— Guest BRAD BLOG Op-Ed by Daniel Ellsberg
For the second time in two weeks, the entire U.S. press has let itself be scooped by Rupert Murdoch’s London Sunday Times on a dynamite story of criminal activities by corrupt U.S. officials promoting nuclear proliferation. But there is a worse journalistic sin than being scooped, and that is participating in a cover-up of information that demands urgent attention from the public, the U.S. Congress and the courts.
For the last two weeks — one could say, for years — the major American media have been guilty of ignoring entirely the allegations of the courageous and highly credible source Sibel Edmonds, quoted in the London Times on January 6, 2008 in a front-page story that was front-page news in much of the rest of the world but was not reported in a single American newspaper or network. It is up to readers to demand that this culpable silent treatment end.
Just as important, there must be pressure by the public on Congressional committee chairpersons, in particular Representative Henry Waxman and Senator Patrick Leahy. Both have been sitting for years on classified, sworn testimony by Edmonds — as she revealed in the Times’ new story on Sunday — along with documentation, in their possession, confirming parts of her account. Pressure must be brought for them to hold public hearings to investigate her accusations of widespread criminal activities, over several administrations, that endanger national security. They should call for open testimony under oath by Edmonds — as she has urged for five years — and by other FBI officials she has named to them, as cited anonymously in the first Times’ story.
And this is the time for those who have so far creditably leaked to the Times of London to come forward, accepting personal risks, to offer their testimony — and new documents — both to the Congress and to the American press. I would say to them: Don’t do what I did and waste months of precious time trying to get Congressional committees to act as they should in the absence of journalistic pressure. Do your best to inform the American public directly, first, through the major American media.
But perhaps today the alternative media and the international press are a necessary precursor even to that. It shouldn’t be true, but if it is, it’s a measure of how far the New York Times and Washington Post have fallen from their responsibilities to the public, to their profession and to American democracy, since I gave them the Pentagon Papers in 1971. They printed them then. Would they today?
It’s impossible to believe that they — or Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal — could not have acquired documents and testimony that Murdoch’s London paper reports on today. Now the challenge to them is to end their silence on that reporting and do their job.
Otherwise, like the now-Democratic-controlled committees, they are complicit in cover-up. That’s not what these institutions should be doing. It’s not that “the cover-up is always worse than the crime”: that favorite media mantra is itself a cover story. The criminal cover-up by the FBI revealed by Edmonds and the Times’ documents is, as often the case, to conceal extremely serious crimes endangering our security, and to protect the official perpetrators. But if “freedom of the press is mainly for the people who own presses,” it is time for those owners to stop using that freedom to help conceal official wrongdoing. And the people who own computers should be using them to light a fire under the owners of presses and television networks.
In support of the official cover-up, various American journalists in the last weeks have reportedly received calls from “intelligence sources” hinting that “what Sibel Edmonds stumbled onto” is not a rogue operation by American officials and Congressmen working to their own advantage — as believed by Edmonds and some other former or active FBI officials — but a sensitive covert operation authorized at high levels. If there is any truth to that, we clearly have another prize candidate — giving us, as blowback, the Pakistani Bomb and nuclear sales — in the category of “worst covert operation in U.S. history,” rivaling such contenders as the Bay of Pigs, Iran-Contra, and the secret CIA torture camps abroad.
In the first two of those, the American press gullibly responded to official warnings of “sensitivity” and sat on information they should have reported (as did the New York Times, for a year, on the illegal NSA surveillance program). If the Washington Post had heeded such warnings and demands with respect to the covert torture camps, they would have missed a well-earned Pulitzer Prize and the camps would still be torturing.
Many, if not most, covert operations deserve to be disclosed by a free press. They are often covert not only because they are illegal but because they are wildly ill-conceived and reckless. “Sensitive” and “covert” are often synonyms for “half-assed,” “idiotic,” and “dangerous to national security,” as well as “criminal.” All of these would apply to the pattern of activities revealed by Edmonds if it were truly presidentially authorized, as is being whispered. Such activities persist, covertly, to the point of national disaster because the press neglects what our First Amendment was precisely intended to protect and encourage it to do: expose wrongdoing by officials.
