William Safire Reports for Duty in the Propaganda War

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Good PR practitioners can reinvent themselves as journalists. William Safire is a Pulitzer Prize winning opinion columnist with the New York Times, but his background and love is as a right-wing propagandist. He began his career as a PR executive who helped manage the now-infamous Nixon-Kruschev "kitchen debate" during the Cold War, then went on to advise and write speeches for Nixon in the White House before jumping that sinking ship to land a stateroom on the opinion pages of the New York Times. These days he's strongly criticizing the Bush Administration for losing the propaganda war in Afghanistan. Safire even blames his cronies like Elliott Abrams of the White House National Security Council, a man personally familiar with waging terrorism against civilians from his less-than-legal work with the notorious "contras" in Nicaragua. If Safire didn't have such a powerful bully pulpit at the New York Times he might want back into the White House. Instead he provides free PR advice exhorting the slackers in Washington to crank up the propaganda machinery, and fast: "times a-wastin, there's a war on."