After the terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a rebrand of Jabhat al-Nusra, which is the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate, claimed responsibility for the dramatic downing of a Russian Su-25 fighter jet over Idlib in northwest Syria on Saturday – the first Russian plane downed in Syria since 2015 – a number of analysts have published articles asking the obvious million dollar question: where did al-Qaeda get the portable anti-aircraft missile system used in the attack?
Once such article in Al Monitorspeculates on the following: “The three immediate questions that arose from the attack were how the downing was made possible, how the militants acquired the arms and whether there was a bigger-level player behind the attack.”
MANPADS are heat seeking shoulder fired missiles capable of hitting targets flying at anywhere between 10,000 and 15,000 feet.
And Al Monitor seems to answer its own question in the following when listing the array of allied groups now operating under the leadership of al-Qaeda (HTS) – among them groups previously “vetted” and approved to receive advanced weaponry by the CIA (specifically the TOW anti-tank missile):
Dozens of miles of Idlib province are contested among an array of groups, including the terrorist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a rebrand of Jabhat al-Nusra, which was affiliated with al-Qaeda; the Free Syrian Army; and its affiliate Jaish al-Nasr, which is considered a “moderate opposition group” that received weapons from the United States. Minutes after the downing of the Su-25, Alaa al-Hamwi, the military commander of Jaish al-Nasr’s aid defense battalion, claimed responsibility for the attack. Alaa argued that Jaish al-Nasr’s command supplied weapons to protect against the Russian air assault.
Later, however, HTS claimed responsibility for downing the plane.
Though US intelligence and defense officials have long denied that so-called “vetted” groups in Syria were recipients of anti-aircraft systems, rumors to the contrary have been persistent for years. The latest denial came immediately on the heels of Saturday’s Russian jet shoot down, which resulted in the death of the pilot on the ground as he came under fire by jihadists. Pentagon spokesman Maj. Adrian J.T. Rankine-Galloway told Russia’s TASS: “The United States have not provided any of its allied forces in Syria with anti-aircraft weapons.”
The Pentagon spokesman further said, according to RT, that the US-led coalition is currently not engaged in any operations in the area where the jet was downed Saturday, indicating the coalition’s combat efforts are “geographically orientated on the current fight with Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS, ISIL) in eastern Syria.” Yet the statement clearly avoided any reference to past US programs to arm so-called “moderates” – whether through the secretive CIA program or DoD program. And this is to say nothing of allies like Saudi Arabia who worked closely with US intelligence for years in supplying weapons to anti-Assad militants.
Washington’s Arab allies, disappointed with Syria peace talks, have agreed to provide rebels there with more sophisticated weaponry, including shoulder-fired missiles that can take down jets, according to Western and Arab diplomats and opposition figures.
Saudi Arabia has offered to give the opposition for the first time Chinese man-portable air defense systems, or Manpads, and antitank guided missiles from Russia, according to an Arab diplomat and several opposition figures with knowledge of the efforts. Saudi officials couldn’t be reached to comment.
The U.S. has long opposed arming rebels with antiaircraft missiles for fear they could fall into the hands of extremists who might use them against the West or commercial airlines. The Saudis have held off supplying them in the past because of U.S. opposition.
Saudi Arabia reportedly is offering to provide Syrian rebels more sophisticated weapons, including shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles that can take down fighter planes and helicopter gunships. They could be a game changer in the Syrian civil war. Known as MANPADS or man-portable air defense systems, the shoulder-fired missiles are a highly-effective weapon.
Now, Saudi Arabia is offering to supply moderate rebels with these weapons. That could tip the balance on the battlefield.
… President Barack Obama is said to be rethinking U.S. strategy toward Syria. No doubt arming the Syrian rebels will be on the agenda when Obama travels to Saudi Arabia in late March.
Meanwhile, in February 2018 there’s this to consider…
Al-Qaeda controls a strip of land (Idlib province) not far from the Mediterranean coast, and has now clearly demonstrated the capability of shooting down aircraft.
In 2014 a historical first was reached: al-Qaeda established a foothold on the Mediterranean coast after it took the Syrian town of Kessab, but has since been pushed back into Idlib.
However, al-Qaeda still remains a very short drive to the Mediterranean coast, with Syrian government territory in between.
MANPADS (“man-portable air-defense system”) have appeared on the Syrian battlefield in recent years in the hands armed opposition groups supported by the West and Gulf states, including various FSA and Islamist factions – some of which, as Al Monitor confirms, operate today in Idlib.
These groups have at various times filmed and demonstrated themselves to be in possession of these externally supplied MANPADS long before last weekend’s Russian jet downing. The portable systems are believed by analysts to have entered Syria in multiple waves via different routes and external sponsors, including old Soviet models shipped out of Libya, Chinese FN-6’s provided by Qatar, and through NATO member Turkey’s porous border with Syria. Some supplies were also likely gained through opposition takeovers of Syrian government storehouses as well as ISIS seizures of Iraqi government bases and equipment.
Most likely, United States intelligence operatives simply allowed its close allies like the Saudis and Turks to introduce MANPADS early on in the conflict to the Syrian battlefield. In this way the US could maintain “plausible deniability” as it is likely doing now after last weekend’s attack.
But a detail which has gone largely unnoticed since the Russian fighter downing is that Congress had already quietly laid the legal framework for US transfer of MANPADS to groups in Syria over a year ago as part of the Fiscal Year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (the NDAA passed the House and Senate in the opening weeks of December 2016). The leading military news site SOFREP reported the authorization at the end of 2016, and described at the time that “Congress for the first time authorized the Department of Defense to provide vetted-Syrian rebels with anti-aircraft missiles.”
Concerning procedural rules, the NDAA requires that the Secretaries of Defense and State submit a formal request to Congress requesting the transfer of the anti-aircraft missiles systems to Syria, which must include the following according to the SOFREP report:
A detailed description of each element of the vetted Syrian opposition receiving MANPADS
The justification for providing those elements with MANPADS
The number and type of MANPADS provided
The logistics plan for resupplying approved elements with MANPADS
The duration of support
And SOFREP included the following observation:
The inclusion of the provision represents a departure from previous versions of the NDAA. The original House bill specifically prohibited the transfer of MANPADS to “any entity” in Syria, while the Senate bill did not address it.
Though there was an attempt in March 2017 to roll back the authorization, nothing appears to have changed regarding MANPADS and Syria in the 2018 NDAA, which was signed into law by President Trump.
However, long before this formal NDAA legal framework was put into effect, it appears anti-aircraft systems were already being handed out among Syrian militant groups – again, likely through the Saudis or a third party US ally. In May 2016 we featured the following commentary:
Dr. Christina Lin, a leading scholar on jihadist groups, opens her April 8th commentary at Asia Times: “In a blunder reeking of the fallout caused by supplying Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to 1980s mujahideen in Afghanistan, civilian airline passengers are now under threat from Syrian jihadists armed with portable surface-to-air missiles (MANPADS).
Reports say some American-backed jihadi groups are being equipped with US-made MANPADS. Indications are they’re obtaining these advanced weapons either directly or indirectly from the US or its Mideast allies in connection with a recent escalation in the fighting in Syria.”
And further:
Dr. Lin quotes a Saudi official as saying (in Germany’s Spiegel), “We believe that introducing surface-to-air missiles in Syria is going to change the balance of power on the ground… just like surface-to-air missiles in Afghanistan were able to change the balance of power there.” He was referring there to this in 1979, where Obama’s friend Zbigniew Brzezinski explained why the Americans and the Saudis were supplying SAMs to the mujahideen who became al-Qaeda, and he was also referring to this in 1998, where Brzezinski, when asked whether he thought that arming those fundamentalist Sunnis had been a mistake, said that it certainly was not.
And an unpleasant reminder which bears repeating…
The threat of MANPADS taking out civilian passenger jets is very real, as history proves. The US Department of State counted that 40 civilian aircraft have been hit by MANPADS since the 1970s, which includes the complete downing of 28 civilian airliners resulting in over 800 fatalities. The State Department’s official report on MANPADS and civilian aircraft provides the following partial list of attacks on civilian aviation:
March 12, 1975: A Douglas C-54D-5-DC passenger airliner, operated by Air Vietnam, crashed into Vietnamese territory after being hit by a MANPADS. All six crew members and 20 passengers were killed in the crash.
September 3, 1978: An Air Rhodesia Vickers 782D Viscount passenger airliner crash landed after being hit by a MANPADS fired by forces from the Zimbabwe Peoples Revolution Army. Four crew members and 34 of the 56 passengers were killed in the crash.
December 19, 1988: Two Douglas DC-7 spray aircraft en route from Senegal to Morocco, chartered by the U.S. Agency for International Development to eradicate locusts, were struck by MANPADS fired by POLISARIO militants in the Western Sahara. One DC-7 crashed killing all 5 crew members. The other DC-7 landed safely in Morocco.
September 22, 1993: A Tupolev 154B aircraft operated by Transair Georgia was shot down by Abkhazian separatist forces, crashed onto the runway and caught fire, killing 108.
April 6, 1994: A Dassault Mystère-Falcon 50 executive jet carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi and its French flight crew was shot down over Kigali, killing all aboard and sparking massive ethnic violence and regional conflict.
October 10, 1998: A Boeing 727-30 Lignes Aeriennes Congolaises airliner was downed over the Democratic Republic of the Congo jungle by Tutsi militia, killing 41.
December 26, 1998: A United Nations-chartered Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport was shot down over Angola by UNITA forces, killing 14.
January 2, 1999: A United Nations Lockheed L-100-30 Hercules transport was shot down by UNITA forces in Angola, killing 9.
November 28, 2002: Terrorists fired two MANPADS at an Arkia Airlines Boeing 757-3E7 with 271 passengers and crew as it took off from Mombasa, Kenya. Both missiles missed.
November 22, 2003: A DHL Airbus A300B4-203F cargo jet transporting mail in Iraq was struck and damaged by a MANPADS. Though hit in the left fuel tank, the plane was able to return to the Baghdad airport and land safely.
