Launched in 1995, Antiwar.com describes itself as a site “devoted to the cause of non-interventionism” whose “initial project was to fight against intervention in the Balkans under the Clinton presidency.” Explaining their “key role” in the battle for public opinion during that seminal “humanitarian intervention,” the editors write:

Our goal was not only to inform but also to mobilize informed citizens in concerted action to stop the war. The war at home was an information war: an attempt by the government to both limit and shape the information that Americans had. It was, above all, a propaganda war, one in which the American government and its allies in the media were bombing and strafing their own people with hi-tech lies.

Back in the early days of the internet, Antiwar.com did indeed do a very good job of countering the interventionist narrative. Writers such as John Laughland, Chad Nagle, Justin Raimondo, Christine Stone, and George Szamuely showed readers what was really going on in the Balkans and elsewhere, helping many to understand the imperative of non-interventionism. Today, only Raimondo still writes for Antiwar.com. 

By 2011, the information war had shifted from the former Yugoslavia to the Middle East and North Africa, as country after country was being destabilized by a wave of supposedly “spontaneous” uprisings against the region’s dictators — not unlike the one that toppled Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 — dubbed an “Arab Spring” by some dubious cheerleaders (the term was originally used by Israel partisans such as Charles Krauthammer to refer to an “initial flourishing of democracy” in 2005) and an “Arab Awakening” by others. But while the people were still being bombed and strafed by the interventionists’ lies, Antiwar.com appeared to be either missing in action or even to have gone over to the other side.

As the media focus quickly shifted from a “liberated” but devastated Libya to a besieged Syria, there was disturbingly little to distinguish between mainstream reports and those in Antiwar.com. Apparently having forgotten the interventionists’ need to “limit and shape the information” getting to the public, Antiwar.com managed to limit and shape it even further by providing a largely uncritical daily synopsis of mainstream reporting of suspect opposition claims, without even the mainstream’s caveat that “the opposition claims could not be independently verified.”

Its reliance on the interventionists’ “allies in the media” for its “news” on Syria can be gauged from examining its research editor’s choice of sources. In a survey of 10 news reports on Syria between December 14 and December 27, Jason Ditz linked to a total of 24 outside sources, 16 of which were from mainstream media such as the BBC, New York Times and Haaretz; two were from Voice of America, the official external broadcast institution of the US government and a key instrument of its regime change agenda; two from Monsters and Critics, a web-only entertainment/celebrity news and review publication with political commentary and news; and one was from Human Rights Watch, to which billionaire hedge fund manager and prominent “pro-democracy” advocate George Soros (astutely described in an excellent February 2001 Antiwar column as a “False Prophet-At-Large”) pledged $100 million last year, enabling it “to deepen its research presence on countries of concern.” The remaining three were taken from SANA, the Syrian Arab News Agency, whose claims were briefly mentioned only to be dismissed with a cynicism clearly absent in the credulous treatment of opposition sources.

The almost exclusive reliance on mainstream sources was clearly reflected in the content of the news reports. By far the most popular phrase appears to have been “At least … killed,” which appeared in at least 36 separate headlines on Syria in 2011, such as “Good Friday Massacre: At Least 88 Protesters Killed in Syria Crackdown” (April 22), “At Least 60 Killed as Protests Grow in Syria” (June 3), “Hama Massacre: At Least 140 Killed in Syrian Tank Offensive” (July 31), “Syrian Navy Attacks Latakia, At Least 31 Killed” (August 14), “At Least 16 Killed as Syrian Troops Launch New Crackdowns” (August 25), “At Least 17 Killed in Syria Protest Crackdown” (September 2), “At Least 40 Killed as Syria Protesters Call for ‘No-Fly Zone’” (October 28), “At Least 65 Killed in Two Days Since Syria Announced Arab League Deal” (November 3), “At Least 57 Killed in Two Days as Syrian Opposition Express Fear of New Massacre” (December 10) and “At Least 30 Killed as Syrian Forces Shell Homs” (December 26). A September 4 report typically entitled “At Least 24 Killed as Syria Crackdown Continues” encapsulates Jason Ditz’s tendentious analysis of the situation:

The violence marks continued public protests against the Assad regime and months of security forces attacking the demonstrators under the assumption that the attacks will eventually end the nationwide rallies.

Massive Negative Reader Feedback

Throughout the crisis in Syria, dismayed readers have pointed out Antiwar’s complicity in the propaganda war, despite the clear parallels with previous interventions, particularly the most recent one in Libya. In response to that September 4 report entitled “At Least 24 Killed As Syria Crackdown Continues,” someone called “keltrava” commented:

Let me get this wrapped around my head.

The article says as a matter of fact 24 “more” people killed. Yet when it comes to Syrian troops killed it is qualified as “reported by state media”. Why is it written in stone that 24 people [were] killed[?] What are the sources? This is typical of the reporting from Syria and Libya.

Even one of Antiwar’s top columnists was prompted to point out the obvious flaws in Jason Ditz’s reporting. Commenting on the July 31 “Hama Massacre” report, Phil Giraldi wrote:

Any story that is unsourced or is sourced to the rebels or to any of their supporters, as this story is, should be considered suspect. I don’t know what is happening in Syria but nor does any antiwar editor or any source that has a stake in what is going on and is probably writing his account from a hotel in Beirut. The US has clearly sided with the rebels and is doing everything in its power to advance their cause, including easing the passage of their propaganda into international media.

In stark contrast to the readers’ concerns about another Libya-style intervention, Ditz displayed what might most charitably be described as wishful thinking. In an October 25 report predictably entitled “At Least 24 Killed as Syrian Protestors Mass Nationwide,” he averred:

Enthusiasm has tended to grow in protest cities when other regimes fall, and while the situation in Syria isn’t the same as the one in Libya, the causes are largely the same. The protesters are hoping the end result will be too, though ideally without the multi-month civil war and the post-dictator mess Libya is facing.

Despite what another reader accurately described as “massive negative reader feedback,” Jason Ditz appears neither to have responded directly to the criticism nor to have let it in any way moderate his subsequent reports. Antiwar’s response to its readers’ (including at least two of its own writers’) concerns appears to have been mainly in the form of a moderator’s snide remarks attached to some of the more persistent critics’ comments. On December 29, an exasperated Gordon Arnaut exclaimed:

Even as readers have been pointing out the gaping holes in your so-called coverage…you have done NOTHING to address these problems…

You are a WASTE OF TIME…for anyone who is truly interested in truth about current events…

His criticism elicited this response from Thomas L. Knapp:

[Moderator's Note: Mr. Arnaut, if you consider Antiwar.com a waste of time, why do you waste so much time here? Pull down your hem, dear, your agenda is showing - TLK]

Arnaut replied:

Mr. Knapp:

Yes I have an agenda…it’s called THE TRUTH…

Yes I waste time here because I can’t stand FAKE NEWS…

On other occasions, Knapp did attempt to make a slightly more reasonable defence of Antiwar’s coverage. For example, in response to this writer’s question as to how its uncritical reporting of claims coming from Western-based and -backed opposition sources has differed from the pro-war propaganda in the mainstream media, Knapp replied:

If I could snap my fingers and cause Antiwar.com to be able to afford to send its own correspondent to Syria and environs to get the real scoop, I’d snap them immediately. Since I can’t, I try to be understanding of the fact that Mr. Ditz et. al have to rely on outside sources and try to squeeze the truth from the information they can get, a process that’s obviously vulnerable to error.

But as David Daniels had commented on a rather belated “Obama Secretly Preparing for Syria Intervention” on December 28:

And instead of leading the fight with facts and hard research against the lies that stimulate the R2P instinct, this website has once again fallen for all of the lies that led NATO into Libya and the various overt and covert interventions (like the lie of the “Green Movement”).

This is important and all readers should take note: Antiwar.com has repeatedly pushed the lies that lead NATO to attack. Draw your own conclusions. The “moderators” here will say that they just don’t have enough information and any mistakes are not theirs. Do you believe that, readers? Are you that gullible, or did you first come here as I did to see behind the bull**** of the mainstream propaganda machine?

If Antiwar.com had tried a little harder “to squeeze the truth from the information they can get” (or even paid better attention to the information that all too infrequently appeared on its own site) they would find that the reality in Syria (see a more recent and comprehensive analysis here) was quite different from what their research editor would have its readers believe. Moreover, it wasn’t as difficult as some seem to have have found it to see who was pushing hardest (as they had done in Libya and in previous interventions) to get America to take the “humanitarian” road to Damascus.

Ideological Blinders

 While most readers were perplexed by Jason Ditz’s blatant bias in favour of the Syrian opposition, a look at some of his earlier writings provides an explanation. In a March 3, 2008 post on the Antiwar Blog entitled “In Defense of Non-Violence,” Ditz opined:

Rather, we know precisely what strategy the Israeli military employs in response to non-violence, because it is the only strategy available to it. Indeed it is the only strategy militaries ever employ in response to non-violence, and we saw it clearly this weekend.

Escalation.

Seeing the path of non-violence to its necessary conclusion is not easy for precisely this reason: that every act of non-violence [sic] defiance is met with an act of increasingly disproportionate violence in the hopes of realizing a violent response and vindicating the claim that the posture of non-violence is an insincere one.

[…]

The people of the Gaza Strip must hold firm in their resolve for non-violence. They must make it clear to the Israeli military that they will not be swayed, nor will they respond violently. They must leave the Israeli government with only two choices: acquiescence or committing genocide. And despite what Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister or anyone else may say, they must remain confident that Israel cannot choose the latter.

This weekend may have been a setback for non-violence, but it is nothing resembling failure. Non-violence remains not just an option for the Palestinians in the face of occupation, but at the end of the day, the only one.

In March 2005, Ditz was the first to respond to a message on an Anti-State.com discussion forum entitled “Ideas for How Somalis can defend themselves” in which someone called “chemical_ali” notified participants of the Albert Einstein Institute’s release of Robert Helvey’s On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict as a free PDF. Describing “chemical_ali” – a rather odd choice of pseudonym for an advocate of nonviolence – as “probably my favorite new poster in the past year,” Ditz didn’t raise any questions (nor did anyone else in the discussion) about why Gene Sharp’s nice-sounding “nonviolent resistance thinktank” might be offering a book on strategic nonviolent conflict for free by the former military attaché at the US Embassy in Rangoon.

As luck would have it, Antiwar.com soon provided an answer. In his column on April 16, editorial director Justin Raimondo noted the collaboration between a key sponsor of nonviolent revolution (who later told the Wall Street Journal that he had given a sum in the “low eight figures” to the Albert Einstein Institute) with one of the more notorious proponents of violent regime change:

“Say You Want a Revolution,” is the title of a piece by neoconservative Michael “Faster Please” Ledeen, a tireless advocate of the U.S. waging endless wars of “liberation,” and Peter Ackerman, chairman of the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC). Its theme: more U.S. tax dollars to fund “revolutionaries” in a new model of “regime change” – as in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. According to these two, Iran, Lebanon, and Syria are next. Now, before you say anything, it’s just a coincidence that all these countries are in the Middle East and just happen to be Israel’s worst enemies – stop being such a killjoy! Besides, the “revolutionaries” are ready to roll, but they can’t do it without U.S. tax dollars and other assistance.

Observing that Ackerman’s ICNC had been “at the center of machinations that have felled regimes from Belgrade to Bishkek and back,” Raimondo traced the business ties of its founding vice-chairman, Berel Rodal, to then Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, whose short-lived controversial venture capital company, Trireme Partners LLP, invested in technology, goods, and services related to Homeland Security. Pointing out that “[t]he little stormtroopers of the ‘democratic’ revolutions are in most cases unwitting foot-soldiers of War Profits, Inc.,” Raimondo concluded that the seemingly idealistic advocates of nonviolent resistance and the most extreme warmongering ideologues were little more than two sides of the same deceptive coin:

Chameleon-like, they readily assume “left” and “right“-wing forms, appropriating the language of whatever audience they’re trying to manipulate: they speak the harsh language of nationalism and super-patriotism as well as the more polite PC lingo of “humanitarian intervention” and “human rights” internationalism. Ledeen invokes Mussolini’s ghost, while the ICNC channels Martin Luther King and Gandhi.

Interestingly, it was reported in an April 2005 profile of Ackerman in The New Republic, aptly entitled “Regime Change, Inc.,” that he had sent a trainer to Palestine “to spend twelve days creating a nonviolent vanguard to challenge Hamas” – three years before Antiwar’s Jason Ditz opined that nonviolence was the Palestinians’ only option.

Platform for Regime Change, Inc.

Yet despite Raimondo’s exposure of the nonviolent revolutionaries, the chameleon-like channelers of King and Gandhi continued to be given a platform at Antiwar.com. On February 28, 2011, its Viewpoints section featured a link to an interview with Gene Sharp entitled “Teaching People Power,” just as, in the words of Reason Magazine’s Jesse Walker, “the revolutionary fire lit in Tunisia in December was burning across the Middle East and Africa.” On December 5, as that Regime Change, Inc.-kindled fire was being directed against Damascus, Antiwar’s Viewpoints featured Gene Sharp’s “Choices for Defecting Syrian Soldiers,” in which “The 83 Year Old Who Toppled Egypt” offered strategic advice to the few who had already defected, suggesting that they “help the regime’s other soldiers also to defect from the Assad regime.”

While Regime Change, Inc.’s aging intellectual guru appears to have at least one or two fans at Antiwar.com, its “publicist within the progressive community,” Stephen Zunes, is even more popular there. During the so-called “Green Revolution” in Iran, they reprinted his “Iran’s Do-It-Yourself Revolution,” in which the well-paid chair of the academic advisory committee of Peter Ackerman’s International Center on Nonviolent Conflict attempted to deny the democracy-meddling establishment’s self-confessed role in that and other “colour revolutions.”

