Links to two articles of commentary from Consortium News. The first is excerpted from its author’s forthcoming book. The second was first published on July 19 by Declassified UK.  NOTE: This is the first of two entries today. — MCM

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The U.S. press, spooks, and the Senate’s Church committee, by Patrick Lawrence | Consortium News  On Jan. 9, 1953, the Washington Post published an editorial we can read all these years later as a murmur amid silence. It was a blunt worry about what the Central Intelligence Agency, five years old at the time, was getting up to. On page 20 of that day’s editions, the newspaper stood with the objectors, viewing the agency’s activities as “incompatible with a democracy.” Dead quiet followed. Nothing more was published on the topic. READ MORE . . .

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BP’s wars, coups & dictators, by Mark Curtis | Declassified UK / Consortium News Declassified recently revealed that BP has pumped Iraqi oil worth £15 billion since the U.K. and U.S. militaries invaded the country in 2003. Governments in London and Washington long denied the Iraq war was about oil. Yet BP returned to the country in 2009 after a 35-year absence and was awarded a significant interest in Iraq’s largest oil field. Something similar happened in Libya following another U.K. military intervention in 2011. READ MORE . . .