March 23, 2007: A Transaviaexport Ilyushin 76TD cargo plane was shot down over Mogadishu, Somalia, killing the entire crew of 11.
Countering Russia has become a lucrative industry in Washington. In recent years, the think tank business has exploded. But who funds these organizations, who works for them and what are the real agendas at play?
From the start, let’s be clear, the term ‘think tank’ essentially amounts to a more polite way of saying ‘lobby group.’ Bar a few exceptions, they exist to serve – and promote – the agendas of their funders.
However, particularly in the United States, the field has become increasingly shady and disingenuous, with lobbyists being given faux academic titles like ‘Senior Non-Resident Fellow’ and ‘Junior Adjunct Fellow’ and the like. And this smokescreen usually serves to cloud the real goals of these operations.
Think tanks actually originate from the Europe of the Dark Ages. That’s 9th-century France, to be precise. But the modern American movement is modeled on British organizations from around a millennium later, many of which, such as ‘RUSI (1831)’, still exist today. The concept was possibly brought to America by the Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie. And his ‘Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’ (1910) is still going strong.
Yet, the real boom in the ‘think tank’ industry came with the era of globalization. With a 200-percent rise in numbers since 1970. And in recent years, they’ve become more transnational, with foreign states and individuals sponsoring them in order to gain curry favor in Washington.
One country that largely hasn’t bothered playing this game is Russia. Instead, mostly in the foreign policy and defense sectors, Moscow frequently serves as Enemy Number One for many advocacy groups. Here are some prominent outfits in the think tank racket, which focus on hyping up threats from Russia.
The Atlantic Council
Founded: 1961
What is it? Essentially the academic wing of NATO. The Atlantic Council serves to link people useful to the organization’s agenda across Europe and North America. However, in recent years, its recruitment has increasingly focused on employees who directly attack Russia, especially on social media. Presumably, this is to give them a guaranteed income so they can continue their activities, without needing to worry about paying the bills.
What does it do? Promotes the idea of Russia being an existential threat to Europe and the US, in order to justify NATO’s reason for being.
Who are its people? The Atlantic Council’s list of lobbyists (sorry, ‘Fellows’!) reads like a telephone directory of the Russia bashing world. For instance, Dmitri Alperovitch (of Crowdstrike, which conveniently alleges how Russia hacked the Democratic National Congress) is joined by the perennially- wrong Anders Aslund, who has predicted Russia’s impending collapse on a number of occasions and has, obviously, been off the mark. Then there’s Joe Biden’s “Russia hand,” Michael Carpenter and their recent co-authored Foreign Affairs piece suggests he actually knows very little about the country). Meanwhile, Evelyn Farkas, a fanatical Russophobe who served in Barack Obama’s administration has also found a home here. Another interesting Atlantic Council lobbyist is Eliot Higgins, a “geolocation expert” who has made a career out of spinning tales from the Ukraine and Syrian wars but is, naturally, mostly disinterested in covering Iraq and Yemen, where the US and its allies are involved, but Russia has no particular stake. Lastly, we can’t forget CNN’s Michael Weiss, the self-declared “Russia analyst” who, by all accounts, has never been to Russia and can’t speak Russian.
Who pays for it? The Atlantic Council has quite an eclectic bunch of patrons to serve. NATO itself is a big backer, along with military contractors Saab, Lockheed Martin and the Raytheon Company, all of which naturally benefit from increased tensions with Moscow. The UK Foreign Office also splashes the cash and is joined by the Ukrainian World Congress and the US Department of State. Other sugar daddies include the US military (via separate contributions from the Air Force, Navy, Army and Marine Corps), Northrop Grumman and Boeing.
The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)
Founded: 2005
What is it? Despite the name, CEPA is based in Washington, not the ‘old continent’, but it does have an outpost in Warsaw. This club specifically focusses on Central and Eastern Europe and promoting the US Army and foreign policy establishment’s agenda there. Or, in its own words, creating a “Central and Eastern Europe with close and enduring ties to the United States.”
screenshot from cepa.org
What does it do? CEPA amounts to a home for media figures who devote their careers to opposing Russia. It whips up tensions, even when they don’t really exist, presumably in order to drum up business for its sponsors, who are heavily drawn from the military industry. For example, it spent last year hyping up the ‘threat’ from Russia’s and Belarus’ joint ‘Zapad’ exercises, even running a sinister-looking countdown clock before the long-planned training commenced.
CEPA grossly overestimated the size of the event, saying it “could be the largest military exercise since the end of the Cold War” and dismissing basically all Moscow’s statements on its actual nature as “disinformation.”
Who are its people?Times of London columnist Edward Lucas has been part of CEPA for years.
Poland chooses Raytheon. Even if the missiles don’t work, America will defend its customers http://t.co/QwqrkCiosD
The dedicated ‘Cold Warrior’ doesn’t appear to have spent much time in Russia for a long while and still seems to view the country through a prism which is very much rooted in the past. Thus, he’s more-or-less an out-of-touch dinosaur when it comes to Russia expertise. He will soon be joined by Brian Whitmore, who comes on board from RFE/RL and appears to be even more ill-informed than Lucas. His broadcasts for the US state broadcaster led to him being described as the “Lord Haw Haw of Prague,” where has been based for some years. CEPA is a pretty fluid organization and, until recently, Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev were also on its list of lobbyists. The former is a Polish-American Washington Post columnist who obsessively denigrates Russia and the latter has previously worked with the Atlantic Council’s Michael Weiss, which shows you how small and incestuous the Russia-bashing world is.
Who pays for it? While other think tanks at least try to make their funding look semi-organic, CEPA looks to have zero hang-ups about its role as a mouthpiece for defence contractors. Which is, at least, honest. FireEye, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Bell Helicopters and BAE systems pump funds in and they are joined by the US State Department and the Department of Defence. Another notable paymaster is the National Endowment for Democracy – ‘regime change’ experts who are surely interested in CEPA’s remit to also cover Belarus. The US Mission to NATO and NATO’s own Public Diplomacy Division also provide cash.
German Marshall Fund of the United States
Founded: 1972
What is it? Don’t be fooled by the name, the German Marshall Fund (GMF) is a very American body these days with little input from Berlin. It was founded by a donation from Willy Brandt’s Bonn-government to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. Ironically, Brandt is today best remembered as the father of ‘Ostpolitik’, which sought a rapprochement between Germany and Russia.
What does it do? After the fall of the Soviet Union, the GMF transformed into a vehicle promoting US influence in Eastern Europe, with outreaches in Warsaw, Belgrade and Bucharest. However, in the past 12 months, it’s taken a very strange turn. Following the election of US President Donald Trump (ironically a German-American), the lobby group launched the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) project. Its centerpiece is the ‘Hamilton 68 Dashboard’, which seems to classify social media users which reject the US liberal elite’s consensus as “Russian trolls.” The reaction has been highly critical, with even the secretly-funded Russian opposition website Meduza asking “how do you identify ‘pro-Russian amplifiers’ if… themes dovetail with alternative American political views?”
Who are its people? The GMF, especially through its new ASD plaything, has a high-profile bunch of lobbyists. They include Toomas Ilves, an American-raised son of Estonian emigrants who once headed the Estonian desk at erstwhile CIA cut-out Radio Free Europe and eventually became president of Estonia. Also on board is Bill Kristol, known as the ‘architect of the Iraq War’ and former CIA Director Michael Morrell. Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who recently announced he was partially abandoning his Russian scholarship and has “lost interest in maintaining my (sic) ability to speak/write Russian” is another team member.
And sorry that I am not responding in Russian. After being on the travel ban list to your country for 3 years, I have lost interest in maintaining my ability to speak/write Russian. You government seems to really fear me these days. странно и жалько https://t.co/8SRdSEvg5r
After serving on Obama’s team, McFaul has re-invented himself as a network TV personality since 2016 with 280,000 Twitter followers, 106,000 of which are fake, according to Twitter audit.
Who pays for it? USAID are big backers, throwing in a seven-figure annual sum. This, of course, raises some questions about US taxpayers essentially funding the Hamilton 68 dashboard, which may be smearing Americans who don’t agree with their government’s policies as Russian agents. The State Department also ponies up capital, as does NATO and Latvia’s Defense Ministry. Other interesting paymasters are George Soros, Airbus and Google. While Boeing and the ubiquitous Raytheon are also involved.
Institute for the Study of War
Founded: 2007
What is it? This lobby group could as easily be titled ‘The Institute for the Promotion of War’. Unlike the others, it doesn’t consider Russia its primary target, instead preferring to push for more conflict in the Middle East. However, Moscow’s increased influence in that region has brought the Kremlin into its crosshairs.
What does it do? The IFTSOW agitates for more and more American aggression. It supported the Iraq ‘surge’ and has encouraged more involvement in Afghanistan. IFTSOW also focuses on Syria, Libya and Iran. Just last week, one of its lobbyists, Jennifer Cafarella, called for the US military to take Damascus, which would bring Washington into direct conflict with Russia and Iran.
US occupation of Damascus – @TheStudyofWar seems to be calling for the US military to take Damascus and rebuild Syria. This seems the only “realistic” policy that could produce its demand to rid Syria of Assad’s government as well as Iranian and Russian influence. pic.twitter.com/nmSTkSzb5G
Who are its people? Kimberly Kagan is the brains behind this operation. She’s married to Frederick Kagan, who was involved in the neocon ‘Project for the New American Century’ group along with his brother, Robert Kagan. Which makes Kimberly the sister-in-law of Victoria “f**k the EU” Nuland.
Another lobbyist is Ukrainian Natalia Bugayova, who was involved in Kiev’s 2014 EuroMaidan coup. She previously worked for the Kiev Post, a resolutely anti-Russian newspaper which promotes US interests in Ukraine. However, IFTSOW’s most notorious lobbyist was Elizabeth O’Bagy, who emerged as a ‘Syria expert’ in 2013 and called for American political leaders to send heavy weaponry to Syrian insurgent groups. She claimed to have a PhD from Georgetown University in Washington, DC, but this was fictional and once the media twigged to it, she was dismissed by the IFTSOW. Two weeks later, she was rewarded for her deception by falling up to a job with fanatical Russophobe Senator John McCain. O’Bagy has also collaborated with the Atlantic Council’s Michael Weiss, which is further evidence of how tight-knit the world of US neoconservative advocacy really is.