On one of the rare occasions that Regime Change, Inc.’s role in the so-called “Arab Spring” was actually acknowledged at Antiwar.com, Zunes appeared semi-anonymously in the comments section to pooh-pooh the very idea. In a June 24 column entitled “Invasion of the Mind Snatchers,” Nebosja Malic reviewed “The Revolution Business,” a documentary that shows veterans of Otpor, the Sharp/Helvey/Ackerman-linked Serbian youth group that toppled Milosevic, training the activists who directed the not-so-spontaneous-after-all “Arab Spring.” Touting one of the Serbian trainer’s “anti-imperial” credentials, “StephenZ” commented:

And does Malic really think that a handful of Serbs can get millions of peoples out on the streets? Does he really think that Arabs are simply sheep that a few white Europeans lead to a popular insurrection against entrenched US-backed dictatorships? Get real!

StephenZ did not respond to my comment inquiring whether this was part of his responsibilities as chair of the academic advisory committee for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

More recently, “the great Stephen Zunes” was interviewed by Scott Horton on Antiwar Radio in which he argued that the Arab Spring was “the culmination of decades of peaceful rebellion against tyrannical governments.” Despite his collaboration with Otpor alumni in training activists in Egypt and elsewhere in nonviolent conflict (an important fact that was deftly obscured during the interview, unless we count Zunes’ oblique reference to having “met” Syrian activists), the ICNC’s academic advisor claimed that the US had “very little” to do with these “really exciting” developments.

But as Professor William I. Robinson, the author of the seminal critique of the “democracy promotion” establishment, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony, has written of the man who funds Zunes’ work:

That Ackerman is a part of the U.S. foreign policy elite and integral to the new modalities of intervention under the rubric of “democracy promotion,” etc., is beyond question. There is nothing controversial about that and anyone who believes otherwise is clearly seriously misinformed or just ignorant.

When it comes to Antiwar.com, however, one certainly cannot rule out the possibility of ignorance. Asked by Russia Today’s Adam Kokesh in early August “to help put what’s going on in Syria into the broader context of modern history in the Arab world,” Antiwar Radio producer Angela Keaton offered this astounding explanation of the mainstream media’s supposed “reluctance” to report the Syrian government’s alleged atrocities:

I mean, you know, [inaudible], Assad’s a US puppet. 

Change We Can Believe In?

While there had been a few exceptions to Antiwar’s biased coverage of Syria throughout 2011, most notably from Justin Raimondo, Philip Giraldi, Eric Margolis, and Pepe Escobar, the prevailing impression one got from reading it was a simplistic narrative of peaceful protestors being killed by a tyrannical regime. However, in his January 2, 2012 column, Justin Raimondo wrote:

The last bastion of Ba’athist secular rule in the region has been rocked by anti-government riots, with groups of well-armed men taking on the Syrian military and hundreds killed and wounded in violent street demonstrations. What’s interesting is that we hear much about the latter in the Western media, while the former is downplayed or not reported at all.

As the intensity of the anti-Syrian propaganda war picks up in the “mainstream” media – which focuses on alleged atrocities committed by government forces while maintaining a soft focus on the violence of armed rebel groups – the news that the Obama administration is making plans to intervene comes as no surprise. Indeed, the Americans are already intervening behind the scenes: the question is, will they come out in the open and call for “regime change”?

Considering that Jason Ditz’s reporting on Syria has been marked by the exact same bias, Raimondo’s criticism of the mainstream media seems disingenuous to say the least. Ironically, Raimondo’s link to “alleged atrocities” takes the reader to VOA News, one of his colleague’s most trusted sources, regularly cited as evidence of Assad’s alleged violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrators.

In a recent op-ed piece not published on Antiwar.com, Professor James Petras warns against the “anti-imperialism of the fools”:

The long history of imperialist manipulation of “anti-imperialist” narratives has found virulent expression in the present day. The New Cold War launched by Obama against China and Russia, the hot war brewing in the Gulf over Iran’s alleged military threat, the interventionist threat against Venezuela’s “drug-networks”, and Syria’s “bloodbath” are part and parcel of the use and abuse of “anti-imperialism” to prop up a declining empire. Hopefully, the progressive and leftist writers and scribes will learn from the ideological pitfalls of the past and resist the temptation to access the mass media by providing a ‘progressive cover’ to imperial dubbed “rebels”. It is time to distinguish between genuine anti-imperialism and pro-democracy movements and those promoted by Washington, NATO and the mass media. (emphasis added)

If Antiwar.com wants its claim to be “the central locus of opposition to a new imperialism that masks its ambitions in the rhetoric of ‘human rights,’ ‘humanitarianism,’ ‘freedom from terror,’ and ‘global democracy’ to be taken seriously, they will need to heed that warning.

However, if it is to regain the trust of its readers, Antiwar.com will also need to address the serious concerns raised in this report. An important first step would be to undertake an internal review of its reporting of last year’s tumultuous events in the Middle East and North Africa. For it to be worthwhile, it should provide its many disillusioned readers with satisfactory answers to the following questions:

1. Are all members of staff qualified to comment on foreign policy? Have some staff members allowed their ideological biases to adversely affect their analysis of complex foreign policy issues?

2. Why has well-documented information provided by readers that challenge its interpretation of events either been ignored or treated with contempt? Why do critical comments by certain readers either get deleted or have to be approved by the site admins before they appear publicly, while comments by others are banned altogether?

3. Why does it provide a platform for those who are “integral to the new modalities of intervention” while ignoring the work of others who could have provided a genuinely non-interventionist perspective on last year’s events? Among those overlooked by Antiwar.com in 2011 were Prof. Mark Almond, Ibrahim al-Amin, Michael Barker, Jeffrey Blankfort, Dr. K R Bolton, Alistair Crooke, Sibel Edmonds (banned from even posting comments on the site), Belén Fernández, Jeff Gates, Prof. David N. Gibbs, Diana Johnstone, Dr. Franklin Lamb, Prof. Joshua Landis (apart from a couple of references in articles by others), John Laughland, Dr. Rania Masri, Cynthia McKinney, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Maidhc Ó Cathail (despite the submission of articles publishedin mainstream media), Gearóid Ó Colmáin, Dr. Adrienne Pine, Prof. William I. Robinson, Prof. Jeremy Salt, Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, Dr. Stephen J. Sniegoski, Julien Teil, and Amjad Yamein.

4. How can readers be assured that one or more of its “generous” but anonymous “angels” do not have an interest in interventionism?

Maidhc Ó Cathail is an anti-war journalist and Middle East analyst.

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18 days ago, on November 21, here at Boiling Frogs Post, I reported on the ongoing joint US-NATO secret training camp in the US air force base in Incirlik, Turkey, which began operations in April- May 2011 to organize and expand the dissident base in Syria. I had received the information for that story from multiple sources including highly credible insiders in Turkey and government insiders here in the US. You can read the story here.

My follow up piece on December 3 included the intentional blackout of this multiple-sourced and well-documented exposé. Here are a few excerpts from that story:

I immediately started checking our infamous US mainstream media sites- still nothing on this significant information. I then contacted one of my high-level sources and asked why he had come to me with his documented report instead of going directly to the big guys. With several credible insiders as his corroborators and a high-level official in Turkey, he would have no problem getting their attention. And his response? Well here it is minus a few expletives:

Who said we didn’t go to MSM first? We got them the info back in October. First they were interested and drooling. At least the reporters. Then, they disappeared. We sat and waited for a few weeks, and no one followed up. It is Turkey. It is NATO. It is our CIA guys. The media hot shots would not touch those cases without State Department sanction attached…

Now, 18 days later, there comes a decent coverage of this exposé. Guess where? Not in the US mainstream media. Not even the US alternative media…Well, here it is, Iran’s Press TV providing accurate and untwisted coverage, and doing so as part of its front page news:

A former employee with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has said that American and NATO forces are training Syrian rebels in southeastern Turkish city of Hakkari. Sibel Edmonds also said that she had received information from Turkish and US sources indicating that training Syrian opposition forces, led by defected Syrian colonel Riad al-Assad, had started in May, the Turkish daily Milliyet reported. Edmonds further added that the US is involved in smuggling arms into Syria from Incirlik military base in Turkey in addition to providing financial support for Syrian rebels…

…

Confessions by a number of Syrian rebels about foreign-sponsored plans to carry out armed operations and killing ordinary people as well as security forces prove that recent developments in the country are part of an attempt to incite a revolt in the strategic country neighboring the Israeli regime, aiming to overthrow the current government and replace it with a US-backed regime… Damascus blames the violence on foreign-sponsored terrorist groups, with the Syrian state TV broadcasting reports showing seized weapons caches and confessions by terrorists describing how they obtained arms from foreign sources.

…

So, let’s review. Turkish media, right from the involved region, and after checking with their own sources, have picked up my exposé based on several highly credible sources in Turkey-US. We are not talking blogs or alternatives in Turkey. We are talking mainstream media over there. And this, despite similar censorship pressures there due to the Turkish government’s intense desire to keep its partnership in this deal a ‘secret.’

After Turkish media and Iran’s Press TV, several other international news organizations are reporting on this very significant story; see a few examples here and here.

Now, what do we have here in the US? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Again we are not talking MSM only. Included in this are all those quasi alternatives supported by the corporate and corporate foundation sugar daddies. You see that the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times have no balls, no guts, to pursue a solid story brought to them by credible military sources here and abroad. Now, even after getting a deflector by the international media taking the lead, they are sitting, shivering, and continuing the blackout.

Since my story here at Boiling Frogs Post I have been contacted by additional credible sources, including a former high-level military official in Syria. I will have more, and will continue the coverage. And I will provide our readers with more specifics on the US media and reporters who’ve been sitting on this story for several months. Please stay tuned.

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12 days ago, on November 21, here at Boiling Frogs Post, I reported on the ongoing joint US-NATO secret training camp in the US air force base in Incirlik, Turkey, which began operations in April- May 2011 to organize and expand the dissident base in Syria. I had received the information for that story from multiple sources including highly credible insiders in Turkey and government insiders here in the US. Here are a few excerpts from that story:

You see, those alternative news and blog sites put down by the first cited article had it exactly right. Col. Riad al-Assad has been in Turkey, working with U.S. & NATO, right inside the US Incirlik Base in Turkey, to do exactly what he vehemently denies: smuggle US weapons into Syria, participate in US psychological and information warfare inside Syria as the middle-man whom Syrian protesters tend to trust, and help with funneling intelligence and military operators across the border and night-time drop offs by air.

The joint US-NATO secret training camp in the US air force base in Incirlik, Turkey, began operations in April- May 2011 to organize and expand the dissident base in Syria. Since then, in addition to Col. Riad al-Assad, several other high-ranking Syrian military and intelligence officials have been added to operations’ headquarters in the US base. Weekly weapons smuggling operations have been carried out with full NATO-US participation since last May. The HQ also includes an information warfare division where US-NATO crafted communications are directed to dissidents in Syria via the core group of Syrian military and Intelligence defectors.

Yesterday the following report showed up on the Press TV Website:

‘Syrian saboteurs train in Turkey’

The head of Turkey’s main opposition group has accused the government of allowing the country’s soil to be used for training Syrian armed groups, Press TV reports. “Is it appropriate for Turkey to use its soil for training armed forces with the aim of creating unrest in another country?” Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the head of Republican People’s Party (CHP), told reporters in Ankara on Thursday.

“While we have lots of problems ourselves, why do we meddle in the internal affairs of another country?” he added. His remarks came after Turkey’s Taraf daily reported that Ankara was establishing a ‘buffer zone’ in Syria to provide Syrian rebels with shelter.

“We say ‘Great Turkey’, ‘Powerful Turkey’. Can a great and powerful Turkey use its soil to support an armed force with the aim of meddling in another country? Is such an understanding possible?” Kilicdaroglu questioned…

…

The official also accused the Turkish government of having turned into a contractor for the ‘dominant powers.’

…

The story above only goes as far as ‘France’ and the French factor. It stops short of France and other NATO member nations led by the United States in NATO member country-Turkey.

I immediately started checking our infamous US mainstream media sites- still nothing on this significant information. I then contacted one of my high-level sources and asked why he had come to me with his documented report instead of going directly to the big guys. With several credible insiders as his corroborators and a high-level official in Turkey, he would have no problem getting their attention. And his response? Well here it is minus a few expletives:

Who said we didn’t go to MSM first? We got them the info back in October. First they were interested and drooling. At least the reporters. Then, they disappeared. We sat and waited for a few weeks, and no one followed up. It is Turkey. It is NATO. It is our CIA guys. The media hot shots would not touch those cases without State Department sanction attached…

So, okay. I was the last resort. But that’s not the moral of this post. This goes down as one more example of very many cases of intentional, willful censorship by the US mainstream media and their so-many- times-proven role as distorters of reality and gravediggers of the truth.

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At the London Conference on Cyberspace, November 1-2, Vice President Joe Biden urged other nations to protect internet freedom of expression.

“Biden did not name countries he felt were offenders. But he criticized the efforts of some nations pursuing an “international legal instrument that would lead to exclusive government control over Internet resources, institutions and content and national barriers on the free flow of information online.” (PCWorld)

Meanwhile, back in the US, Congress was preparing to pass a law granting extraordinary powers to censor the internet. The proposed law, described as “the Great Firewall of America,” has the support of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who also favors Internet freedom for other countries. If the US government still had any credibility on this issue after banning access to websites posting leaked cables, the latest hypocrisy should have killed it.

Last week, Representatives Lamar Smith (R-TX), John Conyers (D-MI), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and Howard Berman (D-CA) introduced a House bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). A Senate version, called the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), had been introduced last May by Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Charles Grassley (R-IA). The bills propose to let the federal government block public access to websites accused of violating intellectual property rights. They would also require Internet access providers, search engines and payment providers to deny services to websites upon request from rights holders.

A devil in the lack of details

The bills have been criticized for their vague language and lack of due process, making them ripe for abuses.

“Imagine a world in which any intellectual property holder can, without ever appearing before a judge or setting foot in a courtroom, shut down any website’s online advertising programs and block access to credit card payments. The credit card processors and the advertising networks would be required to take quick action against the named website; only the filing of a “counter notification” by the website could get service restored.

