Alexander Cockburn, a mouthpiece for Scientology

Journalist Alexander Cockburn has written several articles critical of prozac, the (original) cult awareness network, or the german government. All these articles supported the agenda of Scientology, and all these articles seem to have been spoonfed to him by Scientology, instead of being the result of investigative reporting. Why is this so? Why doesn't this guy make an attempt to check his facts? A NEXIS search made me suspect that the core of it is simply that he dislikes Richard Behar, the journalist who wrote the excellent TIME magazine article Scientology: The thriving cult of greed and power. Let's first see the "hall of shame" of Cockburn journalism:

Publication	Title	Critical description	File name (for me)
The Nation 4.5.1992	TIME's attack on The Nation Reporter Richard Behar's defense of Bill Clinton	Attacks Behar for his article on Terry Reed; claims that Behar's Scientology article was so bad that it resulted in sympathy for Scientology. (Cockburn parrots the "flourish and prosper" propaganda that Scientology uses after every critical article)	920504.txt
New Statesman & Society 27.11.1992	Consider the Lilly: Dispute between Eli Lilly and Co. and Church of Scientology	Weird conspiracy story about president Bush and prozac	921127.txt
The Nation 7.12.1992	Paradigms of Power: The Case of Eli Lilly	Same as above, except that "National Enquirer" (mentioned in article above) has now been replaced by "National Journal"	921207.txt
The Nation 12.3.1993	A La Recherche du Temps Perdu: Or, How TIME Saved Clinton's Ass	Mentions the lawsuit by Terry Reed against TIME, the lawsuit by Scientology against TIME (both later dismissed), and parrots scurrilous allegations by Earle Cooley that Behar is colluding with kidnappers, and claims that TIME itself is a cult	930712.txt
The Los Angeles Times 27.4.1993	From Salem to Waco, by way of the nazis	Claims that the cult awareness network is responsible for the Waco disaster. Attacks Rick Ross, Patricia Ryan, Priscilla Coates and of course TIME magazine.	930427.txt
New Statesman & Society 30.4.1993	100 days of Clinton; includes related information on Army's domestic spy network and its investigations of African American leaders since 1917	Similar to the LA Times article	930430.txt
The Nation 31.1.1994	Karl Popper and the march of science	An attack on psychiatry, probably spoonfed by CCHR	940131_2.txt
The Nation 9.5.1994	Waco, a year later	Claims that the FBI murdered a harmless religion, attacks exit counsellor Rick Ross	940509.txt
The Nation 25.11.1996	Still Germans after all these years	Attacks Germany for being critical on Scientology. Claims that a German school in Denmark denies scientologist children to attend. Calls Heber Jentzsch his friend. Neglects to tell that the parents of these children actually sent their children to an illegal German Scientology school in Denmark, and were trying to infiltrate the german minority association, which had to protect itself. Calls for a boycott of Braun products. (Braun is owned by Gillette, an american company!!)	961125.txt
The Los Angeles Times 13.3.1997	Scientologists Take Offensive in Reich Land	Another attack against Germany	970313_2.txt
New Statesman 7.3.1997	And don't upset the Scientologists	Same article as above, although it does not mention Chick Corea, and doesn't have the "don't bother writing me about the evils of scientology" segment from the LA Times.	970307.txt
The Seattle Times 2.4.1998	Germans lose their cool on the topic of Scientology	Jumps to the rescue of John Travolta, after "Primary Colors" flops at the box office. Claims that 160 investigations against scientologists resulted in nothing, neglects to mentions that the two highest IAS donors ever landed in jail for tax evasion. Claims that scientology is attacked in Germany because investigators found vitamin C at the home of a scientologist, neglects to tell that this scientologist died by multiple organ failure, had received huge amounts of vitamins in shoe boxes from The Netherlands, had ruined his whole family, and had no health insurance (very unusual in Germany!) because he believed to be healthy forever thanks to scientology.	980402.txt
The Las Vegas Review-Journal 4.7.1999 Also in CounterPunch 15.7.1999	Bombs waiting to explode	Claims that the Unabomber was a volunteer in "CIA mind control experiments". Additionally, the usual rant against anti-depressants, mentioning that Eric Harris was on Luvox and Kip Kinkel was on Prozac.	990704_4.txt
The Las Vegas Review-Journal 23.8.1999	On George W, the prez, Buford Furrow and drugs	An attack against NY Times columnist (and scientology critic!) Frank Rich, who had dared to suggest psychotherapy for President Clinton. Additionally, a rant against neuroleptics and antidepressants.	990823_2.txt
Creators Syndicate 12.6.2002	Guinea Pigs in freedom's cause	Claims that the CIA sent a railroad car of shredded documents to the scientologists in response to a FOIA request, and that the scientologists patiently pieced enough of the millions of scraps of paper together to figure out that in 1951, the U.S. Army had secretly contaminated the Norfolk Naval Supply Center in Virginia with infectious bacteria. He then advertises his book about alleged CIA experiments.	020612.txt
CounterPunch 3.4.2004	Anti-Depressants a Problem? We're Shocked!	The usual anti-psychiatric propaganda from Scientology and from Insight, a moonie magazine	040403.txt
CounterPunch 2.4.2005	Death, Depression and Prozac	More of the usual anti-psychiatric propaganda, but Scientology & co are not named as his sources	050402.txt
CounterPunch 30.12.2005	The Making of Mental Patients Inside TeenScreen By Sandra Lucas of CCHR	anti-psychiatric propaganda against TeenScreen, a programme to prevent Teen suicide	051230.txt