Who pays for it? Predictably, Raytheon has opened its wallet. Meanwhile, other US military contractors like General Dynamics and DynCorp are also involved. L3, which provides services to the US Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and government intelligence agencies is another backer along with Vencore, CACI and Mantech.
On January 31, the Boston Professor Gene Sharp died aged 91. In his youth, he refused to serve in the American army and fight in Korea. He was jailed for 9 months, after which Sharp left the United States and lived in Europe for nine years.
Sharp became known for writing of instructions for the political destruction of states. He was called a modern day philosopher, but rarely appeared at philosophical meetings. He was called a political technologist, but he never led any group and rarely participated directly in anything to do with revolutions. That’s if we don’t count that government power in various countries was overthrown by his textbooks.
The most famous work is “From dictatorship to democracy”; 198 methods of nonviolent actions. For example – number 22 – undressing in protest, 124 – boycotting of elections, 161 – non-violent psychological exhaustion of the opponent. Although not everything in Sharp’s writing is so non-violent – point 148 is rebellion.
The “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine in 2004 is a classical implementation of the recommendations of Gene Sharp. Without any imagination whatsoever. Earlier, Professor Sharp’s know-how was implemented in the “bulldozer revolution” in Yugoslavia, when protesters on a bulldozer stormed a television station.
Later, Sharp’s ideas were implemented in the “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan, “Rose Revolution” in Georgia, “Jasmine Revolution” in Tunisia in 2010-2011 . Egypt and the “Arab Spring” also utilised Sharp’s technology.
To generalize, the main goal in any “color revolution” is to create a point of public discontent in a limited space and claim that this crowd of people, is “the people”, out and about revolting in a “grass-roots” movement.
An attempt at a colour revolution was also tried in Russia in the winter of 2011-1012 – with white ribbons, prior to the presidential elections. Sharp himself made a remark to the “negligent pupils” – “It’s a real false start, the organizers of the rally were too quick. You can’t do it before the elections take place,” Sharp said in an interview.
Later, Sharp had founded the Boston Einstein Institution, which had very few employees. Yet it was financed very generously – these funds financed protest movements in countries where the United States required regime change. Sharp’s money came primarily from the National Endowment for Democracy, which is maintained by the Congress, and from the International Republican Institute (director – John McCain).
Why does America participate in “color revolutions”? It’s simple – it solves military tasks by non-military means, destroys states and puts the country’s resources in the service of the United States. People as a result of the revolution generally live worse than before the uprising.
“This is military technology, but a substitute for war and other violence,” Sharp said.
Sharp’s work was also engaged in the Soviet Union – technologies of collapse were similar. As we now understand, the same methods were utilised in the countries of Eastern Europe – take at least “Solidarity” in Poland in the late 80’s.
Now, when the United States once again would like to destroy Russia, Sharp’s tactics are also useful. Let us turn again to its numbered points: 89th – tightening of credit/loans, 96th – international trade embargo, 154th – deterioration of international diplomatic relations.
But the original Sharp recommendations are similarly growing obsolete – he could never have imagined the new subversive opportunities through the power of the Internet, technologies able to process large databases – big data, sanctions and all sorts of “enemy lists” of America, the use of terrorist armies to overthrow a disliked leader. For America, this is also “not war”, which means that it is also a “non-violent” method for achieving military tasks.
Sharp has died, but his legacy lives on and is snowballing new methods.
“Former CIA director John Brennan has become the latest member of the NBC News and MSNBC family, officially signing with the network as a contributor,” chirps a recent article by The Wrap, as though that’s a perfectly normal thing to have to write and not a ghastly symptom of an Orwellian dystopia. NBC reports that the former head of the depraved, lying, torturing, propagandizing, drug trafficking, coup-staging, warmongering Central Intelligence Agency “is now a senior national security and intelligence analyst.”
Former CIA analyst and now paid CNN analyst Phil Mudd, who last year caused Cuomo’s show to have to issue a retraction and apology for a completely baseless claim he made on national television asserting that WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is “a pedophile”, is once again making headlines for suggesting that the FBI is entering into a showdown with the current administration over Trump’s decision to declassify the controversial Nunes memo.
More and more of the outlets from which Americans get their information are being filled not just with garden variety establishment loyalists, but with longstanding members of the US intelligence community. These men got to their positions of power within these deeply sociopathic institutions for their willingness to facilitate any depravity in order to advance the secret agendas of the US power establishment, and now they’re being paraded in front of mainstream Americans on cable news on a daily basis. The words of these “experts” are consistently taken and reported on by smaller news outlets in print and online media in a way that seeds their authoritative assertions throughout public consciousness.
As we discussed recently, the term “deep state” does not refer to a conspiracy theory but to a simple concept in political analysis which points to the undeniable reality that (A) plutocrats, (B) intelligence agencies, (C) defense agencies, and (D) the mainstream media hold large amounts of power in America despite their not being part of its elected government. You don’t need to look far to see how these separate groups overlap and collaborate to advance their own agendas in various ways. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, for example, is deeply involved in all of the aforementioned groups: (A) as arguably the wealthiest person ever he is clearly a plutocrat, with a company that is trying to control the underlying infrastructure of the economy, (B) he is a CIA contractor, (C) he is part of a Pentagon advisory board, and (D) his purchase of the Washington Post in 2013 gave him total control over a major mainstream media outlet.
Jeff Bezos did not purchase the Washington Post because his avaricious brain predicted that newspapers were about to make a profitable resurgence, he purchased it for the same reason he has inserted himself so very deeply into America’s unelected power infrastructure: he wants to ensure a solid foundation for the empire he is building. He needs a potent propaganda outlet to manufacture support for the power establishment that he is weaving his plutocratic tentacles through. This is precisely the same reason other mass media-controlling plutocrats are stocking their propaganda machines with intelligence community insiders.
Time and time and time again you see connections between the plutocratic class which effectively owns America’s elected government, the intelligence and defense agencies which operate behind thick veils of secrecy in the name of “national security” to advance agendas which have nothing to do with the wishes of the electorate, and the mass media machine which is used to manufacture the consent of the people to be governed by this exploitative power structure.
America is ruled by an elite class which has slowly created a system where money increasingly translates directly into political power, and which is therefore motivated to maintain economic injustice in order to rule over the masses more completely. The greater the economic inequality, the greater their power. Nobody would willingly consent to such an oppressive system where wealth inequality keeps growing as expensive bombs from expensive drones are showered upon strangers on the other side of the planet, so a robust propaganda machine is needed.
And that’s where John Brennan’s new job comes in. Expect a consistent fountain of lies to pour from his mouth on NBC, and expect them to all prop up this exploitative power establishment and advance its geopolitical agendas. And expect clear-eyed rebels everywhere to keep calling it all what it is.
The FBI need not worry despite the release of the GOP memo alleging the FBI’s surveillance abuse against Donald Trump, because the Bureau has been in the game much longer than the current president, says an ex-CIA analyst.
“I know how this game is going to be played. We are going to win,” Philip Mudd, a former CIA analyst told CNN, referring to a brewing conflict between Trump and America’s security services following the recent release of the GOP document.
Mudd, who also served as a deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia on the US National Intelligence Council, added that despite the declassification of the document which outlines abuses by the FBI and the US Justice Department, Trump can’t do anything about the “hundreds of agents” working on the case of his alleged collusion with Russia. Apparently, Trump’s just not powerful enough.
“They [the FBI] are going to be saying (I guarantee it): You [Trump] think you can push us off this [investigation] because you can try to intimidate the [FBI] director? You better think again, Mr. President. You have been around for 13 months. We have been around since 1908,” Mudd said.
He also noted the security services’ reaction to the memo, saying: “FBI people are ticked.” He also described accusations of corruption issued against the FBI by no less than the US head of state himself, as “an attack on [its] ability to conduct an investigation with integrity.”
Former CIA counterterrorism official Phil Mudd: The FBI people "are ticked" and they'll be saying of Trump, “You’ve been around for 13 months. We've been around since 1908. I know how this game is going to be played. We're going to win" https://t.co/5x39x20g3epic.twitter.com/fByOLNrh0I
The four-page GOP file that has caused a stir within the US political establishment was initially commissioned by the House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-California) in mid-January. Trump authorized its release on Friday.
The document chronicles how the FBI and the DOJ obtained a warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page entirely on the basis of the so-called “Steele dossier” paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign through the Democratic National Committee.
Democrats, many mainstream media outlets, and a number of former and current FBI and DOJ officials fiercely resisted its publication. It also triggered a social media storm and sent Trump critics into meltdown. And of course, some even ‘found’ a Russian trail in these developments.
The “Nunes” Memo isn’t political dynamite but it could be the final blow to the whole ridiculous and virtually fact-free Russiagate narrative. It confirms the Steele dossier is a scam, and demonstrates the lies employed to get approval for spying on Trump’s team, it shows the vindictive bias in the establishment towards an elected official.
But, of course, the mainstream media and various paid opinion-makers are not admitting that. In fact there’s a chorus of evasion and distraction and frantic meme-creation right now, from bots spamming talking points, and “#nunesburger” hashtags to avowedly serious opinion pieces claiming it’s all a “half-baked conspiracy theory”… blah… blah…
There’s no shortage of examples of just how eerily lockstep the various strands of the campaign are, but here’s one of the “serious” ones to mull over. Politico’sThe Nunes Memo & Putin’s Long Game.
Here’s the text with our annotations:
Ever since the U.S. intelligence community discovered the Russian operation to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and aid President Donald Trump’s victory, some Republicans have been laboring to undermine investigations into the attack and discredit the intelligence agencies that discovered it.