Finally, and for good measure, Internet service providers and payment processors get the green light to simply block access to sites on their own volition—no content owner notification even needed. So long as they believe the site is “dedicated to the theft of US property,” Internet providers and payment processors can’t be sued. (ArsTechnica)”

Such a law could be used to chill criticism of corporate and government policies.

“Emerging nonprofit whistleblower sites could find themselves in the jaws of SOPA if they post any documents related to corporate corruption or law breaking, if those documents contain trade secrets or are copyrightable,” warns the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “What happened to Wikileaks via voluntary censorship will now be systematized and streamlined – as long as someone, somewhere, thinks they’ve got an IP right that’s being harmed.”

Potentially, the US government also could take advantage of the law, directly or through a corporate intermediary, to silence whistleblowers and dissent. The proposed law’s provisions could, for example, be used to shut down Tor, an anonymity network used to protect whistleblowers and activists–including participants in the Occupy Wall Street protests.

“The timing could not be more exquisite. In the midst of protests emerging all around the US complaining about the power that corporations have inside our political system, big content is quite literally trying to foist its own version of the Great Firewall of China on to the American public” (Harvard Business Review)

The effects of SOPA/PIPA on internet commerce could be devastating, ultimately shutting down a wide swath of the internet, including the websites Facebook, Google, Tumblr, eBay, and Wikipedia (Harvard Business Review). In a letter to Congress, 30 technology entrepreneurs and executives warned that the legislation would freeze innovation and job creation in the technology sector–one of very few sectors in the US with continuing growth.

Some computer experts believe the legislation could undermine the stability of the Internet and make it more vulnerable to malicious attacks.

Low-income Americans who cannot afford prescription drugs at US prices could be the biggest losers if these bills become law.  That’s because the legislation makes it possible to block websites that legally sell prescription dugs in Canada and other countries, typically at much lower prices.

“Protection for domain name registries, registrars, search engines, payment processors, and advertising networks from damages resulting from their voluntary action against an Internet site “dedicated to infringing activities,” where that site also “endangers the public health,” by offering controlled or non-controlled prescription medication.”

Rather than protect public health, such a law could result in low-income Americans being denied life-saving medications if profit-hungry pharmaceutical companies and their government collaborators use the law to oppose competition.

Supporters include the US Chamber of Commerce, the Motion Picture Association of America, the National Music Publishers’ Association, the Newspaper Association of America, and the Screen Actors Guild, to name a few. But, there are potential goodies in SOPA/PIPA for just about all of the Big Money interests that exercise control over the federal government.

There’s a good deal of opposition to the bills, including 108 professors of intellectual property and Internet law who wrote a letter to Congress warning that it “may represent the biggest threat to the Internet in its history.” Opposition is bipartisan, with both conservatives and progressives condemning the blacklisting scheme–and some aren’t mincing words.

PROTECT IP is a lunatic proposal, penned by a dinosauric industry concerned solely with the preservation of its own profits. It will do nothing to curb piracy while at the same time eroding fundamental freedoms of the internet. (TechCrunch)

Back at the Cyberspace Conference where the Mr. Biden and his British counterparts spoke about the importance of free speech, journalists were forced to view the proceedings from a “media pen” equipped with television screens, being forbidden from mingling with conference attendees, who included defense contractors.

Arms companies such as Lockheed Martin, Detica (part of BAE Systems), Raytheon, Thales, QinetiQ, Serco and Northrop Grumman attended in force. They are re-branding themselves as part of what might be called the cyber-industrial complex. (The Economist).

And so, the “crisis” used to justify draconian rights abuses changes, but the names of the perpetrators remain pretty much the same.

Linda Lewis is a policy analyst with degrees in emergency management and geosciences. Her experience includes 13 years as a policy analyst and planner for the U.S. government. During that time, she brought attention to serious deficiencies in government preparedness prior to the disasters that confirmed her analyses. Those included emergency communications (9/11 terrorist attacks), federal assistance (hurricane Katrina) and decision making (Columbia shuttle disaster).

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Go East Young Man, The Early Years: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas; (Random House, 1974)

The Court Years, 1939-1975: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas; (Random House, 1980)

William O. Douglas holds a few records for his U.S. Supreme Court Justice career, including the longest continuous service (36 years) ever.  Douglas was a passionate defender of the First Amendment and free speech.  That dedication coupled over time with growing concern for the abuse of government authority, as well as support for individuals facing arbitrary and capricious government behavior.

When it came to freedom of the press, well, Douglas walked the talk.  His prolific Supreme Court opinion writing coincided with a career that included 30 books and hundreds of articles.  It isn’t all that surprising that Douglas wrote not one, but two, autobiographies. 

Go East, Young Man, The Early Years (Random House, 1974) covers Douglas’ childhood roots, education, and his experience as a law professor at Columbia and Yale.  Douglas’ analysis of securities law and regulation on the heels of the Crash of 1929 and with the onset of the Great Depression prompted Joseph Kennedy to recruit him to the SEC staff.  Douglas was appointed a Commissioner of the SEC when Kennedy left the SEC in 1936, and Douglas was named the Chairman of the SEC in 1937.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt then nominated him to serve on the Supreme Court in 1939, where he sat until his retirement in 1975.

Douglas’ early enthusiasm for applying law and regulation to cure the markets’ ills grew tempered by experience, an evolution reflected in reflections in Go East, Young Man as well as the second autobiographical volume, The Court Years, 1939-1975.  Douglas watched and documented how idealistic regulatory goals were hijacked by special interest groups, muting his expectations for the value of an active government.  And this First Amendment champion was no innocent, spoon-fed consumer of newspapers, either.  Douglas’ accumulated experience left him likewise concerned about the Fourth Estate.

A recent re-reading of Douglas’ observations about the media in The Court Years sparked this review.  Many Boiling Frogs readers share concerns about the depth and honesty of mainstream journalism on important matters.  Sibel’s experience makes for one example, but there are certainly others.  In Chapter Eleven (“The Press”) of The Court Years, Douglas provides some remarkable observations that will likely resonate with many in the audience here.

Douglas introduced the chapter with a brief description of his basic philosophy, but the second paragraph left little doubt his respect was for the freedom of the press, not the press itself:

In time I wrote many opinions sustaining and defending the press. I, along with Hugo Black, was a strict constructionist who thought the First Amendment meant what it said when it commanded that Congress shall make ‘”no law … abridging” freedom of the press. …

My defense of the press did not stem from my personal opinion of its quality. It was, I thought, as depraved as it had been in Jefferson’s time. My feelings, however, were like Jefferson’s – that craven and abusive and self-seeking as the press is, a much worse press would result from governmental surveillance.

Speaking of surveillance, it is interesting to consider that last observation in light of the recent News Corporation news in the UK.  We may have more to learn about practices like that in the US.  And what if government outsources some of its surveillance as it partners with large media interests?  Some food for thought, perhaps. 

Douglas didn’t paint with an overly broad brush; he had significant respect for some of his contemporaries in journalism, and named and discussed them in the chapter.  Bernstein, Woodward and Graham gather high praise from Douglas for their work in Watergate, for example.  But Douglas’ overall appraisal was pretty bleak, and his concerns are shared by many in the Boiling Frogs community in light of media practices over the last decade or so:

…There were not many real reporters in Washington. A real reporter, as I use the term, is someone who searches out the facts on his or her own. In the capital there were a few solid muckrakers, notably I.F. Stone and Drew Pearson. But most reporters followed the course of least effort and lived on government handouts or curried favor with high officials like J. Edgar Hoover for tip-offs or leads. Presidents, Cabinet officers or agency heads handed out tidbits to favored reporters. Much classified, even top secret, material was leaked in this way. Government’s purpose was served and the reporter who reported faithfully, stressing precisely the right angle, could expect to be rewarded again.

The victim was the public, which did not know who the “undisclosed but reliable source” was. Full disclosure would have revealed the strategy being employed. Much of the disastrous build-up of public support for our activities in Vietnam was the product of these discreet “leaks” to the press.

New York Times, are you listening?  How well have you apologized for your reporting leading into the war with Iraq?  Have you reformed the kind of practices at work in that and other episodes?  Could a loss of public confidence be playing a more important role than the challenge from the Internet in explaining the 80% decline in your stock price since 2004?

Douglas’ observations on the implications of government/media collaboration and the implication for public policy in the Vietnam war years ring bells that are loud, clear, and timely in light of our national security and foreign policy in the last decade:

The official line that was pushed by the government as respects Vietnam was often half-truths or distorted facts or plain lies, as the Pentagon Papers later were to show. The lie was often believed on the inside as well, leading men whose personal opinions differed from the official line to drop out of government or accustom themselves to working in a system that produces cynicism and self-deceit. The fact that a Lyndon Johnson could have his way and mold the American mind as he did is as alarming as were Goebbels’ techniques under Hitler.

In The Court Years, Douglas criticized not just intent but also a tendency toward laziness.  There are exceptions today, to be sure, but in light of our major media’s treatment of issues like the events of September 11, the lead-up to the war with Iraq, and other matters, Douglas observations from 1980 still hold at least a grain of truth today:

… The American press, as I have suggested, is by and large a mimic, not an original research group. It prints handouts from government and from industry and expresses its opinions on those items. But the basic facts are seldom mined; the press does not have the initiative or the zeal to ferret out the original from the false or pretended.

It wasn’t just laziness.  Incentives against independent hard work were frequently part of the system:

… most of the “facts” disclosed in the Pentagon Papers were so well known in Vietnam that only a newsman’s decision (or his paper’s decision) to look the other way and parrot what the military told him, kept the American public from knowing full well what was going on there, at least during the sixties.

The key role in those years was played by the CIA. Yet there were no news stories out of Vietnam even by the New York Times to reveal a) which members of the Saigon government were on the CIA payroll, b) what the CIA rates of pay were, c) how the CIA organized riots, d) how much they paid those who shouted, those who carried banners, those who only marched. … In later years Americans were entitled to know these same facts about CIA activities in Laos and Cambodia. But few, very few, such facts filtered through until much later. The press was greatly remiss in our “war” in Southeast Asia.

Between 1959 and 1963 the New York Times had outstanding reporters in Vietnam. …. Yet few of the vital facts ever found their way into print. Why this great, this enormous default? It is hard to believe, but I think it is true that in those years our press in Vietnam was as much under the thumb of the armed services as Russia’s press is under the thumb of the politburo.

See also the following compilation of the Supreme Court opinions in the Pentagon Papers case in particular, Justice Douglas’ dissenting opinion in a 5-4 decision suggesting Beacon Press might be prosecuted for publishing the Pentagon Papers despite Sen. Mike Gravel had already read them into the Congressional Record. 

“The story of the Pentagon Papers is a chronicle of suppression of vital decisions to protect the reputations and political hides of men who worked an amazingly successful scheme of deception on the American people. They were successful not because they were astute but because the press had become a frightened, regimented, submissive instrument, fattening on favors from those in power and forgetting the great tradition of reporting.”

Douglas’ discussion in The Court Years amplified how his heightened concern for regulatory agency behavior joined at the hip with his concern for media quality:

…The press is very sensitive to its own First Amendment rights, but it has done very little to promote First Amendment values. … The role of the press is not to defend any institution or any party but to search for the truth involved in important public issues. Many of the “facts” lie buried in the files of the federal bureaus in Washington. The Freedom of Information Act of 1966 … was designed to make those agencies open their files. They did not fully do so in my time. While sporadic efforts have been made and some court contests ensued, the press at no time waged an all-out campaign to get at the truth. It was easier to “cover” the institutions, take their press releases, and accept the “official” version as the gospel. The result was that, in my time, the people knew less and less what forces were behind the decisions of the agencies. If the press had done its job, the pitiless spotlight of publicity would have exposed the cancerous condition of our government and disclosed the powerful and evil lobbies that more and more dictate policies.

The idealistic public servant that entered the SEC back in the early 1930s had grown sharply critical of the motivations and effect behind government’s role in the economy.  Douglas’ New Deal enthusiasm has drawn criticism from some quarters, but we would do well to learn from the lessons he learned over time. And since he wrote the book in the 1970s, the fact that his observations seem to ring so true today suggest we have yet to take those lessons to heart.  Douglas didn’t expect us to, either:

Yet looking ahead, the days seem dark to me. Great wealth controls most of our news outlets. The conservative influence of the press will continue; a Society of the Dialogue, as espoused by the First Amendment, will be increasingly difficult to stimulate.

…

Provocative and frequently controversial, Douglas has drawn heat as well as admiration.  His inspirational call for the press to serve the public by actively seeking the truth might be cheapened by critics who have challenged some elements of Douglas’ own memoirs.  But Douglas still serves as a valuable lighthouse, and his critique and challenge to the media matters today, 30 years after The Court Years. 

Those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it, the saying goes.  The manufactured myth that shrouded the truth of the events of September 11, 2001 and helped shape our foreign policy over the last decade should be viewed in this light.  Again, there are exceptions in the media, and a recent article in Vanity Fair titled “The Kingdom and the Towers” indicates some stalwarts are still out there.  But in a democracy dependent on majority rule, where a majority of people were shown by survey to have believed that Saddam Hussein played a key role in the events of 9/11, the willingness of many elements of the media to serve or otherwise enable dishonest leaders shaping public perception calls out for a rebirth in journalism.  Douglas’s autobiographies can provide guidance on that quest.

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DailyKos has acted to ban commenters from linking to Mondoweiss, charging me with anti-Semitism. It is a disgraceful smear and hides DailyKos’s real anxiety: it cannot deal with the issue of Palestinian human rights, any more than the Democratic Party can, and so Israel supporters are striking at me.

            …

And this from another writer over there at Mondoweiss:

…Several times over the last few months I’ve been alerted by friends regarding ‘diaries’ by members of ‘Team Shalom’ at Daily Kos highly critical of Mondoweiss. Why does this matter? For our site, I don’t think it does. It’s clear some of our biggest detractors read this site avidly, including the comments that ultimately drive traffic.  Team Shalom has run a campaign to have this site banned from Daily Kos (even tho I am not aware posters there link to this site with any regularity, perhaps I am wrong) and yesterday one of my friends who posts there wrote to inform me they have achieved this goal.

