Blogged On Aug 21, 2013 5:40 AM, "Eugen Leitl" <[email protected]> wrote:
> > How very surprising. > > http://harpers.org/blog/2013/08/anatomy-of-an-al-qaeda-conference-call/ > > Anatomy of an Al Qaeda “Conference Call” > > Dubious sources feed national-security reporter Eli Lake a fraudulent story > for political purposes — once again > > By Ken Silverstein > > Share Single Page > > Cartoon by C. Clyde Squires (September 1907) > > Two years ago, following the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, > a > number of journalists wrote dramatic accounts of the Al Qaeda leader’s last > moments. One such story, co-authored by Eli Lake in the Washington Times, > cited Obama administration officials and an unnamed military source, > described how bin Laden had “reached for a weapon to try to defend himself” > during the intense firefight at his compound, and then “was shot by Navy > SEALs after trying to use a woman reputed to be his wife as a human > shield.” > > It was exciting stuff, but it turned out to have been fictitious propaganda > concocted by U.S. authorities to destroy bin Laden’s image in the eyes of > his > followers. Based on what we know now, the SEALs met virtually no resistance > at the compound, there was no firefight, bin Laden didn’t use a woman as a > human shield, and he was unarmed. > > The White House blamed the misleading early reports on the “fog of war,” > but > as Will Saletan pointed out in Slate, “A fog of war creates confusion, not > a > consistent story like the one about the human shield. The reason U.S. > officials bought and sold this story is that it fit their larger indictment > of Bin Laden. It reinforced the shameful picture of him hiding in a mansion > while sending others to fight and die. It made him look like a coward.” > > Many reporters uncritically rushed the government’s account into print. For > Lake, though, it fit a career pattern of credulously planting dubious > stories > from sources with strong political agendas.[*] > > [*] I should disclose that Lake and I aren’t on friendly terms. We were > until > a few years ago, when I received a tip that led to a 2011 story showing > that > Lake, who regularly praised the government of the former Soviet republic of > Georgia, was a close friend of one of the country’s Washington lobbyists, > and > that the lobbyist sometimes picked up his bar and restaurant tabs. After > the > story was published, Lake and his friends, some of whom had flown to > Georgia > on junkets paid for by the same lobbyist, took to Twitter to denounce me. > > Which brings us to the news story that Lake and Josh Rogin broke for the > Daily Beast last week, in which they reported that the “crucial intercept > that prompted the U.S. government to close embassies in 22 countries was a > conference call between al Qaeda’s senior leaders and representatives of > several of the group’s affiliates throughout the region.” The story said > that > among the “more than 20 operatives” on the call was Ayman al-Zawahiri, who > the piece claimed was managing a global organization with affiliates in > Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Other Al Qaeda participants involved in > the call reportedly represented affiliates operating in Iraq, the Islamic > Maghreb, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Sinai Peninsula, and Uzbekistan. > > The sources for the story were three U.S. officials “familiar with the > intelligence.” “This was like a meeting of the Legion of Doom,” one told > Lake > and Rogin. “All you need to do is look at that list of places we shut down > to > get a sense of who was on the phone call.” > > The piece also cited Republican senator John McCain, who drew a predictably > grim conclusion from the news. “This may punch a sizable hole in the theory > that Al Qaeda is on the run,” he said. “There was a gross underestimation > by > this administration of Al Qaeda’s overall ability to replenish itself.” The > story was picked up widely, especially on the right. On his show, Rush > Limbaugh charged that the Obama “regime” had leaked the story for political > gain. “They leak it,” he explained, “so as to make Obama look big and > competent and tough and make this administration look like nobody’s gonna > get > anything past them.” > > Then a number of respected national-security journalists began to question > the motives of the leakers, and to cast doubt on the story generally. Ken > Dilanian of the Los Angeles Times suggested that the piece was intended to > glorify the NSA’s signals-intelligence capabilities. Barton Gellman of the > Washington Post said there was something “very wrong” with the whole thing. > New York magazine got in on the act by parodying the notion of an Al Qaeda > conference call. > > Despite this tide of doubt and ridicule, the Daily Beast didn’t correct the > story, though Lake and Rogin made statements that seemed designed to alter > its meaning. “We used ‘conference call’ because it was generic enough,” > Lake > tweeted. “But it was not a telephone based communications.” In another > tweet > he informed Ben Wedeman of CNN, “This may be a generational issue, but you > can conduct conference calls without a telephone.” (Actually, you can’t, at > least according to the dictionary. Moreover, the “Legion of Doom” source > had > specifically called it a “phone call.”) > > In a follow-up story published the day after the original article, Lake > wrote > that at the request of its sources, the Daily Beast was “withholding > details > about the technology al Qaeda used to conduct the conference call.” The > suggestion was that the story had omitted information to keep terrorists > from > knowing too much about U.S. intelligence operations. But as Dan Murphy of > the > Christian Science Monitor noted, “If a conference call of some sort took > place, then the participants know full well how they did it. And the moment > they see a news report that says the United States was listening in to the > call, they’re going to shut that means of communication down.” Others > wondered why, given the worldwide uproar about National Security Agency > spying, Al Qaeda would risk gathering all of its top operatives for any > form > of simultaneous multiparty communication. > > Lake’s past is instructive here. He was an open and ardent promoter of the > Iraq War and the various myths trotted out to justify it, contributing to > the > media drumbeat that helped the Bush Administration sell the war to the > public > and to Congress. He reported on Saddam Hussein’s close ties to Al Qaeda and > his stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and he championed > discredited > con man Ahmed Chalabi, head of the CIA-backed Iraqi National Congress > (INC), > who promised that Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops “as liberators” and said > there would be little chance of sectarian bloodshed after the invasion. > Bogus > INC material found its way into at least two of Lake’s pieces, including a > December 2001 National Review story in which he argued that, with the > Taliban > defeated in Afghanistan, the United States should consider military action > against Iraq, Somalia, and Yemen. “There are very good arguments why all > three should be the next target,” he wrote. “Iraq after all has been > developing nuclear and biological weapons in underground wells and > hospitals, > according to Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a defector interviewed by the > New > York Times. One of the 9/11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta, met with Iraqi > intelligence officers in Prague in April.” > > Even Dick Cheney later acknowledged that the latter story, which was > trotted > around endlessly by war advocates, had never been confirmed. And the New > York > Times report to which Lake was alluding, published the day before his piece > came out, was written by Judith Miller, a serial fabricator whose reckless > Iraq War reporting effectively ended her career as a respectable > journalist. > > As Jonathan Landay and Trish Wells of Knight Ridder reported a few years > later in a look back at that period, the INC by its own admission gave > “exaggerated and fabricated” pre-war intelligence to journalists to promote > the invasion of Iraq. “Feeding the information to the news media, as well > as > to selected administration officials and members of Congress,” Landay and > Wells wrote, “helped foster an impression that there were multiple sources > of > intelligence on Iraq’s illicit weapons programs and links to bin Laden. In > fact, many of the allegations came from the same half-dozen defectors.” > > By 2004, even Chalabi and the Bush Administration had conceded that Saddam > didn’t have WMD stockpiles. “We are heroes in error,” Chalabi told the > Daily > Telegraph. “As far as we’re concerned we’ve been entirely successful. That > tyrant Saddam is gone.” > > Yet for years, Lake continued to doggedly pursue his belief that Iraq had > WMDs, writing pieces (again using questionable sources) claiming that > Saddam > had in fact possessed large quantities of these weapons, but that Russia > had > snuck them across the border into Syria on his behalf shortly before the > U.S. > invasion. In a 2006 piece for the New York Sun, he reported that David > Gaubatz, a former special investigator for the Pentagon, said he’d found > four > sealed underground bunkers in Iraq “that he is sure contain stocks of > chemical and biological weapons.” But, Lake reported, when Gaubatz asked > American weapons inspectors to look into them, he was “rebuffed.” > > Military authorities may have rebuffed Gaubatz because he showed signs of > being unhinged. Two years after Lake’s story appeared, Gaubatz wrote a > now-scrubbed post about Obama at jihadishere.blogspot.com that read, “We > are > now on the verge of allowing a self admitted ‘crack-head’ to have his > finger > on every nuclear weapon in America.” In 2009, he published a book entitled > Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize > America. > > In recent years, Lake has, using similarly tainted sources, continued his > hunt for Saddam’s WMDs and carried water for those seeking a hard-line > American approach toward Iran. And now we have the Al Qaeda conference > call. > > Thus far no major media outlet has confirmed Lake and Rogin’s story. U.S. > officials told Bloomberg News that reports of a conference call were > incorrect, while CNN reported that it had “learned that the al Qaeda > leaders > communicated via some kind of encrypted messaging system, with multiple > points of entry to allow for various parties to join in,” adding, > “officials > continue to insist . . . that there was no traditional conference call.” > > The thrust of Lake and Rogin’s initial report — that Al Qaeda leaders got > together to discuss strategy by phone — was false. The pair then > effectively > retracted the key element of their story by relabeling the call a > “non-telephone communication” while failing to acknowledge the error or > that > at least one of their sources — the Legion of Doom quipster — was either > ignorant of the facts or a liar. They even went on to claim that they’d > been > vindicated by the CNN report, which explicitly refuted their original > account. > > Lara Jakes and Adam Goldman at the Associated Press appear to have reported > the embassy-closure story more accurately yesterday, also challenging the > veracity of the Daily Beast article in the process. The AP story said that > the “vague plot” that led the U.S. government to shut down American > diplomatic posts may have resulted from comments made by jihadists on > encrypted Internet message boards and in chat rooms — which is nothing new > — > and that it was “highly unlikely” al-Zawahiri was personally part of the > chatter or that he would “ever go online or pick up the phone to discuss > terror plots.” > > But just as in the case of the raid that killed bin Laden, the bogus story > was better than the truth. A less sensational story would not have provided > fodder for John McCain’s preposterous remarks on the renewed strength of Al > Qaeda (or for the broader political exploitation of the story by the > right), > nor would it have provided political cover for the NSA, as Ken Dilanian put > it. > > No matter. The Daily Beast’s sources must be pleased with their handiwork, > and with the reporters who bought it. > -- > Liberationtech is a public list whose archives are searchable on Google. > Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: > https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. > Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at > [email protected].
-- Liberationtech is a public list whose archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at [email protected].