It’s almost touching how, right from the off, they bravely opt to simply ignore the fact that the Russia hack narrative is now probably doomed. Like a first class passenger on the Titanic, deeply in denial, they are sitting, hat slightly askew, sipping tea and admiring the view while the deck beneath them tilts and slides. Don’t think about the facts, Politico readers, think about the mean people who wanted you to know the facts!
Those efforts reached a new crescendo (sic) on Friday, when House Republicans released a partisan memo alleging anti-Trump bias at the FBI with approval from Trump, who declared on Twitter that both the FBI and Department of Justice are corrupt.
Well, first can someone tell them what “crescendo” means? Secondly, isn’t it interesting how the Memo only “alleges” anti-Trump bias, even though it contains and refers to clear proof of same. Contrast with the above claim of certitude about “Russian interference” in the face of no proof whatsoever.
But that turmoil, some were quick to point out, is exactly what Putin wanted all along.
In the nick of time the Titanic passengers have managed to grab something to keep them afloat. A lifebuoy with “Putin” written on it in scary red letters. Reality averted.
“The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests – no party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in a statement Friday. “Our nation’s elected officials, including the president, must stop looking at this investigation through the warped lens of politics and manufacturing partisan sideshows. If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin’s job for him.”
Someone could tell McCain that the rule of law is undermined by people breaking the law and getting away with it – not by revealing the fact to the public. But they probably wouldn’t dare.
For more than a year, Trump has consistently cast doubt on the assessments of intelligence agencies he now leads, arguing that “the deep state” is stacked against him.
The Memo (which Politico hasn’t yet quoted or linked to) proves Trump was right. But let’s not waste time on details like that.
Facing an investigation that reached into his own administration, and potentially into the Oval Office, the president chose to fire his FBI director, James Comey last May, and since then has repeatedly hinted that he might try to do the same to others.
That may include deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who oversees special Russia counsel Robert Mueller. “You figure that one out,” Trump said when asked Friday if he still had confidence in Rosenstein after reading the memo.
The cumulative effect of it all, intelligence veterans said, was to diminish trust in government institutions—thereby weakening the U.S.
To sum up their point here if we may – it’s not the fact US officials have been caught lying and manipulating and conspiring against elected representatives that diminishes trust in government institutions – it’s the fact people insist on talking about it
“We have to remember what Putin’s goal in this whole endeavor was,” said Ned Price, a former CIA officer and NSC spokesperson under President Barack Obama. “It was at its core to divide the American people and pit us against each other.”
“This is exactly what he had hoped and it has succeeded beyond his wildest expectations,” he said of the memo. “This memo just play right into that… This is exactly what Putin had in mind.”
In some ways this is the most ridiculous thing in the article. Why would any sane person – Putin or anyone else – want America to be more divided, unstable and terrifying than it already is? To the rest of the world, even its supposed friends, America is the psycho next door with the drinking problem, the chainsaw and the cupboard full of illegal firearms. No one wants this guy getting all riled up about anything. Because they don’t want to wake up with their house on fire and their kids dead in the yard.
The memo “is simply an attempt to cast aspersions on the whole investigation,” said Robert Litt, a former general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who now works for Morrison and Foerster.
This is rather like saying proving someone guilty of child abuse is an “attempt to cast aspersions” on their parenting. And they still haven’t mentioned or quoted the contents of the Memo.
“To the extent that Putin’s goal is to weaken us an emphasize our internal division, which was certainly one of the conclusions that the intelligence community reached, yes absolutely [he succeeded],” Litt added. “This is increasing partisanship and division and making it more difficult to bring to light what they’re actually doing. … I would’ve thought that there would have been a considerably greater level of bipartisan concern about what the Russians have done.”
Hey – you know another way they could have thwarted that damn Putin? Their intelligence agencies could have not lied and cheated and plotted in the first place.
But for Trump, House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes and other Republicans, Friday was a day of triumph.
“The Committee has discovered serious violations of the public trust, and the American people have a right to know when officials in crucial institutions are abusing their authority for political purposes,” Nunes wrote on Friday, accompanying the release of the memo his staff drafted.
“I think it’s a disgrace what’s happening in our country,” Trump declared.
Politico focuses on what Nunes said as if the only thing that mattered was the fact he was triumphing over the Dems. They completely avoid even considering the fact the words happen also to be true. Truth is a thing. It happens. It can be measured. Remember when that used to matter? Oh but wait – Politico is about to discuss the contents of the Memo!…
The memo, however, showed little that was new. A dossier compiled by a former British intelligence operative, who was funded in part by Clinton’s campaign, was part of the basis for the investigation, the memo says. But that was already known. And other elements of the investigation were underway independent of the dossier, the memo acknowledged.
… No, false alarm. It looked momentarily as if they were going to discuss the contents of the Memo, but it turns out they don’t need to, because there’s nothing new in it! Nope. Nothing here you haven’t seen before. Move along.
But wait – if the Memo doesn’t matter why did so many people not want it published? Why is it “dividing” anyone? If the Memo doesn’t matter then why is it just what Putin wants?
And if the Memo doesn’t matter and contains nothing new why won’t Politico quote a single line of it? Or even link to it?
And they don’t. Not once in the entire piece. What Politico is saying, with pure Doublethink, is the Memo is completely worthless, useless, empty and boring and a fiendish, cunning plot by Vladimir Putin to divide America and undermine public faith in its institutions. And most of the people who read it will believe these two things with ease. Because being an American Liberal these days requires complete removal of your sense of the ridiculous.
This last bit is interesting though:
Nonetheless, conservative media — including some outlets which were handed the memo before it became public — rejoiced.
Former House Speaker and Trump confidant Newt Gingrich suggested that the memo would ultimately undermine Mueller’s investigation.
“This memo will lead to more releases of more material and it will go on and on,” Gingrich told POLITICO. “We will be shocked at how deep the sickness was. … Why would you think Mueller is anything different? He’s just part of the same mess.”
Are we going to see a Memo war of attrition? Will this signal an avalanche of mutually destructive dirt from all sides? This could be a time for popcorn and a comfy chair.
Recent newspaper obituaries and articles on the late Gene Sharp are a classic case of misinformation, and a good example of why so many people don’t trust the mainstream news.
Far from being a promoter of democracy through Gandhian non-violence, Gene Sharp made an entire career out of US/CIA regime change operations, from Yugoslavia to Venezuela to Ukraine to Syria.
His “color revolutions” all had the same formula — phony grass roots organizations, funded and advised by US government aid, suddenly appearing in public squares; covert operations making it look like the demonstrators were being attacked by government forces, and lavish coverage from Western news outlets calling for the toppling of the “evil dictator” responsible for killing his own people.
Gandhi would have rolled over in his grave if he saw the ends to which his philosophy was perverted by Gene Sharp.
Violence always lurked beneath his high-sounding but underhanded destabilization and coup campaigns.
Sharp was an agent and accomplice of the CIA in grossly illegal attacks on sovereign nations all around the world. He should be condemned, not praised.
With the House Intelligence Committee vote yesterday to release its four-page memorandum reportedly based on documentary evidence of possible crimes by top Justice Department and FBI leaders, the die is cast. Russia-gate and FBI-gate are now joined at the hip.
The coming weeks will show whether the U.S. intelligence establishment (the FBI/CIA/NSA, AKA the “Deep State”) will be able to prevent its leaders from being held to account. Past precedent suggests that the cabal that conjured up Russia-gate will not have to pick up a “go-to-jail” card. This, despite the widespread guilt suggested by the abrupt way that several senior-echelon DOJ and FBI rats have already jumped ship. Not to mention the manner in which FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, was unceremoniously pushed overboard yesterday, after Director Christopher Wray was given a look at the extra-legal capers described in the House Intelligence Committee memorandum.
Granted, at first glance Deep State’s efforts to undercut candidate Donald Trump seem so risky and audacious as to be unbelievable. By now, though, Americans should be able to wrap their heads around, one, the dire threat that outsider Trump was seen to be posing to the Deep State and to the ease with which it held sway under President Barack Obama; and, two, expected immunity from prosecution if Deep State crimes were eventually discovered after the election, since “everybody knew” Hillary Clinton was going to win. Oops.
Accountability This Time?
There seems to be an outside chance, this time, that the culprits who did actually interfere in the 2016 presidential election in an effort to make sure Trump could not win, and then did all in their power to sabotage him after his electoral victory, will be held to account by unusually feisty members of the House. It is abundantly clear that members of the House Intelligence and House Judiciary Committees are now in possession of the kind of unambiguous, first-hand documentary evidence needed to get a grand jury convened and, eventually, indictments obtained.
It is no exaggeration to suggest that the Republic and the Constitution are at stake. A friend put it the way:
“When GW Bush said of the Constitution, ‘It’s just a goddam piece of paper,’ I thought it was just another toss-off bit of hyperbole as he so often would utter. Not so. He, and many in his administration (and out) sincerely believe it and set out to make it so. They may actually have succeeded.”
The Media’s Role
I almost feel sorry for what is called “mainstream media” and – even more so – for the majority of Americans deceived by the prevailing narrative on Russia-gate. Even though that narrative now lies in shreds, there is no sign so far that the pundits will fess up and admit to spreading a far-fetched, evidence-impoverished story that was full of holes from the get-go.
Even vestigially honest journalists of the old school, who may themselves have been taken in, will have a Herculean challenge if they attempt to right the ship of journalism. As for brainwashed Americans, pity them. It is far easier to deceive folks than to convince them they have been deceived, as Mark Twain once wrote.
From today’s online version of the New York Times, for example, the lede headline read, “Taunted by Trump and Pressured From Above, McCabe Steps Down as F.B.I. Deputy.”
The Times quotes Representative Adam B. Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, giving hypocrisy a bad name. Schiff said yesterday that it had been a “sad day” for the committee and that Republicans had voted “to politicize the intelligence process.”
And this just in: an op-ed from NYT pundit David Leonhardt, titled – you guessed it – “The Nunes Conspiracy.”