…

You can read more on other recent censorship incidents by these Israeli Lobby parasites here.

Does this incident, this exposé, come as a surprise to me? Of course not. After Obama’s election any discussion threads about me or my case were also banned from this Parasitic-Zionist-Neoconistic mega establishment mini mouthpiece. I didn’t bother writing about it. With the reasons so obvious, with the pattern so very clear, and with the involved participants’ agenda extremely translucent, why waste time to dwell upon it?

It took one article to get on this extension of partisan status quo’s black-list. While foaming at the mouth they yelled ‘How dare she criticize Obama?! She should just focus on Bush-Cheney FBI and DOJ, and leave the rest of the politics to our experts….’

Any real criticism and exposure of Obama-Cons made it to the top of their ‘no-no’ list.

Same goes for other ‘dangerous’ topics. Even though, initially, this forum started off on the back of rational and legitimate 9/11 critics, despite milking the attention on 9/11 related topics at the time, it very quickly changed course and started banning and censoring any and all topics related to 9/11.

The real establishment is nonpartisan. It seeks power, control, and of course mega dollars. For them real independent and rational ‘ideas’ are dangerous. For them the ‘free exchange of ideas’ is extremely dangerous. For them the possibility of the exchange of independent rational ideas leading to ‘real action’ is detrimental. So be realistic and ask yourself what are they to do? Shouldn’t they rein in any forums and channels with any potential of becoming a place for any rational independent ideas that may lead to any real action? Right. Then, welcome the phony alternative news; welcome the little parasitic puppet forums; welcome the existence of sites such as the Daily Kos. Need I say more?

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BFP Nightly Quote

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”- President Woodrow Wilson

International Newsworthy

Edging Towards the  Partition of Libya?

Another Stinging Blow for the Libyan Rebellion

McCain Tells Libyan Rebels: End Abuses or Risk US Support

US Accuses Iran of “Secret Deal” with Al-Qaeda

Harrowing Exhibition Reveals Damage Done by Drones in Pakistan

Israelis Torture Palestinians with Impunity, similar to US Prisons

Palestinians Fear as Israel Destroying West Bank Water Sources

Turkey: Court Forbids Corruption-Busting Journalist from Writing

* * * *

National Newsworthy

Censorship of War Casualties in US

US Cannot Say How Many Had Communications Watched

Senators Want Secret Warrantless Wiretap Renewal

First Presidential Campaign Finance Reports Show Clout of Wall Street, Retirees

White House Recruits IMF Communications Chief

Senate Extends FBI Director Mueller’s Term

Obama’s scare tactics to get Democrats to vote for his Republican Wall Street plan

TSA Readying New Behavior Detection Plan for Airport Checkpoints  

Lockheed Martin Wins $72,000,000 Contract to Install Body Scanners

DOD Full-Spectrum Cyberspace Budget Lunacy

* * * *

Noteworthy Editorials

The War on Libya: An Imperialist Project to Create Three Libyas

Obama Drug Policy: Yet another Broken Promise

Become a Conspiracy Realist

America’s Rural Ghost Towns

The “Towers of Basel”: The World’s Biggest Central Bank Has Private Shareholders

Disastrous Outcomes from an Orchestrated Economic Crisis

The Looting of America: The Federal Reserve Made $16 Trillion in Secret Loans to Bankster Friends & the Media is Ignoring the Eye-Popping Corruption that Has Been Uncovered

* * * *

BFP Nightly Funnies

“I think I know now why we are occupying Iraq. In case we have to sell America and move to a smaller country.” —Bill Maher

“Texas governor Rick Perry said God is calling on him to run for President. But Michele Bachmann said that God is calling on her to run for President. You know, if God is that indecisive, he’s probably for Mitt Romney.” —Jay Leno

* * * *

BFP Nightly Video Potpourri 

Video 1: Ferengi Discusses Earth Economics (Star Trek)

Video 2: Coal Lobby Warns Wind Farms May Blow Earth Off Orbit

Video 3: Ron Paul “What’s a Dollar?”

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In February 2004 Behrooz Sarshar provided the 9/11 Commission’s investigators with specific documents and names of the related witnesses, including the full name and contact information of the key “FBI Asset/Informant” in an FBI case titled ‘Kamikaze Pilots.’ However, the commission chose not to contact or interview any of these witnesses, including FBI Director Robert Mueller. The Commission’s final report did not mention a single word of this documented testimony, and their recently released memorandum omitted the entire interview with no explanation provided.

The following information was provided by Mr. Sarshar to several Congressional offices and investigators, including staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Committee’s leading Democrat at the time, Senator Patrick Leahy, and the Justice Department’s Inspector General Office.  I was present during at least four meetings where the briefings were recorded and documented. While working at the Bureau I was briefed on this case by not only Mr. Sarshar but another firsthand witness, and I saw the actual 302 forms filed with the unit’s squad supervisor (FBI language specialists get to keep a copy of their reports/forms). Further, I personally briefed the 9/11 commission investigators on the details of this particular case, which is confirmed by the commission’s memorandum.

I have only deleted sensitive personal information related to the FBI informant-Asset, and as you’ll see every single deleted item (by me-indicated as S.E.) has been indicated in bold-italics. Other than that, the information below is exactly what was recounted by Mr. Sarshar on four occasions:

FBI File Name: “Kamikaze Pilots”

In the early 90s the Bureau hired an Iranian man as an informant, placed him on its payroll at approximately fifteen hundred dollars per month, and used him and his information in several criminal, counterintelligence and counterterrorism operations and investigations. Over time this informant, a man in his (Informant’s Age Information Deleted by S.E.), proved to be extremely reliable, and his information was found to be trustworthy.

This man had been the head of SAVAK, Iran’s main Intelligence agency, counterintelligence unit during the Shah’s regime. His area of operations involved the East and Southeastern region of Iran, and the countries under him were Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. He also managed the unit’s intelligence gathering operations in Sistan and Baluchistan, two semi-independent regions on the border with Afghanistan. Unlike U.S. agencies, the intelligence agency in Iran conducted most, if not all, of its surveillance and information gathering operations via human intelligence and sources. The man, the informant, was very good at what he did; he had established a large number of sources and informants scattered in the strategically most important areas within these countries.

Immediately after the Islamic Revolution, he planned his escape out of the country. All former SAVAK and military intelligence had been placed on the black list of the new regime, and death warrants had been issued for them. He successfully escaped Iran, and then spent several years in (Names of the informant’s previous residences/countries deleted by S.E.) where he tried to obtain a U.S. visa and come to the states, where many of his relatives and friends had already settled. In the late (date of Informant’s US entry deleted by S.E.) he succeeded and moved to the United States.

His reputation and his fame of having a wealth of resources for information all over the world had somehow reached the FBI by the early 1990s – around 1991-1992. Via a middleman, the Bureau was able to contact the man and persuade him to become an informant. He was placed on the payroll and began providing the Bureau with extremely useful and reliable information. The Bureau was so pleased with his performance that it began using him both as an informant and as an asset. On a regular basis, almost monthly, agents from the FBI HQ and WFO would meet with him at … and …and … (Meeting locations Deleted by S.E.) to obtain information and intelligence on various on-going operations and investigations.

Since the informant didn’t speak English very well, was by no means considered fluent, often if not always, the agents took an interpreter, a translator, with them to these regular monthly meetings. This is where Amin and I came into the picture. For these sessions the agents would have either Amin or me accompany them. By sheer coincidence, I happened to recognize the man during the first meeting from a gathering I frequented. I knew where he lived, and I had his phone number.

Around the end of April, 2001, I was asked to accompany two special agents from the FBI-WFO, Tony and John, to a meeting arranged with this informant; we hooked up with him somewhere near the (Meeting Location Deleted by S.E.). The agents and I were working on a particular criminal investigation that was going to court in (Possible sensitive date deleted by S.E.), and the informant’s information played an extremely important role in building the case.

We met the informant in this park-like area and spent nearly an hour discussing the case, asking detailed questions, and of course, with me translating the communication which went back and forth. Once we were finished with the session and ready to head back to the WFO, the informant urged us to stay for a few minutes and listen to something very important and alarming he had recently received from his sources. We looked at one another and sat down on the bench; we were all ears.

The informant said:

‘Listen, I was recently contacted by two extremely reliable and long-term sources-neither one Iranian; one in Afghanistan; the other in Pakistan’s border region with Afghanistan. In the past, these guys had provided me with inside information and intelligence that was extremely hard to come by, considering the tightly-based networks and groups they were able to enter and penetrate. They notified me that an active mujahideen group led by Bin Laden had issued an order to attack certain targets in the United States, and were planning the attack as we spoke.’

Now the informant had our full attention; the agents seemed very alarmed, since their main unit of operation was under the WFO Counterterrorism division. They asked the guy to stop, asked him to repeat that again, and ordered me to take verbatim notes as I translated. They too took notes.

The informant continued:

‘According to my guys, Bin Laden’s group is planning a massive terrorist attack in the United States. The order has been issued. They are targeting major cities, big metropolitan cities; they think four or five cities; New York City, Chicago, Washington DC, and San Francisco; possibly Los Angeles or Las Vegas. They will use airplanes to carry out the attacks. They said that some of the individuals involved in carrying this out are already in the United States. They are here in the U.S.; living among us, and I believe some in US government already know about all of this (I assumed he meant the CIA or the White House).’

Tony, one of the agents asked ‘did they say when? Did they give any specific dates? Did they say how they were going to use airplanes; bombs or high jacking?’

The informant paused for a second:

‘No specific dates; not any that they were aware of. However, they said the general timeframe was characterized as ‘very soon.’ They think within the next two or three months.’ He then added: ‘As far as how they are going to use the planes to attack; your guess is as good as mine. My bet, it will be bombs; planting bombs inside these planes, maybe the cargo, then have them blown up over the populated cities.’

The agents nodded and took extensive notes. I took my notes in Farsi; I usually did that, and later after returning to the office, sat down and translated them verbatim. We stood up and were ready to leave, when the informant urged us to report this immediately and act on it:

‘If I were you guys, I’d take this extremely seriously. If I had the same position I had in SAVAK, I’d put all my men on this around the clock. I can vouch for my sources; their reliability. Make sure you put this in the hands of the top guys in Counterterrorism.’

The agents nodded and thanked him for the information. We drove back in silence. After we parked the car, while walking to the elevators, the agents were discussing the best person, the top person; they should submit this warning to. They decided on Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Thomas Frields, who was in charge of the WFO Counterterrorism division and who used to lead the division that dealt with Iran’s Hostage Crisis in 1980s. I reminded them that although the informant was Iranian, his sources were not; and that they were in Pakistan and Afghanistan; not in Iran; Bin Laden was not Iranian but a Saudi. They acknowledged that, but made the point that Frields was in charge of the Counterterrorism unit in the WFO.

Once we got to the office, I went straight to my cubicle and began translating the entire conversation verbatim and typing it into a formal report. The agents went to their section and filled out the necessary 302 forms. These forms, the 302s, are forms used by agents to report information gathered from the Bureau’s assets and or informants. The agents, Tony and John, filled out two sets of 302 forms; one for the ongoing criminal case and the informants’ information related to that; the other, on the warning, with the initial code name ‘Kamikaze Pilots,’ as information related to Counterterrorism operations.

The agents called me up on my extension and asked me to escort them inside the language unit. I walked them over to my desk, where we sat, compared notes, and finalized and coordinated our report. They had me make several copies of the translation report for them to be submitted with their report. I took it upon myself to make a set of copies of their 302 forms for my own file; my own record. At the end of the day, around five o’clock, they submitted the 302 forms and my translation report. They submitted the warning report to SAC Frields; with a note, a yellow stick-up, on the top saying ‘VERY URGENT: Kamikaze Pilots’

Neither of us heard back from Frields or the Counterterrorism division. No one asked for any follow-ups or additional information. Two months went by. Around the end of June 2001, I accompanied the two agents to another meeting with the Iranian Informant. This time we met in (Location Details Deleted by S.E.).

After going over the target criminal investigation; now only …(Specific Date Deleted by S.E.), as we were ready to turn around and leave, he stopped us:

‘What did you do with the information I gave you two months ago? Did you report it to your bosses?’

The agents nodded. One of them said: ‘Yes; we sent it up. We submitted it to the top guy.’

The informant was animated now,

‘Well; are they going to do something about it? Because, three days ago I heard back from one of those two sources; in Pakistan. He swore the attack was on its way; any time now; a month or two max.’

Tony said: ‘I know; I hear what you are saying, man; but doing something about this won’t be up to us. Plus, we don’t have enough information to take any action here. We don’t know when, how, or exactly where. The only thing we have is: Mujahideen, Kamikaze Pilots, Bin Laden, five cities, and airplanes. That ain’t enough.’

The informant reasoned:

‘I’ve been thinking about this; trying to make more sense out of it myself. The source mumbled something about tall buildings. Maybe they will blow up the plane over some tall buildings; I don’t know. Maybe the FBI can get more specifics from the Pakistanis; ISI. Have they tried? After all they are your guys, and they already know all about this.’

The agents were getting exasperated and impatient, ‘We’ve got to go; we have a lot of work back there. We have done all we could. We reported it to the guy in charge; now, it is up to them.’

As we turned around and walked away, the informant yelled in Farsi:

‘Why don’t you discuss it with the CIA? They know. Tell the White House. Don’t let ‘them’ sit on this until it is too late…’

I asked Tony, ‘Maybe sharing this with other agencies is not a bad idea. What do you think?’

He rolled his eyes ‘not up to us Behrooz. As far as the White House goes, the HQ guys will include it in their briefings; I’m sure they’ve already done so. Frields is obligated to submit what he got, everything he gets under Counterterrorism, to the HQ guys in charge of Whitehouse National Security Briefings. He always does. So, the White House and other agencies have already heard about this. Let’s drop this man; will ya?’

