MEK Re-Ups 3 Year Old Nuclear Propaganda
Terror Group is Sounding Board for Dubious US Intel
By Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America | July 13, 2013
Rudy Giuliani with MEK leader Maryam Rajavi
(Photo Credit: Jacques Demarthon / AFP)
Embracing its recent removal from the U.S. State Department’s list of designated foreign terrorist organizations, the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), an exiled Iranian terror cult with deep pockets and close ties to the Washington establishment, is attempting to ramp up the fear-mongering and propaganda over Iran’s nuclear program following last month’s election of moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani as the Islamic Republic’s next president.
In April 2013, the group opened an office in Washington DC and officially registered as a lobbying organization the following month.
Now, a Reuters article from July 11, 2013 reported the MEK and its affiliate organizations such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) claim to have “obtained reliable information on a new and completely secret site designated for [Iran’s] nuclear project,” despite providing no credible evidence to back up the allegation.
The supposed site is said to be “located in a complex of tunnels beneath mountains 10 km (6 miles) east of the town of Damavand, itself about 50 km northeast of Tehran.” The MEK claimed that construction of the site began in 2006 and it was recently completed. “The site consists of four tunnels and has been constructed by a group of engineering and construction companies associated with the engineering arms of the Ministry of Defence and the IRGC (Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards force),” a statement from the terror group said.
Unsurprisingly, the Iranian government immediately denied the allegations.
As in nearly all media reports on the MEK, Reuters credits the group with having “exposed Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and a heavy water facility at Arak” in 2002. But beyond the fact that Iran’s nuclear program was never a secret, this specific claim is untrue, as nuclear experts Jeffrey Lewis and Mark Hibbs pointed out back in 2006.
In fact, the U.S. intelligence community had been tracking Iran’s nuclear facility development for quite some time, notably its construction at both Natanz and Arak. Lewis notes that, in 2002, “someone leaked that information to an Iranian dissident group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which then released the second-hand dope in a press conference where they got the details wrong.” The information the MEK supposedly gleans from sources inside Iran are actually just leaks received from intelligence agencies in the United States and Israel.
Since then, the MEK has not itself provided a single shred of credible information regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Furthermore, in early 2007, an unnamed senior official at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) revealed to the Los Angeles Times, “Since 2002, pretty much all the intelligence that’s come to us [from the United States about the Iranian nuclear program] has proved to be wrong” and has never led to significant discoveries inside Iran.
“They gave us a paper with a list of sites. [The inspectors] did some follow-up, they went to some military sites, but there was no sign of [banned nuclear] activities,” the official told The Guardian at the time. Additionally, the LA Times reported that “U.S. officials privately acknowledge that much of their evidence on Iran’s nuclear plans and programs remains ambiguous, fragmented and difficult to prove.”
Additionally, the Associated Press reported this past May that, when it comes to accusations about the Iranian nuclear program and despite their terrible track record, “about 80 percent of the intelligence comes from the United States and its allies.”
Reuters, writing about the MEK’s most recent revelation, noted, “The group released satellite photographs of what it said was the site. But the images did not appear to constitute hard evidence to support the assertion that it was a planned nuclear facility.” Clearly, a non-state actor like the MEK doesn’t have satellites of its own floating around in space taking pictures of Iranian mountains; it’s obviously getting the information from government organizations with advanced spying resources.
Though these latest claims by the MEK have garnered quite a bit of attention this week, they are, in fact, nothing new. Allegations about tunnel systems have long been a go-to source of alarmism over Iran’s nuclear program. Back in January 2010, on the heels of promoting an opinion piece that explicitly advocated an unprovoked military attack on Iran, The New York Times‘ William Broad published a hysterical report, which claimed, “Over the past decade, Iran has quietly hidden an increasingly large part of its atomic complex in networks of tunnels and bunkers across the country.”
The report goes on to lament that Iranian efforts to protect their own nuclear infrastructure from military attack is viewed by the U.S. administration as “a stealth weapon, complicating the West’s military and geopolitical calculus.” Translation: it’s harder to spy on things and then blow them up when they’re not out in the open and that’s annoying.
Broad doesn’t even try to mask the frustration:
“It complicates your targeting,” said Richard L. Russell, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst now at the National Defense University. “We’re used to facilities being above ground. Underground, it becomes literally a black hole. You can’t be sure what’s taking place.”
Even the Israelis concede that solid rock can render bombs useless. Late last month, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, told Parliament that the Qum plant was “located in bunkers that cannot be destroyed through a conventional attack.”
Despite the decades of threats from the United States and Israel, then-U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates didn’t realize the blistering irony when, discussing the heavily-fortified uranium enrichment site at Fordow, he said, “If they wanted it for peaceful purposes, there’s no reason to put it so deep underground, no reason to be deceptive about it, keep it a secret for a protracted period of time.”
Later in his report, Broad describes Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a tunnel aficionado and quotes Greg Duckworth, a “civilian scientist” described as having “recently led a Pentagon research effort to pinpoint enemy tunnels,” as saying, “Deeply buried targets have been a problem forever. And it’s getting worse.”
As the January 2010 report continues, a familiar name emerges under the heading “An Opposition Watchdog.” Who could that be? Broad writes, “In 2002, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition group, revealed that Iran was building a secret underground nuclear plant at Natanz that turned out to be for enriching uranium. Enrichment plants can make fuel for reactors or, with a little more effort, atom bombs.”
He goes on to sing the praises of NCRI for having announced “that Iran was digging tunnels for missile and atomic work at 14 sites” in 2005 and announcing “that Iran was tunneling in the mountains near Natanz, the sprawling enrichment site” in 2007, which he says was confirmed by satellite images.
In December 2009, Broad writes that NCRI issued yet another report on “Iranian military tunneling,” which claimed “Iran had dug tunnels and bunkers for research facilities, ammunition storage, military headquarters and command and control centers.”
“A group of factories” in the mountains east of Tehran, it insisted without providing proof, specialize in “the manufacturing of nuclear warheads.”
Broad even quotes the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Frank Pabian saying of the MEK, “They’re right 90 percent of the time. That doesn’t mean they’re perfect, but 90 percent is a pretty good record.” Mohamed ElBaradei, former IAEA Director-General, had a different take on the group. “We followed whatever they came up with. And a lot of it was bogus.”
In his reporting, William Broad never once identifies the MEK or NCRI as an officially designated terrorist group, which at the time they both were and had been for over a decade.
To hammer home how deliberately alarmist the claims actually were, the Times even published the article with a photograph of a smiling Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his entourage in red hardhats emerging from what is apparently supposed to resemble a steel-reinforced underground lair. Yet the photo is wholly unrelated to any of the allegations made within the report.
The caption beneath of the picture reads, “President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, center, at a highway tunnel near Tehran. Much of Iran’s atomic work is also in tunnels.”
Yes, that really happened. Fit to print, indeed.
The focus on Iranian tunnels leads inevitably to discussion of American military capabilities and the challenges faced by less vulnerable facilities. Broad, in his 2010 report, noted that the “Pentagon is racing to develop a deadly tunnel weapon” for such circumstances. That weapon has since been completed and tested, but has not been sold to Israel for fear it might be used without American authorization.
Clearly, the MEK’s latest revelations are recycled claims and, like before, are essentially allegations based on vague intelligence leaked to the group by American officials. The MEK merely acts as a laundering service for the unproven accusations of its handlers in the United States and Israel.
Unfortunately, the mainstream press – even when skeptical about the information – continues to dutifully provide a platform for such propaganda and fear-mongering by publishing such accusations.
The NYT Continues to Misinform on Chemical Weapons in Syria
By Michael McGehee · NYTX · July 11, 2013
Writing in his original preface to Animal Farm, George Orwell wrote about how “inconvenient facts [can be] kept dark, without the need for any official ban”:
Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news – things which on their own merits would get the big headlines – being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact […] At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.
One way in which readers, listeners, or viewers can gauge the validity of news stories is by how quickly they drop off the media’s radar. If a story is sensationalist hype it will likely disappear as fast as it appeared. Another way is if the story gets reported at all.
Earlier this year was the scare story of an impending North Korea attack on the United States. The mainstream media, especially in the U.S. and the West, went ballistic (pun intended) on supposed North Korean threats. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of articles claimed over and over that North Korea threatened to attack South Korea and the United States. That was the popular narrative repeated ad infinitum. But it’s not entirely true. What North Korea “threatened” was retaliation, not an attack. Kim Jong-Un said his country would respond to South Korean and American aggression.
But, let’s rewind to the New Year. According to the Washington Post: “In New Year’s speech, N. Korea’s Kim says he wants peace with South”:
SEOUL — In a domestically televised New Year’s Day speech, North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Eun said he wants to “remove confrontation” on this divided peninsula and called on “anti-reunification forces” in South Korea to end their hostility toward the North.
The lengthy address, which laid out North Korea’s goals for the year, marked Kim’s first formal remarks since the election two weeks ago of Park Geun-hye as South Korea’s next president.
The North Korean leader asked for a detente — but with prerequisites that the conservative Park is likely to be reluctant to accept. Both sides, Kim said, must implement joint agreements signed years ago by the North and liberal, pro-engagement presidents in Seoul. Those agreements call for, among other things, economic cooperation, high-level government dialogue and the creation of a special “cooperation” zone in the Yellow Sea, where the North and South spar over a maritime border.
The peace overture was replied with the annual South-Korean-U.S. military exercise, but this time with an interesting twist: the exercise included a scenario of a pre-emptive attack on North Korea. Worse, the U.S. pulled out its B-52’s, that are capable of firing nuclear weapons, and flaunted them recklessly.
In chronological order: North Korea requests peace and steps to move in that direction, to which South Korea and the United States respond with a mock scenario of a pre-emptive strike, including the possible use of nuclear weapons, to which North Korea says it will retaliate against any such attack, and, finally, the American media largely ignores this context, that Kim was vowing retaliation, and whips up hysteria of North Korea coming out of the blue with threats of nuking America.
But then the story simply went away.
We have seen this also with the recent case of Syria and the regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons.
A month ago the White House came out with the claim that the Syrian government used chemical weapons “on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.”
And though FAIR’s Peter Hart quickly pointed out that skepticism was “warranted,” the mainstream media saturated news outlets with the story.
But, like the North Korean “threat,” the story simply went away.
Until yesterday.
The story is back on the radar as Russia provided the UN, and Western countries with their report on the Sarin attack in Aleppo, Syria. Unlike the US, the Russians have (and provided) evidence that it was the rebels who carried out the chemical attack.
According to Rick Gladstone of The New York Times, in his article “Russia Says Study Suggests Syria Rebels Used Sarin,” and which appears on page A7 of the July 10, 2013 edition, Moscow’s “scientific analysis of a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria on March 19 showed it probably had been carried out by insurgents using Sarin nerve gas of ‘cottage industry’ quality delivered by a crudely made missile.” Gladstone then informs us that Russia’s findings “contradicted conclusions presented by Western nations, including the United States, that the Syrian government had been responsible.”
The most troubling aspect of Gladstone’s article was this passage: “The American conclusion was based in part on indirectly procured soil samples and interviews with survivors, as well as the Syrian insurgency’s lack of technical ability and materials to carry out a chemical weapons attack.”
The problem? Those last sixteen words—“the Syrian insurgency’s lack of technical ability and materials to carry out a chemical weapons attack”—are presented, not as a claim, but as a fact. As we at the NYTimes eXaminer pointed out last month, The New York Times has ignored two important news items that undermine this assertion: (1) the hacking of Britam, a British defense company, revealed a plan by Washington for the use of chemical weapons in Syria, and then blame it on the government; and (2) the arrest of Syrian rebels in Turkey, who happened to be in possession of Sarin nerve gas.
All of this occurred before the White House came out with their claim that the Syrian government was behind the Sarin attacks, and was readily available in the press, though not reported by The New York Times. To this day the “paper of record” has yet to mention either of these two incidences, even as they claim that the Syrian rebels have a “lack of technical ability and materials to carry out a chemical weapons attack.”
Readers should be concerned with why sensationalist stories of a threatening North Korea, and chemical weapon-using Syria, can appear long enough to outrage the public, but stories of false flags, and rebels getting caught with the very chemical weapons we claim they don’t have, go unreported.
How Do You Know When President Obama is Lying?
By JEFF COHEN | CounterPunch | July 8, 2013
I was a young person when I first heard the quip: “How do you know when the President is lying? His lips are moving.” At the time, President Nixon was expanding the war in Vietnam to other countries and deploying the White House “plumbers” to commit crimes against antiwar leakers.
Forty years have passed. Sadly, these days, often when I see President Obama moving his lips, I assume he’s lying.
Like Nixon, our current president is prolonging an endless, borderless and counter-productive war (“on terror”) and waging a parallel war against “national security” leakers that makes the plumbers’ burglary of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office look almost quaint.
The World War I vintage Espionage Act, originally used to imprison socialists for making antiwar speeches, has been used by the administration against whistleblowers with a vengeance unprecedented in history: eight leakers have been charged with Espionage under Obama, compared to three under all previous presidents. The Obama administration has prosecuted not a single CIA torturer, but has imprisoned a CIA officer who talked about torture with a journalist. National Security Agency official Thomas Drake, who was unable to get abuses fixed internally, now has a criminal record for communicating with a reporter years ago about sweeping domestic surveillance.
So there I was watching Obama’s lips move about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden at a June 27 press conference. Saying he wouldn’t be “scrambling military jets to go after a 29-year-old hacker,” Obama added that he would not “start wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues, simply to get a guy extradited.”
I didn’t believe a word of it.
Given Obama’s war on whistleblowers and journalists who utilize them, and given the Army’s abusive treatment of military whistleblower Bradley Manning (apparently aimed at getting him to implicate WikiLeaks), it’s inconceivable that Obama was truly blasé about Snowden. To deter future whistleblowers, Snowden would have to be caught and made an example of – and probably mistreated (like Manning, in hopes of getting him to turn against WikiLeaks and even journalist Glenn Greenwald).
As his lips were moving, Obama knew well that he would go to extreme lengths to prevent this articulate young man from securing asylum in some Latin American country, where he could continue to inform the world’s media about the Surveillance State that has blossomed alongside the Warfare State under the Bush and Obama administrations.
That Obama wasn’t truthful became clear when the U.S. campaign of “wheeling and dealing” led to possible asylum countries retreating in fear one after another (Vice President Biden was deployed to pressure Ecuador’s president by phone). And even clearer with last week’s outrageous, international law-breaking that effectively forced down the presidential plane of Bolivian President Evo Morales.
And if Obama eventually does scramble jets to force down a plane with Snowden on board, the commander-in-chief will be applauded for taking bold and decisive action by mainstream TV talking heads, “national security” experts and the opposition he seems most intent on pleasing: conservatives. Criticism from civil libertarian and peace voices (or unions and environmentalists, for that matter) has rarely daunted Obama.
The bipartisan consensus in support of our bloated Military/Surveillance State – which so undermines our society as a whole – is reflected in Congress and both the Bush and Obama administrations, as well as mainstream media.
When it comes to issues of U.S. militarism and spying, the allegedly “progressive” MSNBC often seems closer to the “official network of the Obama White House” than anything resembling an independent channel. With a few exceptions (especially Chris Hayes), MSNBC has usually reacted to expanded militarism and surveillance by downplaying the abuses or defending them.
Had McCain or Romney defeated Obama and implemented the exact same policies, treating whistleblowers like Manning and Snowden as foreign espionage agents, one would expect MSNBC hosts to be loudly denouncing the Republican abuses of authority.
But with Obama in power, a number of MSNBC talking heads have reacted to the Snowden disclosures like Fox News hosts did when they were in hysterical damage control mode for Bush – complete with ridiculously fact-free claims and national chauvinism that we’ve long come to expect from the “fair & balanced” channel.
As Snowden arrived in Russia from Hong Kong, MSNBC host Ed Schultz blustered on about Snowden as a “punk” and “coward.” Railing about the “security of the country” in tones Hannity would approve of, Schultz questioned Snowden’s patriotism and credibility, asking: “If the United States of America is doing something so egregiously wrong in its surveillance program, how come he’s the only one speaking up?
In O’Reilly-like blissful ignorance, Schultz seemed unaware of the three NSA whistleblowers who’d loudly spoken up way earlier than Snowden – and gathered for an illuminating USA Today interview a week before his tirade.
I watched one MSNBC host function as an auxiliary prosecutor in Obama’s Justice Department, going after Snowden – while trying to link WikiLeaks and journalist Glenn Greenwald to criminal flight.
MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry has been condemning Snowden by contrasting him with civil disobedients who “love their country” and submit to arrest – while Snowden just wants to “save his own skin.” She proclaimed: “This is different. This is dangerous to our nation.” Should we similarly dismiss Dan Ellsberg, who leaked the top secret Pentagon Papers to a dozen newspapers in 1971 by going on the lam from the FBI. Or Watergate’s “Deep Throat,” who saved his own skin by hiding his identity for 30 years after leaking secrets that helped crash the Nixon presidency?
In a bizarre monologue attacking Snowden (who’s risked plenty, in my view), Harris-Perry hailed those who engage in civil disobedience for being willing “to risk your own freedom, your own body in order to bring attention to something that needs to be known. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested, attacked, smeared. Nelson Mandela went to prison for 27 years.” (My emphasis.)
Nelson Mandela? He wasn’t a civil disobedient who gave himself up. He was a fugitive, fleeing the apartheid police. He was on the lam domestically, like Snowden is now internationally. And some reports indicate that South African authorities were able to nab Mandela thanks to the U.S. CIA (one of the agencies now working to apprehend Snowden).
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has also disappointed. After doing a typically thorough presentation on the force-down of President’s Morales’ plane, she ended her report by expressing displeasure only that Washington had apparently gotten allies to go out on the limb “for nothing.” Her objection to the harassment seemed to be: it hadn’t succeeded. I didn’t hear opposition to the action had Snowden actually been on board and apprehended.
