Renowned journalist and attorney Glenn Greenwald, who in June 2013 published in The Guardian Edward Snowden’s revelations about the PRISM surveillance program and other National Security Agency programs classified as top secret, has highlighted in an article in his The Intercept digital publication, the role of NBC and MSNBC as arms of the CIA to put together the story of the alleged attacks received by officials of the US Embassy in Cuba.Cubadebate offers its readers this interesting article:
NBC and MSNBC blamed Russia for using “sophisticated microwaves” to cause “brain injuries” in US “diplomats” in Cuba. The culprits were probably the crickets.
by Glenn Greenwald
NBC NEWS and MSNBC specialize in repeating and disseminating what US intelligence officials do. they tell them to say and then call that servants “servitude”. Those two networks are really the official media of the CIA. And this state has led its brightest stars in the air to broadcast a series of extremely important stories that proved humiliating.
This stenographic and highly patriotic practice of reciting without thinking the statements whispered by anonymous “intelligence officials” was what notoriously led the New York Times and other American media to trick the country into believing Dick Cheney’s fairy tales and Paul Wolfowitz on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Jeffrey Goldberg’s stories about Saddam’s alliance with al Qaeda .
But while many of those media apologized for that behavior and vowed to avoid it in the future, NBC and MSNBC have pledged to do so with more vigor than ever, as evidenced by the growing prominence of their national security reporter Ken Dilanian, whose Full career has been defined by the repetition of what the CIA tells you – and therefore has been plagued by one embarrassing false story after another.
On Friday, veteran national security reporter William Arkin announced his departure from those television stations , criticizing them as stenographic servers of state security agencies and pro-war propaganda. Noting that ex-generals and CIA officials dominate the NBC / MSNBC waves, Arkin wrote: “In many ways, NBC began to emulate the state of national security itself, occupied and profitable,” adding: “The national security leaders and generals that we have are authorized. to do their thing without being disturbed. “
Now we have what could be the most vivid, reckless and dangerous illustration of how NBC and MSNBC work. If his behavior was not so destructive and shamefully journalistic, it would be like black humor.
Last September, on the symbolically significant date of September 11, NBC and MSNBC relentlessly announced what they considered an exclusive scoop: Russia is “the main suspect” in what the network called “mysterious attacks” that led to “injuries brain. “ in the US staff UUin Cuba “. They put CIA loyalist Ken Dilanian in the air to explain it, based on the script given by intelligence officers who, as always, are protected from anonymous accountability: “It is likely that microwaves were used sophisticated or other type of electromagnetic weapon in the workers of the US government. “And that it was Russia that probably designed the attack. Look at his dramatic scoop in all its glory:
It would be impossible to parody that. Let me highlight my favorite Dilanian line: “The other interesting thing that we report here is that one of the technologies used to hurt these American spies and diplomats was some kind of microwave weapon, which is so sophisticated, that Americans do not even I UNDERSTAND COMPLETEly. “ Yes: those poor American CIA officials who are so innocent that they are not even aware of the latest developments in villainous technological weaponry.
Throughout the day, MSNBC promoted its exciting scoop on the mysterious attack on US “diplomats”. UU (The “diplomats” who seek peace in Cuba presumably do things like create fake Twitter networks to lure young Cubans to receive US propaganda and encourage them to destabilize their own country.)
A six-minute segment led by Andrea Mitchell, who began the report by announcing that “intelligence officers now believe that Russia is the prime suspect, and it was not an accident,” said Bush / Cheney Deputy National Security Advisor, Juan Zarate (who needless to say that he now works for NBC News as an “analyst”), along with reporter Josh Lederman, who said that Russia’s fault is “now more than a simple theory. They are the main suspect. “ And, he said, Russia’s fault is “backed by interceptions of Russian communications.”
As this discussion developed, the graphic on the MSNBC screen was designed for its most sensationalist expression: Russia is the “main suspect” in “brain injury attacks” against US diplomats:
Mitchell then invited Zarate to explain the real meaning of this story, and the former Bush / Cheney official turned NBC analyst responded: “The Cold War never ended for many in the Cuban government, including parts of the Russian government, including President Putin. “Zarate warned that this attack is only part of Moscow’s growing aggression, including in South America, “another vector of Russian attack.”
