THE BUSH REGIME’s CAMPAIGN TO SILENCE THE MEDIA
By Kenneth J. Theisen, 8/25/06
The Bush regime has regularly attacked the media to silence
exposure of its crimes. It fears the light of day being shed on its actions
like any rat that prefers to operate in the dark. In Iraq
and Afghanistan, reporters
have become “collateral damage” in U.S. attacks because they expose
the daily crimes of the regime in those wars.
Aljazeera journalists have been a favorite target in those two
countries. During the war in Afghanistan in 2001, Aljazeera’s Kabul office was the target of 2 U.S. “smart bombs” even though Aljazeera had
specifically given the location of the office to U.S. forces so no “accident” would
occur.
On April 8, 2003 the U.S.
attacked journalists” sites in Baghdad.
Aljazeera correspondent Tariq Ayyoub was killed when the Aljazeera Baghdad
headquarters was targeted. Immediately
after, 2 cameramen, working for Reuters and Telecinco respectively, were killed
when a U.S. tank fired on Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel
which housed more than 200 hundred foreign correspondents. These journalists were not “embedded” with U.S. forces. For those who may have forgotten, “embedding”
was the idea of the Pentagon to control media coverage of the Iraq
attack. Reporters were stationed with U.S. forces
where they could be “controlled.”
But many reporters refused to be embedded to the
consternation of the Bush regime. After
Ayyoub’s death the message was made clear to non-embedded reporters by U.S.
Central Command in Qatar
which issued a veiled threat to the media.
“Central Command has repeatedly warned media representatives that Baghdad would be a
dangerous place to be if the coalition engaged the Iraqi regime in combat.”
Iraq
has proven to be a dangerous place for journalists. As of this month, according
to Reporters without Borders, at least 100 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the
start of the war. Several of these have been victims of Coalition forces. Reporters
have also been arrested by U.S.
forces. In one outrageous case, CBS cameraman Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein was
first shot by U.S. troops
while filming a ceremony at Mosul
University. He was then
charged with recruiting insurgents and incarcerated at Abu Ghraib prison. After
being held for a year, he was finally released when an Iraqi court found that
there was no evidence against him. His release followed the earlier release of
2 Reuters” journalists who were held for several months by Coalition forces without
ever being charged.
Attempts to silence the media go all the way to the oval
office. According to British newspapers,
the Guardian Unlimited and the Daily Mirror, a leaked Downing
Street memo put the blame where it belongs for these attacks. According to these paper’s websites,
President Bush discussed with Tony Blair the idea of bombing Aljazeera’s
headquarters in Doha, Qatar at a meeting on April 16,
2004. At the time, the Bush and Blair regimes were outraged at the coverage of
the Iraq
war by Aljazeera which showed the real costs of war in pictures of dead
civilians.
The White House response to these reports of the meeting was
a one liner – “We are not going to dignify something so outlandish with a
response.” While the White House was
trying to suggest that no such conversation ever occurred, the British admitted
the existence of the memo and the conversation when a Downing
Street spokesman stated, “We have got nothing to say about this
story. We don’t comment on leaked
documents.” Another government
spokesperson suggested that Bush was just being “humorous, not serious.” But a Daily Mirror source declared, “Bush was
deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language
used by both men.” Another confirmation
of the memo is the fact that Cabinet Office civil servant David Keough was
accused of passing the secret memo and charged with violating the Official
Secrets Act. To put the entire story to
rest, the British Attorney General then threatened the media with prosecution
under the Official Secrets Act if they revealed the contents of the memo – end
of story.
But war zones are not the only places where the Bush regime
fears independent media coverage of its crimes. Here in the U.S. the regime
has also issued warnings to the media on a regular basis. A few of the threats from the regime are
highlighted here.
One of the first warnings after 9/11 occurred at a White
House press briefing by Ari Fleischer, the president’s official media
flak. In answer to a question about
remarks made by Bill Maher on his TV show, Politically
Incorrect, Fleischer warned Americans, “that they need to watch what they
say, watch what they do.” Shortly thereafter the show, despite high ratings,
was cancelled.
Perhaps the most famous case of trying to intimidate the
media and those who expose Bush lies is the Joseph Wilson leak story. Wilson
had an op-ed to the New York Times published on July 6, 2003. He concluded
“that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was
twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.” His charge carried weight as he was a
former U.S.
ambassador and had directed African policy for the National Security
Council. He had been sent to Niger to investigate an alleged sale to or
attempted purchase of uranium yellowcake by Iraq. He discredited the allegations,
thus undermining one of the key charges made by the Bush regime against Iraq. Bush had even referenced it in his 2003 State
of the Union speech. The White House went into full attack mode against Wilson. His wife was exposed as a CIA agent in order
to discredit him. While no one has been
charged with the leak, “Scooter” Libby, the right hand of Dick Cheney, was
indicted for the cover-up of the leak.
In another high-level attack by the administration, on May
21, 2006, Attorney General Gonzales appeared on ABC’s This Week. He was asked if journalists could be
prosecuted for publishing classified information. He responded by saying, “There are some
statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to
indicate that that is a possibility.” He
was also asked about the investigation into the leaks to the New York Times
that led to the revelation of the National Security Agency’s surveillance of
phone calls and emails. He responded, “We are engaged now in an investigation
about what would be the appropriate course of action in that particular case,
so I’m not going to talk about it specifically”We have an obligation to enforce
the law and to prosecute those who engage in criminal activity.” During the
interview he also admitted that the Bush administration would not hesitate to
track phone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leaks investigation.
