Syria and Mission Creep, Obama, War, Bin Ladem

THE ABSURD TIMES

Too Much BS in the World

By

Papa Yaga

Illustration: Osama – buried at Sea?

This is a transcript of the interview Amy Goodman did this week with Seymour Hersch.  He is a very worthwhile journalist and exposes many things that we knew but could not prove.  Some are a bit strange, but then we have given a whole new meaning to "strange" this Century and it looks as if this will continue, only accelerate.

This link has been retweeted greatly on Twitter, reliked to an amazing degree on Facebook, and generally made the rounds.  However, I promised to make the transcript available here as well and so here it is.

There is only one thing I find even more strange.  Remember there was no sign of Bin Laden's dialysis machine where he was supposedly captured and then "buried at seas with full Islamic funeral" stuff, ya da da da.  This after carrying the machine over the mountains of Afghanistan for years, if you will remember.  Now Hersch has him in Saudi Arabia, or so it seems.  Everything seems to go well until the end when he suddenly seems to forget who said what to him when, or doesn't want to say, and so on.  Amy said they would continue off the air, but I have yet to find that clarification  If I do, I'll send it around.

 

President Obama has announced the deployment of 250 more Special Operations troops to Syria in a move that nearly doubles the U.S. presence in the country. This comes just days after the Obama administration announced 217 more troops would be sent to Iraq to help in the fight against the self-proclaimed Islamic State. As the U.S. expands its presence in Iraq and Syria, we speak with the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who has just published a new book titled "The Killing of Osama bin Laden." In the introduction, Hersh writes: "It's now evident, fifteen years after the 9/11 attacks, that Obama's foreign policy has maintained many of the core elements of the Global War on Terror initiated by his predecessor—assassinations, drone attacks, heavy reliance on special forces, covert operations and, in the case of Afghanistan, the continued use of American ground forces in combat. And, as in the years of Bush and Cheney, there has been no progress, let alone victory, in the fight against terrorism."

---

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We're on a 100-city tour marking Democracy Now!'s 20th anniversary. Today, we're broadcasting from the Roundhouse, the Santa Fe, New Mexico, Legislature, here in Santa Fe.

President Obama has announced the deployment of 250 more Special Operations troops to Syria in a move that nearly doubles the U.S. presence in Syria. This comes just days after the Obama administration announced 217 more troops would be sent to Iraq to help in the fight against ISIS. Earlier today, President Obama addressed the wars in Syria and Iraq during a speech in Germany.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Right now, the most urgent threat to our nations is ISIL. And that's why we're united in our determination to destroy it. And all 28 NATO allies are contributing to our coalition, whether it's striking ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq, or supporting the air campaign or training local forces in Iraq or providing critical humanitarian aid. And we continue to make progress, pushing ISILback from territory that it controlled.

And just as I've approved additional support for Iraqi forces againstISIL, I've decided to increase U.S. support for local forces fightingISIL in Syria. A small number of American Special Operations forces are already on the ground in Syria, and their expertise has been critical as local forces have driven ISIL out of key areas. So, given the success, I've approved the deployment of up to 250 additional U.S. personnel in Syria, including special forces, to keep up this momentum. They're not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces as they continue to drive ISIL back.

AMY GOODMAN: As the U.S. expands its presence in Iraq and Syria, we turn to the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing the 1968 My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, when U.S. forces killed hundreds of civilians. In 2004, Sy Hersh broke the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. He has just published a new book titled The Killing of Osama bin Laden. In the introduction, Hersh writes, quote, "It's now evident, fifteen years after the 9/11 attacks, that Obama's foreign policy has maintained many of the core elements of the Global War on Terror initiated by his predecessor—assassinations, drone attacks, heavy reliance on special forces, covert operations and, in the case of Afghanistan, the continued use of American ground forces in combat. And, as in the years of Bush and Cheney, there has been no progress, let alone victory, in the fight against terrorism."

Seymour Hersh, it's great to have you back on Democracy Now! Congratulations on your book. Why don't we start by talking about what President Obama announced in his speech in Germany today, just hours before this broadcast: increased troop presence in Syria. What does it mean?

SEYMOUR HERSH: First, happy anniversary. Glad you're still around, kiddo.

AMY GOODMAN: Thank you.

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, one of the words he doesn't mention is Russia. Look, I can't begin to tell you what's in his mind. It's a little amazing at this stage he's putting more forces in, but that's—you know, that's his prerogative, I guess, as president. Always makes good news. Nobody ever—nobody seems in this country ever to object too much when we put more people on the ground.

But the real winner in the last year or so of the war there has been the Russians. And the Russians—the bombing was much more effective. If you remember, the president had said publicly, when Putin decided to put his air force hard at work there, he said it would be a quagmire, they wouldn't be able to get out, it's going to be, you know, schadenfreude—it would be like what happened to us in Afghanistan, and is happening to us, and certainly did happen to us in Vietnam. But they did it. They came in, and they did very well.

I will tell you right now, Russian special forces are in the fight against ISIS with the Syrian army, with Hezbollah, with the Iranian army, the Quds Force. And the Russians have done an awful lot to improve the Syrian army in the past year—retrained them, reoutfitted them, etc., etc., etc. It's a much better army since the Russians came in. The fighting in Palmyra that the Syrian army and the Russian special forces did was much bloodier. ISIS fought to the death. It was a terrible toll on everybody, but it was a victory for the Syrian army. We know all these things. The Syrian army is much better. It's probably going to—probably—we don't know. I don't know. Nobody knows. It will probably take Raqqa, the former capital city, if you will, ad hoc capital city ofISIS. ISIS is on the run, particularly in Syria, not necessarily in Iraq.

And I just don't understand what the president is doing, why he wants to engage more. But, you know, it's not my call. I would also—I've been told there are many more forces in Iraq than we're publicly announcing, including even some elements of one of our airborne divisions. What the hell? As usual, we don't really know what the game plan is. I do not understand why he's decided to jump into a war that was being run by—it's being won right now by the Syrian army and its allies, including Russia. I just—I can just speculate that our anti-Putin, anti-Russian instinct in America continues apace. That's all.