Mitchell, in his harshest tone of voice, stressed how evil all this was: “This is not an accident.This is not a microwave listening device that has broken down. This is an attack, against US diplomats and intelligence officials, and this was the goal. “
So, for the past four months, thanks to NBC News’s eagerness to repeat without thinking what CIA officials tell them to say, Americans were led to believe that Russia intentionally caused “brain injuries” in dozens of “diplomats.” “Americans, spies acting under diplomatic cover – through electromagnetic or microwave weapons that are so sophisticated and twisted that even the most advanced Pentagon scientists could not understand what horrible new horrors the Kremlin had inflicted on peace-loving Americans. .
Some media outlets expressed skepticism about NBC’s claims. Buried deep in a November 11,000-word article by the usual hawk on Russia New Yorker was this warning note:
In September, NBC News reported that the US intelligence agencies UU they considered Russia the main suspect, citing evidence of communications interceptions. But intelligence officials, in interviews with The New Yorker, insisted they still had no proof of Russian complicity.
Then, while the NBC claimed that the US intelligence agencies UU they had intercepted the communications between the Russian officials where they recognized their guilt for this attack, those same agencies insisted to the New Yorker “that they still did not have proof of the Russian complicity”. Did this make the NBC revisit its history and tell its viewers this significant doubt raised by the New Yorker? Do you still have to wonder?
In contrast, NBC and MSNBC used broadcast hours and numerous pages to spread highly inflammatory claims on their numerous media platforms, all blaming Russia for an extremely serious attack in the United States, all because their CIA teachers told them that do. This is what NBC and MSNBC are, their function and mission:
And, needless to say, journalists from other mainstream media accepted these claims of blind faith, as exemplified by this Daily Beast reporter:
A US senator used the NBC report to urge Russia to be classified as a “terrorist” state:
That the NBC / MSNBC story has suffered a major blow this week is a pretty dramatic understatement. Two scientists, Alexander Stubbs of Berkeley and Fernando Montealegre-Z of the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom, published their findings on a key part of the evidence on this incident, under this heading:
In 2017, the Associated Press obtained and published recordings of sounds that embassy staff complained about listening to. Instead of being the byproduct of some kind of Bond villain weapon cooked in the Kremlin laboratories, the scientists concluded that the sounds match those of a specific species of Caribbean crickets during the mating season:
As shown here, the call song of the short-tailed cricket of the Indies (Anurogryllus celerinictus) combines, with nuanced details, AP recording in duration, pulse repetition frequency, power spectrum, pulse frequency stability and oscillations per pulse. . . . This provides strong evidence that a cricket call with echo, rather than a sound attack or other technological device, is responsible for the sound in the released recording. While the causes of health problems reported by embassy staff are beyond the scope of this document, our findings highlight the need for more rigorous investigation into the source of these ailments, including possible psychogenic effects, as well as the possible physiological explanations not related to sonic attacks.
One of the scientists, Dr. Stubbs, emphasized the certainty of his findings in an interview with the New York Times: “I can say quite definitely that the recording released by AP is of a cricket, and we believe that we know what species it is “ The villain behind the noises is the short-tailed male cricket of the Indies, shown below in what NBC News will soon be able to use as his snapshot of Interpol:
The first line of the AP report of 2017 on the noises heard by US personnel. UU in Cuba he suggested that the perpetrators may not be Putin’s scientists, but tropical insects: “it sounds something like a mass of crickets,” AP said of the sound recorded by embassy staff. None of these warnings ever made its way to NBC’s scaremongering over Russia.
In fact, contrary to the sensational MSNBC screen graphics, serious doubts have been raised about whether US “diplomats” in Cuba even suffered brain injuries. As The Guardian Science editor Ian Sample reported in August: “The claims that US diplomats suffered mysterious brain injuries after being attacked with a secret weapon in Cuba have been questioned by neurologists and other brain specialists.”