My impression is that Alexander Cockburn happily swallows whatever Scientology tells him, without checking any facts; The Nation prints it without checking any of the facts; Scientology then "quotes" Alexander Cockburn: the cycle is closed. Richard Behar explained the beginning of Alexander Cockburn's anger to his friend Paulette Cooper:

From: paulettec@aol.com (Paulettec)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: More on Cockburn versus Behar
Date: 8 Apr 1998 17:37:45 GMT

I asked Rich Behar (author of Time magazine anti-Scientology cover story) to
write up something for a.r.s. readers about the reasons Cockburn has been
attacking him and promoting Scientology.  Here it is -- I think you'll find the
last paragraph especially interesting.

Paulette Cooper

Paulette, you can post this:

     In the spring of 1992, I reported and wrote an expose of Terry Reed, who I
had concluded was a con man. Reed, you may recall, is the alleged "CIA"
operative who has linked President Clinton to contra training and drug running
at the Mena Airport in Arkansas.  My in-depth investigation found that many of
Reed's former employers claimed he had stolen money from them (or attempted to
steal money).  Reed then weaved some of these people into his Clinton tale,
which I concluded was just a fantasy.
   Alex Cockburn had been Reed's biggest champion in the press and yet he never
bothered to fully investigate the guy. In my article, I decided to take a shot
at The Nation for being so "credulous."  Unfortunately, I was in the Middle East
on a vacation when my story ran and an editor decided to attack Cockburn by
name.  The name he chose was "Andrew," Alex's brother, and a fact-checker at
TIME didn't catch the blunder. Nor did I.
   Cockburn gleefully pointed out the mistake, and he went on to attack me in
column after column -- defending Reed (to my utter amazement), while also
condemning my Scientology story.  Cockburn was so passionate that a few
publications  (among them, Media Week, as I recall) ran some articles on the
so-called Behar-Cockburn feud.
    By the way, except for the Andrew-Alex mix-up, I argued at the time that my
Reed expose was accurate.  Reed ultimately sued us for libel, and a federal
judge threw out the case after concluding that I had made a "thorough
examination" and that Reed "has been unable to come up with any evidence
suggesting that Behar did not in good faith believe that every fact stated in
his article was accurate, and that his characterization of plaintiff as a liar
was fully justified."
   The judge, after reviewing my massive evidence (which included many tape-
recorded conversations), did not even permit Reed to depose me, which, as you
may know, is very rare in libel actions. That's how strong our story was. 
   Incidentally, we had a sworn affidavit in the case from a colleague at
TIME who claims that Reed told him (months before the suit was filed) that the
church had offered to pay for any lawsuit he wanted to bring against me and
TIME.  Even if we assume that Reed was telling the truth about this alleged
offer, I have no proof whether he actually accepted such money. Freedom
Magazine published a positive story about Reed and his suit against TIME. 
Interestingly, Reed's book ("Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA")  briefly
made the best-seller list in the LA Times, which I find simply remarkable given his
background.