NSA Spies On US Journalists
This piece does not require a tinfoil hat, just a thinking cap.
Eleven days before Andrea Mitchell asked author and NYT reporter James Risen whether he had any knowledge that the NSA had been spying on CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour, Wayne Madsen wrote: NSA spied on its own employees, other U.S. intelligence personnel, journalists, and members of Congress
Risen Targeted by NSA
According to NSA sources, the targeted journalists included:
- Author James Bamford, author of “Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency”; (see BooTrib ad for this book)
- New York Times’ James Risen, author of “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration”; (see BooTrib ad for this book)
- Washington Post’s Vernon Loeb
- New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh, (Hersh calls the Bush White House the most secretive administration he’s ever encountered. The Bush Adiministration was especially concerned that the American public was getting its pre-war intelligence from the likes of Hersh in an article he wrote in March of 2002 called: “The Debate Within” — The objective is clear–topple Saddam. But how?)
- Washington Times’ Bill Gertz
- UPI’s John C. K. Daly
- Wayne Madsen, who has written about NSA for The Village Voice, CAQ, Intelligence Online, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
(source: www.WayneMadsenReport.com)
Considering this list we might now ask, along with Andrea Mitchell, “Was The NSA Spying on CNN Reporter Christiane Amanpour?” And if not, why not? More on that question below.
Firstfruits: The Journalist Surveillance Program
The journalist surveillance program, code named “Firstfruits,” was part of a Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) program that was maintained at least until October 2004 and was authorized by then-DCI Porter Goss. Firstfruits was authorized as part of a DCI “Countering Denial and Deception” program responsible to an entity known as the Foreign Denial and Deception Committee (FDDC). Since the intelligence community’s reorganization, the DCI has been replaced by the Director of National Intelligence headed by John Negroponte and his deputy, former NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden.
(source: www.WayneMadsenReport.com)
Is Wayne Madsen a nut? Michael Froomkin doesn’t think so.
Michael Froomkin of Discourse.net on the reliability of Wayne Madsen:
Here’s the problem. I don’t think Wayne Madsen is a nut. I’ve met Wayne a few times over the years at privacy-oriented events. He’s sometimes rumpled, often a little intense, has a spook-like love for conspiracy theory (forgivable since he is a sometime spook himself). He’s definitely out there on the fringe where left meets right, and we’re not always on the same page politically, but I have found him to be very well informed.
CHENEY: The Post-Watergate Era Limited The Spying Powers Of The Executive: So We Have To Break The Law To Expand Them
The Bush Administration has been playing Constitutional poker in a room of mirrors. As much as they have tried to play it “close to the vest” the sloppiest player is George Bush, who admitted violating the law in warrantless NSA domestic spying. According to John W. Dean this is the first time a President has admitted to an impeachable offense. Attorney General Gonzales flaunts the law by saying, “We didn’t seek warrants because we wouldn’t have got them.” But Cheney dropped an ace on December 21 in remarks made to reporters on his return from a trip to the Middle East.
Cheney Defends Domestic Spying
Cheney says Bush’s decision to sidestep the courts and allow surveillance was an organized effort to regain presidential powers lost in the 1970s.
By Maura Reynolds
Times Staff Writer
From the Los Angeles Times
December 21, 2005WASHINGTON — President Bush’s decision to bypass court review and authorize domestic wiretapping by executive order was part of a concerted effort to rebuild presidential powers weakened in the 1970s as a result of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War, Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday.
Returning from a trip to the Middle East, Cheney said that threats facing the country required that the president’s authority under the Constitution be “unimpaired.”
“Watergate and a lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam, both during the 1970s, served, I think, to erode the authority I think the president needs to be effective, especially in the national security area,” Cheney told reporters traveling with him on Air Force Two. “Especially in the day and age we live in … the president of the United States needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired, if you will, in terms of the conduct of national security policy.”
NIXON’S SURVEILLANCE TARGETS: A REFRESHER COURSE
This is from a 1997 oped in the Houston Chronicle by Richard Ben-Viniste, written on the 25th anniversary of Watergate.
This is just a partial list of crimes by RMN:
the break-in at a psychiatrist’s office looking for information that could be used to smear Daniel Ellsberg, who had exposed the secret government history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers; the misuse of the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies to punish those on the president’s “enemies list”; the illegal wiretapping of journalists and members of Nixon’s own administration; the deliberate falsification of government documents to enhance Nixon’s political agenda; the proposed fire-bombing of the Brookings Institution as a diversion for the theft of records; the surreptitious surveillance of political opponents; and the willingness to use thugs to brutalize political protesters. Shadows of Nixon by Richard Ben-Viniste; Houston Chronicle, 1997
Well, that was then, and this is now.