“Instead of evidence, the memo engages in the same dark and misleading conspiracy theories that have characterized other efforts by President Trump’s allies to discredit the Russia investigation,” Leonhardt wrote. “But the substance of the claims isn’t really the point. Distraction is the point, and the distraction campaign is having an impact.”
And so it goes.
Ray McGovern works with the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Savior in inner-city Washington. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years and co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Despite the fact that the ongoing US investigation into the alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign has failed to produce any tangible results, a top American intelligence official now says that Moscow “will continue” to try and influence elections in the United States.
Mike Pompeo, Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, has claimed that there has not been a “significant decrease” in Russian activity in the US, and that Moscow may now attempt to interfere with the upcoming congressional midterm elections in November.
“I have every expectation that they [the Russians] will continue to try and do that but I’m confident that America will be able to have a free and fair election [and] that we will push back in a way that is sufficiently robust that the impact they have on our election won’t be great,” Pompeo told the BBC.
The CIA head also claimed that Russia is an adversary rather than an ally, despite the ongoing cooperation between Moscow and Washington in the fight against terrorism.
Earlier in January Pompeo made a similar claim on Face the Nation Sunday, expressing his concerns about the “many foes who want to undermine Western democracy” and insisting that Russia has been allegedly interfering in the American elections “for decades.”
At the same time, retired CIA officer turned political activist Ray McGovern has unveiled proof of attempts by members of the US intelligence community to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
In 2017 the US Congress launched four separate probes into the alleged Russian meddling during the election, including the investigations run by the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees and the House’s Intelligence and Oversight panels.
Moscow has repeatedly denied the allegations of collusion, while US President Donald Trump described the probe as the “single greatest witch hunt” in US history.
Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates were indicted in October for charges unrelated to Trump’s campaign and the election, while former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was charged by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for lying to the FBI about a meeting he had with a Russian ambassador.
Former policy adviser to the Trump campaign George Papadopoulos was also charged with providing false statements to the FBI regarding his interactions with foreign nationals.
The US intelligence community has also released an assessment alleging they had “high confidence” Russia meddled in last year’s US presidential election. The community’s report claimed that Moscow conspired to get Trump elected as president and to undermine faith in the US democratic process.
“And thus the U.S. left leadership sits in the left chamber of the hall of mirrors, complaining about conspiracy theories while closing its eyes to actual conspiracies crucial to contemporary imperialism.” – Graeme MacQueen, Beyond Their Wildest Dreams: September 11, 2001 and the American Left
It is well known that effective propaganda works through slow, imperceptible repetition. “The slow building up of reflexes and myths” is the way Jacques Ellul put it in his classic, Propaganda. This works through commission and omission.
I was reminded of this recently after I published a newspaper editorial on Martin Luther King Day stating the fact that the United States’ government assassinated Dr. King. To the best of my knowledge, this was the only newspaper op-ed to say that. I discovered that many newspapers and other publications (with very rare exceptions), despite a plethora of articles and editorials praising King, ignored this “little” fact as if it were inconsequential. No doubt they wish it were, or that it were not true, just as many hoped that repeating the bromide that James Earl Ray killed Dr. King would reinforce the myth they’ve been selling for fifty years, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary that is available to anyone wishing to investigate the truth.
The general attitude seemed to be: Let’s just appreciate MLK on his birthday and get on with it. Don’t be a spoil-sport.
That this is the approach of the mainstream corporate media (MSM) should not be surprising, for they are mouthpieces for official government lies. But when the same position is taken by so many liberal and progressive intellectuals and publications who are otherwise severely critical of the MSM for their propaganda in the service of empire, it gives pause. Like their counterparts in the MSM, these liberals shower King with praise, even adding that he was more than a civil rights leader, that he opposed war and economic exploitation as well, but as to who killed him, and why, and why it matters today, that is elided. Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! in a recent piece on an upcoming documentary about King is a case in point. Not once in this long conversation about a film about the last few years of King’s life and his commitment to oppose the Vietnam War and launch the Poor People’s Campaign is the subject of who killed him and why broached. It is a perfect example of the denial of the truth through omission.
Propaganda, of course comes in many forms: big lies and small; half-truths, whispers, and rumors; slow-drip and headlong; misinformation and disinformation; through commission and omission; intentional and unintentional; cultural and political, etc. Although it is omnipresent today – 24/7 surround sound – when it comes from the mouths of government spokespeople or corporate media the average person, grown somewhat suspicious of official lies, has a slight chance of detecting it. This is far more difficult, however, when it takes the form of a left-wing critique of U.S. government policies that subtly supports official explanations through sly innuendos and references, or through omission. Reading an encomium to Dr. King that attacks government positions on race, war, and economics from the left will often get people nodding their heads in agreement while they fail to notice a fatal flaw at the heart of the critique. The Democracy Now! piece is a perfect example of this legerdemain.
I do not know the motivations or intentions of many prominent leftist intellectuals and publications, but I do know that many choose to avoid placing certain key historical events at the center of their analyses. In fact, they either avoid them like the plague, dismiss them as inconsequential, or use the CIA’s term of choice and call them “conspiracy theories” and their proponents “conspiracy nuts.” The result is a powerful propaganda victory for the power elites they say they oppose.
Orwell called it “Crimestop: [it] means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short means protective stupidity.”
There are many fine writers and activists who are very frustrated by their inability, despite a vast and continuous outpouring of excellent critiques of the machinations of the oligarchical rulers of the U.S., to convince people of the ways they have been brainwashed by government/media propaganda. Most of their anger is directed toward the most obvious sources of this intricate psychological warfare directed at the American people. They often fail to realize, however – or fail to say – that there are leftists in their ranks who, whether intentionally or not, are far more effective than the recognized enemies in government intelligence agencies and their corporate accomplices in the media in convincing people that the system works and that it is not run by killers who will go to any lengths to achieve their goals. These leftist critics, while often right on specific issues that one can agree with, couch their critiques within a framework that omits or disparages certain truths without which nothing makes sense. By truths I do not mean debatable matters, but key historical events that have been studied and researched extensively by reputable scholars and have been shown to be factual, except to those who fail to fairly do their homework, purposely or through laziness.
There is no way to understand today’s world without confronting four key historical events out of which spring today’s conditions of oligarchic rule, constant war, and the growth of an intelligence apparatus that makes Orwell’s 1984 look so anachronistic.
They are: the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK by elements within the U.S. intelligence services, and the insider attacks of September 11, 2011. These are anathema to a group of very prominent left-wing intellectuals and liberal publications. It is okay for them to attack Bush, Obama, Clinton, Trump, the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders, liberals in general, creeping fascism, capitalism, the growth of the intelligence state, etc.; but to accept, or even to explore fairly in writing, what I assert as factual above, is verboten. Why?
When President Kennedy was murdered by the CIA, the United States suffered a coup d’état that resulted in years of savage war waged against Vietnam, resulting in millions of Vietnamese deaths and tens of thousands of American soldiers. The murder of JFK in plain sight sent a message in clear and unambiguous terms to every President that followed that you toe the line or else. They have toed the line. The message from the coup planners and executioners was clear: we run the show. They have been running it ever since.
When Martin Luther King declared his opposition to the Vietnam War and joined it to his espousal of a civil rights and an anti-capitalist program, he had to go. So they killed him.
Then, when the last man standing who had a chance to change the direction of the coup – Robert Kennedy – seemed destined to win the presidency, he had to go. So they killed him.
To ignore these foundational state crimes for which the evidence is so overwhelming and their consequences over the decades so obvious – well, what explanation can leftist critics offer for doing so?
And then there are the attacks of September 11, 2001, the fourth foundational event that has brought us to our present abominable condition. One has to be very ignorant to not see that the official explanation is a fiction conjured up to justify an endless “war on terror” planned as perhaps the prelude to the use of nuclear weapons, those weapons that JFK in the last year of his life worked so hard to eliminate after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
In refusing to connect the dots from November 22, 1963 through April 4 and June 5,1968 and September 11, 2001 until today, prominent leftists continue to do the work of Crimestop. For the moment I will leave it to readers to identify who they are, and the numerous leftist publications that support their positions. There are two famous left-wing American intellectuals, one dead and one living, who are often intoned to support this work of propaganda by omission: Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, both of whom dismissed the killing of JFK and the attacks of September 11 as inconsequential and not worthy of their attention. They have quite a few protégés whose work you probably read and agree with, despite the void at the heart of their critiques. Why they avoid accepting the truth and significance of the four events I have mentioned, only they can say. That they do is easy to show, as are the dire consequences for a united front against the deep-state forces intent on reducing this society and the world to rubble because of their refusal to confront the systemic evil that they render unspeakable by their acquiescence to government propaganda.
In his groundbreaking book on the assassination of John Kennedy, JFK And The Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters, James Douglass quotes his guide into the dark underworld of radical evil and our tendency to turn away from its awful truths, the Trappist Monk Thomas Merton, who said of the Unspeakable: “It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss.”
Newly published declassified files reveal the UK provided financial, material and practical support to jihadist fighters before and during the Soviet campaign, in what may well represent the country’s largest covert overseas operation since 1945.
On December 27 1979, the Soviet Union started a campaign in Afghanistan at the request of the country’s government, in response to a violent rebellion by extreme Islamic opposition elements. The conflict quickly became an international effort, with thousands flocking from the Middle East and North Africa to assist Afghan Muslims in a “holy war” against the Soviet Army.
American support for these fighters, under the auspices of Operation Cyclone, is well-documented. While supportive of these efforts, then-UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and other officials either did not mention, or actively denied, the country’s involvement in the conflict.
However, newly published declassified files reveal Britain played a significant role in the financing, arming and training of mujahideen fighters before and during the Soviet operation, going so far as to help execute sabotage missions in the Soviet Union itself.
On July 3 1979, US President Jimmy Carter signed a covert directive that provided secret aid to violent opposition fighters in Afghanistan. As Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Advisor, later explained, the aid was sent in the full knowledge it would prompt the government to request Soviet military assistance.
“That secret operation was an excellent idea. It [drew] the Russians into the Afghan trap. The day the Soviets crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: we now have the opportunity of giving the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow [carried[ on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire,” Brzezinski told Counterpunch in 1998.
However, the files indicate the US was not alone – Britain likewise covertly supported the Afghan rebels before the Soviet invasion.
On December 17 1979, 10 days prior to the Soviet Army’s entrance to the country, US Vice President Walter Mondale convened a meeting in the White House – officials agreed to discuss with Britain “the possibility of improving the financing, arming and communications of the rebel forces to make it as expensive as possible for the Soviets to continue their efforts.”
The UK duly agreed to train the jihadist resistance in Afghanistan, and send military specialists to support their efforts.
While the operation was carried out entirely in secret, Thatcher effectively acknowledged the policy – and its motivations – on January 28 the next year, during a parliamentary debate.
“If [the Soviet] hold on Afghanistan is consolidated, the Soviet Union will have vastly extended its borders with Iran, acquired a border over 1,000 miles long with Pakistan, and advanced to within 300 miles of the Straits of Hormuz, which controls the Persian Gulf.”
The files reveal while the US provided far more in financial and material terms to the Afghan jihad, the UK played a direct combat role, with covert British forces – in particular the SAS – practically supporting resistance groups.
Current and former SAS officers trained numerous jihadi forces at MI6 and CIA bases in Saudi Arabia and Oman, teaching them sabotage, reconnaissance, attack planning, arson, and how to use explosive devices, heavy artillery such as mortars, and attack aircraft, among other things.
The SAS also, in conjunction with US special forces, training Pakistan’s Special Services Group (SSG), which led insurrectionary operations in Afghanistan, in the hope officers could impart their learned expertise directly to jihadists in Afghanistan.
Mujahideen were also trained in the UK – snuck into the country as tourists, they spent three-weeks at a time in camps situated in Scotland and the North of England. A key trainer was Brigadier General Rahmatullah Safi, former senior officer in the royal Afghan army who, who’d lived in the UK since the 1970s.
He trained as many as 8,000, continuing to live in the UK well into the 1990s, when he was regarded by the United Nations as the Taliban’s key representative in Europe, by then the undisputed rulers of Afghanistan.
Another key individual supported by the UK was Hadji Abdul Haq, of the Hizb-i-Islami group. He was provided 600 ‘Blowpipe’ anti-aircraft missiles missiles and maps of Soviet military positions by MI6, and introduced to the CIA.
Unlike many other jihadist groups, Haq had no qualms about targeting innocent civilians, arranging the infamous September 1984 bombing at Kabul airport, which killed 28, and attacks on hotels.
Despite this, in March 1986 he was welcomed to the UK as a guest of Thatcher. An official spokesperson explained at the time the Prime Minister had “a degree of sympathy with the Afghan cause” as they were “trying to rid their country of invaders, which you cannot say of the ANC or PLO.”
In reality, far in excess of a “degree of sympathy” with Afghan fighters, by that point the UK’s role in the conflict entailed directly military involvement not only in Afghanistan, but the Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union.
MI6 organized and executed “scores” of terror strikes in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, on the basis Soviet Army troop supplies flowed from these areas – the first direct Western attacks on the Soviet Union since the 1950s. MI6 also funded the spread of extremist Islamic literature in the Soviet republics.
Soviet forces would eventually leave Afghanistan February 15 1989, leaving the government of Mohammed Najibullah to be overthrown in 1992. By 1996, the Taliban had taken control of the country, during which time strong restrictions were imposed on women, public executions were reinstituted, and international aid was prevented from entering Afghanistan, leading to thousands of deaths through starvation.
Consequences Ignored
The US/UK policy had significant ramifications not only for the future of Afghanistan, but the world. During the conflict, many individuals funded, armed and trained by the West formed militant groups, which in years to come would carry out terrorist attacks across the Middle East, Europe and North America.
For instance, the globally infamous Al-Qaeda was led and peopled by former members of the anti-Soviet jihadist resistance – in a July 8 2005 column for The Guardian, former UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook noted the group’s leader, the now-slain Osama Bin Laden, was “throughout the 1980s” armed by “the CIA, and funded by the Saudis, to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.”
“Al-Qaeda, literally ‘the database’, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians,” Cook wrote.
Missing from Cook’s list of culpable parties were the British, and MI6. While there is no evidence of direct financial or material support given to Bin Laden by London in the files, he is known to have been granted entry to the UK on many occasions through the 1980s, speaking at several mosques and Islamic centers.
Moreover, several camps used by the mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan war, such as the infamous Tora Bora,were constructed with British funding – these camps would subsequently serve as training centers and planning hubs for domestic and international terror strikes by Al-Qaeda.
The weaponry supplied by the UK to extremist forces also assisted the efforts of extremist groups in Afghanistan and elsewhere. For instance, Blowpipe missiles have regularly been found in Taliban and Al-Qaeda arms-caches across the country since the 2001 US-led invasion – as late as 2010, the mainstream media was reporting the shoulder-fired missiles were a major threat to US troops.
In essence, the UK both directly and indirectly assisted in the global rise of Islamist terrorism in the wake of the conflict – were it not for their arms, supplies, training and funding, scores of extremists would lack the means and infrastructure to plan and conduct major atrocities.
It is with a heavy heart that we inform Consortiumnews readers that Editor Robert Parry has passed away. As regular readers know, Robert (or Bob, as he was known to friends and family) suffered a stroke in December, which – despite his own speculation that it may have been brought on by the stress of covering Washington politics – was the result of undiagnosed pancreatic cancer that he had been unknowingly living with for the past 4-5 years.
He unfortunately suffered two more debilitating strokes in recent weeks and after the last one, was moved to hospice care on Tuesday. He passed away peacefully Saturday evening. He was 68.
Those of us close to him wish to sincerely thank readers for the kind comments and words of support posted on recentarticles regarding Bob’s health issues. We read aloud many of these comments to him during his final days to let him know how much his work has meant to so many people and how much concern there was for his well-being.
I am sure that these kindnesses meant a lot to him. They also mean a lot to us as family members, as we all know how devoted he was to the mission of independent journalism and this website which has been publishing articles since the earliest days of the internet, launching all the way back in 1995.
With my dad, professional work has always been deeply personal, and his career as a journalist was thoroughly intertwined with his family life. I can recall kitchen table conversations in my early childhood that focused on the U.S.-backed wars in Central America and complaints about how his editors at The Associated Press were too timid to run articles of his that – no matter how well-documented – cast the Reagan administration in a bad light.
One of my earliest memories in fact was of my dad about to leave on assignment in the early 1980s to the war zones of El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala, and the heartfelt good-bye that he wished to me and my siblings. He warned us that he was going to a very dangerous place and that there was a possibility that he might not come back.
I remember asking him why he had to go, why he couldn’t just stay at home with us. He replied that it was important to go to these places and tell the truth about what was happening there. He mentioned that children my age were being killed in these wars and that somebody had to tell their stories. I remember asking, “Kids like me?” He replied, “Yes, kids just like you.”
Bob was deeply impacted by the dirty wars of Central America in the 1980s and in many ways these conflicts – and the U.S. involvement in them – came to define the rest of his life and career. With grisly stories emerging from Nicaragua (thanks partly to journalists like him), Congress passed the Boland Amendments from 1982 to 1984, which placed limits on U.S. military assistance to the contras who were attempting to overthrow the Sandinista government through a variety of terrorist tactics.
The Reagan administration immediately began exploring ways to circumvent those legal restrictions, which led to a scheme to send secret arms shipments to the revolutionary and vehemently anti-American government of Iran and divert the profits to the contras. In 1985, Bob wrote the first stories describing this operation, which later became known as the Iran-Contra Affair.
Contra-Cocaine and October Surprise
Poster by street artist and friend, Robbie Conal
Parallel to the illegal arms shipments to Iran during those days was a cocaine trafficking operation by the Nicaraguan contras and a willingness by the Reagan administration and the CIA to turn a blind eye to these activities. This, despite the fact that cocaine was flooding into the United States while Ronald Reagan was proclaiming a “war on drugs,” and a crack cocaine epidemic was devastating communities across the country.
Bob and his colleague Brian Barger were the first journalists to report on this story in late 1985, which became known as the contra-cocaine scandal and became the subject of a congressional investigation led by then-Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 1986.
Continuing to pursue leads relating to Iran-Contra during a period in the late 80s when most of Washington was moving on from the scandal, Bob discovered that there was more to the story than commonly understood. He learned that the roots of the illegal arm shipments to Iran stretched back further than previously known – all the way back to the 1980 presidential campaign.
That electoral contest between incumbent Jimmy Carter and challenger Ronald Reagan had come to be largely dominated by the hostage crisis in Iran, with 52 Americans being held at the U.S. embassy in Tehran since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Iranian hostage crisis, along with the ailing economy, came to define a perception of an America in decline, with former Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan promising a new start for the country, a restoration of its status as a “shining city on a hill.”
The hostages were released in Tehran moments after Reagan was sworn in as president in Washington on January 20, 1981. Despite suspicions for years that there had been some sort of quid pro quo between the Reagan campaign and the Iranians, it wasn’t until Bob uncovered a trove of documents in a House office building basement in 1994 that the evidence became overwhelming that the Reagan campaign had interfered with the Carter administration’s efforts to free the hostages prior to the 1980 election. Their release sooner – what Carter hoped would be his “October Surprise” – could have given him the boost needed to win.
Examining these documents and being already well-versed on this story – having previously travelled three continents pursuing the investigation for a PBS Frontline documentary – Bob became increasingly convinced that the Reagan campaign had in fact sabotaged Carter’s hostage negotiations, possibly committing an act of treason in an effort to make sure that 52 American citizens continued to be held in a harrowing hostage situation until after Reagan secured the election.
Needless to say, this was an inconvenient story at a time – in the mid-1990s – when the national media had long since moved on from the Reagan scandals and were obsessing over new scandals, mostly related to President Bill Clinton’s sex life and failed real estate deals. Washington also wasn’t particularly interested in challenging the Reagan legacy, which at that time was beginning to solidify into a kind of mythology, with campaigns underway to name buildings and airports after the former president.
