Alvin A. Snyder

Alvin A. Snyder was a director of WORLDNET Television and before that a senior executive with CBS and NBC, special assistant to President Nixon, and a high ranking communications official in the Ford and Reagan administrations.

Some quotes from Snyders inside account of the USIA:

"The stunning impact our KE-007 videotape had at the United Nations showed how dramatically television could manipulate world opinion. It was clear to all of us that it would henceforth influence the way in which America conducted its foreign affairs." (Snyder, 1995, p.73)

"I was frankly astonished by the impact the Worldnet satellite format was having on jaded veteran newsmen, who were so dazzled by the technology that it actually influenced their work. It seems I had underestimated the size of many journalists' egos. They liked sitting chatting one-on-one with some of the world's most influencial people. It seemed to soften them up." (Snyder, 1995, p.87)

Snyder, given his involvement in producing the Korean Air 007 shootdown video that was screened at the UN Security Council in 1983, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in Sept. 1996 in which he offered a mea culpa. The Reagan Administration, via then Secretary of State George Schultz, gave him intercepted audio communications of the Soviet jet fighters' cockpit audio to incorporate into the video, but withheld the Soviet ground controller audio. The edited portions showed that the KAL plane was confused for a KC-135 tanker that flew routine surveillance missions along the Soviet border. The withheld, newly-released audio also showed that the Soviet fighter pilots tried to establish communications and land the KAL plane, but was ignored by the KAL pilot crew before the missile strike.

Resources

• Alvin A. Snyder, 1995, Warriers of disinformation: American propaganda, Soviet lies, and the winning of the Cold War, Arcade Publishing: New York. ISBN 1559703210 (Hardcover 1995), ISBN 155970389X (Softcover 1997)
• Alvin A. Snyder, September 1, 1996, "The Truth about Korean Airlines Flight 007", Washington Post.

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