The Snowden/NSA story proves once again that – especially on so-called “national security” issues – we need strong, independent media not enmeshed with the corporate/political power structure and not allied with one of the two corporate parties.
We can’t count on MSNBC to heed the lesson taught by legendary independent journalist I.F. “Izzy” Stone, after years reporting from Washington: “All governments lie and nothing they say should be believed.”
Jeff Cohen was an MSNBC pundit and senior producer in 2002-3 until being terminated for political reasons, along with Phil Donahue, on the eve of the Iraq invasion. He is director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, founder of the media watch group FAIR, and author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media. He cofounded the online action group RootsAction.org, which has petitioned for Snowden.
As Obama regurgitates Israel lobby script on Syria, America sliding toward another Iraq
By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | July 5, 2013
At a Washington Institute policy forum luncheon debate on June 28 entitled “Arming the Rebels: Sliding Toward Iraq or Inching Toward Stability,” Andrew J. Tabler, a senior fellow in the institute’s program on Arab politics, hinted at the pro-Israel think tank’s influence over President Obama’s recent shift in Syria policy. Referring to his Foreign Affairs piece entitled “Syria’s Collapse: And How Washington Can Stop It,” Tabler said he would like to say that it “follows a lot” of President Obama’s responses in a major June 17 television interview. Whether out of modesty or a desire to downplay the Israel lobby’s role in deepening Washington’s involvement in the destabilization of Syria, a smiling Tabler added, “I’m sure that he didn’t read it and then just go and regurgitate it to Charlie Rose.”
WINEP’s executive director Robert Satloff was similarly coy in his introduction. Describing Tabler as a “very consulted” expert on Syria, Satloff said, “I won’t go into the details of the consultations” he has with senior government officials “but suffice to say that the arguments that we’ll be hearing today very much reflect the arguments that are on the table.”
Given the proven track record of such arguments made “in the national interest” by partisans of Israel, it would appear that its oblivious American proxy is rapidly sliding toward another Iraq.
Maidhc Ó Cathail is an investigative journalist and Middle East analyst. He is also the creator and editor of The Passionate Attachment blog, which focuses primarily on the U.S.-Israeli relationship. You can follow him on Facebook and Twitter @O_Cathail.
Related articles
- Ó Cathail: ‘Israel dominates US Syria policy’ (thepassionateattachment.com)
- Did an Israel lobby front group organize McCain’s trip to Syria? (thepassionateattachment.com)
Who Is An Objective Journalist?
By Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer | Worker’s Compass | July 2, 2013
In a recent New York Times article article David Carr questioned whether someone could be both a journalist and an activist, a question that was prompted by the role of Glenn Greenwald, a writer for The Guardian and a political activist, in reporting on Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency leaks.
As Carr put it, “The question of who is a journalist and who is an activist and whether they can be one and the same continues to roar along, most recently in the instance of Glenn Greenwald’s reporting for The Guardian on the secrets revealed by Edward J. Snowden.” Carr also framed the question as “a fight between objectivity and subjectivity.”
Carr initially seemed to concede that one and the same person could be both an activist and a journalist, even though the activists are “driven by an agenda.” In fact, the title of his article conveyed exactly that point: “Journalism, Even When It’s Tilted.” And, as Carr noted, this is an important concession since journalists are afforded special legal protections in the case of reporting leaks. Mr. Greenwald needs this protection because there are some government officials who would like to see him prosecuted.
However, towards the end of his article Carr began to raise caveats. Activism, he concluded, does not prevent someone from being a journalist; it rather tends to make them bad journalists: “But I think activism – which is admittedly accompanied by the kind of determination that can prompt discovery – can also impair vision.” And he added: “…the tendentiousness of ideology creates its own narrative.” In other words, activism can on rare occasions be helpful in unearthing the truth, but usually it is a barrier.
But perhaps Mr. Carr has failed to grasp the larger picture, possibly due to his own unspoken commitments. Everyone falls into one of two categories. There are those who basically have resigned themselves to established society, perhaps because of ideological compatibility, a strong strain of pragmatism, or a conviction that attempts to change society are entirely futile. Then there are others who are critical and are prepared to embark on a campaign to try to change what they find objectionable. Neither of these groups has a monopoly on objectivity; both positions rest on a set of fundamental values that can be rationally supported. And both involve a kind of activism: one aims at changing society while the other aims at refraining from changing it.
Yet there is a superficial difference between the two: those who want to change society do stand out. Unlike Mr. Carr, they do not seamlessly blend in with the surrounding social institutions and the values embodied in them. Accordingly, they might seem as if they have an agenda that uniquely distinguishes them, but that is only from the perspective of people like Mr. Carr, whose agenda ties him to the status quo but who has not sufficiently reflected on his own social commitments and therefore is unable to acknowledge them. No one, in other words, is exempt from having an “agenda.”
This point was graphically illustrated when “Meet the Press” host David Gregory pointedly asked Greenwald why he should not be charged with a crime for divulging Edward Snowden’s leaks. Here Gregory stood smugly on the side of those who wield power and was quick to demonstrate this point by his tendentious question, perhaps with the thought in mind of winning a promotion, which is a rampant form of another kind of activism.
To his credit, Carr elicited Greenwald’s response to the counterposing of activism and journalism, and this was Greenwald’s response: “It is not a matter of being an activist or a journalist; it’s a false dichotomy. It is a matter of being honest or dishonest. All activists are not journalists, but all real journalists are activists. Journalism has a value, a purpose – to serve as a check on power.” And Greenwald added: “I have seen all sorts of so-called objective journalists who have all kinds of assumptions in every sentence they write. Rather than serve as an adversary of government, they want to bolster the credibility of those in power. That is a classic case of a certain kind of activism.”
Greenwald’s rejection of the purported dichotomy between activism and journalism is, of course, entirely correct. Everyone is an activist of one kind or another. The distinction should rather be drawn between those who are conscious activists and those who, like Mr. Carr and Mr. Gregory, are unconscious activists. Those who fail to reflect on their own commitments are sometimes the most vicious.
