By Paul Craig Roberts

May 07, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - Radio “Liberty” has always been a propaganda ministry. Formerly its propaganda was directed against the Soviet Union. Today it is directed against distinguished Americans who are known and respected for their allegiance to the truth.

Radio Liberty’s latest target is an American scholar who is far more widely respected than Radio Liberty. Like everything else in Washington the two-bit propaganda ministry is carried away by hubris and a mistaken opinion of its own importance.

A Radio Liberty non-entity named Carl Schreck, of whom no one has ever heard, has declared America’s most distinguished Russian scholar, Stephen Cohen, to be “a Putin apologist.”

Stephen Cohen, a professor of Russian studies at both Princeton University and New York University, was advisor to President George Herbert Walker Bush. Cohen was also respected by the Soviet government. Consequently, he was able to convince the Soviets to rehabilitate Nikolai Bukharin, a leading Bolshevik, one of Lenin’s favorites who was murdered by Joseph Stalin and to permit Bukharin’s widow to return to Moscow from exile. Mikhail Gorbachev also trusted Cohen, and little doubt that Cohen helped to bring about the end of the Cold War.

Like myself, Cohen comes from a time when academic reputations were based on discerning and telling the truth regardless of the government’s propaganda line. Those days have passed.

For propagandists like Carl Schreck, truth is whatever serves Washington’s agendas. Schreck is incapable of comprehending that truth is independent of Washington’s agendas. Therefore, when Cohen speaks the truth, Schreck brands it the Kremlin propaganda line.

Another non-entity of whom no one has ever heard and never will again, Lynn Lubamersky, declared Cohen to be “a mouthpiece for a mass murderer.” If the non-entity means Putin, who did Putin mass murder? The mass murderers of our time are George W. Bush and Obama, and clearly Cohen is not a mouthpiece for them.

So many academic careers today depend on federal and corporate money, that it remains to be seen if the academics in Cohen’s area of expertise can afford to stand up in his behalf.

Cohen’s position on Russia and Ukraine is the same as mine. The crisis began with the Washington organized coup in Kiev that overthrew the democratic government and replaced it with a puppet government answerable to Washington. In the official Radio Liberty propaganda this coup never occurred. Instead, there was a Russian invasion and annexation. No informed person can believe this abject nonsense. Yet, this nonsense is prevailing over the truth.

The Washington establishment is trying to silence Stephen Cohen, but I think he will give the liars the finger and continue to speak the truth.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.