When the NSA was established, in 1952, there were few legal limits on its power to spy within the U.S.
Then came the intelligence-gathering abuses of the Nixon years, when the NSA as well as the FBI were used by the White House to spy on civil rights and anti-Vietnam War activists. In 1978 Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (fisa), which required the NSA to obtain a warrant any time it sought to monitor communications within the U.S.
An explanation for the NSA’s reluctance to seek court approval may be that wiretaps of individual conversations are just one part of what the spy agency can do. It also has the technology to perform data mining, combing by computer through billions of phone calls and Internet messages and looking for patterns that may point to terrorist activity. That requires sifting through a mountain of individual communications to find the one that might lead to something. Under fisa, the NSA would have to obtain a warrant for each suspect phone number. Authorities argue that the fisa process is too slow to cover a situation in which a known terrorist calls a number in the U.S. not already covered by a fisa warrant.
Has Bush Gone Too Far?; TIME; January 1, 2006
KAREN KWIATOWSKI ON THE NSA DOMESTIC SPYING SCANDAL
William Pitt asks Karen Kwiatkowski what the NSA scandal means:
“It means we are in deep trouble,” said Kwiatkowski, “deeper than most Americans really are willing to think about. The safeguards of mid-1970s were put in place by a mobilized Democratic congress in response to President Richard Nixon’s perceived and actual contempt for rule of law, and the other branches of government. At that time, the idea of a sacred constitution balancing executive power with the legislative power worked to give the Congress both backbone and direction.”
“Today,” continued Kwiatkowski, “we have a President and administration that has out-Nixoned Nixon in every negative way, with none of the Nixon administration’s redeeming attention to detail in domestic and foreign policy. It may indeed mean that the constitution has flat-lined and civil liberties will be only for those who can buy and own a legislator or a political party. We will all need to learn how to spell ‘corporate state,’ which for Mussolini was his favorable definition of fascism.”
Radical Militant Librarians and Other Dire Threats
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 19 December 2005
HAS THE NSA BEEN SPYING ON CNN REPORTER CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR?
From Tom in NYC at AmericaBlogspot
NBC’S ENSOR: “Unfortunately this transcript was released prematurely. It was a topic on which we had not completed our reporting, and it was not broadcast on ‘NBC Nightly News’ nor on any other NBC News program. We removed that section of the transcript so that we may further continue our inquiry.”
This is quite big. Note exactly what NBC said.
- NBC did not say it pulled the references to Bush spying on Amanpour because it was inappropriate conjecture about something which Andrea Mitchell had no evidence.
- No, NBC said it pulled the references because it was still investigating the accusation and didn’t want to scoop itself before it was finished investigating. And make no mistake, NBC is “continuing their inquiry.”
- UPDATE: One more point. NBC did NOT delete the part of the interview preceding the Amanpour question – where Mitchell asks if any reporters are being spied on. They only deleted the follow-up question about whether Amanpour was being spied on. Thus, their premature release of info regarding an “ongoing inquiry” wasn’t about reporters generally – or they’d have deleted that part of the interview as well – they only deleted the Amanpour follow-up, suggesting that it’s the question of whether Bush spied on Amanpour that they have been, and are still, investigating.
That’s incredibly big news.
NBC has acknowledged that they have information to suggest that Bush may have spied (be spying) on CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and that NBC is currently investigating that very possibility. This isn’t just conjecture anymore, NBC has confirmed it.
From Talking Points Memo:
Talking Points Memo
January 05, 2006Despite the fact that it’s framed as a question, Mitchell inevitably becomes in some sense a fact witness for the underlying claim. She legitimizes the question and strongly suggests she has at least some evidence that it is true.
Okay, so someone at NBC screwed up. Mistakes happen. But the bell can’t be unrung.
In their response NBC confirms that they not only were but are in fact continuing to investigate whether Amanpour was in fact a target of one of these ‘wiretaps’.
Now, that really puts this into altogether different territory.