AMY GOODMAN: In your introduction to your new book, The Killing of Osama bin Laden, you write, "In a review of my interviews about Obama's early decision to raise the ante in Afghanistan, one fact stood out: Obama's faith in the world of special operations and in Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan who worked closely with Dick Cheney from 2003 to 2008 as director of [JSOC] the Joint Special Operations Command." Seymour Hersh, can you elaborate on this?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, it's amazing. Look, you win the presidency—hope and peace, or whatever it was—and you discover, because of—you know, you don't have the power you might dream you would have. You can't get a lot of things done, because you've got a very hostile Congress. And so—and presidents, inevitably, in frustration—look, I've been in this town since the '60s. There's nothing more wonderful for a president—you can feel more like a president by taking a walk with somebody from the Special Operations community or, earlier, the CIA in the Rose Garden, and getting rid of somebody you don't like, whether you're—in the case of—what we do now is we do targeted assassinations. Earlier, I think we just moved them out of office or did operations, you know, political operations. But now it's really just, you know, we hit people. You know, there's a weekly meeting in which they go through names of people to target, assassinate, including, in some cases, an American, without any due process. It's been a wonderful movement. I don't mean to be too sarcastic about it, but what—you know, this guy ended up in the same place in far too many times, as you read and as I wrote, as Bush and Cheney were.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what these Special Ops forces are doing, both in Iraq and Syria?

SEYMOUR HERSH: I really don't know. I mean, I know what I'm told, but I just don't know what the truth is. Clearly, they're going to be engaged more. They're helping to plan operations. But I—we're great at—we do a lot of dirty tricks in the world. You know, we were inside Iran in the first decade of this year, when the—before the Iranians began to talk seriously about getting rid of their nuclear weapons, that don't exist, that never did exist. We were doing operations inside the Iranian—the borders, and also we even went inside Tehran with surrogates. I mean, yes, we went inside Tehran. We did monitoring for nuclear activity, etc., etc. So we've been deeply involved in that world in covert operations. And how much first-hand stuff, I don't really have. I haven't actually talked to somebody who was in Tehran, but we were doing a lot of stuff, including working with people who were doing stuff like blowing up mosques and trying to whack Iranian scientists. So I assume—one target I do know, the president has designated, is he really wants to take out Mr. Baghdadi, the head of ISIS. He's been a high-priority assassination target for more than a year. We could be doing something like that.

But we're certainly working with the—there's not much you can do in Iraq, because the Iraqi army—you know, it's the usual story: They're going to run away. We've been—one of the great classic lies of America is, every year, some two-star general who's involved with training either the Afghans or, in earlier years, the Vietnam—Vietnamese, or the Iraqi army, they come before Congress. And the two-star looks them in the eye. He's the general in charge of training, and his promotion depends on not so much what he does, but what he says, I guess, at this point. And he tells the Congress how wonderful it's going on, we've got x number of divisions ready to fight. And the congresspeople all nod. It's a little parody that goes on. And, of course, the armies cut and run, and they're no good, and they haven't been. And the Iraqi army we have right now, that we're talking so wonderfully about, is not going to go near Mosul. It's going to be hand-to-hand fighting. If we ever do go into Mosul, we're going to [inaudible]. So, there you are. You know, I—

AMY GOODMAN: Were you—

SEYMOUR HERSH: Yes, I'm sorry.

AMY GOODMAN: Sy, were you surprised by President Obama's announcement today in Germany?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Horrified. I just don't think it's the way to go. I think it's just putting us into—you know, as you mentioned in your introduction, we've been doing this war against terror, against an idea, since after 9/11, you know? And how are we doing, fellas? How's it going there? You know, has the amount of opposition to us spread? Has the hatred of America grown more intense? We are truly a very much hated country in the Middle East. And it's partly because of the way we fight our wars—with drone attacks and a lot of force, the prisons that we did. And Abu Ghraib was just one of many prisons. And a lot of killing goes on by us, you know.

And here's how things have changed, for me, anyway. I'm writing the same kind of stories now about this president, very critical stories, because, you know, somebody has to hold him to—you know, at least based on what I think is as good as evidence I've ever had in all the stories I wrote for The New York Times in the '70s. I was there for six, seven, eight years as a sort of a hotshot there in the Washington bureau. And I wrote a lot of stories, won a lot of prizes, going after the president, going after wars, going after Kissinger, writing about illegal activities. And all of a sudden, the same stories, still anonymous—I mean, I wrote them anonymously then, and I'm writing them anonymously now. And some of the people I knew then, believe it or not, are still operating now. And it's like, we can't do that. It's like the American press has moved to the right, as many elements in this country, as you see, when the Sanders case has moved to the left. It's a much more outspoken opposition to some of the things we—the way we run campaigns. And underneath that is—of those people who support Sanders, also really dislike much more intensely the wars that are going on and the lies that are being told. But, you know, times have changed.

AMY GOODMAN: Sy Hersh, we're going to break and then come back to this discussion. We're speaking to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh for the hour today. He has a new book out; it's called The Killing of Osama bin Laden. We're going to also talk about that, the latest in what's known about the killing of bin Laden in Pakistan, the Saudi government's support for him in hiding there, what the U.S. knew, as well as many other issues. This is Democracy Now! We'll be back in a minute.

---

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

As we turn right now back to Seymour Hersh, who has a new book out—it's calledThe Killing of Osama bin Laden. Sy, I want to ask you about the presidential race. Last year at a debate in New Hampshire, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders accused former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of being, quote, "too much into regime change." This is what he said.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: But I think—and I say this with due respect—that I worry too much that Secretary Clinton is too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be. Yes, we could get rid of Saddam Hussein, but that destabilized the entire region. Yes, we could get rid of Gaddafi, a terrible dictator, but that created a vacuum for ISIS. Yes, we could get rid of Assad tomorrow, but that would create another political vacuum that would benefit ISIS. So I think, yeah, regime change is easy, getting rid of dictators is easy. But before you do that, you've got to think about what happens the day after.

HILLARY CLINTON: Now, with all due respect, Senator, you voted for regime change with respect to Libya. You joined the Senate in voting to get rid of Gaddafi, and you asked that there be a Security Council validation of that with a resolution. All of these are very difficult issues.

AMY GOODMAN: That's Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders debating in New Hampshire a while ago. So, Seymour Hersh, if you could talk about this issue and this most recent news, Charles Koch, the Republican megadonor, the oil baron, saying he could see himself actually supporting Hillary Clinton over a Republican nominee.

