Guest Post by Glenn Greenwald
NBC News and MSNBC specialize in repeating and disseminating what U.S intelligence officials tell them to say and then calling that servitude “reporting.” Those two networks really are the all-but-official outlets for CIA messaging. And this status has led their brightest on-air stars to broadcast a series of extremely consequential stories that turned out to be humiliatingly wrong.
This stenographic and highly jingoistic practice of mindlessly reciting the whispered claims of anonymous “intelligence officials” is what notoriously led the New York Times and other leading U.S. media outlets to deceive the country into believing Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz’s fairy tales about Iraqi WMDs and Jeffrey Goldberg’s tales about Saddam’s alliance with Al Qaeda.
But while many of those outlets apologized for that behavior and vowed to avoid it in the future, NBC and MSNBC have committed themselves to it with greater vigor than ever, as evidenced by the increasing prominence of their national security reporter Ken Dilanian, whose entire career has been defined by repeating what the CIA tells him to say – and has thus been plagued by one embarrassing false story after the next.
On Friday, veteran national security reporter William Arkin announced his departure from those networks, blasting them as stenographic servants of the security state agencies and pro-war propaganda. Noting that ex-generals and CIA officials dominate the NBC/MSNBC airwaves, Arkin wrote: “in many ways NBC just began emulating the national security state itself – busy and profitable,” adding: “the national security leaders and generals we have are allowed to do their thing unmolested.”
We now have what might be the most vivid, reckless and dangerous illustration yet of how NBC and MSNBC functions. If their behavior weren’t so journalistically shameful and destructive, this would be darkly humorous.
Last September – on the symbolically meaningful date of September 11 – NBC and MSNBC breathlessly trumpeted what they regarded as a major exclusive scoop: that Russia is “the main suspect” in what the network called “mysterious attacks” that led to “brain injuries” in U.S. personnel in Cuba.” They put CIA loyalist Ken Dilanian on the air to explain – based, needless to say, on the script given to him by intelligence officials who, as always, are shielded from accountability by them with anonymity – that “sophisticated microwaves or another type of electromagnetic weapon were likely used on the U.S. government workers” and that it was Russia which likely engineered the attack. Watch their dramatic scoop in all of its glory:
It would be impossible to parody that. Permit me to highlight my favorite line from Dilanian: “The other interesting thing that we’re reporting here is that one of the technologies used to injure these American spies and diplomats was some kind of microwave weapon, that is so sophisticated, that the Americans don’t even fully understand it.” Yes: those poor American CIA officials who are such innocent naifs that they are not even aware of the latest developments in villainous technological weaponry.
Throughout the day, MSNBC hyped its exciting scoop about the mysterious attack on the U.S. “diplomats” (peace-seeking “diplomats” in Cuba presumably do things like create fake Twitter networks to lure young Cubans into receiving U.S propaganda encouraging them to destabilize their own country).
One six-minute segment led by Andrea Mitchell – who began the report by announcing that “intelligence officials now believe that Russia is the leading suspect, and it was no accident.” – featured Bush/Cheney Deputy National Security Adviser Juan Zarate (who now, needless to say, works for NBC News as an “analyst”) along with reporter Josh Lederman, who said Russia’s guilt is “now more than just a theory. They’re the main suspect.” And, he said, Russia’s guilt is “backed up by” interceptions of Russians’ communications.
As this discussion unfolded, the graphic on MSNBC’s screen was crafted for its most sensationalistic expression: Russia is the “main suspect” in the “brain injury attacks” on American diplomats:
Mitchell then invited Zarate to explain the real significance of this story, and the former Bush/Cheney official-turned-NBC-analyst obliged: “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 just part of Moscow’s increasing aggression, including in South America, “yet another vector of attack from the Russia.”
Mitchell, with her sternest voice tone, underscored how villainous this all was: “This is not an accident. This is not a microwave listening device gone bad. This is an attack — against American diplomats and intelligence officers, and this was targeting.”
That night, on NBC News’ nightly broadcast, Mitchell condensed all these scary developments for the network news audience:
So for the last four months, thanks to NBC News’s eagerness to mindlessly repeat whatever CIA officials tell them to say, Americans were led to believe that Russia purposely caused serious “brain injuries” in dozens of U.S. “diplomats” – spies acting under diplomatic cover – through dastardly electromagnetic or microwave weapons that are so sophisticated and devious that not even the most advanced Pentagon scientists could understand what new horrific horrors the Kremlin had inflicted on peace-loving Americans.
Some media outlets expressed skepticism of NBC’s claims. Buried way down deep in an 11,000-word November article in from the usually hawkish-on-Russia New Yorker was this note of caution:
In September, NBC News reported that U.S. intelligence agencies considered Russia to be the main suspect, citing evidence from communications intercepts. But intelligence officials, in interviews with The New Yorker, insisted that they still had no evidence of Russian complicity.