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Daniel Ellsberg is a former American military analyst who sparked a national uproar in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of government decision-making during the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers.
ED NOTE: A short video compilation (appx. 1.5 minutes) of a number of previous public comments made by Ellsberg, in support of Sibel Edmonds, has now been posted here by Edmonds expert Luke Ryland.
One good thing has come of all of this. The US media has been exposed at all angles for what it is: overwhelmingly fascist.
Things that Expose the Overwhelmingly Fascist Media for what it is:
1)A blackout of the Sibel Edmonds case
2)Cheerleading George W. Bush’s unnecessary and unjustified war against Iraq, although Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11
3)Not honestly reporting on the massive Iraq civilian deaths caused by US bombings and other military actions.
3)Blacking out US soldier casualties, and failure to reveal show the physical damage rendered by the war, such is loss of limb, permanent paralysis, disfigurement. The US media cuts all of those images out, presenting the Iraq war in ways that are more fantasy-like and less realistic and graphic than Pan’s Labyrinth.
4)Cutting Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul from debates and participating with the fascist Democratic party in making democracy subservient to corporate interests.
5) War profiteering. In the case of NBC/MSNBC are owned by defense contractors General Electric. Would an investigation into corporate holdings reveal that the entire US media has been war-profiteering?
6)Actively lobbying with great success to erode all remaining anti-trust laws etc. that control their monopolization of the transmission of “news” and “information” (or, more accurately, suppression of it)
7) Fighting tooth and nail against Net Neutrality, so as to eventually control the internet. And stop such inconvenient sites as Bradblog?
8) NBC and AT&T have been stating their desire to filter the internet, purportedly to stop copyright violations, but once their foot is in the door…(suppress dissent?)
Clearly, America’s population is finally starting to see what the entire world has known for quite some time: The US Media is overwhelmingly fascist. The Overwhelmingly Fascist Media of the United States serves vile and destructive corporate interests, and is more engaged in suppressing inconvenient facts than reporting news.
Amazing! I originally found the link to this on Antiwar.com.
We are so fucked and NO ONE sees it in the United States. We live in the scariest of times.
Kudos, Brad, and thank you Daniel! This has to be the greatest scandal ever! We must bombard the media. Shame obviously won’t work, but their inevitable irrelevance if they refuse to publish real news just might scare them. Trouble is, they’re all so deeply entwined in the corruption that their extinction may be the only possibility. Thank goodness for the fearless BradBlog, for Sibel, for Daniel…
50 years we now know Joe McCarthy was stunned to receive a list of spies names from one of the heads of KGB. (No one on the left or right ever asked where he got his names from, presuming he just randomly selected them. We now know better). He had proof that most of the names had been known for more than 10 years, yet the spies were allowed to stay in the government. With the outbreak of the Cold War, it became necessary to coverup the non-action by the government- from OSS, to CIA, from the press to the FBI and Army, all united to hide their negligence by destroying McCarthy and creating a “Matrix like” reality about the era to confuse the public.
Apparenly nothing has changed.
McCarthy? “Stunned”?
More like stoned. 🙂
Amy Goodman asked the question , “What would be the difference if we had state media?” Subscriptions and ratings have gone down since Bushco. Money runs this country. So ..We need to say the words. It’s hard but names are important.
“The American Media’s Complicit Failure to Investigate and Report on the Sibel Edmonds Case”
Ha! How about their “in-bed”ded reporters in the leadup to the Iraq War, e-vote machines, 9/11, etc…???
The word “corporate” is in “corporate-controlled mainstream media”! Notice the lack of coverage of Edwards the more populist his message became? You’d think he’s not running anymore! You would think only Hillary & Obama are running on the Democratic ticket! Hmmmmm….you think the CMSM wants either Hillary or Obama in there?