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, I don't believe that for a minute, but that's another story. What Koch said, I think that's just all part of pressure to get rid of Trump, who, in some ways, Trump's pretty—I mean, who ever heard of a Republican talking about "NATO is useless"? Which, of course, pretty much a lot of people I know believe it is pretty much useless. There's a lot of things Trump said that are pretty remarkable. He would talk to Putin, etc. It's a pretty interesting campaign on the Republicans, how they're sort of internally eating up themselves.

But Sanders is right, of course, about that issue. I don't think Sanders is as sound on foreign policy as I'd love him to be, I wish him to be. I don't think he really—he doesn't quite understand the consequences of—he doesn't—I don't think he's terribly—he just hasn't done enough to make me comfortable. But, of course, Hillary—my favorite line about Hillary Clinton is, after Gaddafi was executed—as you know, he was killed by his own people. He was actually sodomized by swords. It was a horrible death. And she said on one show, "We came, we saw, and he died," with a laugh. And that kind of talk is sort of almost bizarre.

You know, here's what I think about this campaign. It doesn't—you know, it's clear where my political thoughts are, but it's—for me to say who I'm going to vote for and all that, I don't think anybody—you know, I'm not a political leader. That's not what I'm into. But I will say this: Something that's amazing is happening in this country. And for the first time, you know, I do think it's going to be very hard for a lot of the people who support Sanders to support Hillary Clinton. Now, times can change. There's a lot more time to go. We've got months before an election and a convention, etc. But at this point, I'm at the point where—I go back to the old days. Remember, if you—you might not remember. We had a lot of talk about a third party in America, a progressive third party. Barry Commoner was one of the people who was going to run it. It went nowhere. But there's really—it seems to me, with what's going on now with these people, 45 and under, the enormous support they're giving to Sanders, just we know by polling, etc.—doesn't always show up in the—it turns out, in the election results. I mean, it certainly didn't show up in New York. And so—but they are there. There's a whole group of young people in America, across the board, all races, etc., etc., who have just had it with our system.

And there's something wonderful in the—you know, look, I've been to Israel many times, have a lot of friends there, and there's a lot of very good people there, but we all know it's headed for—it's chaos coming. And here we have a guy running for president. This is something, I guess, you know, forbidden—a forbidden statement. But he's the first Democrat since I've been watching politics, 50—I'm old, older and crankier than Bernie. But anyway, it's the first Democrat that I can remember that actually did not have to go to the Jewish community in New York to get money to run. And that's something amazing. We may be able to actually change our policy and let the Israelis know that there's going to have to be a settlement—not just divided, not just two countries, but a real settlement, a peace settlement, in that area.

And we've seen some terrific changes happening in this election, as the Democratic Party has been moving to the left, with a lot of contempt for the way the party manages itself, by the people who are pro—working—are interested in Sanders, that look at the chaos on the right. Our system is basically breaking apart right now in this election. And you can only say, "Yay! It's great!" So, it's inchoate. It's not very good. It's a little bit like the new generation of journalism we have with the tweeting and—you know, and blogging, that's going to clearly replace the newspapers, which are dying as we sit, every day. It's all sort of a new world coming.

AMY GOODMAN: Sy, President Obama appeared on Fox News on Sunday a few weeks ago, and he was asked what was the worst mistake of his presidency. This was his response.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Probably failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you respond, and particularly focus on Hillary as secretary of state under President Obama?

SEYMOUR HERSH: First of all, you're just going have to take my word for it. Gaddafi was a tame cat. We got to him in the Bush-Cheney years. If you remember the history, we had a lot of bad trouble. Bush and Cheney were—I think normally would be embarrassed, should have been embarrassed, by the lies they told and the mistakes they made—let's put it that way—about the WMDs that the—Saddam did not have an ongoing nuclear weapons system, which was known to an awful lot of people before—before we took over Baghdad and discovered nothing. At that point—I think it was a year later, in 2004—suddenly, Gaddafi, after allegedly having caught—we caught a ship full of some dual-use goods, and we stopped a ship that was going to Tripoli with it. He suddenly announced that he was giving up—unilaterally going to give up all his chemical arsenal and his WMD, his nuclear plans or options. And it was a big victory at a very much needed time by the Bush and Cheney crowd, that was a victory that showed our policy is working right. Money was involved, the CIA, covert money. A lot of stuff was going on. As you know, I've been doing a book about Cheney for a long time. And I can tell you that it was a considerable amount of CIAactivity involved to turn him around.

I don't think—which is amazing—it's clear to me that the president and Hillary, the secretary of state, did not know about this secret agreement made. It's just amazing to me that one administration will leave—it's one of the things I first learned from a friend who went to work—I think it was way back—maybe it was for Clinton. This friend got a job, a high-ranking job, in the government. The first thing he discovered, that all the files related to everything significant that had happened, all the agreements that had been made in his area—it was in the State Department—had been gone, had been cleaned out. Nothing was left. So, they were—you know, as I said, they were going after a guy that had been doing a lot of good work for us, believe it or not, horrible as he was. He was a horrible human being. Bad things happened inside that country to the people. But he was actively working with us on the al-Qaeda issue, and, you know, if the—I don't believe al-Qaeda exists there. I think the al-Qaeda we talked about disappeared with bin Laden. There's just copycats, and we like to call it al-Qaeda. But Sunni jihadists, Sunni Salafist and Wahhabi extremists are spreading all over, in part in response to what we did after 9/11. But that's the story we all know. So, they didn't really know what the hell had happened with Gaddafi. They took out a guy that didn't need to go. And the French were pushing for it, and we went along. It looked good.

It's a little bit like putting a couple hundred guys, and maybe a lot more that we don't know about, into Syria now, and many more than that into Iraq, where the—God knows what's going to happen in both places. It's just—it's done without consulting the Congress, which probably this Congress probably doesn't want to be consulted, but that's the—you know, the Constitution is not a nuisance, as many in the Republican Party, as Bush and Cheney, and now, in many areas, even Obama believes, it seems to be a nuisance. We don't tell Congress anything. We don't go and—we don't tell the people anything. And the control—the control of the media that goes on now, the major media, is, I think, much more acute now. I can go days wondering, you know, why we don't do more aggressive reporting on certain things.

---

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was President Obama speaking in May 2011. Sy Hersh, your new book, titled The Killing of Osama bin Laden, you argue the official account of how bin Laden was found and killed was deceptive. Explain what you think really happened, and talk about the role of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and, of course, the United States.

