AP, June 29, 2011: Informed sources, citing highly classified documents, have told Associated Press reporters that United State’s Navy Seal Team 6 has finalized plans for a raid on Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan compound in the neighborhood of Kakul, 40 miles outside Islamabad (see photos and exact address). CIA insiders (we’ve promised not to identify them) have told Associated Press that the attack is planned for 1AM, May 2nd. Other U.S. forces will be involved with perhaps as many as 75 or more commandos according to our government sources.
Here, thanks for our CI (confidential informant) is how the raid has been drawn up. These are satellite photos and diagrams of the 7 walls of varying height (note the barbed wire) that will likely come into play during the raid. Our sources tell us that two-dozen Seals will be helicoptered into the compound location 2.5 miles from the center of Abbottabad.
Observers will want to track the path (see diagram) to the compound from the staging base in Jalalabad in Afghanistan. AP plans real-time radar tracking as U.S. helicopters approach, much like tracking Santa Claus at Christmas-time. Several types of arms will be utilized, including Heckler and Koch 416 carbines, Heckler and Koch MP7’s and assorted military assault rifles such as AK-47’s. We at AP were further informed that navigators would use Hyperspectral Imagers. This piece of equipment is currently classified, but we’ve managed to get Patent Office copies from an unidentified employee, that reveal the Imager’s inner-workings. Reference the end of this article.
Occupants of the compound will want to be on the lookout for 2 U.S. helicopters that will hover directly above the courtyard and the roof as Seals lower ropes upon which to climb into the facility. Residents should be forewarned that the CIA plans to cut power in the area, leaving the compound in the dark while the American forces will have Panoramic Night-Vision Goggles. The hovers should happen shortly after 1 AM. Entry will then be forced and any resistance will be responded to with deadly force. It is preferable that bin Laden be captured alive, but as our CIA source told us, “If he gets nicked, he gets nicked.”
I’ve written these ridiculous fictionalized paragraphs to point out just how absurd and fictionalized the current AP and Fox News “scandals” really are. There is no scenario where the above story would find it’s way onto a media platform, pre-raid. And that’s the point of the government investigating the logistics of leaking a different incident involving a terrorist and heavily laden with classified information and reported by the Associated Press when the long-standing news organization should have known better.
Let’s start with Fox News. This one goes back to a two-day review of a reporter’s email and 5 phone toll records, after Justice requested and was granted a search warrant by a federal judge (yes, that’s how it works. The buck stops at the judge). Fox reporter, James Rosen reported in a June 11th 2009 Online article that the CIA had learned of unannounced actions inside North Korea in reaction to outside sanctions. Rosen identified the actions as relating to uranium enrichment and the test launching of an ICBM missile. At the same time a White House official refused to comment, “The U.S. Government never speaks publicly about intelligence.”
It’s patently clear that U.S. intelligence officers didn’t want the daffy leadership of the late Kim Jong-Il of North Korea to know that they knew. It’s also clear to anyone not running a Republican propaganda network that if a source (the now-indicted Stephen Kim, ex-State Department employee) would allegedly give Fox these critical pieces of information, it was open season on all classified government secrets that the source could access.
Besides, in its February, 2011 reporting on the massive WikiLeaks data release, Fox quoted Holder as saying that the publication of the documents by WikiLeaks was a crime that should be prosecuted. “The State Department cables, in particular, embarrassed U.S. Diplomats and could expose their contacts to reprisals.” Leaks? Publication? Crime? And Fox brass was surprised?
Ailes and Murdoch have known about all this for several years, saving their “scandal” for release at just the right political moment.
As for AP, the move was far more comprehensive; two months worth of records were subpoenaed from 20 different office and personal phone lines of several national security reporters, reporters from the House gallery and editors. About a half-dozen individuals are of primary interest to the administration, but 100 AP personnel had access to the phone, so the right bandies that number about as if all 100 are “targets.”
The AP story centers around an al Qaeda terrorist potential airline bomber, Saudi intelligence and Yemen. Attorney General Holder called the leak one of the most serious he’s ever seen; “It put the American people at risk, and that’s not hyperbole.” AP and Fox are funny. There isn’t a genuine investigative reporter within a million miles of either operation. But you get some disgruntled snitches spilling their guts and the resulting ill-considered stories bringing a reaction from the administration and these two organizations are all over it.
Keeping terrorists at bay is an enormous challenge. Giving G.W. Bush his due, Bush and Obama intelligence networks, local and worldwide, often with help from numerous foreign agencies, have broken up dozens of plots a week. If most of the logistics of tracking and foiling potential catastrophes were headlined by AP and Fox every day, there’d be a hell of a lot of dead Americans. On the other hand, we all know of the Bush decade-long warrantless access to international calls and emails.
I’ve been a media guy most of my life. I’ve been accorded no special dispensation. Courts seal endless records yearly. Media can’t name a person killed in an accident until next of kin are notified. Law enforcement repeatedly asks reporters to embargo stories and sit on facts that would let the bad guys escape. There are tons of records state governments won’t let the media near; school, medical, psychiatric.
As far as that horrible president and his DOJ posse, there are at least 4 enabling pieces of federal legislation allowing for the government’s “scandalous” actions. And most states can snoop away as well.
The best defense is a good offense. As long as the right-wing keeps pumping up pretend “scandals”, nobody will take a serious look at the most incompetent bunch of Republican non-achievers in the modern history of the republic. Nobody but PoliticusUSA and a handful of progressive Websites that is!
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