During Cold War, CIA used ‘Doctor Zhivago’ as a tool to undermine Soviet Union

In a sort of self-referential loop, a large part of the propaganda value to many of these, certainly D.Z. in particular, is the fact that it was banned/censored in the USSR in the first place. Obviously that wasn't the only factor that gave it value. It had to have other elements to it (such as being written by one of the greatest Russian authors, provoking unconventional thought, etc. -- obviously banned garbage would have remained garbage). But a large part of its hit on the credibility of the leadership of the USSR, which is what gave it propaganda value, was essentially self-inflicted.

It's important to emphasize the CIA was funding publications targeting the American mind. National Review, Time, and US News and other publications were taking in tax payer dollars (through shell companies) with orders to promote a certain world view. The CIA was also funding art movements. Look into Jackson Pollock and the Congress for Cultural Freedom.

> In a sick twist of irony Operation Mockingbird funded and arranged for the Hollywood production of the book "Animal Farm".

How is this ironic? Orwell wrote Animal Farm as a critique of Stalinism.

Did you know three skyscrapers collapsed on 9/11? In fact, prior to the downfall of the third tower, Larry Silverstein instructed the NY Fire Department to quote "pull it" [i]. Subsequently, Silverstein Properties issued a statement claiming that when Larry Silverstein advised the NY Fire Department commander that “the smartest thing to do is pull it,” what he meant was that it would be wise to pull a contingent of firefighters out of the building [ii].

In your opinion, what accounts for the unbelievable discrepancy between this account by Larry Silverstein, and the NIST's official conclusion that WT7 collapsed due to office fires?

What about the eye witness accounts by NY firefighters claiming to hear, feel and experience "explosions" in the lower lobby of the other towers? [iii]

Oddly, very few people who are for 9/11 truth are saying 9/11 was an inside job. In fact, most of the people who are saying 9/11 is an inside job are either undereducated or have an agenda to discredit the wider 9/11 truth movement.

Look, with all of these discrepancies, why is it that modern life as an American citizen demands a steadfast, unquestioning belief in the official story? Isn't it at least _conceivable_ that the official story isn't completely forthcoming with the facts? Isn't it important we get this one right seeing as the NSA's illegal suspicionless surveillance program is _predicated_ on the events of 9/11 being true?

[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jPzAakHPpk

[ii] NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Structural Fire Response and Probable Collapse Sequence of World Trade Center Building 7, Draft for Public Comment, August 2008, pages 301-302. See http://wtc.nist.gov/media/nist_ncstar_1-9_vol1_for_public_co...

[iii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2cViy34b1A

> Doctor Zhivago is a hauntingly beautiful work

Pasternak, of course, was above all a poet. If I recall correctly, his poet friends (especially Anna Akhmatova) reacted with dismay to his writing that novel at the end of his career—not for political reasons, but for artistic ones. That seems hard to fathom now.

Books were not interesting for them because US didn't censor books.

But they did other stuff. For example, read "Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer" that is written by one the senior counter-intel people from KGB (he handled Ames and Hansen).

He talks about some "projects" and "operations" KGB did in this regard.

Here is a few of them (some already mentioned):

* Planted rumors in newspapers (AIDS was created by US scientists to kill off the black people) [ I remember hearing this one as an urban legend ]

* US sometimes naturalized ex-German active Nazi supporters. Sometimes the Soviets had better archives and trails left than what Americans had. In one case they shamed and pointed at one of the Dept of State workers who was concentration camp guard (and lied about it).

These ones I heard from other places (usually growing up they pop-ed up as "urban legends").

* Planted rumors that US was importing Latin American children and extracting their organs.

* When US was dropping bombs in Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam war, I remember hearing that US deliberately designed their cluster bomblets to look like toys, made them not explode on contact with the ground, with a hope that a child would find them, start playing with it and then it would explode. Message was "US deliberately targeted children with advanced weaponry"

They did other stuff like helping the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War.

Wasn't Beavis and Butthead a KGB plot ?