Red White & Blind

Did CIA Director William Casey really say, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false?”

This is the provocative quote I use for the Introduction to my new book, Red White & Blind. It appears right at the outset of the book. Despite the quote appearing in countless memes and webpages, I should have provided a clear source for it in the text. I somehow overlooked it when I was compiling the book’s exhaustive sources and footnotes. Yes, despite compiling 50 pages of citations, I missed this one.

So, let’s provide it here. There is a useful Quora page where this quote is discussed. The page has been edited a bit, but a man named Greg Smith produces an email with former White House campaign staffer Barabara Honegger, who was in the meeting at which Casey expressed this troubling intention. I’m posting this email here in the event it is removed from the Quora page:

Ex-DCI Bill Casey's quote was attributed online as reported only by Mae Brussell, and so I bounced it off Barbara Honegger because I knew she worked for Mae B back in the day. Here's what I got from her in [an email] response:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Barbara Honegger
Date: Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 11:19 PM
Subject: Re: Conference on THE WARREN REPORT AND THE
JFK ASSASSINATION : FIVE DECADES OF SIGNIFICANT DISCLOSURES
To: Greg Smith
I told Mae about it when we worked together ...
On Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 10:32 PM, Greg Smith wrote:

Thanks Barbara! That's priceless. The web attributes it to Mae B only, and therefore, it's discounted in chat and group conversations on social media. You might want to give it better street cred? Your call!

On Sep 21, 2014, at 8:59 PM, Barbara Honegger wrote:

>     Seriously -- I personally was the Source 
>     for that William Casey quote.  He said it 
>     at an early Feb. 1981 meeting in the
>     Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of 
>     the White House which I attended, and 
>     I immediately told my close friend and 
>     political godmother Senior White House 
>     Correspondent Sarah McClendon, who 
>     then went public with it without naming 
>     the source ...  
>     On Sat, Sep 20, 2014 at 2:49 PM, Greg Smith wrote:
>
>         Love to, but can't break away. I'll definitely get the DVD for future very intense scrutiny! On that note, in the words of the infamous William J. Casey, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." 

>
>         On Sep 17, 2014, at 1:25 AM, Barbara Honegger wrote:
>>         I'm going to try to go to the historic conference.  
>>         Please try to as well... 
>>         Barbara  
>>         On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 8:34 PM, Jerry Policoff wrote:  
>>         Re: Conference on THE WARREN REPORT AND THE
>>            JFK ASSASSINATION : FIVE DECADES OF 
>>            SIGNIFICANT DISCLOSURES