The American Security Council
(ASC), not to be confused with the
National Security Council, recently
released “Attack on the
Americas!,” a made-for-television
film decrying the “red menace”
next door. The film is part of a
$5,000,000 television campaign
called Project Survival, whose
stated intention is to “waken and
activate all Americans for a
change in U.S. defense policy.”
“Attack on the Americas!,”
previewed in December at the
John F. Kennedy Center for the
Performing Arts in Washington,
will be offered by the ASC to all
commerical stations in the coun-
try. As the film’s sponsor, the
Coalition for Peace Through
Strength, an ASC spin-off, states:
“The objective is at- least five
showings in each of the more than
200 television market areas.”
Lest this goal not be taken
seriously, Project Survival’s first
film, “The SALT Syndrome,” has
been televised over 2000 times by
local stations nationwide. This film
was so inaccurate and biased that
the Pentagon itself was led to of-
ficially refute its content. “War
Without Winners,” the impressive
anti-nuclear-war film by the Center
for Defense Information, was
prompted by the extensive airing
of ‘The SALT Syndrome.”
Right Wing TV
The original working title of “At-
tack on the Americas!” was
MarlApr 1981
“Caribbean Pearl Harbor.” Accor-
ding to the ASC, the film “reports
on the Brezhnev-Castro drive to
turn the Caribbean into a Soviet
lake by a combination of
Communist-sponsored revolution
and U.S. government opposition to
anti-communist leadership in the
area.”
The film argues for U.S. support
to unpopular military dictatorships
in El Salvador, Guatemala and
elsewhere in the Americas. It
claims, despite widespread fin-
dings to the contrary by ‘interna-
tional organizations, church
groups and the U.S. government,
that these governments have not
violated human rights. The film
concludes with a plea for increas-
ed military strength in order to pro-
tect the United States’ geopolitical
and economic interests in Central
America and the Caribbean.
Biased and distorted, “Attack
on the Americas!” is such a poorly
done film that even a member of
Congress who agreed with its
message noted, “It is not as well
done as ‘The SALT Syndrome.”‘
Already shown at least thirty times
on public television, the film has
been temporarily withdrawn for
revisons, but a massive campaign
of cross-country television show-
ings is planned for April.
Could another reason for the
film’s withdrawal be that copies
are busy being shown to incoming
Reagan administration personnel
and new members of Congress?
Read the script. See the film.
Listen to the President’s and Con-
gress’ latest calls to unleash the
intelligence community, beef up
military strength, and send in-
creased military aid and advisers
to the Junta in El Salvador. The
feverish rise of anti-communism
has come from somewhere, and
one source is certainly the ASC,
with its “disinformation” cam-
paign to win over first the ad-
ministration, and then the hearts
and minds of the American people.
The American Security
Council
“Attack on the Americas!” was
produced by the American Securi-
ty Council Foundation for the
Coalition for Peace Through
Strength, a bipartisan alliance of
177 national organizations, 230
members of Congress, and other
pro-defense leaders across the
country. According to many, the
American Security Council is the
military-industrial complex which
President Eisenhower explicitly
warned against in his farewell ad-
dress.
Leadership of the ASC and its
incestuously close relatives, the
Center for Strategic and Interna-
tional Studies of Georgetown
University and the Coalition for
Peace Through Strength include
numerous retired high-ranking
military men (including a number
of former Chiefs of Staff), prime
defense contractors, and hard-line
anti-communist politicians, as well
as a number of former CIA and
other intelligence personnel-in
short all the “good old boys” cold
warriors.
General Electric, among other
corporations, is a member of the
ASC. Remember Ronald Reagan
selling GE products years ago on
your television screen? Today we
37te * update update . update
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E
z
Haig’s first press conference-stirring the embers of anti-communist hysteria.
have a President, a Secretary of
State and an Ambassador to the
United Nations, “brought to you by
ASC.” In fact, Ronald Reagan,
Alexander Haig and Jeane
Kirkpatrick are all featured pro-
minently in “Attack on the
Americas!”
Running its National Security
“Academy” in Washington, D.C.,
and courses for credit through
Georgetown University’s School
for Summer and Continuing
Education, the ASC’s central
38
headquarters are on an old rolling
estate in Boston, Virginia. Here the
ASC plays computerized war
games, holds national security
seminars and meetings on
grounds complete with a small lan-
ding field, and runs a large printing
plant and mass mailing facility, a
private library and ultra-modern
computerized offices. Having at-
tempted to obtain Senator McCar-
thy’s old lists among others, the
ASC is also reputed to have the
largest list of “subversives” in the
country.
Lest the ASC lose members to a
nuclear war, it provides a study on
“how to maximize your chances
for surviving nuclear war using
tools and equipment to be found
around the average home” called
Nuclear War Survival Skills.
ASC Special Tours
The latest caper sponsored by
the ASC occurred in mid-March
1981 when they brought five high-
ranking South African military in-
NACLA Reportupdate *update update update
telligence officers into the country
in flagrant violation of U.S. policy.
