manners."

In regard to making people feel important, Hubbard wrote that flattery "is not very useful" because it made people suspicious. Acknowledging people's existence was said to be the way to show them that they were important. In regard to communication, Hubbard wrote that first the people with whom one was communicating had to agree on which procedure would be used to communicate. As an example of how not to communicate, he gave advertisers who blared out their message with no regard for whether anyone was listening to them or not. Hubbard stressed that PR had to succeed.

L. RON HUBBARD
Founder
Copyright 1971
by L. Ron Hubbard

162. OEC Vol 6, item 265
HCO Policy Letter
June 2, 1971
PR Series No. 10
Breakthrough, PR and Production, Tone Scale Surveys
The Laws of PR

The foremost problem to production, wrote Hubbard, was "human emotion and reaction." Relating this to public relations, he wrote

PR IS THE SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY OF HANDLING AND CHANGING HUMAN EMOTION AND REACTION. (emphasis in the original)

In order to measure this, the PR practitioner was urged to get a reaction by means of a survey. In this way the surveys could be studied and the reactions handled. In order to get a reaction, the people being interviewed were to be gotten involved in the subject, and thus their emotions had to be addressed. Emotions would be different for various types of publics. Hubbard described his procedures as follows:

But these are the basic concepts of the science of PR. It covers the field of manipulation of human emotion.

L. Ron Hubbard
Founder
Copyright 1971
by L. Ron Hubbard

163. OEC Vol 6, item 266
HCO Policy Letter
June 15, 1972
PR Series No. 11
PR Area Control, Three Grades of PR

The content of this letter in its entirety are extracted from L. Ron Hubbard's "conference notes" as follows:

These are the three grades of PR:
Perfect PR: GOOD WORKS WELL PUBLICIZED.
Inadequate PR: GOOD WORKS WHICH SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.
Enemy PR: BAD WORKS FALSELY PUBLICIZED.

The daily routine of a working PR man, Hubbard wrote, consisted of

[b]ribing newspapermen and "free lance writers" to write horrible lies about a competitor, bribing or lying to Congressmen or ministers or members of Parliament to get a law passed to enable a fast buck to be made and countering the ploys of the other firm's PR ...

PR could properly be described as a partially workable technique that was capable of changing "states of mind in different types of audiences or publics." In this regard, it could sometime be misused. To prevent this sort of misuse, Hubbard wrote that he had done further study on the subject in order to "find out what was wrong with it."

His findings were that PR was dangerous, was prone to failure and could be turned against one by the competition.

Yet, none of this, or anything else they can dig up about this story, will make those phony memos any less phony.

But they did apologize..