Speaking of alternative media – maybe Sibel needs to take this story to the Rolling Stone magazine. If they agree to print it, this story will reach a lot of people and put the mainstream media to shame.
The Rolling Stone is owned. You won’t get any reporting there that is not ‘sanctioned’ by the elites.
So, in other words, ‘don’t hold your breath’.
9-11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB!!!
Mr. Ellsberg,
I’ve long regarded you as a true American hero. Seems I must now add Ms. Sibel Edmonds to my list.
Would the NYTime and the Washington Post publish the Pentagon Papers today? I sent the Times an article documenting torture was being used as a matter of policy six months before the story on Abu Graib broke and they ignored it. I pointed to the use of torture as a matter of policy at the highest level and all my sources were easily avaiable on the Web (such as an interview with SoD Rumsfeld in the Paris Match where he admitted he encouraged screening of the 1966 film “The Battle of Algiers” –where the use of torture is highlighted as a means of interrogation by the French– to the Pentagon.) Much much later, I contacted the ethics ombudsman at the Times pointing out they had the story and ignored it and I got back what I can describe only as a hot-headed and irrational reply.
The news media has adopted relativism as their criterion for truth, and “balance” is the watchword. There is no way the Bush administration can put a good spin on such issues, and an accusation such as Sibel Edmonds’ is viewed by the MSM not as a revelation; to them, it must be some kind of “partisan” strategy to discredit the incumbent. That’s all I can figure out.
The global corporatist EMPIRE, which hides behind this facade of a full two-party “Vichy” American government and a fully ‘Vichy’ MSM, must be confronted and battled in a Second American Revolution even more so than the British Empire was in the first.
This latest revelation of the Empire’s lies and deceit only reinforce the numerous and compelling proofs we have already seen in foreign imperialist wars and domestic tyranny.
As Hannah Arendt presciently said decades ago:
“Empire abroad (always) entails tyranny at home.”
Now we see both — and we need to clearly see the claw-prints of this global corporatist Empire.
I asked this question on Raw Story and got no reply so I’m hoping there is someone here with the answer. If The Sunday Times in London which is breaking the Sibel Edmonds story abroad is owned by Rupert Murdoch, why can Mr. Murdoch not publish the same stories in the American press which he owns? Are there legal constraints against him doing that here?
The MSM is a one trick pony now daze in Amurka.
Mr. Ellsberg lived in America, which is now considered “quaint” by Amurkans.
MSM theme song:
(Bob Dylan).
The MSM only cares about celebrity (they see themselves as stars on TV), profit (get them gummit bucks flowin), and being proper (i.e. brown nosing the regime currently paying them) in the eyes of “the authorities”.
They used to care, but things have changed.
naschkatze
From what I’ve read, Murdoch, is very sensitive to the political conditions in each country where he does business. He tailors his content to match what the administration of each country wants. Does it in China, and he does it here.
His bread doesn’t get buttered without them, after all.
Naschkatze #14 –
As Edmonds pointed out in our coverage of the story late Saturday night (here), it’s not a matter of Murdoch publishing these stories, as much as the reporters at the British paper digging into things that it seems US reporters won’t (for whatever reason).
With that noted, I’ll mention that the Fox “News” website did run the story on Sunday, reposting the entire UK Sunday Times article in full (here).
As well, Drudge linked to the original Sunday Times article yesterday. Make of all of that whatever you will.
{Ed Note: I’m sorry, I can’t see how this relates to the post, and it’s radically too long. It looks to have been cut and pasted, so maybe you want to try giving us a link instead. Sorry. –99}
Follow the money.
OT –
War Veterans say many things, but this is the first time I have heard them say:
(Raw Story).
I can’t help but think the Sibel Story has been ordered hush hush … in other words the preznit blush regime has told the prestitutes not to run the story or else.