You wouldn’t just pull this Amanpour story out of your hat . To be even remotely credible, a claim like that would have to come from within the government.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: “CNN Intimidated By Bush Administration”
CNN War Reporting Intimidated by FOX and Bush Administration
September 14, 2003CNN’s top war correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, says that the press muzzled itself during the Iraq war. And, she says CNN “was intimidated” by the Bush administration and Fox News, which “put a climate of fear and self-censorship.”
As criticism of the war and its aftermath intensifies, Amanpour joins a chorus of journalists and pundits who charge that the media largely toed the Bush administrationline in covering the war and, by doing so, failed to aggressively question the motives behind the invasion.
Said Amanpour: “I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled. I’m sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did.”
“…All of the entire body politic in my view, whether it’s the administration, the intelligence, the journalists, whoever, did not ask enough questions, for instance, about weapons of mass destruction. I mean, it looks like this was disinformation at the highest levels.
In response to Amanpour’s statements:
Fox News spokeswoman Irena Briganti said of Amanpour’s comments: “Given the choice, it’s better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda.”
I think that just about sums up the question on Christiane Amanpour. She said that her efforts to report on the war in Iraq were intimidated by the Bush Administration and by FOX News, and Fox News called Amanpour a “spokeswoman for al-Qaeda.”
LET’S CALL IT A NIGHT, SHALL WE?
Just thought you might like a glance at Nixon’s resignation letter:
“Proceedings on the Impeachment of Richard Nixon”
Barbara Jordan’s Opening Statement to the House Judiciary Committee
July 25, 1974
“Today I am an inquisitor. I believe hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.”
“Who can so properly be the inquisitors for the nation as the representatives of the nation themselves?” (Federalist, no. 65).
Illustration of Nixon by: Laura Hendricks
.
Reads like a boy’s book on adventure.
Your excellent piece of work describes in novel form the dismantling of the U.S. Constitution by the remnants of RMN not rooted out in the Church era. Some characters returned: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Hadley to infest Junior’s administration.
I have promised to uphold the Constitution, to do what is right as God gives me to see the right, and to do the very best that I can for America.
I have asked your help and your prayers, not only when I became President but many times since. The Constitution is the supreme law of our land and it governs our actions as citizens. Only the laws of God, which govern our consciences, are superior to it.
As we are a nation under God, so I am sworn to uphold our laws with the help of God. And I have sought such guidance and searched my own conscience with special diligence to determine the right thing for me to do with respect to my predecessor in this place, Richard Nixon, and his loyal wife and family.
Gerald Ford on Nixon’s pardon – 8 September 1974
Shows exactly the extent of the coup d’etat by Dick Cheney in the period November-December 2000, after installing himself as Bush’s running mate. A historic mistake of global proportions causing havoc in the Americas, Europe, and throughout the Arab states of the ME.
Bush has lost his left-hand ally in Israel, which fits in his personal misfortune now befallen on the administration of grand evil. The Bush cabal advocated they would undo all Bill Clinton had wrought, when in fact they worked to undo seventy years of progress in America from the times of FDR.
A start of totalitarian dictatorship in Washington DC.
Thanks suskind for writing with such clarity, without sinking into too much of the details in history. Next generations will not judge kindly on the first decade of the 21st Century presented by Washington and the Republican Congress.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼▼▼ READ MY DIARY ▼
Unfortunately Wayne Madsen is considered a disreputable nut. I certainly hope that there will be a follow-up on this story:
Republican Senator Defends Briefings on Domestic Spying
New York Times
January 6, 2006
Also Thursday, 27 House Democrats sent a letter to President Bush asking for information about the National Security Agency eavesdropping program, including whether communications from or to members of Congress and journalists were intercepted.
J. Edgar Hoover With Supercomputers
Ray McGovern: Tom Paine; January 5, 2006
Another concern is that, among the groups of American citizens most likely to be sucked up by the NSA’s vacuum cleaner–because of the nature of their work and their international calls/contacts–are members of Congress and journalists. A key question that raises its ugly head is this: If hundreds of calls and e-mails involving Americans are being intercepted each and every day, and juicy tidbits are learned about, say, prominent officials or other persons, there will be an almost irresistible temptation to make use of this information. Former FBI special agent Coleen Rowley, who for many years monitored court-authorized electronic surveillances and wiretaps relating to organized criminal and drug conspiracy groups, recently underscored how much one can learn about someone by listening in on his/her private communications. She reminds us that the blackmail potential is clear.