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, one of the myths that was created was that we discovered where he was living. Abbottabad is about 50 or 60 miles from the capital of Islamabad. It's a hilly, higher elevation. And in the summer, it's a resort place for many of the people who go—many of the people in the government and the military take their vacations there. It's sort of a Pakistani Martha's Vineyard, if you will. And anyway, he was there.

What I know, as in "know," is there was a walk-in, that in August of 2010, a Pakistani—I can say right now, he was a colonel in the regular army, not in the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, which is a very tough bunch, a separate group. He was an officer who had been passed over for general or whatever, and was—came into our embassy. We have a station chief there who's quite—quite competent guy named Jonathan Bank. And he went in to him and said, "We've had bin Laden for four years." ISI got him. The Pakistani intelligence service picked him up probably in the Hindu Kush area, in the areas—the mountain area between Pakistan and Afghanistan—where we thought he was. He had been on the run for—let's see, since late 2011, when we drove him out of Afghanistan into the mountain region. And we finally got him. We looked for him. We thought we had him in '02. There was a firefight that nobody knows about yet, with the SEALs. But anyway, we finally got him because of a walk-in. And you have to know, in the business of the CIA, protecting a walk-in is the most important thing. And so, a walk-in. And so, if you have a bunch of people somewhere in the basement, intelligence officers working on trying to track him through couriers, you may let them think that they did do it, because that's just the way it works in the CIA. You know, they don't always tell the truth to their people that work for them, when it comes to protecting a source, somebody who walks in.

And where I was dumb—you know, this story, I initially wrote much of this in theLondon Review, oh, about—last year sometime, caused a lot of trouble then. And what I did then, I was so naïve. I thought I had a dog-that-didn't-bark issue. I thought, I'm going to put the name of Bank in there, high in the story, in the—maybe seven, eight graphs into the story. I'm going to say the walk-in went to Jon Bank. And that's—I was going to take a chance that Bank would not succumb to pressure. A knew a lot about him. He's a Harvard grad, very bright guy, very competent. And I just didn't think he would be trotted out by the CIA to say, "What? What's Hersh writing about? I don't know anything about a walk-in." And I thought the fact that I named him and he said nothing after I wrote the story would be important to the media. But it wasn't, and nobody paid a bit of attention. And he didn't do—he didn't. Instead, they trotted out a retired guy that was plugging a book, named Morell, whose book was—let's see, I think it was 53 pages of criticism by the Senate Intelligence Committee for something like 78 lies, or maybe it's 78 pages for 53 lies, that had been published. They just trashed him for the book. And yet, he would go on on television and go after me, nobody asking him about his previous lies in his book. Anyway, big deal.

What's important is, the story we got is that—and I must say, when you do a story like I did, I did have more contact with people in the ISI after I wrote. I learned much more, that was totally—gave me much more flesh on the skimpy bones I guess I had. The first thing the Pakistani high-level—very close to the Saudis. The two generals in charge, General Kayani, who was at the time head of the army, and General Pasha, head of the Pakistani intelligence service, were the two key guys for us. And why so we—Pakistan is very important to us, because they have over a hundred bombs, and it's one of the big national security issues for us constantly. Where are the bombs? Are they telling us the truth? Are they keeping some out of the count? As somebody once said to me, "Are they hiding a few bombs in the tall grass along the runway somewhere?" And that's always our worry.

AMY GOODMAN: Nuclear bombs, you're talking about.

SEYMOUR HERSH: We worry about it. It's, I would say, one of the more acute issues. We don't want—Pakistan is very close to the Saudis, very close. There's a lot of close relationships. Pakistanis go and they work in the security area there, etc. There's always been a fear that one bomb would get transferred somewhere. It's just one of our more rational fears in foreign policy. And we work very hard at it. And so, what happened is, we were stunned when the—

AMY GOODMAN: You're talking, Sy, about nuclear bombs, right? Atomic bombs.

SEYMOUR HERSH: Yeah, oh, my god. Serious nuclear bombs, ranging from small, little, hand-held ones to the major, major ones that can—you know, that mimic some of the high stuff we have—not ICBMs, but they can be delivered by airplane. Anyway, what happened is—

AMY GOODMAN: Sy—

SEYMOUR HERSH: Yes, go ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: I just want to say, we only have a minute to go, and I want to get—

SEYMOUR HERSH: Oh, I'm sorry.

AMY GOODMAN: —to the issue that you allege, that the Saudi government was—was funding Osama bin Laden—

SEYMOUR HERSH: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: —in Abbottabad, in Pakistan.

SEYMOUR HERSH: The Saudi government was funding—we got him in '06. We learned about him in 2010. We killed him—we murdered him, really, in 2011. And the Saudis, for those years didn't—the Pakistanis did not tell us, because the first person they told that they—when they got him, through the ISI in '06, and put him in Abbottabad, they may—the first people they told were the Saudis. Why? Because the Saudis paid a lot of money to the two generals, and to others, perhaps, to keep it quiet, to keep it from us. They did not want us getting to bin Laden and talking to him. And I can tell you, since I've written that—I learned that from Americans—I've learned from ISI people that one of the ways they move money is they send tankers to us. They send—the Saudis would send tankers of oil to the Pakistanis for resale. You can reflag any ship on the ocean. It's an easy way to move money around. You can change ownership from Pakistani to Pakistani—from Saudi to Pakistani on the high sea.

AMY GOODMAN: Twenty seconds.

SEYMOUR HERSH: So, anyway, it's a story we didn't want to push too far publicly. But we actually—we were never supposed to announce the killing in Pakistan. They were supposed to take the body out, take it to the Hindu Kush mountains, and a day—a week or so later, announce that we killed him in a drone raid. And what the president did that night, because of political pressure, because of the worries about waiting a week—maybe somebody else would tell the story—he jumped ahead. It was re-election night. I guess any president would do that. But he did jump ahead. And he left Pasha and Kayani—

AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds.

SEYMOUR HERSH: He left our two generals, the two generals in charge of the bombs, hanging. Not a good thing to do.

AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, I want to thank you for being with us. We'll continue this conversation, post it online at democracynow.org.

Yemen, et al., WTF?

THE ABSURD TIMES

The Absurd Times (and archives)

Illustration: one of the key issues behind all this crap.