Isn’t it fitting that we have to remind the main stream media that a German, Peter Zenger, went to trial and proved that the press (media) has every right to print the truth?
As the son of someone that worked on Team A (see Team B) and who’s on NJ Gov. Corzine’s list of possible Nazi war criminals, it is high time that Americans addressed the incompatibility of secret government agencies and democracy- they are mutually exclusive. And perhaps Gov. Corzine could focus on living and working war criminals, rather than those dead, and doing what thousands of Americans are doing today-building weapons of mass destruction,genocide, and torture.
As Daniel writes:
It might also be useful to reread Billmon’s widely distributed post of Sept. 11, 2006, The Sixteen Acre Ditch where he writes:
When one tries to vote the fascists out of power, we must rely on:
(Bev Harris, Eye on New Hampshire).
Comment#1………Adam
Are you related to Benjamin?
Brad, this is a bit OT in this thread but your recent article on the e-voting train wreck in South Carolina, was spot on.
An old pal of mine down at Clemson in South Carolina, says the place is on red alert right now– there has been discussion especially in the Black community, of Clinton staffers making attempts to do hacking on an e-voting machine in the state. Some inducement to a local official, something to that effect, which needless to say didn’t work this time around.
Needless to say, especially considering the awful racially-tinged nature of the Democratic nomination contest, even the very hint of ballot-tampering by the Clinton campaign, has absolutely dangerous implications for our electoral system and even the peace of this nation.
My pal down at Clemson says that people are on the verge of rioting at even the mention of this hacking attempt, and it’s only going to become more intense as the week goes along.
The election officials in SC need to have a voting system that works, and is trusted by the people. What they have right now is nothing more than a fiasco.
“I gave them the Pentagon Papers in 1971. They printed them then. Would they today?”
Of course they would NOT.
The New York Times has had AT LEAST three different stories of Pentagon Papers-level volatility and each time they “spiked” the stories until they would be less damaging to the Bush Administration.
The New York Times has bent over BACKWARDS to show that they are not “liberal” by being right-wing and conservative and supressing information that would have let the American people make an honest decision about the Bush Administration and their criminality.
The Washington Post doesn’t even CONSIDER letting their reports run with stories that would be critical to the Administration. If they print them at all, it’s “just once and then buried and dead.”
People of the United States of America VS Government of the United States of America’s Coverup and Propagandizing of the Informattion Essential to a Funtioning Democracy throught Media Manipulation! This is no small matter: no less than the welfare of humanity is at stake with nuclear proliferation and wars of aggression based on lies.
Under the cover of corporate media propaganda and complicit silence until after the fact, we are now world terrorists spying, lying, stealing, kidnapping, torturing, killing and engaging in illegal wars of aggression for world resource and military strategic dominance all aided and abetted by corporate media for PROFIT.
The latest example of the crime…the FAKED news reports on the Irainian speed boats threatening 3 US war ships in the Straight of Hormuz, plain as the nose on your face. Just what we need a third war based on LIES! Do you hear about any one being held accountable for that? NO, just the next freaking crisis they create, or worse the dog and pony show of elections! But never a word on Sibel’s damning information. That is CRIMINAL.
The media’s silence on Sibel’s case, the push to conflagrate the Irainian sitation into war, the cheerleading us into the Iraq war, the almost total blackout of information on secret electronic vote counting, and impeachment information, the list goes on and on. These corporations are not serving the public interest and do not deserve the liscences they have to operate on our public airwaves. They are the major problem of American complacency and misinformation and gutter trash addiction. It hasn’t been that long since the Church Commission has it? One simply need insert terrorism for communism and viola the same creepy mess.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op...on_Mockingbird
Laney #26
The candidate who did what to who is generally irrelevant on this blog, since this blog is non-partisan in its concepts of fair voting.
We want every voter’s vote to count as it should, and we want every candidate to get every single vote cast for that candidate.