And from last April:
Excellent post, Suskind. I posted a diary last night on the Amanpour mystery and I just updated it for the second time. I had never heard of “firstfruits” and when I first searched, all I could find was religious references. There has to be a reason that they named their spy program on journalists after a Jewish feast day. If names do continue to trickle out in connection with the firstfruits program, will journalists finally do more hard reporting of this administration? If this whole spy scandal doesn’t explode in this country then we know that almost all hope is gone for our democracy. I am becoming increasingly doubtful that this power hungry administration will ever give up power willingly. Can you honestly see them turning all these programs ( and almost unlimited power) to the Democrats?
That sketch of Nixon is great… it’s actually spooky. Any day now I expect Dubya to start to channel ‘ol Tricky Dick… “I am not a crook”.
Dear Nag,
For the rest of the story go to ACLU: The Government Is Spying On Us. This is a nightmare so bad most people are not willing to look at it. Or maybe they are too young to remember the climate of the Nixon administration and the dirty tricks they were involved in.
I’ll go read your diary now. We’ll live to fight another day.
Great link, thanks!!! I remember Nixon. I am frightened for our country like never before. Bush seems to have surpassed Nixon in lawbreaking. The endgame is coming for the Bushites. Why would they build such a domestic spy network just to give it away to their political enemies in the next few elections? I have a sinking nasty itch that is telling me these people will not go willingly.
Shall we fax bomb NBC asking why they pulled the question? We all know Andrea is a shill for Bush but this is beyond the pale. She finally asks a very important question and it gets pulled? I want answers and I want them now. These Fascists are out of control and unless we are willing to say Hell no…you can’t spy on anyone without a warrant we are never going to stop them….imho.
Look out Alito!
Hey Tracy! It is my New year new you mode! Take my country back or bust. Are you in?(not that I doubt that you’re not…lol)
The NSA is denying that they spied on any CNN reporters. In the course of gathering intelligence, they sometimes pick up conversations of American citizens, which they IMMEDIATELY destroy, don’t you know. …And I’m the Queen of France. (ooo la la)
Andrea Mitchell just blew all that sucking up to Bush with one real question. I bet right now the NSA even knows what kind of pizza she orders on the weekends.
My take on the Mitchell/Risen exchange:
Mitchell asked if Risen was aware of the NSA net being cast to include US journalists. Since the NSA program includes, apparently, all US calls overseas, journalists would truly be among the “firstfruits” caught in this net.
Risen said he didn’t know, wasn’t sure. Well, I think he was being cautious, and rightly so.
But when she named Amanpour in particular she was speaking journalist to journalist as an insider. Journalists get routinely spied on, but Amanpour in particular was an alarming question to ask.
Risen deflected and NBC redacted. Again, rightly so. Why? Because until it was confirmed it was the wrong thing to ask. Unfortunately as it was a transcript and it looked like a Winston Smith (1984) cut, paste, scrub and rewrite job. Not done too smoothly.
Just like my saying that these journalists WERE spied on by NSA is the wrong thing, because it is not yet confirmed by other sources. (Wayne Madsen is not regarded as a credible source.) But there you have it.
That NSA denies it has spied on any CNN reporters is small comfort, if any comfort at all.
Why would that question be a wrong question to ask?
You say that journalists routinely get spied on so why is it wrong to ask about any one in particular?
It was irresponsible.
She was asking Risen to confirm some “inside information.” She was asking Risen to lend his credibility to what was something she picked up somewhere. The only thing to do was to decline. “No comment,” is the narky way of answering a question like this.
It was a question that was going to create a firestorm, if not put out quickly.
And, something Mitchell should have thought of as her first consideration, it was going to cause any amount of grief and hassle to Christiane Armanpour.
That sounds exactly like what Amanpour had serious concerns about in the matter of censorship. I think that the type of question that’s easily declined in answering is exactly the kind that should be asked. What good is a journalist that only asks ‘proper’ questions or those most people already have answered. Is this question better than asking about that possibility with Peter Arnett?
She should have asked Armanpour, but the chances of that are now nil.
I agree that this is exactly the question that should be asked, but it was inappropriate and irresponsible in this forum, a live interview, and of this journalist, Risen.
Mitchell was trying to put him on the spot. Risen declined.
In better circumstances, Mitchell might have got an answer to her question, but her sources would have had to be protected.
This story is just too volatile to be handled in the way that Mitchell tried to do it.