           Heard from Yemen lately?  One of the best reporters from Yemen has been Iona Craig who gives a good idea of what is going on in Yemen.  She told us that the was so much to say and so little time, which leads us to believe that there is much more going on than even hinted at in the interview, below.

            Essentially, a Shia group (that hate the U.S.) wants to take over the government (which loved the U.S.) which helped attack Al Qaeda (which hates the U.S.). The Houthi (or however you spell it) is the Shia faction and it does not consider itself connected with Al Qaeda (which is Whabbi Sunni, which is sort of like Southern Baptist of the Jimmie Swaggert type.  Kinda.

            Anyway, all of this, I.S. or ISIS, Al Quada in wherever, basically gets its justification from Israel, although it is pretty far off the target.  Hezbolla, the Army of God, is Shia and helping the Alowite Assad in Syria against ISIS which we once called "noble rebels", now re-branded as evil so we are training other noble rebels is Saudi Arabia, which is also Wahabbi Sunni but which Bin Laden (remember him? He's the one we helped get set up to evict the Soviet Union from Afghanistan where Canadians are now being shot at) got angry at because they let us on their soil.  Bin Laden's other enemy was Saddam Hussein.  We now have 3,200 official troops back in Iraq and more to come.  We are also bombing lots of places.   

            OK, so the spelling is strange.  The main question is when did any U.S. military intervention in the Mid-East help anyone, either the west or the people in the attacked countries?  Who, besides a few oil company billionaires benefited at all from ANY of this interference? 

            Well, we can see how things are going in Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon (the last two affected by refugees), or anyplace else.   In Syria things are not going well for anyone either.  

            Remember all the fuss in France and the roundup in Belgium and other places?  That is attributed to Anwar Al Alwaki (who we learn was only a mid-level figure in the organization, see Scahill, below).  The west certainly is making great strides.  No?

            Well, time for a couple interviews:

         TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2015

A Coup in Yemen? Jeremy Scahill & Iona Craig on Rebel Offensive to Seize Power, Saudi Role & AQAP

446

SHARED

     

As the world focuses on the threat posed by al-Qaeda in Yemen, the Yemeni government is on the verge of collapse. A dispute between Shia Houthi rebels and the government of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi has sparked the capital Sana’a’s worst violence in months. Houthi fighters have reportedly entered Yemen’s presidential palace in a possible coup attempt. This comes days after fighters abducted the president’s chief of staff. As the government fights the Houthis, it also wages a U.S.-backed offensive against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), whose insurgency has only grown deadlier by the year. The latest unrest comes days after AQAP took responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris. Will the Yemeni government be overthrown in a coup? We are joined by two guests: Iona Craig, a journalist who has reported from Yemen for years and until recently was its last accredited foreign reporter; and Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of the The Intercept and the reporter who broke the story that AQAP took credit for the Charlie Hebdo killings. Scahill reported from Yemen extensively for his book and documentary film, "Dirty Wars."

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AARON MATÉ: We begin in Yemen, where the capital Sana’a is seeing its worst violence in months. Intense clashes between government forces and Shia Houthi rebels have sowed chaos and raised fears of a coup. The latest round of fighting broke out this weekend when the Houthis kidnapped the chief of staff to President Abdu Hadi. The Houthis are protesting the text of a new draft constitution that would divide Yemen into six federal regions. Talks for the charter began under a peace deal reached in September after Houthis mobilized large protests and captured most of Sana’a by force. They were supposed to withdraw in the months since, but have only expanded their hold.

Now the country faces political collapse. On Monday, new gun battles erupted as Houthi fighters surrounded the prime minister’s residence and the presidential palace. The attack came despite a second ceasefire between the two sides. The capital appears calm for now, but tensions are high.

AMY GOODMAN: The Houthis’ rise has further upended Yemen’s fragile political order. As the government fights the Houthis, it also wages a U.S.-backed offensive against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP. Despite the long-running U.S. drone war, the al-Qaeda insurgency has only grown deadlier each year. The Houthis themselves have also fought al-Qaeda at the same time as they now take on the Yemeni government. The Houthis appear to have major backing from longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the ousted leader who was ousted in a popular uprising in 2011. The latest unrest also comes days after al-Qaeda in Yemen took responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris.

For more, we’re joined by two guests. Iona Craig is with us, a journalist who was based in Sana’a for four years as the Yemen correspondent for The Times of London. She was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2014. The government has cracked down on local and foreign journalists, and at one point last year Iona Craig was the country’s last accredited foreign reporter. She’s joining us now, though, from London.

And we’re joined by Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of the TheIntercept.org. Just days after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Jeremy broke the story that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had taken credit. He cited a confidential al-Qaeda source in Yemen. Days later, AQAP put out an official statement confirming it took responsibility.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Iona Craig, let’s begin with you. Just tell us what is happening right now in Yemen and who the Houthi militants are.

IONA CRAIG: What’s happening now is it’s really political posturing on behalf of the Houthis. They’re trying to get leverage to get this draft constitution changed, which they don’t agree with. So they’ve kidnapped the presidential aide, the chief of staff, in order to get that leverage. And then the fighting that we saw in the last 24 hours was also part of that. So the negotiations at the moment are going on for the release of Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, the chief of staff, in exchange for changing the draft constitution.

But the issue with the Houthis, the Houthis were first formed as a movement in 2004. They then fought the government in six wars between 2004 and 2010. But they then became part of the Arab Spring. They put down their weapons. They joined the protests. They joined the sit-ins, particularly in Sana’a, and became part of that peaceful movement. But the transition that followed that was backed by the international community—and actually instigated by the U.S. in the first place—did not go their way. So when the national dialogue was concluded in January last year and the decision was made about federalism and to divide the country into six regions, the Houthis weren’t happy about that. And that was when they started taking territory. So they were pushing from their stronghold, if you like, in Sa’dah up in the north, which is up by the Saudi border, and they started pushing south toward Sana’a.

This was also then an opportunity for Ali Abdullah Saleh to join in, because the Houthis’ main enemy is Islah, which is Yemen’s equivalent to the Muslim Brotherhood, who had gained a lot of power after the Arab Spring and a lot of political power. So they had a joint enemy. So, between the support of Ali Abdullah Saleh and the Houthis, they were able to take that ground, they were able to beat the Islahi-supported tribes, and eventually got to Sana’a in September. And in the space of four days of fighting, the minister of interior then ordered the troops to stand down, and they took control of the city.