Green, Republican, Democrat, Independent, and every other party is in our minds to be the recipient of a fair and complete election.
And we criticize Green, Republican, Democrat, Independent, and every other party that gets in the way of any such fair election!
It really is that simple.
Theothermax (what’s with the nom de plume?), I don’t get it. There are lots of Adam Fulfords in the world. Why would you ask a silly question like that? Why didn’t you ask me if I’m related to Jade Fulford, Miss Jamaica World 2003, or the stars of that reality show about British aristocrats struggling to keep their crumbling manor together, “The F*ck*ng Fulfords”? Anyway…Yes, he’s my brother.
Jon Gold says there’s more to Sibel’s story – well I’d love to read it. Must be doubly incriminating with paper trails naming the 9/11 gang, and those selling state secrets. Murdoch didn’t do any real damage to the 9/11 myth by printing this half of Sibel’s story. This part alleges Osama was involved (even if ultimately just being used.) So, Murdoch only advanced disinformation.
Has anybody mentioned that none of the so-called “major Democratic candidates” have said anything about it? These phonies — Hillary Clinton, Obama Barack, and John Edwards — don’t even have the backbone to stand up for democracy. They not only let war-profiteering corporations dictate the terms of democracy, but actively instigated the anti-democratic practice of suppressing democratic discourse by shutting Dennis Kucinich out of the debates. While Dennis Kucinich is the only democratic candidate whose voting record matches his rhetoric, this is not about Kucinich per se. This is about the viability of the American democracy (and, in turn, other democracies around the world). If they don’t have the moral fortitude to stand up for Dennis Kucinich — a legitimate candidate — and letting his voice be heard, what makes anybody think they’d hear the voices and address the concerns of regular American citizens? Get real. Obama, Clinton, and Edwards all voted for the war against Iraq even thought it had nothing to do with 9/11, then repeatedly voted in favor of funding it. With nary a little protest, they then shamefully let defense contractor GE (owner of MSNBC) dictate which candidates could participate in a political debate. Only Dennis Kucinich actually voted against this unjustified and unnecessary war and against funding it. The other candidates — endorsed by the Overwhelmingly Fascist Media — are wimpy corporate sycophants who helped enable fascism to take hold in the United States. Kucinich didn’t, and that is why the Overwhelmingly Fascist Media and the corporation-controlled Democratic Party are scared of him and shutting him out. They’ll roll over for whoever is pulling the strings in cutting out Sibel Edmonds’ voice too.
Thanks to Mr. Ellsberg even Commondreams.org, (a great resource for progressives), is taking the BradBlog seriously now. They published this article today with all of the appropriate links to this blog.
Now if we can just get them to help Brad save the 2008 election instead of largely ignoring the issue of election fraud, for fear of looking like conspiracy theorists, all these years.
Further to the issue of why The Sunday Times in London is breaking the Sibel Edmonds story even though it is owned by Murdoch, it is worth noting that a UK government enquiry into media ownership is currently underway. The Sunday Times has many fine journalists who are no doubt itching to get stories like this into print, and what is Murdoch going to do if their editors give the thumbs up? Spike the story personally and take the heat for such intrusive management? Not likely!
Furthermore, there are probably legal issues used by US media barons to explain why they do not want to touch this story, whereas such legal issues might not apply to UK papers. But in fact the door is now open for US media to post stories about the Sunday Times’ story: “A British paper has claimed that … blah blah”
Why don’t they? No excuse, except that US media publishers are in bed with the whole Murdoch-Bush-Davos mob.
Murdoch probably has the same difficulty that some of the bigger wingnut investors did with Knight Ridder when the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau got too “uppity” for their tastes. Knight Ridder was a pretty decentralized command structure (in terms of content). I know, I used to work there at the turn of the century when the original 2000 election happened (did the shared election page for many of their papers). That was probably a big reason for the selloff of the paper to McClatchy. But even under McClatchy, they still seem to be relatively more independent, though some parts of McClatchy newspaper empire chooses to “edit” the Washington Bureau’s stories, as Brad noted earlier with the KC paper distorting some of the election and U.S. prosecutor stories earlier last year.