I would say that it happened exactly as it should have. Given the history of intelligence and/or military involvement at CNN, Amanpour’s marriage to a former State Dept official who was also a key memeber of both Clark’s and Kerry’s campaigns and her own prior assignments all lead to that question being relevant. A nonanswer is fine but asking that question is important.
How can we differentiate between Risen’s right to comment on others’lives proper or improper when that is the basis of his book? Doesn’t that also apply to Mitchell?
I think that if I’m invited to dinner and dare ask the hostess ‘if she would like to fuck’, to be a better example of an irresponsible question.
I think Mitchell was irresponsible and behaving unethically. Unprofessionally, too, for that matter. However, her question was every bit as valid as you say.
This is the latest from John Conyers:
I understand the connections but I’m having trouble understanding what condemns Mitchell’s question as irresponsible and/or unethical.
Is this an example of prostituting policy for profit but not being serious about anything other than marketing? We don’t know for sure that it’s not all an agreed publicity stunt to sell books.
You’re made of tough stuff.
“Is this an example of prostituting policy for profit but not being serious about anything other than marketing?” I suspect that this is true, but on Mitchell’s end rather than Risen’s.
I didn’t say condemn, and I think that’s too strong a word. I said irresponsible, unethical and inappropriate. (I probably said more than this)
BILL MOYERS:
The Ethics Of Journalism:
Honest Journalism A Form Of Honorable Behavior
Those are great philosophies but I don’t think we’ve seen much of that in many, many years. Actually, I think the folks at AmericaBlog and TPM both got a little carried away and read too much into it. The trouble is, we have been the recipient of so much deception by the media and government that any detail of doubt is subject to intense scrutiny. I used to turn to those names (traditional news and MSM sources) I knew for the first understanding of what was going on. Now, I’m afraid none of them carry much measure of credibility.
The perception management has gone too far and shrunk ethics down to a size that a Muppet could drown it in a bathtub.
Will answer on the left, as I get uncomfortable too far over on the right.
He has sources within the Pentagon that these people wanted to silence and get rid of.
You’ve got it, kiddo !!
Now I didn’t have time to go through the whole list, but just taking Bamford, Risen and Hersh and what they have written about: Bush’s Secret Govt and the Management of Intelligence, one could almost say that if the NSA was not spying on them they wouldn’t have been doing their job.
What I mean is this. Journalists are intelligence agents. They are on the front lines of intelligence gathering. Journalists are FREE intelligence agents, that is when they are free and when there is democracy.
“I would humbly offer that if we give people the knowledge, the republic will be saved. The media is the only entity in America that has complete freedom to hold government accountable.”
Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind, case: Branzburg v. Hayes
This whole horrorshow of the Bush years has been about managed and controlled intelligence. Phony planted stories, phony planted journalists, journalists paid off, and journalists intimidated, as Armanpour said. And for every lethal disaster we have the phrase “INTELLIGENCE FAILURE.” Whenever I hear that phrase I think it means just plain ignorant. And you and I know whenever we hear “INTELLIGENCE FAILURE” it means civilian casualties. Sometimes in the thousands.
The problem is that when you have free agents mixing it up with controlled agents you’ve got to get the whole thing co-ordinated to present a unified front to the American people. And that’s what FOX News is meant to do, along with USA Today, and a host of other media outlets.
The only thing a corrupt Administration can do is to curtail the freedom of the press. This is so simple to see. But, evidently, too frightening to understand. It boils down to this: with a corrupt regime we are not free. This is a short-circuiting of the American identity.
But as long as you have the Sy Hershes, the Helen Thomases and, in a previous time, the I.F. Stones… it’s just not going to work. The flaw in the rhetoric becomes so obvious, the lies are so blatant that the people smell a rat. That’s where we are now.
And getting rid of the rats is where we are going. But it takes some real guts. It WILL cause Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
People move against corruption because they feel it threatens their well being somehow. And ‘people’ typically means not so much voters as prominent leaders and institutions in society.
I think the trends at the top end of the economy and population are such that they’re outgrowing the traditional consequences of corruption. I think they’re also outgrowing their dependence on the masses of people, especially philosophical support by the people.
Till I see it proven otherwise, I conclude there is no tipping point. The world I see is stable in the way it’s being run now, and for countless reasons is unstable in a condition of enlightenment or democracy.
The organizations mentioned above seemed particularly creepy in a 1984ish sort of way. Even after several readings, I wasn’t sure whether they were real or whether you were making up snarky names for government agencies. (I’d prefer the latter.)