AARON MATÉ: When you say the Houthis are engaging in political posturing, do you mean then that they’re not trying to carry out a coup, despite all this fighting in the capital?

IONA CRAIG: I think it’s really hard to determine whether that’s the case or not. In September, they had the opportunity to do that. They could have kicked President Hadi out at that point, but they didn’t, which makes me think that they probably won’t do that now. It depends how far they’re pushed. If they don’t get their way with the constitution, then they may indeed do that. But I think the Houthis have so far stopped short of actually taking physical power. Again, they could have put their own people up as ministers when the new government was formed at the end of last year, but they chose not to do so, because it means that then they are not held responsible for when the government collapses and things go wrong, where they’re taking this silent control by trying to manipulate the government, take control inside ministries, without actually having their own men in power.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, how does what’s going on in Yemen right now, a place you also have spent time in and reported from, relate to what happened in France and AQAP, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, taking responsibility for theCharlie Hebdo attack?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, you know, one of the things that’s interesting, just to add to what—you know, to Iona’s analysis, which I think is really spot-on, is that the Houthis have been a really interesting political football of sorts in the U.S. policy in Yemen. They have also been bombed repeatedly by the Saudis, you know, Saudi Arabia waging a not-so-secret war, bombing the Houthis. In the WikiLeaks cables, you see that when Ali Abdullah Saleh was in charge, officially in power in Yemen, he would consistently say to the United States, "We have to do something about the Houthis, because they’re being backed by Iran." And actually, to the credit of U.S. diplomats, they said, "Well, you know, we don’t exactly think that that’s true." And what was happening is that Ali Abdullah Saleh was a master manipulator of the United States, and he was looking for any way he could to justify getting more military assistance, more money to bolster his own forces that were supposedly fighting al-Qaeda, to actually use them to shore up his own power base. So, when the well was sort of dry, started to dry up with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula at points, he would then sort of appeal to the United States and say, "Hey, we have these Iranian agents in the form of the Houthis inside of Yemen." And so, what we’re seeing right now is that Ali Abdullah Saleh, who actually himself is a Zaydi Shiite and has roots in that region, has now flipped sides and, as Iona said, is sort of the not-so-hidden hand behind some of the power grab efforts of the Houthis.

As it relates to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, of course, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is facing a situation in the world where they and al-Qaeda Central have sort of been eclipsed by the rise of the Islamic State, ISIS. And so, in this case, it seems like, at a minimum, there are ties between the Kouachi brothers, who conducted the massacre, and AQAP. It’s to AQAP’s benefit to maximize the way that that group portrays its involvement with Charlie Hebdo. But there are still very serious questions about whether or not, as AQAP says, they financed it and directed it, or that they simply provided some training to aspiring jihadists who went on then to conduct this very, very public, globally recognized massacre.

AARON MATÉ: Iona, Jeremy mentioned Saudi Arabia. That’s Yemen’s neighbor to the north. Can you expand more on their role in this current conflict? And also, do you agree that Saleh, the former leader, is playing a major role in the current unrest?

IONA CRAIG: Yes, I think it’s certainly clear that Saleh has played some role. It was clear to me, after the Houthis had taken over control of Sana’a in September, just walking around the city, talking to people, even talking to some of the men that were Houthis and other people around the city, that many of those plainclothes gunmen that you were seeing on the street, as Houthis, had actually been part of the Republican Guard before, which the Republican Guard was a unit under Ali Abdullah Saleh’s time and was commanded by his son, Ahmed Ali, so there was very much an overlap between the Houthis and what used to be the Republican Guard in the takeover of Sana’a in September and indeed in the continued control of the city since then.

Just to go back to the issue of the Saudis, the Saudis are sort of stuck in a situation now where, you know, obviously the Houthis are seen as very much as supported by Iran—how much support there is isn’t clear, but those are obviously their regional rivals. The Saudis, as Jeremy mentioned, were very much involved in bombing the Houthis. And we actually know from more recent reporting that there were cluster bombs that were fired on the Houthis during those wars, that came from America, that were sold to them by America to the Saudis. So, this slogan the Houthis have of "death to America" not only comes from a dislike of American foreign policy, but issues over that, where the Houthis have claimed that it’s American bombs that were hitting them in the past. But Saudi Arabia is now in the situation where the Houthis are effectively in charge of the government, although not physically, as I mentioned before, as Hadi is still there. So they’re reluctant to give any more economic aid to Yemen as a result, because the Houthis are in control, and they very much see them as supported by Iran. So that brings Yemen closer to the edge of economic collapse, which it’s now facing at the moment.

On the other side, you have who is taking on the Houthis, if the Saudis are looking at it from that perspective. And the only people who are physically and able—willing and able to take on the Houthis at the moment is al-Qaeda, which is also putting a lot of tribal groups in a difficult position. When the Houthis started taking further territory after Sana’a in September, there were areas where tribes didn’t want the Houthis coming into their territory, and they then found themselves, whether they liked it or not, on the same side as al-Qaeda, and possibly with the prospect of fighting alongside al-Qaeda, even if they didn’t agree with them ideologically, because they were the only ones that were standing up to the Houthis’ expansion, because the government was neither willing or able to do so.

AMY GOODMAN: Iona Craig, I wanted to ask you about the comments of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. He’s in London right now, and he was repeating the allegations that have repeatedly been uttered on Fox—now, though, four major apologies from Fox about what they’ve been saying—that whole areas of London—of, rather, Britain, are no-go zones. Being that you are in London right now, having reported in Yemen for years, can you talk about this controversy and the response of David Cameron and others in Britain? They also made the—Fox also made the allegations about France.

IONA CRAIG: I think, really, people here obviously feel incredibly insulted by that kind of very ignorant comment, or, you know, some people have just laughed it off as slightly ridiculous, as many people see those kind of comments. But yeah, I mean, I’ve spent time in Birmingham. I’m living at the moment in South London. You know, these are communities, multicultural communities, in both cities that are—that are certainly no-go areas for anybody in that respect. So, yes, I think it’s deeply insulting to the people of Birmingham particularly. And, you know, if—

AMY GOODMAN: Birmingham is the place—

IONA CRAIG: —that’s how we can—

AMY GOODMAN: Birmingham is the place where the so-called terrorism expert Steve Emerson said on Fox is completely Muslim. It’s majority Christian, actually. And then he was forced to apologize, Iona.

IONA CRAIG: Yeah, I think probably the crucial thing is that "so-called terrorism expert." You know, perhaps this is somebody who hasn’t spent much time from behind a—out from behind a desk for a while. Certainly, obviously, hasn’t visited Birmingham anyway.

AARON MATÉ: Well, Iona, back to Yemen, what do you see happening next?

IONA CRAIG: I think it’s really hard to predict right now. I think that the situation politically, obviously—you know, unless you have political stability, you can’t have security. You’ve got a very weak government. You’ve got a very weak president. You’ve effectively got a president now with a gun to his head from the Houthis, who are saying, "We want the draft constitution changed; otherwise, we’re going to keep control and hold onto the chief of staff."

You’ve got al-Qaeda, who have really changed their mode of operation since the Houthis took over in September, and have started targeting civilians as a result, civilians that they claim are Houthis. But before, al-Qaeda had never deliberately and gone out of their way to kill civilians in Yemen, and that changed after the Houthis took control in September. So they attacked a Houthi gathering in October with a suicide bomber. I was actually walking into the square when that suicide bomb went off in October. And twice since the beginning of this year, they have attacked civilians, and deliberately targeting civilians. So that’s really worrying for people in Yemen, obviously, that now civilians are seen as a legitimate target by al-Qaeda. They’ve claimed responsibility for over 150 attacks across Yemen since the Houthis took control.

So, you have this issue of instability both politically and security-wise, and the economy, as I already mentioned, on the brink of collapse, where the government has run out of money to even pay the civil service and the military. So, at the moment, really, it’s all in the hands of the Houthis. It’s up to them whether they start this fighting again in order to push what—and force the government into a corner and to take heed of their demands, or whether we now see a peaceful end to all of this. But it won’t really be an end. The Houthis still have the power in their hands at the moment, and President Hadi most certainly does not.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Iona, we want to thank you for being with us. Iona Craig, joining us from London, she was based in Sana’a for four years as the Yemen correspondent for The Times of London, was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2014, left Yemen last month, joining us from London.

When we come back from break, we’ll be continuing with Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, about the so-called terrorism experts and the networks they’re on. We’ll play a clip of Jeremy taking on CNN on CNN. And also, what does it mean to protect sources, no matter who or where they are? Stay with us.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2015

As Fox News Apologizes, Jeremy Scahill on Fake "Terror Experts" & Challenges of Real War Reporting

1,318

SHARED

     

Fox News has apologized for broadcasting false information about Muslims in the wake of the Paris attacks. Last weekend, self-described terrorism expert Steve Emerson claimed on air that parts of Europe, including the entire English city of Birmingham, were totally Muslim areas where non-Muslims do not go. Emerson was forced to apologize, but the claim about so-called "no-go zones" was repeated by other Fox guests and anchors. On Saturday, according to a CNN Money tally, Fox News took time out of four broadcasts to apologize for reports on Muslims. Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, discusses the rise of so-called "terrorism experts" by Fox News and other major cable networks. In two recent interviews with CNN, Scahill has criticized the news giant and others for their use of "on-air analysts who also work in the private sector and make money on the idea that we should be afraid." He also responds to blistering criticism fromFBI chief James Comey of using an anonymous al-Qaeda source in reporting on the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and analyzes what al-Qaeda’s claim of responsibility will mean for the U.S. drone war in Yemen.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest—we continue with Jeremy Scahill. He’s the author ofBlackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, and his latest book is called Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield. He broke the story that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP, took credit for the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, based on an al-Qaeda source in Yemen. Days later, AQAP put out a statement of that very nature, but Jeremy broke it first. Jeremy, talk about the controversy—The Washington Post has written about it, you were on CNN talking about it—protecting what they call "terrorist sources," not naming the sources that leaked you that story before it was officially acknowledged.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I mean, I actually, as a—you know, I’ve been a journalist for around 20 years, and I’m honestly a bit dumbfounded at the response from other journalists. I mean, a classic part of good journalism, responsible journalism, going many, many centuries back, is that you’re trying to provide people with information that is actionable, that they can use to make informed decisions on what to believe or positions to take on certain issues. And a key part of covering war is that you have to have journalists willing to go to the other side to speak with the people that you are told are the enemies and to get their perspective so that we can better understand the nature of this conflict. And so, just as I’ve gone to areas in Yemen that are controlled by al-Qaeda or areas in Somalia that are controlled by al-Shabab or areas in Afghanistan that are controlled by the Taliban, you know, we have an obligation to try to understand where al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is coming from. And so, you know, the idea we should have a special standard that in certain cases we’re actually not journalists, but we are somehow militant nationalists who should not engage in responsible journalism because the U.S. government doesn’t like us talking to those individuals, to me, just flies in the face of just basic journalistic principles.

AARON MATÉ: Well, Jeremy, the director of the FBI, James Comey, he criticizedThe New York Times for anonymously quoting a source from al-Qaeda. And I presume he would criticize you, too, since you broke the story, the first person to reveal that AQAP had taken credit for the Charlie Hebdo massacre. And Comey said the use of the source was "mystifying and disgusting." And he added, to the Times, "I fear you have lost your way and urge you to reconsider allowing your newspaper to be used by those who have murdered so many and work every day to murder more." Your response?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, well, I mean, clearly, Director Comey doesn’t actually want us to have a truly free press. And let’s remember that this Justice Department is waging a war against whistleblowers that effectively amounts to a war against journalism. Look, I don’t believe, you know, in using anonymous sources widely, and I particularly think that newspapers and news organizations should not be giving senior U.S. officials anonymity so that they can project their propaganda on the world, which is largely why senior U.S. officials request anonymity. They want to be able to say things that secretly or privately benefit U.S. policy, and it’s not actually moving the story forward. A lot of disinformation gets pushed out that way. So I believe in a limited use of confidential sources.

In this case, we had a situation where we had something that was of tremendous news value on a breaking news story. The gunmen had declared that they were from al-Qaeda in Yemen. There was a lot of speculation going on. And so, I reached out to sources that I know are members of AQAP with access to the leadership of that organization to try to get an understanding of whether or not this was true. And it was not clear at the time that any official statement was forthcoming from AQAP. And if we were to identify our source, who is not authorized to speak, not just because they’re like a private spokesperson, but because AQAP has a very strict set of guidelines as to who speaks officially for the organization—also the source could potentially be in danger, which, to me, is the number one reason why you would grant anonymity to a confidential source whose information in the past has been verified as legitimate, if they’re life is going to be in danger.