At times, Bob had doubts about his career decisions and the stories he was pursuing. As he wrote in Trick or Treason, a book outlining his investigation into the October Surprise Mystery, this search for historical truth can be painful and seemingly thankless.
“Many times,” he wrote, “I had regretted accepting Frontline’s assignment in 1990. I faulted myself for risking my future in mainstream journalism. After all, that is where the decent-paying jobs are. I had jeopardized my ability to support my four children out of an old-fashioned sense of duty, a regard for an unwritten code that expects reporters to take almost any assignment.”
Nevertheless, Bob continued his efforts to tell the full story behind both the Iran-Contra scandal and the origins of the Reagan-Bush era, ultimately leading to two things: him being pushed out of the mainstream media, and the launching of Consortiumnews.com.
I remember when he started the website, together with my older brother Sam, back in 1995. At the time, in spite of talk we were all hearing about something called “the information superhighway” and “electronic mail,” I had never visited a website and didn’t even know how to get “on line.” My dad called me in Richmond, where I was a sophomore at Virginia Commonwealth University, and told me I should check out this new “Internet site” he and Sam had just launched.
He explained over the phone how to open a browser and instructed me how to type in the URL, starting, he said, with “http,” then a colon and two forward slashes, then “www,” then “dot,” then this long address with one or two more forward slashes if I recall. (It wasn’t until years later that the website got its own domain and a simpler address.)
I went to the computer lab at the university and asked for some assistance on how to get online, dutifully typed in the URL, and opened this website – the first one I had ever visited. It was interesting, but a bit hard to read on the computer screen, so I printed out some articles to read back in my dorm room.
I quickly became a fan of “The Consortium,” as it was called back then, and continued reading articles on the October Surprise Mystery as Bob and Sam posted them on this new and exciting tool called “the Internet.” Sam had to learn HTML coding from scratch to launch this online news service, billed as “the Internet’s First Investigative ‘Zine.” For his efforts, Sam was honored with the Consortium for Independent Journalism’s first Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award in 2015.
X-Files and Contra-Crack
At some point along the way, Bob decided that in addition to the website, where he was not only posting original articles but also providing the source documents that he had uncovered in the House office building basement, he would also take a stab at traditional publishing. He compiled the “October Surprise X-Files” into a booklet and self-published it in January 1996.
Original 1996 Consortium merchandise
He was also publishing a newsletter to complement the website, knowing that at that time, there were still plenty of people who didn’t know how to turn a computer on, much less navigate the World Wide Web. I transferred from Virginia Commonwealth University to George Mason University in the DC suburbs and started working part-time with my dad and Sam on the newsletter and website.
We worked together on the content, editing and laying it out with graphics often culled from books at our local library. We built a subscriber base through networking and purchasing mailing lists from progressive magazines. Every two weeks we would get a thousand copies printed from Sir Speedy and would spend Friday evening collating these newsletters and sending them out to our subscribers.
The launching of the website and newsletter, and later an even-more ambitious project called I.F. Magazine, happened to coincide with the publication in 1996 of Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series at the San Jose Mercury-News. Webb’s series reopened the contra-cocaine controversy with a detailed examination of the drug trafficking networks in Nicaragua and Los Angeles that had helped to spread highly addictive crack cocaine across the United States.
The African-American community, in particular, was rightly outraged over this story, which offered confirmation of many long-standing suspicions that the government was complicit in the drug trade devastating their communities. African Americans had been deeply and disproportionately affected by the crack epidemic, both in terms of the direct impact of the drug and the draconian drug laws and mandatory minimum sentences that came to define the government’s approach to “the war on drugs.”
For a moment in the summer of 1996, it appeared that the renewed interest in the contra-cocaine story might offer an opportunity to revisit the crimes and misdeeds of the Reagan-Bush era, but those hopes were dashed when the “the Big Media” decided to double down on its earlier failures to cover this story properly.
Big Papers Pile On
The Los Angeles Times launched the attack on Gary Webb and his reporting at the San Jose Mercury-News, followed by equally dismissive stories at the Washington Post and New York Times. The piling on from these newspapers eventually led Mercury-News editor Jerry Ceppos to denounce Webb’s reporting and offer a mea culpa for publishing the articles.
The onslaught of hostile reporting from the big papers failed to address the basic premises of Webb’s series and did not debunk the underlying allegations of contra-cocaine smuggling or the fact that much of this cocaine ended up on American streets in the form of crack. Instead, it raised doubts by poking holes in certain details and casting the story as a “conspiracy theory.” Some of the reporting attempted to debunk claims that Webb never actually made – such as the idea that the contra-cocaine trafficking was part of a government plot to intentionally decimate the African-American community.
Gary Webb with his front-page Contra story
Gary Webb and Bob were in close contact during those days. Bob offered him professional and personal support, having spent his time also on the receiving end of attacks by journalistic colleagues and editors who rejected certain stories – no matter how factual – as fanciful conspiracy theories. Articles at The Consortium website and newsletter, as well as I.F. Magazine, offered details on the historical context for the “Dark Alliance” series and pushed back against the mainstream media’s onslaught of hostile and disingenuous reporting.
Bob also published the book Lost History which provided extensive details on the background for the “Dark Alliance” series, explaining that far from a baseless “conspiracy theory,” the facts and evidence strongly supported the conclusion that the Reagan-Bush administrations had colluded with drug traffickers to fund their illegal war against Nicaragua.
But sadly, the damage to Gary Webb was done. With his professional and personal life in tatters because of his courageous reporting on the contra-cocaine story, he committed suicide in 2004 at the age of 49. Speaking about this suicide later on Democracy Now, Bob noted how painful it is to be ridiculed and unfairly criticized by colleagues, as his friend had experienced.
“There’s a special pain when your colleagues in your profession turn on you, especially when you’ve done something that they should admire and should understand,” he said. “To do all that work and then have the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times attack you and try to destroy your life, there’s a special pain in that.”
In consultation with his family, Bob and the Board of Directors for the Consortium for Independent Journalism launched the Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award in 2015.
The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush
The presidency of George W. Bush was surreal for many of us, and no one more so than my dad.
In covering Washington politics for decades, Bob had traced many stories to “Dubya’s” father, George H.W. Bush, who had been implicated in a variety of questionable activities, including the October Surprise Mystery and Iran-Contra. He had also launched a war against Iraq in 1991 that seemed to be motivated, at least in part, to help kick “the Vietnam Syndrome,” i.e. the reluctance that the American people had felt since the Vietnam War to support military action abroad.
As Bob noted in his 1992 book Fooling America, after U.S. forces routed the Iraqi military in 1991, President Bush’s first public comment about the victory expressed his delight that it would finally put to rest the American reflex against committing troops to far-off conflicts. “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all,” he exulted.
The fact that Bush-41’s son could run for president largely on name recognition confirmed to Bob the failure of the mainstream media to cover important stories properly and the need to continue building an independent media infrastructure. This conviction solidified through Campaign 2000 and the election’s ultimate outcome, when Bush assumed the White House as the first popular-vote loser in more than a century.
Despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court had halted the counting of votes in Florida, thus preventing an accurate determination of the rightful winner, most of the national media moved on from the story after Bush was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2001. Consortiumnews.com continued to examine the documentary record, however, and ultimately concluded that Al Gore would have been declared the winner of that election if all the legally cast ballots were counted.
At Consortiumnews, there was an unwritten editorial policy that the title “President” should never precede George W. Bush’s name, based on our view that he was not legitimately elected. But beyond those editorial decisions, we also understood the gravity of the fact that had Election 2000 been allowed to play out with all votes counted, many of the disasters of the Bush years – notably the 9/11 tragedy and the Iraq War, as well as decisions to withdraw from international agreements on arms control and climate change – might have been averted.
As all of us who lived through the post-9/11 era will recall, it was a challenging time all around, especially if you were someone critical of George W. Bush. The atmosphere in that period did not allow for much dissent. Those who stood up against the juggernaut for war – such as Phil Donahue at MSNBC, Chris Hedges at the New York Times, or even the Dixie Chicks – had their careers damaged and found themselves on the receiving end of death threats and hate mail.
While Bob’s magazine and newsletter projects had been discontinued, the website was still publishing articles, providing a home for dissenting voices that questioned the case for invading Iraq in late 2002 and early 2003. Around this time, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern and some of his colleagues founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and a long-running relationship with Consortiumnews was established. Several former intelligence veterans began contributing to the website, motivated by the same independent spirit of truth-telling that compelled Bob to invest so much in this project.
At a time when almost the entire mainstream media was going along with the Bush administration’s dubious case for war, this and a few other like-minded websites pushed back with well-researched articles calling into question the rationale. Although at times it might have felt as though we were just voices in the wilderness, a major groundswell of opposition to war emerged in the country, with historic marches of hundreds of thousands taking place to reject Bush’s push for war.
Neck Deep, published by Media Consortium in 2007
Of course, these antiwar voices were ultimately vindicated by the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the fact that the war and occupation proved to be a far costlier and deadlier enterprise than we had been told that it would be. Earlier assurances that it would be a “cakewalk” proved as false as the WMD claims, but as had been so often the case in Washington, there was little to no accountability from the mainstream media, the think tanks or government officials for being so spectacularly wrong.
In an effort to document the true history of that era, Bob, Sam and I co-wrote the book Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, which was published in late 2007. The book traced the work of Consortiumnews, juxtaposing it against the backdrop of mainstream media coverage during the Bush era, in an effort to not only correct the record, but also demonstrate that not all of us got things so wrong.
We felt it was important to remind readers – as well as future historians – that some of us knew and reported in real time the mistakes that were being made on everything from withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol to invading Iraq to implementing a policy of torture to bungling the response to Hurricane Katrina.
Obama Era
By the time Barack Obama was elected the 44th president, Consortiumnews.com had become a home to a growing number of writers who brought new perspectives to the website’s content. While for years, the writing staff had been limited primarily to Bob, Sam and me, suddenly, Consortiumnews was receiving contributions from journalists, activists and former intelligence analysts who offered a wide range of expertise – on international law, economics, human rights, foreign policy, national security, and even religion and philosophy.