That was the last time we ever discussed this case before the 9/11 attacks took place. The only other person I told this to and showed the 302 forms and the translation report, before September 11, was Amin here. Then, on that Tuesday morning on September 11 everything came back to me and hit me on the head like several tons of bricks.

That morning, we heard the news, and all of us ran out to the next unit to watch the CNN footage on the TV screens installed out there. As soon as I saw the planes hitting those buildings I said to myself: ‘Oh my God, oh dear God; we were warned about this; we were told about this; very specifically’ I almost fainted; I kept hearing the informant’s words; I kept hearing his last warnings begging us to do something fast. And we had done NOTHING. Now it was already way too late. I felt nauseous; I felt sick.

A few minutes later I saw one of the two agents; I started making my way into the crowd gathered in front of the TV screens, hundreds of people, and walked toward the agent. He spotted me before I got to him; we locked eyes; knowing eyes. He felt what I was feeling; he knew what I knew; he thought what I was thinking; we were responsible for this. Someone in the FBI would be hung for this.

When I got close to him I asked ‘what are we going to do? What should we do next?’ He shook his head and whispered: ‘I don’t know. I cannot even think straight right now. I don’t know Behrooz. We fucked this up; the Bureau fucked our country. Why?! Oh God; we let this happen.’ With that said he ran out of the room. I went back to check my drawer and make sure that I still had everything: the 302 forms, from both meetings, my translation reports; both of them. They were all there.

A few days later, when I got together with both agents and Amin to go over an assignment, I brought up the topic. They avoided eye contact with me. I asked the agents what they were going to do; if they’d already done something. At first they were evasive. Then, after I insisted, one of them, Tony, said: ‘Listen; Frields called us into his office and gave us an order; an absolute order.’ I asked them what the order was. He said ‘we never got any warnings. Those conversations never existed; it never happened; period. He said this is very sensitive…and that no one should ever mention a word about this case; period.’

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In a public statement issued today (see below), members of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee demanded a prompt response from the former Chairman and Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission regarding Former FBI Language Specialist Behrooz Sarshar’s censored testimony to the Commission. The press release was prompted by recently released documents related to the interviews conducted by the 9/11 Commission published at Cryptome.org, in particular the “Memorandum for the Record” containing the Commission’s interview with Mr. Sarshar. The memorandum, after establishing Mr. Sarshar’s credibility and  vaguely referring to his documented and witnessed testimony regarding specific tip(s) provided to the FBI in April and June 2001 regarding planned imminent “Kamikaze Pilots” attacks targeting major cities in the United States, leaves out the entire testimony. This testimony was also entirely left out of the Commission’s final report released in July 2004.

For Immediate Release: January 31, 2011

Statement of September 11th Advocates Regarding FBI Translator Behrooz Sarshar’s Redacted Testimony To The 9/11 Commission

The 9/11 Commission’s mandate was to provide a “full and complete accounting” of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and recommend how to prevent such attacks in the future.

As family members who actively fought for the establishment of the 9/11 Commission and served on The Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Commission (FSC), we find it appalling that once again we must question the thoroughness and credibility of the 9/11 Commission and its Final Report.

A pattern of ignoring whistleblowers persisted throughout the Commission’s tenure, even though Governor Kean, the Chairman, promised the FSC that no credible witnesses would be turned away. The list of whistleblowers that should have been interviewed by the 9/11 Commission included former and current intelligence agents, analysts, translators and others. It was only after repeated attempts by the FSC that former FBI translator, Mr. Behrooz Sarshar, was finally interviewed by them. The “Memorandum for the Record” containing this interview was just released on January 1, 2011 (http://cryptome.org/nara/behrooz-sarshar.pdf).

According to previously published sources, in April 2001 Mr. Sarshar, in his position as FBI interpreter/translator, attended a meeting between a long-term, reliable FBI asset and two additional FBI agents from the Washington Field Office. That FBI asset told the two FBI agents that his sources in Afghanistan had information of an al-Qaeda plot to attack America in a suicide mission involving planes. It would appear that when Mr. Sarshar filed his reports within the Bureau, they were titled “Kamikaze Pilots”.

After leaving the FBI in 2002, Mr. Sarshar provided the same information to various Congressional offices and investigators, such as staffers for the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senator Patrick Leahy. The Justice Department’s Inspector General also interviewed him.

Thus, we were shocked to find that Mr. Sarshar’s relevant information was missing from the “System Was Blinking Red” section of the 2004 Final Report issued by the 9/11 Commission. Now, six and a half years past the publication of the Final Report, the transcript of Mr. Sarshar’s interview has been released with all of its substance redacted. In light of the fact that the majority of his information does not meet the standard for classification, which is to protect “sources and methods”, it is unclear as to why that information was blocked. Covering up incompetence, or worse, malfeasance, is not a valid reason for classification. So, what happened to Mr. Sarshar’s warnings once he filed his reports? This is exactly the type of essential information the Commission should have used in order to write its final report and issue recommendations. How does the Commission justify omitting information from a credible source within one of our own intelligence agencies?

By their own admission, a large portion of the 9/11 story was based on the tortured, third party interrogations of Khalid Sheik Mohammad, the alleged “Mastermind” of the 9/11 plot. Does this make any investigative sense? What criteria did the Commission use to determine whom they would interview and whom they would ignore? One must wonder how many others were similarly omitted. It also seems that the nation’s intelligence agency(ies) had information that included kamikaze pilots and planes being used as weapons. So how does the Commission reach its absurd conclusion that 9/11 was a “failure of imagination”?

Based on just these facts alone, one could surmise that the Commission was more intent on conforming to a predetermined storyline rather than a truthful compilation of the facts revealed through an objective, thorough and effective investigation, that left no stone unturned.

As the public has a right to know this information, we request that the transcript of Mr. Sarshar’s interview be immediately declassified. Furthermore, we respectfully request that the former Chairman, Governor Thomas Kean, Vice-Chairman, Mr. Lee Hamilton and the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, Mr. Philip Zelikow, promptly answer the questions herein.

Patty Casazza
Monica Gabrielle
Mindy Kleinberg
Lorie Van Auken
………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Behrooz Sarshar worked as a GS 12 language specialist with Top Secret Clearance at the FBI Washington Field Office. After leaving the FBI in 2002, he provided his testimony on “Kamikaze Pilots” to several Congressional offices and investigators, including staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Committee’s leading Democrat at the time, Senator Patrick Leahy, and the Justice Department’s Inspector General Office. The congressional sources familiar with Mr. Sarshar’s case and briefing found him and his report credible:

A former Grassley investigator says he found Sarshar credible, too. “We thought he was a pretty credible guy,” said former Senate Judiciary Committee investigator Kris Kolesnik.

In April and June of 2001 a long-term FBI informant told two FBI agents from the Washington field office that his sources in Afghanistan had provided him with information regarding a terrorist plot to attack the US in a suicide mission involving airplanes. Mr. Sarshar acted as an interpreter at both meetings after which the case agents filed a report (on 302 Forms) with their squad supervisor, Thomas Frields. Here is what Mr. Frields told the reporter when questioned about the case:

Frields, now retired from the bureau, says the case is too “sensitive” to discuss.”It involves very sensitive matters that took place while I was an on-duty agent, and I have absolutely nothing to say,” said Frields, reached at his Washington-area consulting office.

The 9/11 Commissioners had initially refused to interview Mr. Sarshar. He was one of several witnesses from the intelligence and law enforcement organizations with relevant testimonies and reports who were denied access to the commission (the ones that we know of). It was only after pressure from members of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee and memorandums from the congressional offices that the commission reluctantly agreed to interview Mr. Sarshar. However, his entire testimony was omitted from their final report. According to a Chicago Tribune investigative reporter even FBI Director Mueller appeared baffled by the Commission’s lack of inquiry into this particular case:

FBI Director Robert Mueller, who expected to be asked about the case during an appearance before the commission in April, was surprised when the commissioners never raised the question, according to aides.

I do not expect to see any satisfactory explanation from the commission in response to this public statement issued by the 9/11 family members. In this case they certainly cannot hide behind their usual lame secrecy or classification mantra. Mr. Sarshar provided several testimonies and briefings to official bodies where neither the facilities nor the officials were considered secure or in possession of clearance. I was present during at least four of those meeting where the briefings were recorded and transcribed. In two of these meetings several members of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee were also present. In fact, during my short tenure with the Bureau, I was briefed about this case by not only Mr. Sarshar but other firsthand witnesses, and I saw the actual 302 forms filed with the unit’s squad supervisor (FBI language specialists get to keep a copy of their reports/forms). Further, I personally briefed the 9/11 commission investigators on the details of this particular case, which is confirmed by the commission’s memorandum:

Members of the Family Support Group requested that the Commission meet with Mr. Sarshar, Dan Marcus arranged for a meeting with Mr. Sarshar. The meeting became an interview and was recorded. Sibel Edmonds, another former FBI translator, provided information concerning Mr. Sarshar during her interview with Chris Healey and Lance Cole on February 11, 2004.

I believe not only the families of the September 11^th attacks but every American has the right to know about this case. They need to know that this significant report was completely censored by a quasi commission, that this is one of many cases that were omitted from this staged and rehearsed show to pacify the public’s need to know, and that there never was any real investigation into this horrific event used in reshaping not only our country, but the entire world. Based on my discussion with the family members who issued the following public statement, the commission will be given two business days to provide them (and the public) with answers to questions raised by this bold and appalling omission. If no response is forthcoming, on Wednesday, February 2, I will publish Mr. Sarshar’s verbatim testimony here at Boiling Frogs Post.

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I am going to stay true to my pledged position on Wikileaks related topics, and stick with questions rather than hasty analyses and interpretations. I’ve been highly puzzled by the recent position of and statements by the New York Times on Wikileaks Gate. I don’t know whether to view this puzzling change of heart and position in light of appropriately seasonal concepts of miracles, seeing the light, and the eighth wonder of the world, or, more realistically cynical interpretations based on their reputation, history and track record. How does a mindset dictating governmentally correct and approved reportage suddenly change into one that sides with transparency and positive journalistic ethics? This is when it is good to have media outlets and investigative journalists who investigate, analyze, and report on other media channels, editors and reporters. Alas, we ain’t got one; at least not one I’ve been able to find, thus, here I am with my list of questions asking you to hop on board and help me come up with possible explanations.

It wasn’t that long ago that the Times’ infamous editor, along with his superiors in the government and inferiors beneath him on the committee, decided to hold the explosive exposé on NSA’s Warrantless Spying Program. The Times held the story not for one day, not for one week, not for one month, but for over a year. It sat on it, and whether easily or with great difficulty, it sealed its every single reporter’s lips. Together, in a unified fashion, they all sat on this earth-shattering revelation. They served their masters, and threw their weight into highly critical elections. When, after it was way too late, their governmentally sanctioned deed, this journalistically unethical scam, was exposed, they didn’t have much if anything to offer as defense:

“After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns,” James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote, “the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting.”

…

Troubled by what seemed to be shifting language about the delay — the initial story and a statement issued over Keller’s name said the paper had held the story for “a year,” but Keller later seemed to acknowledge implicitly that the delay had been longer — Calame kept asking for details, and Keller has now provided them: Drafts of the article were written weeks before the presidential election, Keller says, and “the climactic discussion about whether to publish was right on the eve of the election.”

…

Why was the story held? That’s a little hard to decipher. Keller has said that he can’t get into too much detail without exposing anonymous sources — and that the administration had assured the Times initially that everyone thought the program was legal…Keller also says that there was a matter of fairness involved — a point with which Calame agrees. “Candidates affected by a negative article deserve to have time — several days to a week — to get their response disseminated before voters head to the polls,” Calame says.

…

Okay, as I said it wasn’t that long ago and I’m sure many of you remember the entire saga, one that made very clear the position of the Times, their modus operandi and their true masters. And this is exactly why I was left confused and highly puzzled with the Times’ recent change of heart and 180 degree change in position:

But the more important reason to publish these articles is that the cables tell the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money. ..As daunting as it is to publish such material over official objections, it would be presumptuous to conclude that Americans have no right to know what is being done in their name.

The same Bill Keller, who obeyed the government on censoring the illegal wiretapping of all Americans for over a year, and without any hesitation, had this to say on publishing Wikileaks’ cables:

Look, I absolutely believe that governments have an obligation to keep certain things secret, you know, not just diplomacy — military operations, the codes to the nuclear weapons. I mean, there are lots of things that governments have the right to keep secret. It’s their job to keep it secret. It’s not the press’s job to do that.

Granted, the Times has already admitted to having their to-be-published cables and to-be-covered WikiLeaks issues vetted and blessed by their mighty governmental masters:

U.S. officials submitted suggestions to The Times, which asked government officials to weigh in on some of the documents the newspaper and its partners wanted to publish.

And:

But we were concerned at the Times, and it’s one of the reasons that we went through so carefully to try to redact material that we thought could be damaging to individuals or undercut ongoing operations. And we even took the very unusual step of showing the 100 cables or so that we were writing from to the U.S. government and asking them if they had additional redactions to suggest.

Yet, the questions, remain; at least for me. To what can we attribute this curious and sudden change of heart? After all we are talking about the NY Times of Judith Miller, the cover up of the Downing Street Memo, the year-long burial of NSA wiretapping, and much more. Let’s start with the most innocent possibilities and work our way up from there:

-Is it simply due to the competitive market and nature of the news business? Unlike the NSA illegal wiretapping disclosure, this cache of leaks was given to more than one news outlet in more than one country. Did NY Times find the option of censoring it while international competitors did otherwise too big a pill to swallow?

-Is it because they secured the US government’s ‘vetted, sanctioned and blessed’ stamp? Releasing documents that have been vetted and redacted by the US government can serve several purposes: information management – where people get to read and know what the government wants them to read and know, strategic information warfare – where the government counters and neutralizes the damage caused by the leak by placing their own spin and maintaining direction control…

-Is it brought about by some supernatural or spiritual experience on the part of NY Times decision makers? Maybe some supernatural or mythical power decided to make an appearance before them? Maybe it is a case of a terminal illness bringing the editor (or editors) closer to death, thus, more fearful of potential consequences of their past and present evil deeds (think purgatory and think hell)? Maybe there is such a thing as seeing the light – that it is not limited to some serial killer waiting on death row?