Murdoch might have some control, but they don’t have complete control.
It’s interesting when looking at how many corporations also don’t have direct control over their Japanese affiliates, as Japan requires that companies that have branches in Japan need to have those branches owned and controlled by local Japanese entities there, unlike multinationals in other countries might. I have a feeling that British law might restrict the amount of control Murdoch might have over these papers.
Calipendence, are you Theothermax? Your comments on Japan are mighty suspicious.
I have great respect for Daniel Ellsberg, but something about this story doesn’t smell right. US intel doesn’t have to steal nuclear secrets off the black market to peddle them. The US is the biggest nuclear power on the planet and has access to every nuclear secret imaginable. Plus, why peddle secrets to Pakistan, another nuclear power? Saudi Arabia, maybe, but Pakistan?
Sibel Edmonds could well have stumbled upon a 2-way sting operation. The goal would be to find out what information is available on the black market and the persons in different countries who are seeking said information. These are a few of the reasons why if I were a journalist I don’t think I’d touch this story either.
That doesn’t mean her other allegations don’t deserve a fair hearing, but that hearing should probably be behind closed doors due to her sensitive intellligence position. Only after it has been vetted should Congressional Committees decide whether to declassify the information and make it public.
Politico #37
The culprit in this story is not US intel. Your premise therefore being flawed, leads inevitably to the illogical deduction.
The culprits come from the state department and congress ab initio. Thus your apologetics are an aside.
Wider coverage and questions are cropping up.
All this should make you appreciate J. Edgar Hoover all the more.
There is one thing of note, the family of preznit blush has been in this business a long time.
This is why my nickname for the American media is PRAVDA. People with minds that already go beyond the television brainwash know exactly what I mean by PRAVDA. The rest of you must be young or something. The Internet is the solution to this problem, and just needs to continue making a fool out of PRAVDA. I read the Internet and just watch the TV news to get pissed off at the PRAVDA. Hell we Internet readers are better informed than Congress itself, and we knew long before the war started that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Speaking of no Weapons of Mass Destruction, why is there no WMD’s in Iraq when nobody can say this administration is too honest to not plant them? I caught an Internet rumor years ago about a shipment of VX nerve gas that was stopped in November of 2002 from being smuggled into Iraq through Turkey. It was topped by the CIA through the Brewster, Jennings, and Associates front company headed by Valarie Plame. There are Internet rumors of Vice Presidential staff working with Turkey in secret before the war. The forged Niger Uranium documents came from that bit of espionage. Recently an Al Qaeda detainee admitted to training 9/11 hijackers in Turkey which I hear was what prompted Sibel Edmonds to give this interview to the London times since that was one of the facts her intercepts produced knowledge of, and she’s been gagged by the US government for her knowledge of this. What she knows might blow the lid off of this Turkey-Al Qaeda-Iraq connection with a finger pointing right at the office of the Vice President. The reason that lid isn’t getting blown off may also be the reason that the Valarie Plame affair never went past the obstruction of justice charge against Libby. Libby was protecting the Vice President. I’m sure whatever the story is, it’s better than fiction with that lid blown off.
Huffington Post gives Bradblog credit. Now that is a good thing!
Okay, here’s a doozy. Just when you thought things might start to get cleaned up, here come the real nutcases in charge
http://www.guardian.co.uk/nato/story/0,,2244782,00.html
Best Advice.
Write NYT, WAPO, etc etc and tell them you will no longer buy or read their papers or watch their tv crap because of their failure to report on Sibel. Tell them you’re sticking with McClatchey papers and Guardian UK. Who needs their corporate dog and pony show.
My guess is they have been threatened with isolation if they get to close. Wouldn’t want to loose that source for the WH spin would they.