So while NBC claimed that U.S. intelligence agencies had intercepted communications between Russian officials where they acknowledged their guilt for this attack, those same agencies insisted to the New Yorker “that they still had no evidence of Russian complicity.” Did any of that make MSNBC or NBC go re-visit their story and tell their viewers of this rather significant doubt raised by the New Yorker? Do you even need to ask?
Instead, NBC and MSNBC used hours of airtime and numerous pages to spread highly inflammatory claims across their numerous media platforms, all blaming Russia for an extremely serious attack on the U.S. – all because their CIA masters told them to do it. This is what NBC and MSNBC are, their function and mission:
An @NBCNews exclusive: After more than a year of mystery, Russia is the main suspect in the sonic attacks that sickened 26 U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials in Cuba. @MitchellReports has the latest. pic.twitter.com/NEI9PJ9CpD
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) September 11, 2018
And, needless to say, journalists from other mainstream outlets accepted these claims on blind faith, as exemplified by this Daily Beast reporter:
Wow >> U.S. has signals intelligence linking the sonic attacks on Americans in Cuba and China to *Russia* https://t.co/FbNla0vu9W
— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) September 11, 2018
One U.S. Senator used the NBC report to urge that Russia be classified as a “terrorist” state:
Following NBC report about sonic attacks, @SenCoryGardner renews calls for declaring Russia a state sponsor of terror https://t.co/wrnubfecom
— Niels Lesniewski (@nielslesniewski) September 11, 2018
That the NBC/MSNBC storyline suffered a major hit this week is a rather dramatic understatement. Two scientists, Alexander Stubbs of Berkeley and Fernando Montealegre-Z of the UK’s University of Lincoln have published their findings about one key part of the evidence about this incident, under this title:
I have been to Cuba, but I never left the resort, (until it was time to fly home of course). 🙂
This is fucking hilarious. That these nbc pukes can stand before us and claim impartiality lays bare the rank hypocrisy of the entire ‘news’ facade. The end must be near.
Crickets. Christ!
Russian crickets!
NBC/MSNBC are the Titans of Fake News. Make note of their claims on a daily basis, and presume the opposite is true. Exception: Investing and the stock market. These numbskulls are clueless on investing.
They’ve apparently identified the offending cricket. It is the Anurogryllus Celerinictus. And it wouldn’t be a good post without the noise this cricket makes. If I had to listen to it for any length of time, it’d make me mental 🙂
Hear it here: https://entnemdept.ifas.ufl.edu/walker/buzz/492a.htm
More MSM Dain Bramage.
So let me get this straight… The US Government, through its all-encompassing Affirmative Action and Diversity Hiring Practices, manages to hire a bunch of brain damaged retards. After a very short period of time, none of their peers in the various departments can stand being around them because they’re a bunch of fucking retards. So they are transferred out and given State Dept credentials, flown to faraway shitholes, and left to rot in an embassy somewhere since they’re not bad enough to be fired but too retarded to do any real job correctly. Then these people hear some crickets – a rare thing indeed in the Blue City projects since most of them are eaten by the much larger cockroaches or the occasional brown toddler – and lose their shit because they ain’t heard no fuckin’ crickets like that in Deeeetroit befoe’. All of a sudden, the retardation and brain damage that’s been there the whole time is now identified on a scan they previously couldn’t afford due to Obamacare being such a pile of shit wrapped in a shit tortilla, so these retards get lifetime disability and other bennies while the presstitutes get a new angle to play in the Russia Did It! game. It takes almost a year before anybody notices it was just a bunch of retards that got through on diversity hires and weren’t worth a fuck to start with. Yep. That’s the country I swore to protect and defend right thar.
Makes more sense to me than anything that’ll end up on teevee.
Americans seem to be in a contest to see who can be the most disgusting. When did tattoos, obesity, and debt become attractive?
The entire US seems to be committing suicide.
WTF?
Print what we say!
-CIA Heart Attack Gun
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I spent two years in Cuba as a U.S. official. I never heard a cricket and they certainly did not damage my brain or disturb my sleep. In fact, I never heard a single cricket in two years that I can remember. Sorry, Greenwald. This time you have been taken in by a leftist Berkeley professor trying to clear the Cubans and their friends of this.
The Cuban Communists are brutal killers and would not hesitate to use a sonic weapon (which the Russians and Chinese surely have) against out diplomats. They have done much worse, believe me. A the time I was there we believed the U.S. Interests Section (now the embassy once again) was being “flooded” with microwaves by the Cubans. This stuff is nothing new.
What has likely happened is that radical hard-liners in the Cuban Communist Party allied to the infamous Ministry of the Interior joined with some foreign entity to pull this off. The objective? Stop the gradual improvement in relations with the U.S. , which is supported by Rasul Castro, a Communist but a pragmatic, rational one. His base is in the Cuban military.
I have personal experience of what the Cubans can and have done. Please spare me the cricket bullshit.
To the two folks who voted my note down, on what basis did you do that? Have you lived in Cuba? Have you served as a U.S. diplomat there? No, you haven´t, so your opinions mean jack shit.