The regime has also attacked the independent media. The most recent example is the case of Josh
Wolf. Mr. Wolf is a San Francisco freelance journalist
incarcerated in federal prison. On July
8, 2005 he was recording a video of a demonstration against a G8 conference. At some point, a burning mattress was
allegedly put under a police car.
According to specious argument of the Federal prosecutors, this
constitutes a federal crime since the San Francisco Police Department receives
some federal money.
A federal grand jury was convened and on February 1, 2006 a
subpoena was issued for Mr. Wolf’s unaired videotapes of the demonstration. Wolf claims that none of his tapes show any
footage of the alleged crime. He cited a reporter’s right to withhold
unpublished material and refused to testify or to turn over the tapes to the
federal government. Under California’s “reporter’s
shield law” he may have been successful.
But this case is being brought by the U.S. government, not by the state,
and we know what the Bush regime thinks of the first amendment right of a free
press.
On August 1, 2006, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup
found Wolf in contempt of court. Josh
Wolf was taken into custody and transported to prison where he could be
incarcerated until July 2007 when the grand jury’s term expires unless he
complies with the subpoena. Under the
peculiarities of federal law a new grand jury could be convened next July and
that jury could also issue a subpoena and the whole process could repeat.
Wolf is trying to protect an important right that the Bush
regime has shown it despises – that of a free and independent press. Mr. Wolf
is protecting the right to withhold unaired and unpublished work of journalists
from the government. If reporters are
compelled to turn over this material, they will not be able to report the news.
Every reporter will be viewed as an arm of the government. No one will talk to a reporter as what you
say or what the reporter records will in effect “belong” to the government.
In August, in recognition of the importance of this case and
others where the federal government is trying to lock up reporters, the California legislature
unanimously passed a resolution calling on Congress to enact a federal shield
law for the protection of journalists.
Forty-nine states have such laws, but there is no such federal
protection.
But the Bush regime also knows what is at stake and that is
why they are so aggressive in this case and others where they have jailed
reporters. They want to intimidate the
media and anyone who may wish to talk to the media.
(As I write this article, a news report out of New York indicates
another attempt to suppress access to the media. Javed Iqbal, who runs HDTV Corp. was arrested
on charges that he conspired to support a terrorist group by providing U.S. residents
with access to Al-Mansar, a satellite channel allegedly run by Hezbollah. This appears to be the first time anyone has
been accused of violating U.S.
laws by enabling access to a news outlet.)
Fortunately the Bush regime has not been completely
successful in its attempt to utilize the media to hoodwink the people of the
world. One of it attempts backfired on
the administration when it was exposed. The Los Angeles Times reported that the
Pentagon had a contract with the Lincoln Group to disseminate U.S. propaganda
in Iraqi media. (“U.S.
Military Stages Media Offensive in Iraq,” 11/29/05) Lincoln Group operatives, posing as freelance
reporters or advertising executives, delivered stories (secretly written by U.S. military
personnel) to Iraqi media outlets which were often paid to run the stories. The
same Times story claimed that the “Information Operations Task Force” under the
command of Army Lt. General John R. Vines also took control of an Iraqi radio
station and purchased a newspaper “and was using them to channel pro-American messages
to the Iraqi public.”
The exposure of this attempt to disseminate U.S. propaganda
followed the 2001 creation of the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI). After February
2002 news reports that OSI was going to plant false news stories in the
international media, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld announced the decision to close
the office. But the regime was not deterred. On November 18, 2002, Rumsfeld stated in a press briefing that
the OSI was closed down only in name and that the activities of the office
continued. He stated, “And then
there was the Office of Strategic Influence. You may recall that. And ‘oh my
goodness gracious isn’t that terrible, Henny Penny the sky is going to fall.’ I
went down that next day and said fine, if you want to salvage this thing, fine
I’ll give you the corpse. There’s the name. You can have the name, but I’m
gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have.”
Despite the
attempts to silence or otherwise use the media, the crimes and outrages
of the regime are so obvious that even the mainstream media is often forced to
cover them. These have included the
torture and murders at U.S. run prisons, Katrina, the murders of civilians in
Iraq and Afghanistan, the spying on Americans, and countless others. We have courageous journalists such as Josh
Wolf and others who risk their lives, their livelihood and even their freedom to
cover the news. We have the internet where virtually anyone can “report” the
news. We also have the ability and opportunity
to make news where even the most right-wing news outlets have to acknowledge our
actions.
October 5th
is one such opportunity. If enough
people take concerted action on that day to take on the Bush regime, even Fox
will be forced to cover it. As the call
for Oct 5 states,
“Imagine if,
from out of this huge reservoir of people, a great wave were unleashed, moving
together on the same occasion, making, through their firm stand and their
massive numbers, a powerful political statement that could not be ignored:
refusing that day to work, or walking out from work, taking off from school or
walking out of school — joining together, rallying and marching, drawing
forward many more with them, and in many and varied forms of creative and
meaningful political protest throughout the day, letting it be known that they
are determined to bring this whole disastrous course to a halt by driving out
the Bush Regime through the mobilization of massive political opposition.
If that were
done, then the possibility of turning things around and onto a much more
favorable direction would take on a whole new dimension of reality.”
If we do this, we will be on the pages of the New York Times, on the
network news broadcasts and on the internet websites. We can and must change the world. We can
drive the Bush regime from power. Oct 5 is critical to this effort. The world
can’t wait!
Kenneth J. Theisen is an organizer
with THE WORLD Can’t WAIT! DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME! He frequently writes about the crimes of the
regime.