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer may be reached at sanfrancisco@workerscompass.org
Rafael Correa, the Press, and Whistleblowers
By ADAM CHIMIENTI | CounterPunch | June 25, 2013
Once again, we are witnessing a growing frustration with “tiny” Ecuador. The United States government is clearly not happy with what would be the latest diplomatic slap in the face coming from the South American country, i.e. the pending arrival of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in the coming days. Beyond the United States’ government though, the US press corps are also seemingly up in arms. Why are they so angry? Well, it appears that they are indignant over the perceived hypocrisy of President Rafael Correa.
According to an article from The Atlantic (and another similar one from NPR here), the Ecuadorian leader “has created a safe space for foreigners like Assange — and now possibly Snowden –[but] he doesn’t do the same for dissenters within his own country.” News agencies like NBC News and The Atlantic think this is “interesting” and want to know ‘Why Ecuador?’ Such inquiries naturally turn to the NGOs, who are also less than pleased with this unruly little country. Freedom House, the Committee to Protect Journalists and others are upset that this very week, the one-year anniversary of Assange being holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London (and the same week that the Snowden asylum request is being reviewed), the Ecuadorian National Assembly has passed a Communications Bill that detractors claim is a major blow to a free press.
Claims of Hypocrisy
For several of the opposition figures and US-based observers, Ecuador’s new media legislation has sealed the deal on the stasi-like state that they imply or openly charge Correa has been dreaming about for years. In other words, transparency advocates like Assange and Snowden are compromising their credibility by associating with the Correa government. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the right-wing terrorist supporter/US Congresswoman representing Miami, has been busy tweeting as much. The Ecuadorian government, however, asserts that the bill is meant to place more media power in the hands of public groups and move away from privately owned media monopolies.
Meanwhile, the Council of Hemispheric Relations, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Heritage Foundation all say that Ecuador must be punished for this latest insult to the US government. James Roberts of Heritage lashed out at the South American leader on June 24, writing in the National Review Online:
“Rafael Correa has demonstrated a blatant disregard for international standards of justice. That kind of conduct may not be surprising from a man who seeks to don the mantle of Chávez, but it should not be rewarded with trade preferences.”
It doesn’t take much imagination to understand how a figure like Correa would have been dealt with a few decades back, but it appears that the more heavy-handed approach is not really possible at the moment, much to the dismay of the powerful and connected.
Returning to the issue of freedom, has the defiant president of Ecuador used the National Assembly to pass a law that NPR, The Atlantic and others tell us will be used to make the country less transparent and more hostile to journalists who only wish to be free to monitor the government and act as a check on state power? Well, let’s hold off on the most absurd elements of irony here for a moment and address the issue at hand.
About a Coup
It should certainly not be regarded as a good thing if the case was simply a cut-and-dry example of authoritarian overreach. Freedom of the press, as we are learning with the Snowden case, has seemingly never before been so important, or so contentious for that matter. However, the Ecuadorian issue is not so simple and it was certainly complicated after a day of crisis nearly three years earlier when factions of the National Police and armed forces attacked the president of Ecuador on September 30, 2010. The event was widely regarded as a coup attempt. What exactly went down is still somewhat unclear. There was a dramatic showdown between Correa himself and police officers that were angered by a supposed attempt to cut their pay. What is for certain, though, is that it was a countrywide, well-coordinated attempt to shut down the National Assembly, the two major airports in Guayaquil and Quito and eventually a hospital where the president was being treated for wounds. Furthermore, the plotters were also attacking journalists throughout the country, and most of these were pro-government reporters working for public media outlets.
The opposition press has taken an active role in attempts to discredit Correa since he first ran for president. He has elaborated on his views of the press and they are certainly not very congenial. In 2012, during a public TV interview in Spain, Correa said, “one of the main problems around the world is that there are private networks in the communication business, for-profit businesses providing public information, which is very important for society. It is a fundamental contradiction.”
One of the issues that NGOs and journalists have cited in their litany of complaints about Ecuador’s endangered freedom of the press actually stems from the 2010 police and military uprising. During the chaos that ensued during the alleged coup attempt, one reporter from the paper of record in Guayaquil took the opportunity to claim that Correa had ordered police to fire on a crowd of innocent onlookers caught up in the melee, presumably aiming to provoke anti-government sentiments. The claim turned out to be completely unsubstantiated. The government fined the journalist and his paper El Universo some $40 million for defamation but later withdrew the charges. Consider what might have happened in the US if the Los Angeles Times or Washington Post would have falsely claimed that Barack Obama had personally ordered military or police forces to fire on a crowd of protesters and innocent people were injured as a result somewhere in Washington, D.C It would be difficult to imagine a reporter and his editors ever committing such a stupid move, but if they had, there would have been some serious consequences. Alas, this is not really too shocking in the context of a sensationalist Latin American press.
Televised and Untelevised Revolutions
That dramatic Ecuadorian affair is reminiscent of the 2003 documentary film The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,directed by the Irish filmmakers Kim Bartley and Donnacha Ó Briai. The pair happened to be in Caracas, Venezuela during one of several 21st century Latin American coup attempts thus far. The film provided a key glimpse into the nature of media in the region, so often dominated by pro-US elites. It showed the efforts expended by private media outlets to incite anger and get people out in the streets in order to challenge the power of anti-Washington governments.
Right up until his death, it was a sort of requirement for US and European governments, journalists and NGOs to claim that Hugo Chávez Frías was a dictator for not renewing the license of RCTV. The outlet, owned by Marcel Granier, was one of the most virulent anti-government television stations operating on the state-owned airwaves and the Venezuelan government eventually forced them over to cable television. The criticism of the allegedly authoritarian leader served to cover up the very questionable coverage by corporate media. Indeed, one anti-Chávez commentator honestly noted six months ago that the idea that Chavez ever controlled the Venezuelan media was a myth. He pointed out that back in April 2002,
“Coup plotters collaborated with Venezuelan media figures before the coup. The media refused to show statements by officials condemning the coup d’état. When the coup d’état failed, the private Venezuelan networks refused to broadcast the news that Chávez had returned to power.”
“Correa is a Very Smart Guy”
The Venezuelan experience did not escape the attention of the rather astute and confident Correa. Neither did the fact that, only 15 months prior to the attempted coup in Ecuador, there was a successful coup in Honduras, removing the president of that country, Manuel Zelaya, by gunpoint in the middle of the night. This was considered to be illegal by President Obama himself, although soon after the offending and illegitimate new government of Roberto Micheletti was accepted by his administration and is still backed to this day by Washington (under current President Porfirio Lobo). This support comes despite a terrible record of human rights abuses and, yes, a genuine threat to a the flow of crucial information. Journalists have been censored and intimidated since the 2009 coup in Tegucigalpa and, what’s worse, have frequently been murdered by the government and its allies. Honduras consistently ranks as one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. The double standards are blatant and many would like to see the opinion-makers from the States take a closer look in the mirror.
Popular Support and Popular Media
Anyone who would have spent some time watching The Revolution Will Not Be Televised would have also learned what President Hugo Chávez, then only a mere three years into his presidency, meant to the millions of impoverished and the historically marginalized majority in Venezuela. This did not stop the State Department and its allies from focusing on how best to rid Venezuela of its president. (Incidentally, while doing an internship for the State Department in the fall of 2001, I was invited by the Public Diplomacy department to work on ideas on how to get the message out to Venezuelan people about the dangerous nature of President Chávez.) That coup attempt failed, as the one in Ecuador would eight and a half years later, mainly because the people staunchly backed the president of the Republic.
At the time of the 2002 coup attempt, Chávez was wildly popular and the same was true of Rafael Correa in September 2010; two weeks before the coup attempt, polls found that he had the support of 67% of respondents in the capital Quito and nearly 60% in his native Guayaquil, the second largest city. Correa actually got a nice bump in approval ratings after the whole affair and, more recently, he has just won a major reelection bid in February of this year precisely because he has brought political and economic stability to the country of 15 million people. Poverty has been reduced dramatically since Correa took office. Public works projects have resulted in huge improvements to the country’s infrastructure and, more importantly, there is a sense of independence from the yoke of neocolonialism so prevalent in years past.
It appears that Correa and the government may have some good reasons to increase the influence of publicly owned media companies and challenge private corporate media elites. This foray into press control is a dangerous game, however, especially since there appear to be some genuine concerns from indigenous and environmental activists who oppose the government’s expansive plans for an economy based primarily on extraction. Often, those who disagree with Correa are dismissed as childish Marxists, or more alarmingly, terrorists. There must be more attempts to reach a humane and considerate consensus on some of these crucial issues, especially as the Chinese enter the fray in search of resources to fuel their economic needs and a gateway into South America (and Ecuador recovers from two major oil spills so far this year). There are clearly opportunities, but also responsibilities to the environment and the people that live outside of the metropoles.
With such considerations in mind, is there a reason to agree with the opinion-makers in the US who would dub Correa as a dictator, increasingly revealing his dangerous nature?
One of Correa’s main antagonists is Martin Pallares, a senior political editor at one of the major national newspapers El Comercio. Pallares recently said, “I think freedom of press in Ecuador is gravely threatened by a system managed by the government. They have the objective to discredit the media, affect their credibility. And they also want to characterize the press like political adversaries and destabilization agents.” In a very important sense, the media should or even must by its nature act like political adversaries. Destabilization is a different story however. In the case of the coups in Latin America, there is typically interference by Western powers, especially the United States, and this often serves to destabilize governments Washington deems troublesome (through the funding of local civil society groups via the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID and, of course, the CIA). The message is often that these groups are just trying to further democratic causes, but this belies an obvious mission by colluding corporate and government powers that is evident throughout the many anti-democratic interventions and support of such leaders in postwar history (from Iran in 1953 to both the Maldives and Paraguay in 2012).
Felonious Journalists
Returning to the issue of irony, here you have several of the leading news outlets in the US reporting on the lack of media freedom in Ecuador, yet ignoring the major issues raised by leakers, journalists, and publishers such as Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden. In effect, these major corporate outlets are legitimizing or are even themselves guilty of demonization of these individuals who have put everything on the line to get the public talking about some serious violations of human rights and privacy, and the dangerous encroachment of the corporate state. One has to wonder if the fact that many of these commentators themselves are getting paid major corporate money has anything to do with their take on the Snowden/Ecuador affair.
If you watched the Sunday morning talk show highlights, you should be able to draw your own conclusion. One jaw-dropping example of the corporate media’s lack of objectivity in this discussion was the meticulously staged interview that George Stephanopoulos did with General Keith Alexander, the man who has access to the personal data of nearly anyone he so chooses to target. There were several moments in which the responses to some of the host’s softball questions were so weak (lots of babbling about dots) that it was unbelievable that Stephanopoulos didn’t pounce. Yet, why he did not or would not do such a thing is evident considering the establishment’s treatment of the recently departed journalist Michael Hastings, loathed for his refusal to play footsie with the biggest fish in the game. That sort of behavior simply cannot be tolerated.
Also on the talk show rounds, there was David Gregory’s aggressive and ethically revealing accusation thrown at guest Glenn Greenwald in the form of a ‘tough question’. Gregory actually asked Greenwald why he shouldn’t be charged with a crime, and The Guardian columnist sharply replied that it was “pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies”, with no evidence of wrongdoing. But there you have the attitude that the establishment needs to maintain close ties; it mustn’t be overly adversarial and never threaten the stability of the government or a particular administration, even if that means sitting on stories such as the spying on US citizens, like The New York Times was guilty of in 2004 when it delayed publication of a story on government surveillance after being approached by the Bush Administration.
Indy (media) to the Rescue
Modern professional journalism often leaves us wanting for more. Thankfully, we have the independent media outlets that are often way ahead on exposing some of the more heinous crimes of the times. This helps millions around the world identify the mantras of the media elite in the United States: 1) the corporate bias is never to be exposed or acknowledged; 2) it should never be overly adversarial to the government; and 3) a “journalist” should always attempt to divert from important issues that arise from whistleblowing by attacking the whistleblower’s character.