One recurring theme of articles at the website during the Obama era was the enduring effect of unchallenged narratives, how they shaped national politics and dictated government policy. Bob observed that even a supposedly left-of-center president like Obama seemed beholden to the false narratives and national mythologies dating back to the Reagan era. He pointed out that this could be at least partially attributed to the failure to establish a strong foundation for independent journalism.
In a 2010 piece called “Obama’s Fear of the Reagan Narrative,” Bob noted that Obama had defended his deal with Republicans on tax cuts for the rich because there was such a strong lingering effect of Reagan’s messaging from 30 years earlier. “He felt handcuffed by the Right’s ability to rally Americans on behalf of Reagan’s ‘government-is-the-problem’ message,” Bob wrote.
He traced Obama’s complaints about his powerlessness in the face of this dynamic to the reluctance of American progressives to invest sufficiently in media and think tanks, as conservatives had been doing for decades in waging their “the war of ideas.” As he had been arguing since the early 1990s, Robert insisted that the limits that had been placed on Obama – whether real or perceived – continued to demonstrate the power of propaganda and the need for greater investment in alternative media.
He also observed that much of the nuttiness surrounding the so-called Tea Party movement resulted from fundamental misunderstandings of American history and constitutional principles. “Democrats and progressives should be under no illusion about the new flood of know-nothingism that is about to inundate the United States in the guise of a return to ‘first principles’ and a deep respect for the U.S. Constitution,” Bob warned.
He pointed out that despite the Tea Partiers’ claimed reverence for the Constitution, they actually had very little understanding of the document, as revealed by their ahistorical claims that federal taxes are unconstitutional. In fact, as Bob observed, the Constitution represented “a major power grab by the federal government, when compared to the loosely drawn Articles of Confederation, which lacked federal taxing authority and other national powers.”
Motivated by a desire to correct falsified historical narratives spanning more than two centuries, Bob published his sixth and final book, America’s Stolen Narrative: From Washington and Madison to Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes to Obama, in 2012.
Along with revenues from book sales, growing donations from readers enabled Bob to not only pay writers but also to hire an assistant, Chelsea Gilmour, who began working for Consortiumnews in 2014. In addition to providing invaluable administrative support, Chelsea also performed duties including research, writing and fact-checking.
Political Realignment and the New McCarthyism
Although at the beginning of the Obama era – and indeed since the 1980s – the name Robert Parry had been closely associated with exposing wrongdoing by Republicans, and hence had a strong following among Democratic Party loyalists, by the end of Obama’s presidency there seemed to be a realignment taking place among some of Consortiumnews.com’s readership, which reflected more generally the shifting politics of the country.
In particular, the U.S. media’s approach to Russia and related issues, such as the violent ouster in 2014 of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, became “virtually 100 percent propaganda,” Bob said.
He noted that the full story was never told when it came to issues such as the Sergei Magnitsky case, which led to the first round of U.S. sanctions against Russia, nor the inconvenient facts related to the Euromaidan protests that led to Yanukovych’s ouster – including the reality of strong neo-Nazi influence in those protests – nor the subsequent conflict in the Donbass region of Ukraine.
Bob’s stories on Ukraine were widely cited and disseminated, and he became an important voice in presenting a fuller picture of the conflict than was possible by reading and watching only mainstream news outlets. Bob was featured prominently in Oliver Stone’s 2016 documentary “Ukraine on Fire,” where he explained how U.S.-funded political NGOs and media companies have worked with the CIA and foreign policy establishment since the 1980s to promote the U.S. geopolitical agenda.
Bob regretted that, increasingly, “the American people and the West in general are carefully shielded from hearing the ‘other side of the story.’” Indeed, he said that to even suggest that there might be another side to the story is enough to get someone branded as an apologist for Vladimir Putin or a “Kremlin stooge.”
The PropOrNot logo
This culminated in late 2016 in the blacklisting of Consortiumnews.com on a dubious website called “PropOrNot,” which was claiming to serve as a watchdog against undue “Russian influence” in the United States. The PropOrNot blacklist, including Consortiumnews and about 200 other websites deemed “Russian propaganda,” was elevated by the Washington Post as a credible source, despite the fact that the neo-McCarthyites who published the list hid behind a cloak of anonymity.
“The Post’s article by Craig Timberg,” Bob wrote on Nov. 27, 2016, “described PropOrNot simply as ‘a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds [who] planned to release its own findings Friday showing the startling reach and effectiveness of Russian propaganda campaigns.’”
As Bob explained in an article called “Washington Post’s Fake News Guilt,” the paper granted PropOrNot anonymity “to smear journalists who don’t march in lockstep with official pronouncements from the State Department or some other impeccable fount of never-to-be-questioned truth.”
The Post even provided an unattributed quote from the head of the shadowy website. “The way that this propaganda apparatus supported [Donald] Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy,” the anonymous smear merchant said. The Post claimed that the PropOrNot “executive director” had spoken on the condition of anonymity “to avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers.”
To be clear, neither Consortiumnews nor Robert Parry ever “supported Trump,” as the above anonymous quote claims. Something interesting, however, did seem to be happening in terms of Consortiumnews’ readership in the early days of the Trump presidency, as could be gleaned from some of the comments left on articles and social media activity.
It did appear for some time at least that a good number of Trump supporters were reading Consortiumnews, which could probably be attributed to the fact that the website was one of the few outlets pushing back against both the “New Cold War” with Russia and the related story of “Russiagate,” which Bob didn’t even like referring to as a “scandal.” (As an editor, he preferred to use the word “controversy” on the website, because as far as he was concerned, the allegations against Trump and his supposed “collusion” with Russia did not rise to the level of actual scandals such as Watergate or Iran-Contra.)
In his view, the perhaps understandable hatred of Trump felt by many Americans – both inside and outside the Beltway – had led to an abandonment of old-fashioned rules of journalism and standards of fairness, which should be applied even to someone like Donald Trump.
“On a personal note, I faced harsh criticism even from friends of many years for refusing to enlist in the anti-Trump ‘Resistance,’” Bob wrote in his final article for Consortiumnews.
“The argument was that Trump was such a unique threat to America and the world that I should join in finding any justification for his ouster,” he said. “Some people saw my insistence on the same journalistic standards that I had always employed somehow a betrayal.”
He marveled that even senior editors in the mainstream media treated the unproven Russiagate allegations as flat fact.
“No skepticism was tolerated and mentioning the obvious bias among the never-Trumpers inside the FBI, Justice Department and intelligence community was decried as an attack on the integrity of the U.S. government’s institutions,” Bob wrote. “Anti-Trump ‘progressives’ were posturing as the true patriots because of their now unquestioning acceptance of the evidence-free proclamations of the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies.”
An Untimely End and the Future of Consortiumnews
My dad’s untimely passing has come as a shock to us all, especially since up until a month ago, there was no indication whatsoever that he was sick in any way. He took good care of himself, never smoked, got regular check-ups, exercised, and ate well. The unexpected health issues starting with a mild stroke Christmas Eve and culminating with his admission into hospice care several days ago offer a stark reminder that nothing should be taken for granted.
And as many Consortiumnews readers have eloquently pointed out in comments left on recentarticles regarding Bob’s health, it also reminds us that his brand of journalism is needed today more than ever.
“We need free will thinkers like you who value the truth based on the evidence and look past the group think in Washington to report on the real reasons for our government’s and our media’s actions which attempt to deceive us all,” wrote, for example, “FreeThinker.”
“Common sense and integrity are the hallmarks of Robert Parry’s journalism. May you get better soon for you are needed more now then ever before,” wrote “T.J.”
“We need a new generation of reporters, journalists, writers, and someone always being tenacious to follow up on the story,” added “Tina.”
As someone who has been involved with this website since its inception – as a writer, an editor and a reader – I concur with these sentiments. Readers should rest assured that despite my dad’s death, every effort will be made to ensure that the website will continue going strong.
Indeed, I think that everyone involved with this project wants to uphold the same commitment to truth telling without fear or favor that inspired Bob and his heroes like George Seldes, I.F. Stone, and Thomas Paine.
That commitment can be seen in my dad’s pursuit of stories such as those mentioned above, but also so many others – including his investigations into the financial relationship of the influential Washington Times with the Unification Church cult of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the truth behind the Nixon campaign’s alleged efforts to sabotage President Lyndon Johnson’s Paris peace talks with Vietnamese leaders in 1968, the reality of the chemical attack in Syria in 2013, and even detailed examinations of the evidence behind the so-called “Deflategate” controversy that he felt unfairly branded his favorite football team, the New England Patriots, as cheaters.
Reviewing these journalistic achievements, it becomes clear that there are few stories that have slipped under Consortiumnews.com’s radar, and that the historical record is far more complete thanks to this website and Bob’s old-fashioned approach to journalism.
Nuclear weapons
But besides this deeply held commitment to independent journalism, it should also be recalled that, ultimately, Bob was motivated by a concern over the future of life on Earth. As someone who grew up at the height of the Cold War, he understood the dangers of allowing tensions and hysteria to spiral out of control, especially in a world such as ours with enough nuclear weapons to wipe out all life on the planet many times over.
As the United States continues down the path of a New Cold War, my dad would be pleased to know that he has such committed contributors who will enable the site to remain the indispensable home for independent journalism that it has become, and continue to push back on false narratives that threaten our very survival.
Thank you all for your support.
In lieu of flowers, Bob’s family asks you to please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Consortium for Independent Journalism.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a series of threats toward Iran and its interlocutors in the West, including the US, as serious negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program seem more plausible.
As a possible rapprochement looms between the US and Iran, Netanyahu has attempted to impose impossible Israeli conditions on the negotiators, such as the full dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program, not to mention threatening military force.
Whatever the deal that could materialize between Iran and the West, Israel is going to find itself before an open-ended path. One can foresee three possible scenarios… continue
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