Communist Media Manipulation – KGB Lessons

Tsunami 2004 caused by American underwater thermonuclear bomb – Pravda Website

I recently read The Mitrokhin Archive II, the book which details the Soviet penetration of the Indian polity during the cold war. Former KGB spy and archivist Mitrokhin’s revelations are interesting. And yet there are no surprises. The expose is only a confirmation of what many of us knew all along- that the Indian leftists were controlled by Moscow. The juicier bits about how ‘packages of banknotes were passed through the window of a car’ for CPI General Secretary Rajeshwar Rao ( for which Rao provided receipts) or the report about how the KGB arranged for (Miss) Indira Gandhi to be surrounded by ‘handsome young male admirers’ when she visited Moscow in 1953 are passé. After all, according to the KGB officials themselves, ‘The entire country was up for sale’. So, the price, whether in cash or kind, was dictated by individual tastes. The VODKA-NATASHA packages allotted to our comrades during their stay in Moscow were standard tricks of the second oldest profession. So what is new? Nothing much is – as per the Mitrokhin disclosure. Mitrokhin shows that today’s trends in the Indian media have a historical context and these bear a close resemblance to the techniques which the KGB had employed to win friends and influence the policy of our country. The content of the disinformation employed may or may not be different, yet the technique remains almost the same. Nothing has changed -much.

The Technique of today.

The disinformation technique, if I may remind you, is ‘shoot and scoot’. We are familiar with the method. A ‘sensational’ news appears in some obscure newspaper. It might be the case of a nun ‘molested’ by ‘communal forces’ (read VHP) in distant Jhabua or another ‘raped ‘in Baripada, Orissa. This ‘hot news’ would instantly be picked up by other media and amplified- repeatedly. Gradually, on enquiry, the truth of the event would start to trickle in. The molesters would turn up to be Christians themselves and not the ‘communal forces’ as trumpeted by the media. Days later, the medical examination of the ‘raped’ nun would rule out even such a possibility. But by then it would be ‘scoot’ time for the media before the actual details of the event catches up. The truth of the matter would get a complete buried in the next ‘breaking (news) wave’.

Shoot and scoot –KGB style.

Mitrokhin says that this media style is not indigenous. Like almost everything related to Left- wing activism, ‘shoot and scoot’ was imported from the fatherland. Mitrokhin has documented that, during the cold war, the KGB, through its agents and newsmen had ‘planted’ thousands of articles in the Indian media to sell the Communist worldview. The number of such articles ‘planted’ in 1972 was 3789, in 1973 it was 2760, 4486 articles in 1974 and 5510 in 1975.These articles often spread stories and were sometimes supported by forged documents. For example, just prior to the 1967 elections in our country, the KGB planted a story about a letter sent by British High Commissioner John Freeman saying that Americans were paying anti- Communist politicians in India large amounts of money. The forged letter was also published in the media as ‘evidence’. But the KGB forgers had made a mistake and inadvertently added ‘Sir’ to Freeman’s name. The truth was out. Then there was the news planted in the Bombay Free Press Journal that the US had set up a Bacteriological Warfare Facility (actually non existent) in Vietnam. This planted news was used as the ‘proof’ for the subsequent media blitz. Another media ‘scoop’ in 1984 was that the ‘AIDS’ virus was manufactured by the Americans in a Maryland laboratory .This news, which was carried in more than 30 countries of the world, originated, according to Mitrokhin, from a KGB plant in the Indian newspaper ‘Patriot’.

Media manipulation –echoes from the past.

Remember the story about a pregnant Muslim woman ripped open by Hindu mobs wielding Trishuls during the Gujarat riots? Remember how the ‘secular’media lapped it up and amplified it? Well, the story didn’t start in Gujarat. Years before those riots, Kerala’s own Jihadi Abdul Nasser Mahdani was going around the state with the ‘pregnant woman’ story. Mahdani’s claim was that the Indian army was doing exactly the same thing in Kashmir-Yes, ‘ripping out unborn children out of pregnant Muslim women’. Mahdani’s speech became so popular that his cassettes sold like hot cakes (or hot Biriyanis). Till recently I thought that the ‘pregnant woman story’ emerged out of Mahdani’s warped imagination. Apparently it did not. The ‘story’ has a rather illustrious past. It was V.K. Krishna Menon who is known to be this story’s last known trumpeter. Krishna Menon, whom the KGB wanted desperately to succeed Nehru as India’s PM, had his own spin to the story. According to him, it was the American soldiers in Vietnam who were doing this –‘slitting open the wombs of pregnant women to expose their unborn babies’. Not one case of such a Caesarian has been proved – not in Gujarat, not in Vietnam and certainly not in Kashmir. But who needs the truth? And who would want to bother with issues like credibility? Leftist newspapers in India during the period of the cold war were least bothered about credibility or circulation. Did you know that 10 of our ‘secular’ papers during the seventies ran with little or no revenue from advertisements? From where then, did they get the money to run the newspaper? Mitrokhin has the answer. He says that these ‘progressive’ papers were financed by the ‘Center’ (KGB) to the tune of millions of rupees for supporting pro-Soviet politicians of the Congress and the CPI. Money also went to organizations like the ‘World Peace Council’ run by CPI leader Romesh Chandra (Have you noticed that Leftists always get high on ‘Peace’?).It is not surprising that during the period of the cold war it was India which voted against America in the UN more number of times than the Soviet Union itself. Even today the leftward tilt in the UPA-FM continues. Nobody can accuse the left of disloyalty!

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