The Guardian referred to “four separate letters to the Journal of the American Medical Association from” groups of physicians specialized in neurology, neuropsychiatry, and neuropsychology “that” described what they believed were major flaws in the study “commissioned by the US government. . UU., Which originally claimed that brain injuries had been detected. All of these experts insisted that the original doctors “misinterpreted the test results, overlooked common disorders that might have made embassy officials feel sick or dismissed psychological explanations for their symptoms.”
These doubts coincide with the vehement denials not only of the Cuban officials, but also of the best neurological specialists in Cuba, that any type of brain injury would have been demonstrated. In May, The Guardian noted that “some scientists have questioned whether even attacks occurred and say that the wide variety of symptoms reported by embassy staff could be explained by a series of common medical conditions or psychological factors in the stress environment where the staff works. “
In addition, Luis Velázquez, the neurologist who serves as president of the prestigious Cuban Academy of Sciences, “asked the national academies of science of EE. UU and Canada to conduct joint scientific research to examine the evidence behind the alleged attacks. “
But in the jingoistic world of NBC / MSNBC, the statements and claims of the bad country officials, those that the United States government does not like, should not be assumed to be false but should be ignored completely. Only the statements of officials of the noble intelligence agencies of the United States of America, with their well-deserved reputation for truth and integrity, should be treated as Truth and expanded without criticism throughout the world.
None of these recent revelations constitutes evidence that exonerates Russia or denies that an attack has taken place. It is possible that all neurology specialists who are independently opposed to the study commissioned by the US government. The United States, which claims that “brain injuries” existed, is simply overlooking clear evidence of neurological damage. It is possible that the culprit is not the sound identified by the spies of the USA. UU or, as the NBC calls them, “diplomats.” It is possible that Putin and his insane KGB scientists have taken advantage of the ability to control the short-tailed male crickets and make them emit mating sounds that damage the brain and target the enemies of Moscow. All this is possible.
But what is certain is that the reports sustained, extravagant, non-critical, breathless, subservient to the CIA, of the TV figures of NBC and MSNBC – attributing the blame for an obviously serious attack to a power with nuclear weapons that they have spent two years trying to show how a serious threat to the United States, with very few warnings or doubts, was reckless, dangerous and journalistically unethical. And it’s just the latest in a series of attempts by the US media to scare people about Russia by making attacks launched by the Kremlin that never happened: from invading Vermont’s power grid and using news sites leading to infiltrate American minds with the Kremlin’s propaganda. hack C-SPAN to take control of the waves and hacking electoral systems in 21 states.
So far, not a single NBC or MSNBC reporter who promoted the story that Russia did (Ken Dilanian, Andrea Mitchell, Josh Lederman), has bothered to tweet these scientific findings that, at least, raise serious questions about the accuracy of their huge and highly consistent history that they repeatedly promoted. This is how the American media works: sensationalist stories produce massive benefits, while there are zero consequences, or even an obligation to recognize error, when they are doubtful even false.
MSNBC used this terrifying story for one of its “analysts,” a former Bush / Cheney national security official, to declare that “the Cold War never ended for many in the Cuban government, including parts of the Russian government, including President Putin. “ The fact that the United States is in a New Cold War, or has never abandoned the latter, is clearly a prevailing orthodoxy among prominent figures in the American media; This week, Washington Post columnist Anne Appelbaum invoked classic Cold War clichés to declare that “Moscow may be about to become, once again, an imperial capital with full rights, absorbing and governing in multiple countries. “
It is bad enough to be so reckless with such dangerous rhetoric. But when all this is achieved through the most scandalous “report”, repeating without thinking what the anonymous intelligence officials tell the journalists to say without a breath of evidence, then it is clear that the same journalistic pathologies that led the Front-page reports of Saddam’s nuclear reserve and the alliance with Osama bin Laden continues to shape corporate journalism today, particularly on NBC and MSNBC.
(Taken from Cubadebate )
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