One should not just lie. One should lie aggressively and tactically (Scott Horton)

[kpete]

Department of Malicious Falsehoods
BY Scott Horton
PUBLISHED February 23, 2008

They knew, and I knew, and Hersh knew that their statement was dishonest. Why would the Department of Defense issue a grossly false statement like that and then proceed several steps beyond it, assaulting the integrity of one of the nation’s premier exposé journalists?

But it soon became clear that this was a sort of art form for them. The calculus seems to be utterly Rovian: one should not just lie. One should lie aggressively and tactically. But what about the reputation of the Defense Department for truth-telling? Isn’t that an asset worth preserving? No, that counts for nothing in their view. Or perhaps they view it as something that is expendable in the interests of the current political tenants.

And a bit later, Jane Mayer was working on a story that eventually became “The Memo,” the tale of the heroic struggle of Alberto Mora, the former General Counsel of the Navy, to challenge the torture regime that was being installed in Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, largely under pressure from Vice President Cheney and his then-legal counsel (now chief of staff) David Addington. I had been working with Jane to be sure she understood some of the more technical legal points that came up and to help her track down sources for her piece. As it was all done, she went to the Public Affairs Office for comments. They delivered a lambasting, suggesting that points in her article were ridiculous speculation with no basis in fact. What they didn’t know, of course, was that Mayer had the memo itself and a slew of other documents, and that Mora had given several detailed interviews on the underlying facts. Public Affairs simply assumed, yet again, that they could lie prolifically, aggressively, and perhaps sink or curtail the story. I hoped that the New Yorker would at some point publish the totality of the comments that Public Affairs gave. It would provide good insight into the workings of the office. For whatever reason they decided not to do so.

And then a third incident occurred relating to Newsweek. Mike Isikoff ran a tiny little blurb relating to an incident recorded in a report into abuses at Guantánamo. It recorded a Qur’an being thrown in a toilet. When this appeared, Public Affairs launched a massive attack on Newsweek which was clearly coordinated with wingnut bloggers and right wing radio. They sought to vilify Newsweek and to attack Isikoff, questioning their patriotism and professional credentials and vehemently denying the reports. In fact just about everyone in the press community remembers that—for a while it was called the Newsweek factor. What few people remember is that when the report eventually leaked out, it turned out that Isikoff had it wrong. Indeed, the incident was actually worse than what he described. It involved a prison guard urinating in a way so that his urine would drop onto a Qur’an. The incident was investigated and the guard was punished. So the Public Affairs office response was once more something of which a totalitarian society could have been proud. They engaged in sweeping deceit, and it paid off beautifully.

Then we come to a case I was directly involved with. A CBS cameraman named Abdul Amir Younis Hussein was seized in Mosul, Iraq, where he had shot footage of an attack on a Stryker. In fact Congress was that week going to hold a hearing looking at whether the Stryker performed to specifications, and CBS had been very eager to get footage of the attack on the Stryker. But the CBS cameraman was shot, his camera was taken, and he was held—ultimately for a year. Suddenly out of the Pentagon arose a story, reported in hushed and worried tones by Barbara Starr of CNN and others. A Public Affairs spokesman speaking not for attribution said the Pentagon was extremely disturbed about this CBS cameraman. He had been seized with a camera which had footage of four attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq in a manner that showed he had prior knowledge. This flared in the news, and served as a pretext for the U.S. forces to hold Abdul Amir in prison for a year. He was then charged, and I handled his defense. I pressed the Pentagon and the Iraq Command immediately for the return of the camera and tapes from it. They refused, and refused even to allow me to examine these materials until several hours before his trial. When I finally secured them, I discovered—and the court discovered—that the statements by the anonymous Public Affairs spokesman were a complete fabrication. There was only 20 seconds of material on the camera, and it fully corroborated the cameraman’s account. He was fully acquitted, with the judge stating that not a scintilla of evidence against him had been offered. I asked local military authorities where the report about the tape footage with the four incidents had come from. “Not here,” they insisted. “That was all out of the Pentagon Public Affairs office.” So who was the Public Affairs spokesman who fabricated and spread this outrageous lie that put a journalist in prison for one year for no reason? I suspect I know who he is.

.......................


more at:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002481

[DemReadingDU]

1. Important to read the entire article

from the article

Sen Obama: I heard from an Army captain, who was the head of a rifle platoon, supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24, because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition; they didn’t have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.

So is Obama’s statement true?

And here’s what Phil Carter, who served as a captain in Diyala Province in 2006, had to say about the claim:

Really? U.S. troops using captured weapons and ammunition? Is that true? That’s been the basic thrust of the emails I’ve received. In a word: yes.

edit to add last paragraph from article...
So next time you see a report from Pentagon Public Affairs characterizing the reporting of a journalist or commenting on some question from a political debate, remember the source, and treat any words offered with suitable skepticism.

[Faryn Balyncd]

2. K & R #4 . . . . . . . First rate documentation . . .

[lonestarnot]

3. And practice over and over at it so one is good at it!

:banghead: