by Mickey Huff
This “shoot the messenger” ad hominem/red herring approach is standard fare in the US when dealing with those who dare to engage in fearless speech in fateful times, especially when revealing government secrecy and lies. From Daniel Ellsberg to Julian Assange, the US political establishment has sought to discredit, attack, and prosecute those who dare announce that the emperor has no clothes. The Obama administration has targeted whistleblowers more than all previous US administrations combined (see story #4 in chapter 1 of this volume), further evidenced by the legal proceedings involving Bradley Manning; the prosecution of CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, the source exposing CIA torture program; and the federal prosecutorial overreach and legal haranguing14 of Creative Commons tech prodigy and Internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz, which led to his suicide.15 It is clear the Obama administration wants to make examples out of those who are strong advocates of freedom of information and the public’s right to know. It appears that in failing to point out these attacks on the state of press freedom and public rights, corporate media is missing key elements of the story.
SOURCES:
“Detention Wars, Continued,” Washington Post, September 16, 2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/detention-wars-continued/2012/09/16/dfieacac-fea8-11e1-a31e-804fccb658f9_story.html.
Charlie Savage, “U.S. Appeals Judge Grants Stay of Ruling on Detention Law,” New York Times,
September 18, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/us/politics/us-appeals-judge-grants-stay-of-ruling-on-detention-law.html?_r=0. Natasha Lennard, “Obama Signs NDAA Again, Disappoints on Gitmo and Civil Liberties Again,”
Salon, January 3, 2013, http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/obama_signs_ndaa_again/. Charlie Savage, “Obama Disputes Limits on Detainee Transfers Imposed in Defense Bill,” New York Times, January 3, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/us/politics/obama-signs-defense-bill-with-conditions.html. Peter Finn, “Defense Bill’s Guantanamo Bay Provisions have Human Rights Groups Upset with Obama,” Washington Post, January 3, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/defense-bills-guantanamo-bay-provisions-have-human-rights-groups-upset-with-obama/2013/01/03/778be520-55e0-11e2-8b9e-dd8773594efc_story.html. “2013 National Defense Authorization Act,” American Civil Liberties Union, January 10, 2013, http://www.aclu.org/national-security-reproductive-freedom-womens-rights/2013-national-defense-bill-good-bad-and-ugly. Chris Hedges, “The NDAA and the Death of the Democratic State,” Truthdig, February 11, 2013,
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_ndaa_and_the_death_of_the_democratic_state_20130211/.
Kashmir Hill, “Surprise Visitors Are Unwelcome at the NSA’s Unfinished Utah Spy Center (Especially When They Take Photos),” Forbes, March 4, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/03/04/nsa-utah-data-center-visit/. Glenn Greenwald, “NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily,” Guardian, June 6, 2013, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order.
Matt Taibbi, “As Bradley Manning Trial Begins, Press Predictably Misses the Point,” Rolling Stone, June 6, 2013, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/as-bradley-manning-trial-begins-press-predictably-misses-the-point-20130605.
Kevin Gosztola, “Time Magazine Equates Whistleblowers with Spies in Cover Story on Snowden, Manning & Swartz,” Firedoglake, June 13, 2013, http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/06/13/time-magazine-equates-whistleblowers-with-spies-in-cover-story-on-snowden-manning-swartz/
Censored 2013 #4
FBI Agents Responsible for Majority of Terrorist Plots in the United States
SUMMARY: The Federal Bureau of Investigation has embarked on an unusual approach to ensure that the United States is secure from future terrorist attacks. The agency has developed a network of nearly 15,000 spies to infiltrate various communities in an attempt to uncover terrorist plots. However, these moles are actually assisting and encouraging people to commit crimes. Many informants receive cash rewards of up to $100,000 per case.