.
Conspiracy? No, it does truly exist … wow!
FA34 – Strategic Intelligence Officer
4) The Denial and Deception Advanced Studies Program, sponsored by the Foreign Denial and Deception Committee. The FDDC is a member of the National Intelligence Council. The DDASP is designed to create a cadre of certified counter Denial and Deception specialists within the intelligence community. The program consists of four courses taught at the JMIC in Washington, DC; two offsites; a one year research project or thesis, and an oral defense of the project or thesis.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Tell me Oui, do you think George Orwell had any sense of humor when he wrote 1984?
This quote of yours would be laughable, if it didn’t hurt.
DISINFORMATION IS EXPENSIVE !!
Suskind, you are on a roll!!!!!!!!! I just love it when someone can pull the ends of things together and make sense of it.
Thanks again for all that you are doing. I think Mitchell is such a media whore that she can not remember her humble beginnings. Must be who she married or something such as that, anyhow….:)
You are right on your description of how Risen handled the circumstances. That put the monkey back on Andrea’s back, now did’t it??!! Wonder how the producers are handling this with Christine. I hope she considers some legal action on her behalf against Andrea. Would serve Andrea right for backstabbing her in the first place, in from of the whole world. Oh something like libel or slander would be nice to hear about…..:o) I do not like Mitchell one bit! I can see through her, she is so transparent! Same thing for that woman over on fax too….
Thanks again for going after the truth. I applaud you!
Yes, I think we can hold Bill Moyers as a standard-bearer for these great philosophies.
But if “we haven’t seen much of that in many, many years” it’s because:
My professor of literature said once: “There’s nothing good or bad that ever disappeared from this world…. it only went underground.”
I found a great article last week by George Will. If I was a typical leftie, I wouldn’t even read George Will, and I would be drummed out of the core for praising him…. however I’m one of the lucky ones. I am a liberal, which means to me… generous, open-minded. (At least I try to be.)
Byrone Calame, the Public Editor at the New York Times who is leading the attack on the paper’s management for sitting on the NSA story for a year — well he came from a 30 year career with the Wall Street Journal…. how straight can you get? And I think he’s top of the heap, I really do. And yes, I find some of these qualities of what is honorable in journalism in him.
As to AmericaBlog and TPM I definitely do not think they were reading too much into it. Mitchell was trying to break a story. Just for herself. And she was using Risen to do it, and it didn’t work. And she was using Arampour. She was exploiting a situation,(his book promotion interview) for her purposes. It caused embarrasment to the station, so she really screwed up.
“The perception management has gone too far and shrunk ethics down to a size that a Muppet could drown it in a bathtub.”
Now here, I think, is the meat of the matter. This goes back to books written in the 50’s and 60’s. One was “The Hidden Pursuaders.” (Vance Packard?) It’s all about the uses of psychology to sell… a product or a program or a platform. And another one… “The True Believer” by Eric Hoffer. A longshoreman, an immigrant, wrote a brilliant book about how not to get sucked in to the prevailing belief systems of the powers that be…
Sorry I went on for so long, how very rude!
But you’re a very sharp cookie !!
Thanks for bringing us back from that far-right drift. I understand what you’re expressing and actually agree with most of it. We part ways on the responsibility of readers to demand more of journalists as an excuse for them to compromise the readers’ trust. If they can be swayed that easily then they are not truly journalists. That’s the integrity I’m referring to being gone.
Those of us who seek out differing opinions and further information are not average voting citizens. Much as all voters should be informed, it should not be a game of hide and seek the truth to find it and become educated on matters of government.
I dislike politics and I’m only in this far because our leadership was so awful and I felt that the normal news sources and popular authors were not being honest with the vital information. It turns out after much research that this deception has been going on far longer than most will ever realize. It has allowed unsubstantiated claims to go unchallenged and accepted as fact, later to be used for indefinite confinement with all due process eliminated.
If I’m shopping for a product and it’s apparently shoddy quality or incomplete then I’ll pass right by and not consider that product again. It’s not my place to demand quality from a professional when it should be a natural component of their work.
You’re brilliant, rumi.
I can only offer you this little present from your namesake:
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.
(Which is to say I have to reread again what you are saying and give it a good long ponder.)
Thanks but I can only explain it as some bastard somewhere must be doing that channeling thing again. I’m not all that shar…..hey,… O’Reilly’s on!