-Is the entire thing an illusion created by the same illusion-makers who have been at work for a long time? The media plays the most important role in the game of illusion-making; think a magician and his set of props, then think the shadow government and its delivery vehicle…and then, think US media.

I’m sure I’m missing several other equally or even more significant questions, but then again that’s one of the purposes of posting it on this blog and getting your input. Please chime in, add your questions, and help plug in as many answers as we can.

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It is funny and sad at the same time. In the course of one week I have gone from Anti-Semite to Anti-Muslim. Within a week I have been labeled Filthy Jew-Basher and Fear-Mongering Islamophobic. I find it funny since the logic-free arguments of these fanatic labelers who are running around like headless (and brainless) chickens has a priceless comic quality to it; in so many ways it is simply hilarious to watch and listen to them. And I say sad, because the fanatic censorship climate created by these ignoramuses is not limited to their own eco-system; its incestuous multiplication and spread has been swallowing not only their immediate vicinity but the entire society at large via revised encyclopedias, academia, media …and especially the highly polarized forums and blogs.

It began last week when I wrote a piece on how in certain election campaigns candidates have been competing with each other on their degree of loyalty to a foreign country-Israel. And they were doing this openly. Those without blinders and with common sense got my points:

-Shouldn’t these candidates’ electability be about commitment and loyalty to our nation, its interests, and addressing its current humongous problems? We would be raising hell if we heard a candidate pledging their unconditional loyalty to France, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan; and yes, they are all considered allies whether you agree or not! Then why should it be different when it comes to this particular controversial foreign country, Israel?

-Don’t we all consider foreign contributions to and support for our representatives here something to be truly alarmed about? At least distasteful and disgraceful? Large sums, direct and indirect support, by AIPAC and the like would be just that. No? Let me put it this way, in case you don’t get it: If the foreign entities were named something like Al-Hasmani Qaliani Fattullah, many would go out of their way to flag them down. AIPAC and the like are no different. They are foreign, with their own sets of interests and agendas; allies or not.

Since one of the candidates in my piece happened to be one with more special background and even more related facts, I went ahead and included some of  those important documented facts. Then, the moment I posted the above piece the attacks started pouring from the fanatic left (now pay attention, I am not saying ‘all lefties’ but ‘fanatic left’): I was accused of being Anti-Semite, Anti-Jew, Anti-Liberal, Anti-Democrats, Anti-Socialist…

-I noted that Ms. Schakowsky’s husband is a convicted felon. The courts found him guilty, he confessed to his crimes, and he went to prison. I guess based on the fanatic liberal argument: this documented well-known public fact was caused by Anti-Semite Anti-Jewish Anti-Liberals Anti-Democrats investigators, law enforcement, courts, judges, and yes, even prisons. How dare they investigate, convict and imprison the husband of a Jewish Pro-Israel Democrat Congresswoman?!! Further, how dare I or anyone else talk or write about this during the election campaign?!

In that piece I wrote a section on Jan Schakowsky’s role in criminal investigations by the FBI involving Chicago, and provided a link to a related article. This opened up an old wound for blinded ultra partisan Democrats who loved me conditionally: As long as your case involves Dirty Dick & Bush, as long as you point a finger at larva like Republican Hastert, we love you and root for you! Make sure there ain’t no bad democrats involved in your case, ok?

-Well, I talked about that case during my testimony under oath. Considering what side of the DOJ-FBI I’ve been on, even with a minute trace of untruthful response by me under oath they would have landed on me with both feet (wearing combat boots!!).

My piece included quotes from news articles on Jan Schakowsky’s status with AIPAC, and that despite some cosmetic, for-show-only, appearance of glitches between the two, AIPAC has been her supporter for a long time, and that as far as AIPAC is concerned Schakowsky is ‘Kosher.’ 

Based on the Fanatic Left’s argument; AIPAC (and its support) are considered KaKa-BooBoo-NoNo, if the recipient of the support happens to be Bush Era Bad Men, such as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and Paul Wolfowitz. They have always emphasized the evil AIPAC connections of those Bus Era Neocons, and since they reserve the sole right to Fanatic Political Correctness Censorship, no one, I mean no one from the left, accused them of Anti-Semitism. Now, if the same AIPAC happens to be an avid supporter of Democratic candidates, all previous deals are off – based on the pro-censorship fanatic left code.  To point out Schakowsky’s Israel & AIPAC ties are considered Anti-Semitic and Anti-Jewish, but to repeatedly publicize Bush-Era Jewish Neocons’ Israel & AIPAC connections and ties are ‘kosher.’ You see what I’m getting at?

A few days ago, and a few days after the Schakowsky-Israel article, I wrote a brief piece on an infamous and controversial preacher, Fethullah Gulen, his documented background and international status, the never-solved or resolved mystery of his $20 billion organization’s net worth, and his new status as the biggest charter school operator in the US, with over 130 charter schools in 25 states. For decades his schools have been known as Madrasas in Turkey and Turkic nations, and now, interestingly and curiously, this man, through a maze of networks-organizations has been taking over US taxpayer funded charter schools.

As soon as I posted the article the attack of the fanatic left began pouring. Now, after being labeled as Anti-Jew, I was being given the new title of Anti-Muslim. Their fanatic blogs have been spitting out labels like machine guns: fear-mongering, Anti-Islam, Tea-Partier, Neo-Nazi Propaganda machine…you name it – And, my Muslim background and ancestry notwithstanding! How comic & moronic! Oh well, that pretty much describes the bunch.

I’ve been having fun watching the correlation between my posts and my follower status on twitter and Facebook. It is one of my pastimes when I have a few idle minutes in life. This is how it goes:

I write a piece on the Turkish military’s bad deeds, and within minutes I see my follower numbers drop by a few; all ultra-national Turkish entities. And a few minutes later it goes up by a few; recipients of abuses by the Turkish Military.

I write a piece on Israel lobby-AIPAC and there it goes; a drastic drop. Within a day or two I get a fresh list of supporters from the Palestinian side.

I write a piece on the some of the awful deeds of the Bush Administration, and if it has the target words-Cheney-Rice-Ashcroft, I become a hit with a few on the left; my numbers go up, and then down by a few departing fanatic Republicans. A few days later I write about the changes on Obama’s promised changes and his awful deeds against civil liberties, transparency and accountability, and a group of blind lefties depart from my list of supporters…

You really get the picture now; no? In a way I get to laugh a bit. The moronic blinded partisanship and biases can be kind of entertaining due to their inherent stupidious nature and even more stupid acts. This is how their reasoning (lack of!)would work if it was turned on them:

Obama says Taliban are bad bad people. Taliban are Muslim, thus, Obama is Anti-Muslim.

Or

Obama’s civilian casualties in Afghanistan-Pakistan are all Muslim, thus, Obama intends to erase Muslims from the earth.

As I’ve repeated several times: the fanatic left’s stupidious reasoning is summarized in the above examples, and how could I take it seriously and not laugh?!

On the other hand, the situation saddens me greatly, because this is exactly what the establishment wants: large numbers of ignoramuses bickering, blinded irrational loyalties, a highly divided society where people are busy spitting at each other and eating one another rather than going after the joint enemies of all …

And finally, I am neither angry or being defensive. I am going to do exactly what I’ve been doing here at Boiling Frogs Post: write it as is, and say it as is. Our vigilant minority club has been expanding, and that’s all I need to keep at this as is. I have never bothered to post at fanatic right or fanatic left websites or blogs, so no worries there; I am not ban-able. I am not after a position with one of the fanatic left or right so-called alternative media outlets, so I don’t care about not being hire-able. I am not promoting a book or an upcoming movie, so having to be diplomatic (worthless by saying actually nothing, doing actually nothing) is not one of my problems. Unfortunately for you members of the moronic ignoramus political correctness censorship fanatics, I’ll be standing where I am and keeping on doing-saying-writing as usual. Within a few minutes after this post I’ll be checking the status of my Twitter-Facebook membership list, and I’ll be laughing at you allJ

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We had just emailed the link to our interview discussing the ‘real’ history of Afghanistan on Sibel Edmond’s boilingfrogspost.  As soon as it was emailed a Verizon response spit back immediately with a notice declaring the email we had just sent was spam.   When the culprit turned out to be our friend Sibel’s website we called Verizon to clear up the problem. This was clearly not spam and should be easily reinstated, we thought. While a very chatty employee attempted and failed to fix our problem, we innocently asked how can we get this address back in business. That is when the real fun began. According to the laws of Verizon Central, once you’ve been labeled spam, there is only one course of action and it goes like this:

1. Verizon uses an unnamed third party who decides what is spam.

2. This unnamed third party also reviews complaints like ours.

3. We were told to send the “offending” email to spamdetector.update@verizon.net.

4. The unnamed third party would make a secret decision within 24 hours.

5. If the unnamed third party decides it is spam, regardless of our complaint we will not hear back.

That’s it. There is no recourse to challenge the decision. There isn’t even a confirmation that the email we sent to this third party was received at all.  Of course, after 24 hours we still couldn’t send out an email containing the link.

Then it dawned on us, the Verizon employee’s automoton behavior was reminiscent of a 2004 Hollywood comedy titled, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galexy. The film’s plot involves a race of Vogons who run the Vogon homeworld planet just the way Verizon Central is run.

“Vogons are employed as the galactic government’s bureaucrats.. Vogons  are not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.”    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucrat  

When the human heroes in the story try to extricate themselves from the stupidity of the Vogon perpectual bureucratic machine, the unfortunate victims are repeatedly told in a monotonous tone, “Resistance is Useless.” The Vogons never stop to think. There is a simple reason, they can’t.  Just like Vogons, if the Verizon employees actually thought about what they were saying to us, they could not keep pushing out such nonsense. The illogic of the whole process doesn’t stop them from pushing it out, regardless.  If Verizon Central says it’s the law, it’s the law and “Resistance is useless”!

It’s no surprise that many other Verizon customers have been effected by this Orwellian abuse of authority. In fact we discovered that a lawsuit was settled in 2006 on this very issue. Here are the results.

Settlements and Verdicts

Verizon

A class action lawsuit was filed against the telecommunications company for allegedly blocking legitimate incoming emails to certain Verizon.net subscribers. The class includes all business and residential customers of Verizon FiOS, DSL, and dial-up Internet services in the United States at any time from October 1, 2004 to May 31, 2005, who had use of one or more email accounts on the Verizon.net email platform. Verizon adjusted its spam filters to aggressively block messages from domains in Europe and Asia. Instead of simply routing suspected spam into a separate folder, Verizon bounced messages back to the sender without notifying the intended recipient. Verizon has announced a tentative settlement that would award customers $3.50 for each month between October 1, 2004 and May 31, 2005 that he or she was a customer of Verizon Internet Service. The maximum one can receive is $28. (Apr-05-06) [ARS TECHNICA]

[SETTLEMENT INFORMATION]  File Claim before August 9, 2006: [OFFICIAL CLAIM FORM]

That was in 2006 and  it doesn’t seem that Verizon Central  has changed its policy in any noticeable way, regardless of whopping $28/ customer cost. Now we’re wondering how Verizon got the idea in the first place that they had a right to secretly make decisions regarding what can flow through emails without accountability..

What is even more disturbing is realizing that Verizon’s anti-spam campaign could easily be twisted to disguise censorship, a kind of “No Fly” list for emails.  Just like the No Fly list, once you’ve made the list you won’t know why and you may never be removed.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration.  Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story published by City Lights, January 2009 chronicles their three-decade-focus on Afghanistan and the media. 

On a beautiful sunny spring afternoon in 2006, I was sitting outside in the deck area of a neighborhood café in Alexandria with a friend who is a well-known journalist and an accomplished writer, for whom I happen to have the utmost respect. We were discussing the topical ‘Afghanistan & Terror Financing’ issue. Based on well-established trust between us my friend felt comfortable and open in sharing some ‘significant’ tidbits gathered from ‘credible’ sources within the CIA and DIA, and from British Intelligence officers. As I listened, the extent of credible information and documented incriminating evidence gathered excited me to the point where I had to stop this friend to ask:

‘When are you going to have this published?!’

The response was: ‘This was not the main topic I was investigating for my work. These ‘tidbits’ came to me as an ‘inevitable attachment’ due to relevancy…’

I had to stop the conversation again: ‘So? This is explosive. Even bigger than the main topic you’ve been chasing for the last year or so. No one has ever reported this, so you’ll be the first.’

My friend shook her/his head and said: ‘No one has done it because this topic is considered a ‘career ender.’ You know what happens to naïve reporters who actually try to get into this area, don’t you?’

Amazed by this line of reasoning and unable to really process it all I pressed harder: ‘What are you really afraid of?! Government interference? Classification?’
The answer that followed was even more amazing to me – due to my own naivety back then.

‘Government is the least of my worries. It’s the industry – the media. They go after anyone who dares touch this area – CIA, narcotics and terrorism. They will attack, label, and marginalize you, and before you know it your career as a reporter is over. For good.’

That day and in the days that followed I spent hours upon hours researching the topic; this ‘forbidden zone.’ I studied several cases where reporting on government-narcotics relationships, even though obtained and reported based on thoroughly documented credible sources and witnesses, had proven to be ‘career suicide.’ I met with several veteran DEA agents who presented me with even more cases and unreported criminal deeds, buried in the same journalistic ‘forbidden zone’ in the U.S. press. In the months and years that followed I paid much closer attention to reporting on current topics that skirt upon this forbidden area, and in my own time I analyzed and dissected these reports based on my own research and on information received from intelligence sources who are friends and members of my organization. And since I’ve been covering the U.S. MSM topic in ‘Dissecting the Mainstream Media’ series, I am going to present you with a few cases, reports, and analyses, and have your thoughts and views on this ‘Forbidden Apple of the U.S. Press.’