UPDATE: In November 2010, Mohamed Mohamud was arrested for attempting to detonate a car bomb at a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon. Before his arrest, Mohamud had been under FBI surveillance for one year because he had written for a ji-hadi magazine and had been in email contact with two accused terrorists and a man who fought against coalition troops in Afghanistan. The FBI agents who established contact with Mohamud posed as al-Qaeda operatives and claimed that Mohamud had expressed an interest in car bombing. During his trial, Mohamud’s lawyers argued that undercover FBI operatives entrapped the young Somali-American and coerced him. The jury determined that Mohamud was guilty as charged and found no fault with the FBI. He was sentenced to life in prison. Mohamud’s case is one of at least eleven in which defendants have claimed entrapment in terrorism trials though none have been acquitted.
The FBI is accused of devising plots and then targeting operatives who are alienated loners or are easily manipulated. In the case of the Cleveland Five, who were accused of plotting to destroy a bridge outside Cleveland, friends and family members described them as “lost souls.” As in Mohamud’s case, the Cleveland Five involved an FBI-inspired plan. An FBI informant allegedly brought them to the bridge and argued that blowing it up would help the Occupy movement. He then connected them to another undercover FBI operative who provided them with C4 explosives.
The corporate media, at least in print, have picked up on these stories. David K. Shipler of the New York Times wrote in April of 2012 (note the one-to two-year lag mentioned in the introduction of this chapter), that while it may seem the FBI is thwarting terror plots at home, they are rather more intimately involved with the actual carrying out of these very incidents via under cover officers and informants. Shipler rightfully picked up on Trevor Aaronson’s original story highlighted in Censored 2013 as story #4.
The Cleveland scenario was repeated with Quazi Mohammad Nafis. Nafis, a Bangladeshi-born US visitor on a student visa, was described by acquaintances as unintelligent, flunking out of the university he attended in Bangladesh. Within six months of his arrival in the US, the FBI began investigating the twenty-one-year-old. According to public documents, in a phone call Nafis expressed admiration for Osama bin Laden and a desire to wage jihad in the US. In that conversation, Nafis’s contact—who turned out to be an FBI informant—offered to put Nafis in contact with an al-Qaeda operative. Nafis told the informant that he wanted to bomb the New York Stock Exchange. The informant provided everything for Nafis, from the fake bomb and its detonator to the van used to contain the supposed explosives. He even drove with Nafis to the proposed bomb site—the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City—and parked the van outside. The two then went to a nearby hotel where Nafis proceeded to attempt a detonation by dialing a cell phone code. He tried several times before being arrested by FBI agents. Nafis awaits trial.
Several major news outlets like CBS and Huffington Post have covered the Nafis case, but neither mentions the FBI’s heavy involvement with the planning and facilitation of the plot. Nafis and Mohamud and at least 150 others have been arrested as a result of FBI involvement in terror plots. These stings have involved 15,000 registered informants, some are paid up to $100,000 per assignment. The FBI is paying known criminals in order to prevent potential FBI encouraged criminals from executing terrorist acts. The largest portion of the FBI’s budget is for counterterrorism, which receives three billion dollars annually, and which goes to fund these operations.
Often, however, coverage by corporate media about these plots frame the event as if the FBI simply prevented the attacks, with no other details given outside of sweeping statements about agency efforts or local cooperation. This was the case with the May 2013 incident in Minnesota as it was simply announced that the FBI prevented an attack. No other information was given by the prominent US News and World Report story by Steven Nelson, “FBI: ‘Terror Attack’ Plot Disrupted in Minnesota Raid in Rural America Prevented ‘Potential Tragedy,’ FBI Says.” “
The FBI says” . . . and no follow report was done by Nelson.
Given the FBI’s past with its Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), it is astounding that more reporters don’t do more probing. The public would be wise to pay more attention to domestic “terror” attacks (like the one in Boston this past spring, during which the FBI gave several conflicting stories about their knowledge of the suspects) and to begin pressuring the media and government to investigate these matters more fully, more transparently, and with more detail paid to FBI involvement.