By the way, 3 out of 5 hostesses do say yes after the shock of impropriety wears off.
You go do your O’Reilly and get loads of dinner invites while I “frame” my answer…. because I am thinking this game of hide and seek to find the truth behind appearances has something to do with Plato’s cave…. so you KNOW it’s getting late.
But think about this:
You lived during the time when an American president said:
“If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator,”
GWB; December; 2001
Future generations will not get the joke here. I don’t get the joke here. And I didn’t get the joke today when I read on Fox’ news site when they called the ACLU a “jihad.” And I didn’t get the joke up above when the Fox spokeswoman called Amanpour a spokeswoman for Al-Qaeda.
And I agree with you about the “dumbing down” of the American public, and the de-evolution of journalism is part of that. I look at a film made by Charles Chaplin, “The Great Dictator” (1940) and I think “What is going on? What are the times I’m living in?” There is nothing today to compare with that film.
Some things do not change.
Christiane Amanpour:
AMANPOUR (voice-over): This is Iraq through the eyes of a child…
AMANPOUR (voice-over): On calm days, like this, with traffic banned and streets empty for the election period, children have a chance to be outside and feel safe. They can, at last, be children, playing soccer and riding bicycles.
But these days are rare, and the little ones tell us they’re afraid of the explosions and the killing. Anmar, though, is feisty. Perhaps, it is his way of surviving this madness.
AMANPOUR: Well, it is, because, first of all, the danger. For everybody, it’s difficult to go out.
And — and people have been quite scared to have reporters in, to have cameras in. They don’t want to be targeted. For instance, this family, I didn’t want to go out in the street and film outside their house, because they — they said they had just moved. They didn’t know who the neighbors were. They were afraid. They didn’t want to make too big a show of themselves.
Everybody is sort of trying to keep themselves, keep to the people they know, because nobody knows where the crime and the danger comes from.
I don’t catch movies as soon as they come out as a norm. It’s nothing against the industry but just the way my life is. I like movies, both good and bad because it gives my mind something to work with. I have a restless mind.
One night a few weeks ago, I happened to catch one about 2am while simultaneously surfing and drowning in netreality. She was a sweet suburban housewife with kid, husband and I think a teaching career. She ws happy in her life until something caught her attention and dragged an old life up to conciousness. As she struggled with the split and seperate personalities, it came to be a prior career as an intelligence operative was emerging. I’ve always liked Geena Davis and pairing her up with Samuel L Jackson as an innocent bystander to help her out was a nice mix.
She flipped back and forth at various times, usually as a reaction to a trigger stimulation. She didn’t have any choice when it happened and even tried to fight it off. If I had seen this movie when it came out in 97 or so, I would not have appreciated it like I did that night. I’ve since looked for reviews and found some mixed ones and some interesting background on the screenwriter, but I liked the plot. The pivotal scene was relevant to today and dramatic. She was still in teacher/mom mode and the bad guy had to know what she sincerely remembered. The bad guy, by the way, was working a plan to set off tanker filled with bad stuff as a WoT act and blame Islamic terrorists. His plan was to do this because Congress had denied almost all funding for the defense industry.
Anyway, back at the old mill, TBG (the bad guy) ties mom/spook to a wooden water wheel and prepares to rotate her below the surface ubtil near death, presumably to liberate any repressed memories she might possess. Now, I’m not into anything degrading, humiliating or nonconsentual but the sight of that woman tied to a water wheel, soaking wet, in white, finding a new person inside of her mind, was in an odd way, somewhat exciting. Geena Davis pulled off that scene with what I can assume to be a stunning reality. The life or death survival instinct triggered a switch and she had all the fire in her eyes of someone else.
Watching TBG enjoying the power he had over not just her life but her entire psyche made me see a hint of how fucked up these people in this line of work can get.
So anyway, at the end of the movie, she ties this scarf on her head, dons dark glasses and heads off in the convertible…..identical to the oicture of Valerie Plame in 2003. Maybe everyone else has made that connection but having seen it for the first time, now, gave me chills.
The weavery of hollywood-media-government-fiction-intelligence all combined have indeed given us a reality of the owners’ choice.
I think the NSA spies on journalists to get ideas to write screenplays. It’s all the same.
I think I prefer films, photos, and everything in black white and shades of grey. Got to sleep now, talk to you tomorrow.
Thanks for the great conversation and please don’t think I watch O’Reilly.