Of course, all of these conventions go out the window when it comes to perceived enemies, in which case the media, NGOs, corporations and the US government always work together in delegitimization and destabilization efforts. Snowden has followed Assange’s lead and is headed to Ecuador not simply because, as The Atlantic has suggested, both parties feel persecuted or they want to ‘poke the US in the eye’. The reason why Ecuador has offered asylum and why Snowden was seeking it from them is because they believe that there is hope in the future, beyond the grossly excessive power of the United States and its presumed worldwide dominion. The whistleblowers and the Ecuadorian leaders, like countless others around the world, believe that the only hopeful way forward is to shatter the antiquated and dangerous notions inherent in establishment journalism, corporate supremacy, and US hegemony. I guess it is no surprise that the privileged classes vehemently disagree.
Adam Chimienti is a teacher and a doctoral student originally from New York. He can be reached at ajchimienti@gmail.com.
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Bush’s Foiled NSA Blackmail Scheme
By Dennis J Bernstein | Consortium News | June 21, 2013
In early 2003, as the U.S. and British governments were seeking international acquiescence to their aggressive war on Iraq, an unexpected cog thrown into the propaganda machine was the disclosure that the National Security Agency was spying on UN Security Council members in search of blackmail material.
The revelation received little attention in the mainstream U.S. news media, which was almost fully on board the pro-war bandwagon, but the disclosure received wide international attention and stopped the blackmail scheme. U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were forced to abandon a UN resolution and invade Iraq with a ragtag “coalition of the willing.”
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Several months later, the identity of the leaker was revealed, a young woman named Katharine Gun who worked as a linguist at the NSA’s UK counterpart, British Government Communications Headquarters. Gun lost her job and was charged under British secrecy laws, but the case was dropped because the court would have required the Blair government to disclose that it also had twisted the arms of legal advisers to extract an opinion endorsing the invasion.
Now, a decade later, Edward Snowden, a young American systems analyst working for the NSA, has leaked documents revealing a global surveillance network and prompted another international debate – about government spying vs. personal privacy. Katharine Gun joined Pacifica’s “Flashpoints” host Dennis J Bernstein to discuss both cases.
DB: What exactly was your position when you decided to leak a certain document?
KG: My title was linguist analyst. I was a Mandarin Chinese speaker. We translated interceptions and produced reports for the various customers of GCHQ, which are normally the Foreign Office or MI-5 and MI-6.
DB: Can you explain the document you released and the significance of the timing?
KG: It was released at the end of January 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq. I saw an email that had been sent from the NSA to GCHQ. It was a request for GCHQ to help the NSA intercept the communications of six nations that sat on the Security Council at that time. It was to intercept their domestic and office telecoms in order to obtain all the information we could about the delegates, which the U.S. could then use to achieve goals favorable to U.S. interests. They called for the whole gamut of information, which made me think they would potentially use the information to blackmail or bribe the U.N. delegates.
DB: This bugging took place at the United Nations?
KG: Presumably, yes. Or it could involve the United Nations headquarters or also their domestic residence.
DB: The idea was to get the necessary information one way or the other to influence the key members to support the U.S. quest for war in Iraq?
KG: Yes. At the time, if you were not working for the intelligence services or the foreign offices of the U.S. or U.K. you would probably assume that the goal of [President George W.] Bush and [Prime Minister Tony] Blair at that time was to work diplomatically to reach a solution. But we now know, after several leaks over the years about the run-up to the war in Iraq, that war was the agenda all along. When I saw the email it made me think, “This is evidence that war is the agenda.” That’s why I decided the public needed to know.
DB: GCHQ is the British Government Communications Headquarters, the equivalent to the NSA [National Security Agency]. You were working there in the lead-up to the Iraq War. Can you remind us what governments were bugged?
KG: Six nations, smallish countries: Angola, Cameroon, and Pakistan, I think. Mexico was mentioned, and possibly Chile as well. They were countries that are generally not known for their big powerful positions at the U.N.
DB: What went through your mind leading up to the decision to leak this information? This big decision changed history a bit. How did you make this courageous decision that also changed your own life?
KG: I was very concerned. I had informed myself about the realities of Iraq and the situation there because I grew up during the first Gulf War and the following years of sanctions. It was in the back of my mind that Iraq was a country that was virtually destroyed, and that the people were living in impoverished conditions. It made me think that another attack on them would not be fair and justified because there was nothing about Iraq that was a threat to either the U.S. or the U.K.
So when I saw the email and realized what was going on behind closed doors was an attempt to get the U.N. to authorize what would then have become a pre-emptive strike on a country, I thought the public should know about this because it angered me.
DB: What happened after you made this information available? What happened with your position? Were you intimidated, attacked?
KG: Initially I tried to remain anonymous, but when I realized the information revealed in the newspaper at the time was identifiable to GCHQ, I decided I didn’t want to lead a double life at GCHQ and pretend I had nothing to do with it. I confided to my line-manager and said it was my leak. Then I was arrested under suspicion of breaking the Official Secrets Act, questioned, and released on bail for eight months.
In November 2003, much to our surprise, they decided to charge me, despite having waited so long. After discussions with my legal team, which included Liberty, an organization very similar to the U.S. ACLU, we decided I would plead non-guilty, because I personally felt that although I did the act, I didn’t feel guilt, because I didn’t feel I had done anything wrong. Our defense would have been to establish the defense of necessity, which is not yet tested in a court of law. My legal team then asked for all the legal advice leading up the war, and at that point, the prosecution decided to drop all charges against me.
DB: What do you think made them decide to prosecute you, and what information made them drop the charges? Were they trying to backpedal? Were they trying to make sure no other folks in positions like you would do it again?
KG: It’s speculation on my part because obviously they haven’t disclosed. I suspect one of the reasons they charged me was to make an example of my actions to try to deter people from it. On the other hand, when they dropped the charges, I suspect there may have been a variety of reasons. When we asked for the legal advice from the then-Attorney General, at that time his legal advice had not been fully disclosed.