SOURCES:
David K. Shipler, “Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the FBI,” New York Times, April 28, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/terrorist-plots-helped-along-by-the-fbi.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
Arun Gupta, “Cleveland Occupy Arrests Are the Latest in FBI’s Pattern of Manipulation,” Guardian, May 28, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/28/cleveland-occupy-arrests-fbi-manipulation.
John Miller, “Officials Say Alleged Fed Bank Bomber Had Big Plans,” CBS, October 21, 2012, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57536921/officials-say-alleged-fed-bank-bomber-had-big-plans/Dina Temple Raston, “Lawyers Say Teenage Terror Suspect Was Entrapped by FBI 2013,” National Public Radio, January 10, 2013, http://www.npr.org/2013/01/10/169077527/lawyers-say-teenage-terror-suspect-was-entrapped-by-fbi. Trevor Aaronson, “Inside the Terror Factory,” Mother Jones, January 11, 2013, http://www.mother-jones.com/politics/2013/01/terror-factory-fbi-trevor-aaronson-book . Nigel Duara. “Mohamed Mohamud GUILTY Verdict: Oregon Car-Bomb Suspect Convicted of Terrorism.” Huffington Post, January 31, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/mohamed-mohamud-verdict-guilty_n_2594134.html. Bryan Denson, “Mohamed Mohamud Guilty Verdict: No Reaction from Defendant, Lawyers Plan to Appeal,” Oregonian, January 31, 2013, http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.
ssf/2013/01/mohamed_mohamud_guilty_verdict_2.html.
Censored 2013 #6
Small Network of Corporations Run the Global Economy
SUMMARY: A University of Zurich study reported that a small group of companies—mainly banks—wields huge power over the global economy. The study was the first to look at all 43,060 transnational corporations and the web of ownership among them. The researchers’ network analysis identified £47 companies that form a “super en-tity,” controlling 40 percent of the global economy’s total wealth. The close connections mean that the network could be prone to “systemic risk” and vulnerable to collapse.
UPDATE: The corporate media continues to ignore growing evidence of the systematic dangers produced by increasing concentration of corporate wealth. Corporate coverage of the Zurich study has been lacking, but the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) scandal has resulted in corporate news coverage. Libor is an estimated average interest rate that the world’s leading banks use to determine borrowing charges. Members of the press first documented the Libor scandal in 2007, when an employee at the British bank Barclays argued that Libor rates were “unrealistically low.” In 2008, another Barclays employee admitted that they had been manipulating Libor since at least 2005. In July 2012, the Financial Times reported that the numbers had been fixed since 1991. The Wall Street Journal reported that during the economic collapse of 2007–08, the big banks used manipulated Libor scores to make their banks appear healthier, and to gain access to better loans. At least three banks and possibly as many as sixteen were involved in manipulating $500 trillion worth of assets.
Many major media outlets eventually covered the Libor scandal. News outlets including USA Today, Washington Post, Huffington Post, New York Times, Fox News, and Financial Times filed hundreds of reports on the topic in 2012 alone.
Andrew Gavin Marshall offered an analysis on Occupy.com that compared the global corporate network of financial elites to a “global supra-government.” Marshall argued that the “super entity” of connected corporations provides a dangerous amount of power to few and creates a controlling global force on government policies and financial markets (see chapter 9 of this volume for more analysis and exposure of the global ruling elite, also referred to as the transnational capitalist class).
In April 2013, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone documented that economic price-fixing goes far beyond the banks implicated in the Libor scandal. His investigation found that the financial elite not only had a hand in fixing Libor, the interest rates of swaps, but also gold and silver prices, which together would compromise “60 percent of the nation’s GDP.” He argued that fixing continues because banks use “loopholes” that do not require verified data. Taibbi concluded that “the world’s largest banks may be fixing the prices of . . . just about everything.” He went on to note that Libor was the biggest financial scam in history of markets.
