Wow. I could have predicted this. Gerald Posner, the guy who got all the publicity during the thirtieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination for his awfully misleading book “Case Closed,” is now chums with Karzai’s bro–you know, the one the NYT just said was receiving CIA help.
But how stupid is Posner? Or worse, how stupid does he think we are?
Given the situation, I wouldn’t have led with this, as Posner did:
Early Wednesday morning at nearly 1:00 A.M., I checked my email for a final time and saw notice of a newsbreak from The New York Times that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and the man often called the Pablo Escobar of the country’s heroin trade, has been on a CIA payroll for the past eight years. I immediately called him.
I reached him on his private cell number.
Where do you think Posner got that number? The phone book? The local drug store? Of course he got that through contacts at CIA. Why would he get that number? Because the CIA trusts him.
And if the CIA trusts him, we definitely should not! If there’s one thing we don’t need, it’s yet another reporter whose real agenda is to promote the CIA.
Has Posner always been this chummy with the Agency?
Um, yeah. Where have you been?
One of his earliest books was a novel called “The Bio-Assassins” and featured a Cold War CIA oldie fighting a bureacratic newbie in the changing CIA. Guess who wins? I don’t really have to answer that, do I? The old fart, the one willing to break any law to do what needs to be done, in his view.
Another of his early books was about Mengele. He received wide praise for this, but some not so widely distributed criticism. Essentially, the book is an apologia that attempts to explain why the poor ol’ CIA just couldn’t find Mengele to bring him to justice. It reads like the cover story it probably is. If the CIA really wanted to find him, they could. They found Che Guevara in the Bolivian jungle, for Chrissakes. They cold have found Mengele, if they had the will. They could have found Bin Laden, long ago, too, if they had the will.
And of course, I won’t bother to bore you with the many wrongs in Posner’s awful book on the Kennedy assassination, “Case Closed.” But if you’re curious, read this article, by an actual historian, Professor David Wrone: http://www.assassinationscience.com/wrone.html.
The reason I included Keith Olbermann in the title is because Olbermann is a fan of Posner’s, and has had him on his show many times. Every time he does, my opinion of Olbermann’s intellect goes down. I hope someday Olbermann opens his eyes about this guy, before Posner lowers his credibility even further.