***

Gary Webb

In Part 3 of my ‘Dissecting the MSM’ series I discussed Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance series and its consequences in detail, so I won’t repeat the details here. If you haven’t read it I strongly encourage you to go back and do so. In 1996, after publishing his three-part investigative series, “Dark Alliance,” a thoroughly documented and diligently sourced story, he was attacked, ostracized, and pushed out of the media circle by his colleagues in the mainstream media. Despite the damning information contained in the content of the CIA IG Report, the corroborating findings of the DOJ IG Report, various congressional hearings and investigations filled with direct or indirect admissions, the MSM never eased up on its attacks and criticism of Webb’s report, until they successfully ended his career.

In a well-executed piece written by Barbara Osborn she sites the following exchange which took place between Post Dark Alliance Gary Webb and his supportive colleague Robert Parry:

“…Gary Webb didn’t know what was at risk. When he first spoke with Bob Parry–the Associated Press reporter who, along with Brian Barger, broke the Contragate and Contra/drug stories–Webb thought Parry was being “overly cautious.” “I thought he was being kind of foolish,” Webb recalled, when Parry asked him: “Are you sure you want to ruin your career?”

Unfortunately Parry proved to be the ‘realist.’ He was proven right. After all, he had gone through a rough journey of his own during and after his solid reporting on Iran Contra – for taking a bite off the ‘forbidden apple’ of the U.S. mainstream media.

***

Robert Parry

More or less a decade earlier another major case involving a direct government and narcotics relationship had emerged. In 1985, Robert Parry as an AP reporter teamed up with Brian Berger and broke the Iran Contra Affair. He later exposed Oliver North’s involvement in the scandal while reporting for Newsweek. For his impeccable investigative journalism he won a Polk Award, and became a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

You would think a reporter with Parry’s credentials and solid track record would be revered and fought over by publishers in the U.S. mainstream media, no? Not so fast. First, this is what happened at the Associated Press where Parry broke the Contra scandal:

In late 1985, Parry teamed up with another reporter to report on a detailed and documented expose of drug-trafficking involving the Nicaraguan Contras. However, the AP editors blocked the story. Later Parry found out that his boss was regularly in touch with Oliver North and that he was conferring with him on a regular basis. Parry left the Associated Press.

And let’s read Parry’s own words gathered from an interview he gave on what took place at Newsweek:

,“As for my hiring at Newsweek, I think it resulted from how poorly the magazine had done on the scandal to that point. That said, Newsweek never liked the story and wanted it put to rest as soon as possible. Editor Maynard Parker was very sympathetic to the neoconservatives and became my nemesis. Evan felt that my presence so angered Parker that I had become an obstacle for Evan’s plans for the Washington bureau.”

Here is more:

“Though my finished article contained new information about the CIA’s relationship with Manuel Contreras, Chile’s intelligence chief and a key Letelier murder suspect, Maynard Parker and other Newsweek editors killed the story. I was told that Parker made some disparaging comment about me being “out to get” Bush.”

Of course, once again putting integrity in journalism first, Parry left Newsweek in 1990.

The Contra Scandal, especially the related Government-Narcotics relationship, was treated as an absolute ‘Forbidden Apple’ by the MSM. Webb and Parry were not the only ones; there were others. Here is another example involving reporter Ray Bonner and the New York Times – cited by Parry during an interview:

,“There were a number of journalists in the field in Central America, who were doing courageous work, people like Ray Bonner of the New York Times, who had been digging into the human rights problems in El Salvador, in particular. And he was—his career was very badly damaged, and he was made a sort of an example of what happens to you if you go into these areas too aggressively. Some reporters said that they were warned off from going after the North story, because that was seen as a career-ender.”

And of course Time Magazine as always, as an inseparable member of the MSM gang, followed the same trend:

“In the fall of 1987, Time assigned a staff reporter to assemble any evidence that the Oliver North network supplying guns to the Contras was also bringing cocaine into the U.S. The reporter found serious evidence, and wrote it up. As the former Time reporter explained to Extra!, after the article was written and rewritten, finally, a senior editor told the reporter to give up on the story. “The senior editor leveled with me,” the reporter told Extra!. “His words were: Time is institutionally behind the Contras. If this story were about the Sandinistas and drugs, you’d have no trouble getting it in the magazine.’”

Here is a punchy and so very factual quote from Robert Parry:

“It used to be that you were admired if you took on a tough story. Now you’re portrayed as a nut.”

That’s right. Thanks to the U.S. MSM even today many don’t know the facts involving the Contra Affair. Despite numerous reports, congressional investigations and statements, and tons of proven evidence, some people still consider the Iran Contra scandal a conspiracy theory or mere allegations, and those who had dared to touch it as ‘nuts.’ They owe their ignorance to the mainstream media.

The Walsh Report, the Independent Counsel for the Iran Contra Scandal, began it’s conclusion with this paragraph:

“The underlying facts of Iran/contra are that, regardless of criminality, President Reagan, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the director of central intelligence and their necessary assistants committed themselves, however reluctantly, to two programs contrary to congressional policy and contrary to national policy. They skirted the law, some of them broke the law, and almost all of them tried to cover up the President’s willful activities.”

The establishment did not have to concern itself with reports such as the Walsh Report or others produced by various IGs and Congress. These reports, the surfacing of facts exposing our Government’s direct hand in narcotics and illegal arms trade, did not matter a bit. Neither did they have to pay much attention to a handful of true investigative journalists who were determined and capable of informing the masses with their reporting. Of course not. Their extension, the United States Press, made certain that any concerns would be taken care of, thus the ‘real’ stories were quashed and blacked out, and those who dared to touch them were quickly attacked, labeled, marginalized, and ‘taken out.’

***

KLA, Narcotics, and the U.S. MSM

Remember our military intervention in Kosovo during 1998-1999 in order to stop what was referred to as ‘ethnic cleansing’? Our main ally, partner, over there was the Kosovo Liberation Army, a Kosovar Albanian guerilla group which sought the independence of Kosovo from Yugoslavia in the 90s. Up until 1998 the U.S. regarded the KLA as a terrorist group. Then, before the actual NATO-U.S. military intervention, while preparing for that ‘intervention,’ as U.S. Intelligence started establishing its intimate relationship with the KLA in the background, KLA’a terrorist label came off the U.S. government list. In effect our government ‘de-terroristed’ the KLA and cultivated ‘mutually beneficial’ diplomatic relations with KLA leaders.

Here are some excerpts from one of the very few articles printed by the U.S. MSM mentioning this, and ironically it is from the Washington Times, in May 1999:

“Last year, while State Department officials labeled the KLA a terrorist organization, saying it bankrolled its operations with proceeds from the heroin trade and from loans from known terrorists like bin Laden, the department listed the group as an “insurgency” organization in its official reports. The officials charged that the KLA used terrorist tactics to assault Serbian and ethnic Albanian civilians in a campaign to achieve independence.”

James Bissett, Former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania, wrote the following:

“…as early as 1998, the Central Intelligence Agency assisted by the British Special Armed Services were arming and training Kosovo Liberation Army members in Albania to foment armed rebellion in Kosovo. The hope was that with Kosovo in flames NATO could intervene …”

Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa, published extensively sourced and documented analyses of KLA as a gangster and terrorist entity, and its close ties to the CIA. The following except refers to what followed the State Department’s ‘de-terrorization’ of KLA:

“While KLA leaders were shaking hands with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at Rambouillet, Europol (the European Police Organization based in the Hague) was “preparing a report for European interior and justice ministers on a connection between the KLA and Albanian drug gangs.”

Chossudovsky provides report after report from the DEA and Europol, Germany’s Federal Criminal Agency and reports from Belgrade, establishing KLA as a high profile global narcotics and money laundering cartel:

“The proceeds of the narcotics trade has enabled the KLA to rapidly develop a force of some 30,000 men. More recently, the KLA has acquired more sophisticated weaponry including anti-aircraft and anti-armor rockets. According to Belgrade, some of the funds have come directly from the CIA “funneled through a so-called “Government of Kosovo” based in Geneva, Switzerland. Its Washington office employs the public-relations firm of Ruder Finn–notorious for its slanders of the Belgrade government”.”

“75% of the heroin entering Western Europe is from Turkey. And a large part of drug shipments originating in Turkey transits through the Balkans. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), “it is estimated that 4-6 metric tons of heroin leave each month from Turkey having [through the Balkans] as destination Western Europe.” A recent intelligence report by Germany’s Federal Criminal Agency suggests that: “Ethnic Albanians are now the most prominent group in the distribution of heroin in Western consumer countries.”

He then provides an excellent overview for this entire picture:

“Remember Oliver North and the Contras? The pattern in Kosovo is similar to other CIA covert operations in Central America, Haiti and Afghanistan where “freedom fighters” were financed through the laundering of drug money. Since the onslaught of the Cold War, Western intelligence agencies have developed a complex relationship to the illegal narcotics trade. In case after case, drug money laundered in the international banking system has financed covert operations.”

Here is an explosive article exposing the relationship between the CIA and the KLA before the NATO bombing. Not only that, the article exposes a very familiar figure: William Walker, the head of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to monitor the ceasefire in Kosovo in 1998-1999. Walker was nominated by Madeleine Albright, American Secretary of State. Guess what? A decade earlier, in 1988, Mr. Walker was the American Ambassador to El Salvador when Washington was helping the government there suppress leftist rebels, ‘while supporting the contra guerrillas’ against the government in Nicaragua. Coincidence? Not. This is the same Walker who served as Elliott Abrams’ Deputy Assistant Secretary for ‘Central American Affairs’ and accompanied him to all those Contra related meetings. During the investigation of the Iran-Contra Affair several felony charges were brought against Abrams by the special prosecutor, but he was not indicted because he entered into a plea agreement, had a conviction without imprisonment, and eventually was pardoned by President Bush.

Now back to the article for a few excerpts:

“AMERICAN intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia . The disclosure angered some European diplomats, who said this had undermined moves for a political solution to the conflict between Serbs and Albanians. Central Intelligence Agency officers were ceasefire monitors in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, developing ties with the KLA and giving American military training manuals and field advice on fighting the Yugoslav army and Serbian police.”

And this on William Walker:

“Walker, who was nominated by Madeleine Albright, the American secretary of state, was intensely disliked by Belgrade… Some European diplomats in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, concluded from Walker ‘s background that he was inextricably linked with the CIA. The picture was muddied by the continued separation of American “diplomatic observers” from the mission. The CIA sources who have now broken their silence say the diplomatic observers were more closely connected to the agency.”

“Several Americans who were directly involved in CIA activities or close to them have spoken to the makers of Moral Combat, a documentary to be broadcast on BBC2 tonight, and to The Sunday Times about their clandestine roles. Walker dismissed suggestions that he had wanted war in Kosovo, but admitted the CIA was almost certainly involved in the countdown to airstrikes.”

And here is the real punch line on this entire article: This article, this news, was not published in the U.S. MSM. This was reported by the Sunday Times in March 2000. These facts, revelations, and scandalous ties were never truly touched by the U.S. MSM. There was an ‘action alert’ issued by FAIR in 1999 on Time Magazine’s censorship of the established facts and evidence on the ‘Real’ KLA, under the title ‘Time Magazine Ignores KLA Drug Charges’ and subtitle ‘Are editors following Contra tradition?’:

“Time magazine’s May 17 issue ran a feature on the funding of the Kosovo Liberation Army, titled “A Fighting Chance,” suggesting that the KLA is sustained by donations from ethnic Albanians outside of Kosovo. The article reports that the Republic of Kosova Fund holds “more than $33 million” in a bank in Albania, yet in a graphic titled “How the KLA Gets Its Money,” Time cheerfully reports that the KLA gets its money from “fund raisers, mailings and other sources.” What “other sources”? Bake sales? Time doesn’t say.”

“Fortunately, there has been some investigation into the question. The London Times on March 24 cited an intelligence report that indicated as much as half of the funding for the KLA’s guerrilla war comes from drug proceeds. And the San Francisco Chronicle on May 5 reported that European and U.S. law enforcement groups see officers of the KLA as “a major force in international organized crime, moving staggering amounts of narcotics through an underworld network that reaches into the heart of Europe.””

Here is how FAIR appropriately questioned Time’s motives and drew an even more appropriate parallel to show the ‘real’ reason:

“Why didn’t Time mention the ongoing international investigations of the KLA’s suspected role in the heroin trade? A look back at Time’s Iran-Contra coverage sheds some light.”

“In a 1987 investigation into allegations of drug-smuggling by the Nicaraguan Contras, Time staff writer Laurence Zuckerman found serious evidence of Contra-cocaine links, but his story was never run. Why not? A senior editor acknowledged to Zuckerman: “Time is institutionally behind the contras. If this story were about the Sandinistas and drugs, you’d have no trouble getting it in the magazine.””

Pretty hard-hitting piece, right? Can anyone question its validity? I certainly can’t see how. One more time the U.S. MSM showed it’s claws when it came to their ‘forbidden apple,’ – CIA and its narcotics and laundering deeds…

***

Afghanistan & Heroin: The journey from Freedom Fighters to Fanatic Villains

I invite anyone who is interested in understanding the axis of U.S. Government, mainstream media, and our foreign policy involving unholy alliances to look at the last three decades of U.S. media coverage of Afghanistan’s Taliban-Al Qaeda, previously known and promoted as ‘Afghan Freedom Fighters’ and the Mujahidin.
In the 1980s the U.S. government supported the Afghan resistance forces, the Mujahidin, today known as Taliban and Al Qaeda, in the fight against the Soviet occupation. The CIA worked through Pakistan military intelligence (ISS) and worked with these guerilla groups who were close to the ISS.

In his well-researched book, The Politics of Heroin, Professor Alfred McCoy documents the parallel increase in Heroin production in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the 1980s when the U.S. Government collaborated and supported the Mujahidin directly and indirectly. While in 1979 Pakistan had a small and local opium trade and produced no heroin, by 1981, according to U.S. Attorney General William French Smith, Pakistan emerged as the world’s leading supplier of heroin, became the supplier of nearly 60% of U.S. heroin supply, and took over major sections of the market in Europe.