During the run-up to the war, Blair asked for legal advice, obviously. The first draft was about 13 pages long. The language was very cautious – it didn’t say there was a definite reason for war. There were many legal terms of caution, but at some point Blair was told the legal advice was not good enough. He needed a watertight case. The Attorney General then re-drafted his advice, and condensed it to a single page that was then issued to the House of Commons.
That is what persuaded all the MPs in the House of Commons to vote for Britain’s involvement in the war. Eventually information came out, not from myself, but from other means and it became apparent that the legal advice had not been at all watertight to start with.
DB: Daniel Ellsberg said your most important and courageous leak is the only one made in time to avert an imminent possible war. Was your desire to avert war?
KG: Yes, I was hoping the British ministers would see the truth and question the actions of Blair and the secret negotiations he was having with Bush at the time. I wanted more transparency on the issue. I wanted people to question what was going on and to generally challenge this bandwagon for a preemptive strike against a country that was already very impoverished and no threat to anybody whatsoever.
DB: Did you ever hear from folks who based on your revelations, learned they were bugged?
KG: No.
DB: So there were no thank yous coming across from that part of the world?
KG: No. At the time of the leak, my name didn’t come out. Eight months later my name was made public.
DB: Did it change your life?
KG: I lost my job. The secure, full-time, long-term employment was no longer possible. That has made an impact, primarily financially, on my life and my family’s life.
DB: We are now seeing extraordinary NSA leaks from Edward Snowden in the British Guardian. What are your thoughts on this?
KG: I think Snowden is probably is a lot more clued-up than I was at the time. My leak was a single issue. Snowden has had a long period of time working within the U.S. intelligence services. He’s obviously a very technically savvy professional. I admire him for taking this tremendous step, which he thought out very carefully and methodically. He has made some very good points. These kinds of issues should be in the public domain because it involves innocent members of the public. We, the public, should be able to have a measure of a say in these matters.
DB: We hear that people like you, who were leaking before the war, and Snowden now, are putting people’s lives in jeopardy, endangering the people. We hear that secrecy is necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, and that many have been prevented by this kind of secrecy, investigation, wiretapping and bugging that’s going on now.
KG: There is absolutely no evidence that my leaks in any way endangered anybody else.
DB: But you were accused of that.
KG: Yes, they love to throw accusations around, there’s no doubt about that. But in my case, the majority of views supported my actions. In Snowden’s case, people who have a fair and just understanding of the issues at-large are supportive of his actions, as they would be of Private Manning, who is currently on trial.
DB: Did you lose any friends or associates, over this?
KG: Ironically, not really. Many of my friends and colleagues from GCHQ have also left GCHQ, partly to progress in their professions. They didn’t see much chance for their linguistic skills progressing much further within GCHQ and I continue to be in touch with them.
DB: If you had it all to do over again, would you?
KG: That’s a difficult question. Now I’m married and have a child. I would hope that I would still do it, but perhaps I would be more savvy about how I did it. Snowden was very clued-up and seems to know exactly what he should be doing – how to stay safe and keep out of the way of being unjustly arrested and tried without due process of law.
DB: Your language skills. Are you using them now?
KG: Not now. I’m only fluent in Mandarin Chinese. I speak some Japanese and am now trying to learn Turkish.
DB: That may in handy in the next decade or so. Thank you for talking to us.
~
Dennis J Bernstein is a host of “Flashpoints” on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom. You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net.
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UN rejects US claim on Syria chemical weapons
Press TV – June 21, 2013
UN experts say they do not confirm the claims by the United States, France and Britain that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the militants.
“We are not able to say who has used chemical agents or chemical weapons,” said Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the United Nations human rights investigation committee on Syria, on Friday.
Speaking to reporters after an informal meeting with UN Security Council ambassadors, Pinheiro said he would not comment on evidence, including multiple blood, tissue and soil samples, that the US, Britain and France have sent to the UN about the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria.
The technical data presented by the three countries is of limited value to the UN which, according to its rules, can pass a final judgment on the situation only after its own inspectors personally collect evidence.
Based on the unsubstantiated claim that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the militants, President Barack Obama ordered the CIA last week to provide arms to the anti-Syrian groups, saying the government of President Bashar al-Assad had crossed Washington’s red lines.
In an article on the Washington Post on Friday, Colum Lynch and Joby Warrick write that the US move “rests on unverifiable claims” that lack transparency.
Weapons experts say Obama’s declaration of Washington’s red line in terms of more involvement in Syria “handed the Syrian opposition a powerful incentive to fabricate evidence” against the Assad government regarding the chemical arms use, the article said.
“If you are the opposition and you hear” that the White House has drawn a red line on the use of nerve agents, then “you have an interest in giving the impression that some chemical weapons have been used,” said Rolf Ekeus, a Swedish scientist who headed UN weapons inspections in Iraq during the 1990s, the article read.
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From the Archives
A decade of lies: The US-funded biolab denial saga
RT | May 15, 2026
Russia’s allegations that the US funded clandestine biological laboratories near its borders – claims denied until recently by Washington – have remained a persistent flashpoint in the steadily deteriorating relationship between Russia and the West for nearly a decade.
The biolabs affair was revealed in a 2017 exposé by RT that questioned a shady US military tender seeking the genetic material of living Russians. Over the years, Moscow has raised allegations against Washington of conducting clandestine bio-research, including potential WMD development and illicit human testing, in a network of labs located across multiple nations, the bulk of which operated in Ukraine. The claims were met with a blanket denial in the West, which repeatedly dismissed them as “Russian propaganda.”
This abruptly changed the past week when US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said that her department had identified more than 120 US-funded biological laboratories in 30 countries, with over a third of them located in Ukraine. The agency is now working to “identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain, and what ‘research’ is being conducted to end dangerous gain-of-function research that threatens the health and wellbeing of the American people and the world,” according to Gabbard.
RT looks back at the timeline of the biolabs saga and the US denial of its existence until now. … continue
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