But it gets worse. Taibbi continued:
Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world’s largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world’s largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.16
That’s right, a conspiracy from the top of the world’s leading financial institutions to manipulate interest-rate swaps. The very companies that can manipulate these are the very ones who can profit, while potentially trashing other sectors of the global economy. Taibbi concluded grimly:
The only reason this problem has not received the attention it deserves is because the scale of it is so enormous that ordinary people simply cannot see it. It’s not just stealing by reaching a hand into your pocket and taking out money, but stealing in which banks can hit a few keystrokes and magi-cally make whatever’s in your pocket worth less. This is corruption at the molecular level of the economy, Space Age stealing—and it’s only just coming into view.17
As Censored 2014 went to press, Taibbi noted stories from the Bloomberg business press on a possible scandal that could dwarf Li-bor involving the currency market, or foreign exchange rates, where insiders once again were poised to rig the system.18 A small network is still running the global economy.
SOURCES:
Carrick Mollenkamp and Mark Whitehouse, “Study Casts Doubt on Key Rate,” Wall Street Journal, May 29, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121200703762027135.html.
“New York Fed’s Libor Documents Reveal Cozy Relationship Between Regulators, Banks,” Huffington Post, July 13, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/13/new-york-fed-libor-documents_n_1671524.html?view=print&comm_ref=false/.
“Libor Review: Wheatley Says System Must Change,” BBC News, August 10, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19203103 .
Michelle Williams, “Timeline of the Libor Scandal,” Washington Post, December 19, 2012, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/libor-timeline.html/.
Elizabeth Warren, “Libor Fraud Exposes Wall Street’s Rotten Core,” Washington Post, July 19, 2012, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-07-19/opinions/35489555_1_libor-rates-barclays-traders-interest-rates/.
Andrew Gavin Marshall, “Welcome to the Network of Global Corporate Control,” January 29, 2013, Occupy.com, http://www.occupy.com/article/welcome-network-global-corporate-control.
Matt Taibbi, “Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever,” Rolling Stone, April 25, 2013, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425.
Censored 2013 #12
US Joins Forces with al-Qaeda in Syria
SUMMARY: The US, Britain, France, and some conservative Arab allies have funded and armed the Syrian rebellion from its start in 2011. In fact, the US has been funding groups against the administration of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad since the mid-1990s. However, the anti-Assad ranks include members of al-Qaeda, Hamas, and other groups that the United States lists
as terrorist organizations.
UPDATE: Since the beginning of Syria’s civil war in 2011, the US and other international powers have considered intervening on behalf of opposition forces that seek to unseat President Bashar al-Assad, whose family has held the presidency since 197i. Trade agreements and other interests led to a bloc against United Nations intervention. Russia, which supplies the regime with weapons, led the blockade. The US has officially claimed it will support Syria unless they cross a “red line” by using chemical weapons. However, according to WikiLeaks, emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor indicate that, as of 2012, Special Operations Forces (SOF) teams—presumably from US, UK, France, Jordan, and Turkey—“are already on the ground focused on recce (reconnaissance), missions . . . and training opposition forces.”
Independent news sources found that the CIA is operating on the Turkish border, attempting to organize and train Syrian opposition forces. The CIA has also reportedly given fourteen stinger missiles to the opposition. In March 2013, the New York Times revealed that arms were being supplied from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan, to Syria, and that supplies for the opposition, brought into Syria through Turkey, came from dummy corporations run by the CIA. In addition, the United Kingdom’s Daily Star reported that “British MI6, US CIA, and both French and American soldiers” were operating in Syria, seeking Assad’s chemical weapons. Israeli Special Forces were also implicated.
In 2012, the US government began to give public indications of support for the opposition. On February 28, 2013, the US government announced its pledge of sixty million dollars to the Syrian opposition. The BBC reported that the “US would provide direct support to rebel forces in the form of medical and food supplies.” When the New York Times inquired into the covert program of training opposition forces, the State Department refused to answer. However a private source informed the Times that the CIA “has been training groups of Syrian rebels in Jordan” since the previous year.