“Who were the manufacturers? They were all either military factions connected with Pakistan intelligence, CIA allies, or Afghan resistance groups connected with the CIA and Pakistan intelligence. In May of 1990, ten years after this began, the Washington Post finally ran a front page story saying high U.S. officials admit that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar [leader of the Hezbi-i Islami guerilla group], and other leaders of the Afghan resistance are leading heroin manufacturers. This had been known for years, reported in the Pakistan press, indeed in 1980 reported in McClean’s magazine. In fact in 1980 a White House narcotics advisor, Dr. David Musto of Yale University, went on the record demanding that we not ally with Afghan guerilla groups that were involved in narcotics.”

McCoy also documents interesting phenomena involving the DEA operations and actions (or inaction) in Afghanistan during the 80s:

“During the 1980′s from the time that heroin trade started, there were 17 DEA agents based in Pakistan. They neither made nor participated in any major seizures or arrests. At a time when other police forces, particularly Scandinavian forces, made some major seizures and brought down a very major syndicate connected with former president Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan.”

In an excellent article published by FAIR David Gibbs provides the following documented facts and analyses:

“Despite CIA denials of any direct Agency support for Bin Laden’s activities, a considerable body of circumstantial evidence suggests the contrary. During the 1980s, Bin Laden’s activities in Afghanistan closely paralleled those of the CIA. Bin Laden held accounts in the Bank for Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), the bank the CIA used to finance its own covert actions (London Daily Telegraph, 9/27/01). Bin Laden worked especially closely with Hekmatyar–the CIA’s favored Mujahiddin commander (The Economist, 9/15/01). In 1989, the U.S. shipped high-powered sniper rifles to a Mujahiddin faction that included bin Laden, according to a former bin Laden aide (AP, 10/16/01).”

Now let’s go back and search U.S. press coverage of Afghanistan’s ‘Freedom Fighters’ during the 80s and try to find any coverage related to these U.S. backed and supported operations’ intersection with the global narcotics trade. Are there any? I’m afraid we know the answer to this question. Here is further coverage based on the report by FAIR:

“The press coverage of this era was overwhelmingly positive, even glowing, with regard to the guerrillas’ conduct in Afghanistan. Their unsavory features were downplayed or omitted altogether. While some newspapers favored some restraint in the degree of U.S. military support for the Mujahiddin (notably the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post) and others (like the Wall Street Journal) favored a more open-ended policy, these differences were only matters of degree. Virtually all papers favored some amount of U.S. military support; and there was near unanimous agreement that the guerrillas were “heroic,” “courageous” and above all “freedom fighters.””

“According to the L.A. Times (6/23/86): “The Afghan guerrillas have earned the admiration of the American people for their courageous struggle…. The rebels deserve unstinting American political support and, within the limits of prudence, military hardware.””

And here the axis of U.S. Government-U.S. Press- and the information spin or black-out:

“Another problem was direct manipulation of reporting by the U.S. government, which was supporting the Mujahiddin guerrillas during both the Carter and Reagan administrations. (Indeed, we now know that U.S. aid to the Mujahiddin was secretly begun in July 1979, six months before the Soviets invaded–International Politics, 6/00.) This press manipulation began early in the conflict. In January 1980, the New York Times (1/26/80) reported that the State Department had “relaxed” its accuracy code for reporting information on Afghanistan. As a result, the Carter administration generated “accounts suggesting Soviet actions for which the administration itself has no solid foundation.””

I am tempted to continue, keep going, and cover this same trend in a more current context, but I’ll limit myself to only highlights since this piece is already longer than what I intended it to be.

Afghanistan’s $40-50 billion worth of poppy production today is a gigantic leap from it’s approximately $5-10 billion before our invasion after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Similar to cases shown above our media’s selective coverage has been limiting it’s reporting to a few hundred million dollars of this industry which directly involves the Afghan farmers and warlords. Yet, uniformly missing from the coverage is the remaining $40+ billion! Based on numerous reports publicized by Europol, UN, and even our own State Department, over 90% of this industry is operated, managed and carried out by ‘others.’ These ‘others’ happen to include Turkey, Pakistan, and Albania; currently none of them on our ‘terrorist’ or ‘axis of evil’ list, thus the censored coverage.

As we can see, the U.S. press censorship trend when it comes to Government-Narcotics relationships has been replicated over and over: Contra-Cocaine, Cold War era Afghanistan-Heroin, KLA-Heroin, Post 911 Afghanistan-Heroin. This trend goes above and beyond the usual censorship and/or spins regularly exercised by our media. They seem to have collectively designated U.S. Government-Narcotics-Terrorist relations and operations as a ‘Forbidden Apple.’ Moreover, they seem to have been successful in ensuring the marginalization and downfall of any of their colleagues who have been bold and brave enough to take a bite of it. As stated by my good journalist friend ‘…can’t touch this.’

‘Pressure’ is one of those buzzwords you hear in almost all discussions involving the mainstream media and related topics: Government Pressure, Corporate Pressure, Special Interest & Lobby Pressure, Management Pressure, Colleagues Pressure…It’s always pressure – whether its pressure placed directly on the reporter, editor, or on the board and or ownership…So how does it work? How much pressure? What methods are used? Of course, the answer largely depends on ‘who’ the pressure comes from (government or corporate or …), ‘who’ is the target of the pressure (is it the source, the reporter, etc.). For this post I am going to focus on what’s referred to as ‘government pressure,’ provide you with my take by providing context and case examples, and then let you bring in yours.

Just to make sure you understand – I don’t claim to be an expert, nor do I pretend to have all the right answers. I am drawing upon eight years of direct first hand experience in dealing with the media on my case, four years of interaction with the MSM on and with our organization and our National Security Whistleblowers, and years of association and friendship with many journalists, authors, attorneys and experts active in the area of national security and civil liberties. I am still seeking answers and looking for solutions…


Flexing Muscles

Many cases of the government resorting to intimidation and harassment to prevent a story from coming out go unreported. I suppose this proves the effectiveness of this method. The flexing muscles method ranges from subtle threats to overt harassment. Many of these cases go unreported simply because the ‘pressure’ takes care of the ‘problem,’ and the ‘pressured’ party, either due to the shame of giving in or the fear of ‘further pressure,’ goes mum into their grave.

Here is a case where government agents’ muscle flexing through overt harassment did not go unreported because the target happened to be an investigative journalist with a proven track record and integrity; a rare breed, indeed:

Bill Conroy is an editor at the San Antonio Business Journal and a contributing journalist for Narco News and an author. The Reports Committee for Freedom of the Press was one of very few outlets to report the story of the government’s harassment and intimidation, targeting Conroy for his reporting of a leaked memo regarding the centralized database for tracking terrorists.

“A leaked memo from the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security sparked its officials to interview a writer last month in an attempt to discover his source for an article on the online news service Narco News.”

You can read the story and the leaked memo in question here. The memo divulged that DHS supervisory agents in the field were directed to alter terrorism related files without preserving their original versions. This is equivalent to shredding during the pre-computer era. Rather important, right? The government then sent some agents who apparently were instructed to teach Conroy a lesson or two:

“Two agents came to his home and spoke to his wife while Conroy was at work, and appeared at his office the next day. Conroy, an editor at the San Antonio Business Journal, contributes to Narco News. The agents spoke to Conroy as well as his boss at the Journal in an apparent attempt to intimidate him into revealing his source, said Ron Tonkin, Conroy’s attorney.”

So they send a couple of tough looking agents with a mission to intimidate and harass. Send the agents to the target reporter’s office and have them treat him as a ‘criminal suspect,’ and make sure his colleagues and boss are around to watch… Send them to his house, make sure the neighbors see the agents knock on his door and flash their badges, and instruct them to intimidate the spouse and or the children. You might be surprised to learn how many ‘targeted reporters’ actually do get ‘pressured’ out of reporting in cases like this; how many divulge sources; and how many pledge not to ever enter the ‘no no zone’ again. Bill Conroy didn’t, but Conroy is among a tiny group…

“Bill Conroy did not divulge the source of the leak in his article and refused to when agents visited his home and workplace on May 23 and 24, respectively, asking for his sources in the department.”

And guess what? In the end, they couldn’t do anything to him. Shouldn’t this be a lesson to reporters who follow a different path?

“Although the agents reportedly mentioned speaking to the U.S. attorney, implying they might obtain a subpoena for the information, no such order has been issued. A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton of the western district of Texas declined comment. Calls to the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of Professional Responsibility were not returned.”

Intimidation can also come in the form of a legal bluff. This approach seems to be gaining popularity since the September 11 attacks. The government can, and has been, using ‘National Security’ to declare many embarrassing or incriminating stories ‘classified.’ This allows them to flash their ‘we’ll take you to court’ card, and wait to see whether the target publication or reporter decides to ‘hold or fold or walk away.’

Let’s look at New York Times reporter James Risen’s case:

“A federal grand jury has issued a subpoena to a reporter of The New York Times, apparently to try to force him to reveal his confidential sources for a 2006 book on the Central Intelligence Agency, one of the reporter’s lawyers said Thursday.”

The same article emphasized that this trend is not isolated:

“Mr. Risen, who is based in Washington and specializes in intelligence issues, is the latest of several reporters to face subpoenas in leak investigations overseen by the Justice Department.”

How many reporters can afford the hefty legal fees to fight a case like this in court, when the government has at its disposal unlimited resources in dollars, legal maneuvering expertise, and manpower? Not many, I can assure you. Lucky lucky Risen! As for publications, also not many who’ll be willing. And unfortunately, not many reporters can easily secure pro-bono representation by a civil liberties organization with enough muscle to challenge the government. Thus many at an early stage, when ‘pressured’ by threats of legal action, give in and abandon a story yet to be written. Then add to this the recently revealed NSA targeting of journalists and you get the kind of pressure that may even eliminate the need for legal threats. Just the knowledge of being monitored is enough ‘pressure’ to dissuade many editors and reporters from pursuing‘radioactive’ cases in the first place.

The same government intimidation and threat tactics are also applied to ‘sources.’ Here is a brief account of my own experience:

In 2002, a few days before the airing of the CBS-60 Minutes segment on my case, my attorneys received a letter by fax from the Justice Department attorneys. The letter was to let us know that I would be pursued legally and severely if I went through with this interview. They strongly claimed that any information I was to disclose was being considered ‘classified.’ Of course, my attorneys knew better, and we didn’t bulge. And low and behold no ‘action’ ever came from the government following the airing of the segment. It was bluff, threat and intimidation; just that.

Not only did the government try to stop my appearance on the program, they took similar action with another FBI whistleblower, John Roberts, who also was interviewed for that same segment.


Source Pressures

Everyone knows ‘high-level government sources’ to reporters on politics and intelligence related matters is what the rolodex is in business. The net-worth, the value, of these reporters is frequently judged based on their ‘access.’ Sure; it makes sense. First, a reporter tries to make his/her way up the chain and establish the ‘relationship and trust’ necessary for this access. Next, and equally important, is to ‘maintain’ this relationship. This too makes sense, and is part of the job. Now, the question is, at what price? What are the things a reporter is willing to do, how far is he/she willing to go to ‘maintain’ his or her access?

Successful experienced journalists with a solid sense of ethics and integrity are good at ‘balancing’ when it comes to ‘source maintenance.’ This appears to be one of those disappearing qualities within the mainstream media. When the publication, the editors, lean towards, sorry, bend over, the government’s angle on stories, the reporters follow by compromising ‘a lot’ to keep and maintain their news/information ‘feeders’ within the government agencies.

I am going to provide you with another first-hand witnessed and documented incident. The only reason I am not naming ‘the well-known reporter & publication’ is to protect the source who obtained and passed on the incriminating documented evidence – the communication that occurred in writing between him and this particular ‘reporter.’

The individual who dealt with the congressional and press side of my case during the early stages of my whistleblowing journey wrote an e-mail to a well-known and well-placed journalist, saying, ‘Man, I can’t believe you guys did not cover this!!! Ashcroft comes out and invokes the State Secrets Privilege, first time ever asserted by the Bush administration, and you don’t write about it?! What the hell, man?! What’s the deal? I sent you the press release and attached a bunch of documents on that e-mail…’

Here is the response from that well-known journalist, and stupidly enough in writing: ‘I was going to call you. A few months ago I finally got this big DOJ guy, I mean BIG! Our deal-exclusive. You can’t do better than that in Washington. Anyhow, he doesn’t want us to touch Edmonds’ story. Period. I am not going to piss off my source for some God Damn translator whistleblower…’

The reporter’s refusal to cover the story was irrational – the State Secrets Privilege invocation was first released through an official DOJ press release and other major publications ran with the news. So what does this tell you? To maintain high-level government sources well-known reporters cut deals like this: You be my man, and I and what I cover will be yours. Unfortunately, through several reporter friends I was given many more examples and was told ‘that’s the name of the game when it comes to covering politics and government in this city.’

Soft Pressures

I touched on this type of pressure in the previous piece and in my last op-ed, and the recent revelations on Harman-New York Times provides both the context and case example. The fact that the NSA, DOJ and whatever other agency can softly ask the editors and management of the New York Times to sit on a major story involving criminal government action against it’s own people for over a year, and the request be complied with. The fact that a Congresswoman has enough ‘ins and pull’ to dial the decision-makers’ number at the New York Times and ask them ‘as a favor’ to not publish a story. The fact that a LA Times editor dutifully reports to NSA its source’s disclosure on wiretapping and the AT&T, takes his marching orders, comes back, and kills the story.

You see what I mean? There are many, many ‘soft pressure’ cases out there.

As with the various theories on the factors contributing to MSM degradation, the pressure styles can also be applied in combination. While the Justice Department attorneys are ‘flexing muscles’ by threatening the information source with legal action, their Attorney General or Deputy or whomever can be making his ‘soft’ call to dissuade the editor from moving forward with the story, and their Special Agent in Charge of whatever department may be summoning his ‘pet reporter’ to ban him from working on this same target story.