So, I didn’t just decide this on my own to grant anonymity to someone from AQAP. Our general counsel at The Intercept reviewed this, our editor-in-chief, Betsy Reed, and two senior editors. We all discussed this issue and ultimately made a determination that granting anonymity in this case was a responsible thing to do.

AMY GOODMAN: On Sunday, Jeremy, you appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources, which is hosted by Brian Stelter.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Where I think it gets into really kind of fear-generating territory is when you have these so-called terror analysts on the air, many of whom also work for risk consultancy firms that benefit from the idea of making us afraid. I don’t think that CNN, MSNBC and Fox News do anywhere near a good enough job at revealing the potential conflicts of interest of some of the on-air analysts who also work in the private sector and make money off of the idea that we should be very afraid.

BRIAN STELTER: But you understand that is a pretty incendiary charge, that these people want us to be frightened inappropriately, for unnecessary reasons.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I mean, look, I’ve spent a lot of years investigating how the war contracting industry works. You’ll have these retired generals come on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and they’ll talk about the danger of a terror group in a particular country. And they’re on the board of a huge weapons manufacturer or a defense company that is going to benefit from an extension of that war, an expansion of that war. Perhaps the biggest violator of this is General Barry McCaffrey, who has made a tremendous amount of money off of war contracting, and then he’s brought onto these networks.

AMY GOODMAN: That is Jeremy Scahill on CNN’s Reliable Sources, hosted by Brain Stelter. Jeremy, if you could take it by there. You were talking about General McCaffrey and others.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, look, we also know that soon after 9/11, the Pentagon expanded its use of a program where they would invite in former U.S. military brass who were serving as pundits on cable news, and they would basically give them talking points that amounted to propaganda, a backdoor way of the war machine being able to spread its message. And then these guys, without disclosing that they were part of these secret meetings, would go on cable networks and project, supposedly as independent analysts, the very policies that Rumsfeld and others at the Pentagon were trying to drive through to the American public. Almost all of these guys who are retired generals and retired brass that appear on these networks have their hand in the war industry to one degree or another. Many of them are making money off of working with risk consultancy firms, where they are going to big multinational corporations and offering them their services analyzing risk in countries around the world. If you remember Paul Bremer, who was put in charge of the occupation of Iraq, what he was doing prior to 9/11 was benefiting off of the notion that companies need to be afraid all around the world and that they need people like him to help them assess their risk and mitigate any kind of potential terrorist actions against these corporations. So, on the one hand, it’s the retired generals and other brass that are working in the war industry.

On the other hand, it’s people like Evan Kohlmann from Flashpoint Partners, who is on MSNBC, who is a total fraud and is constantly brought on as an expert. His so-called expert testimony has been used to put countless people away in prison on very dubious, thin terrorism charges. You have Samuel Laurent, who was on CNN for a couple of days—he’s been missing in action. We don’t know where he is. He doesn’t seem to be on CNN anymore. But Samuel Laurent, who is a French so-called terror expert, is widely viewed in France as a fraud, and people were up in arms when CNNput him on the air as a terrorism expert.

So, you know, part of what I think is the problem here is it’s—you know, CNN has actually really great international reporters, who have great experience on the ground. I have tremendous respect for many journalists, particularly in the international section, of CNN. But then they bring on these analysts who have a vested interest in revving up the fear engine, and they don’t disclose, in many cases, the built-in agenda of particularly some of these retired military people.

AARON MATÉ: Jeremy, as we wrap, I just want to ask you again about the story you broke about al-Qaeda in Yemen taking responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo massacre. What do you see is going on there with them coming forward to say that they financed the brothers, trained them? Because that would presumably invite an intensified U.S. drone war. And what questions or concerns do you have, going forward, in the aftermath of them taking credit?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I mean, you know, this may be somewhat of a cynical read on this, but who really has benefited—the people that really have benefited most from the U.S. drone war in Yemen have not been ordinary Yemenis, have not been the people of the United States. The only real beneficiaries of that policy have been the manufacturers of drones and the missiles fired from the drones, and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, because when the U.S. conducts a drone strike and they kill innocent civilians, AQAP can use that for propaganda purposes. In the limited cases where they actually have killed individuals from AQAP, then they’re celebrated as martyrs. So I think that part of what AQAP is doing is trying to goad the United States into once again escalating or intensifying its drone campaign inside of Yemen, because it elevates the stature of AQAP. Now, it could be that AQAP had limited involvement and that all of the facts about it are already on the table. My sense is that if AQAP did indeed direct this plot, that they’re going to produce photographic or video evidence to back that up. If they don’t do that, then I think that, you know, it’s likely that the truth is that they had some involvement but were not effectively running the show.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally—we have 20 seconds—what’s repeated on so many networks, that Anwar al-Awlaki, before he was killed in a U.S. drone strike, was behind this terror attack on Charlie Hebdo?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, look, I mean, they try to link Anwar al-Awlaki to every plot under the sun. The fact is that Anwar al-Awlaki’s writings and speeches clearly have inspired so-called lone-wolf terrorists. No doubt about that. Whether he was operationally in charge of this is actually kind of a joke. Anwar al-Awlaki was not even mid-level management in AQAP. They’re exploiting his legacy because of the power of nightmares. He speaks in English. He aims his message at a Western, English-speaking audience. So the United States has elevated his status within the organization. AQAP has a leadership structure. Anwar al-Awlaki was not a senior figure within AQAP.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, we want to thank you for being with us, co-founder of The Intercept, broke the story that AQAP took credit for the Charlie Hebdomassacre in Paris, based on an al-Qaeda source in Yemen. Days later, AQAP put out an official statement confirming it took responsibility. Jeremy’s latest book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield; his Oscar-nominated film, Dirty Wars, as well. He is an award-winning journalist.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to Guatemala for a remarkable verdict that has just come down around crimes against humanity. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Charlie Haden and the Liberation Music Orchestra, "Spiritual," a song inspired by Medgar Evers, Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. And to see other choice picks of music inspired by or inspiring Dr. King, you can go todemocracynow.org. A big shout out to Ruth Haden, who is the widow of Charlie Haden, who has joined us today at our studios just to come by and say hi. This isDemocracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté.

---

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

-->