Following the U.N.-sponsored
arms embargo against South
Africa the State Department pro-
hibited contacts with senior South
African military officers. Never-
theless, these ASC-hosted illegals
briefed not only the ASC staff on
South Africa, but also made a
“courtesy call” to the Defense In-
telligence Agency, and a staff
member of the National Security
Council. They also met with
Kirkpatrick, who incredulously
claims to have been ignorant of
their identities. While attempting to
enter the State Department, one
officer was recognized as being a
persona non grata, and the group
was refused entrance.
This pattern of bringing persona
non grata into the U.S. capital for
surprise visits and press con-
ferences has occurred over and
over again. During the Carter ad-
ministration, the ASC clandestinely
brought in former Major Roberto
D’Aubisson, second in command
of Salvadorean Army intelligence
prior to the 1979 coup. Trained at
the International Police Academy
in Washington, D.C. and claiming
close rapport with U.S. conser-
vatives, D’Aubisson denies fre-
quent charges that he is the leader
of the rightest death squads in El
Salvador. Nevertheless, the ASC
sneaked D’Aubisson into the
United States at a time when the
Immigration and Naturalization
Service was directed to prevent
his entrance.
Furthermore, when President
Carter relieved Major General
John Singlaub of his position as
Chief of Staff, U.S. Forces in South
Korea, the ASC engineered and
financed a speaking tour, held a
press conference similar to
D’Aubisson’s right in the shadow
MarlApr 1981
of the Capitol, and developed a
public relations campaign to give
Singlaub a voice across the coun-
try.
The Counterattack
Measures to counter “Attack on
the Americas!” were small initially,
but are growing, bubbling up here
and there. In January, the Center
for New Creation, a small justice
and peace center “for Northern
Virginia and beyond,” invited a
group of human rights activists
from the religious, political, educa-
tional and grass-roots sectors in
Washington, D.C. to view the film.
Appalled by what they saw, those
gathered formed the ad hoc Coali-
tion for Human Rights in Central
America. As Marie Grasso, a
founder of the Coalition stated,
“We viewed ‘Attack on the
Americas!’ and found it biased in
the extreme. Many members of
this coalition have had personal
experiences in the Caribbean, par-
ticularly in Central America; and
their regular communication with
the struggling poor in Latin
America paints an entirely dif-
ferent picture.”
Composed of over 25 in-
dividuals and Washington-based
organizations, the ad hoc Coalition
asked the Center for New Creation
to develop an information packet
to critique the film, provide
background information on the
ASC, and supply information on
the Fairness Doctrine, plus a list of
alternative films and other
resources to counter the film’s
perversions. A letter signed by the
participating individuals and
groups was also sent to those
television stations who have
shown or intend to show “Attack
on the Americas!,” demanding
that, under the Fairness Doctrine,
they air an alternative viewpoint.
The Fairness Doctrine, an FCC
provision, requires stations to air
opposing views on public issues.
The Center for New Creation’s
information packet includes a cri-
tique of the film prepared by Philip
Wheaton, Director of EPICA. As
Wheaton points out: “The film has
a double message or argument
… (first) a rhetorical, redbait-
ing warning against the steadily
ly growing and intentional strategy
of the Soviet Union to take over
the Caribbean basin and to march
inexorably northward through Cen-
tral America, country by country,
until they are at our border. Thus
the Americas are ‘under siege’
and through Cuban intervention,
the Soviets intend to ‘slash’ the
Americas in half. The second
message,” continues Wheaton,
“is an attack on the Carter ad-
ministration’s human rights
philosophy as naive.”
“The primary distortion,”
Wheaton observes, is that “there
is neither recognition nor analysis
of the social inequities which are
the cause of the social upheavals
in Central America and the Carib-
bean, nor that these inequities are
due to the oppressive and ex-
ploitive role of the ruling classes in
specific countries.”
One glaring example of the type
of distortions that run throughout
the film is a scene in which the
overvoice decries the sufferings of
the people caused by communist
guerrilla terrorists while showing
the well-known news footage of
the government massacre of
mourners at the funeral of Ar-
chbishop Romero, killed a year
ago this March 24th in El Salvador.
Although the ASC film deals
with other Central American and
Caribbean countries, the Coalition
for Human Rights in Central
America considers Glen Silber’s
39update *update update update
“El Salvador: Another Vietnam?”
to be an excellent partial response
to “Attack on the Americas!” All
twenty-six Public Broadcasting
System (PBS) stations around the
country have the Silber film, and
the Coalition urges people to call
their local PBS station to express
interest in broacasting (or re-
broadcasting) “El Salvador:
Another Vietnam?”
With John A. Bushnell, acting
Deputy Assistant of State for Inter-
American Affairs, complaining that
reporters are overplaying their
accounts of El Salvador
developments; the White House
opposing Bushnell’s view; Presi-
dent Reagan denying com-
parisons between El Salvador and
Vietnam; and with the U.S. sending
advisers to El Salvador, it appears
that “Attack on the Americas!” is
indeed helping to make truth the
first casualty of war.
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