19-10-2017, 12:33 AM
In my blunt, uninformed opinion - but I'll state it rather than beating around the bush - Shenon is a spook-linked journalist asset to the CIA who writes what the agency asks him to write. His book on the 9/11 Commission was subtitled the 'Uncensored History' on the front cover to gently lead the reader away from the fact that he was given the job to whitewash and soft pedal what had actually happened. His NYT articles throughout the Iraq war defer to Pentagon talking points and 'debunk' various issues of the time with scoops from military insiders telling us that things aren't as bad as they seem. And his book on the JFK assassination was clearly put out to look authoritative while putting out fires for the agency. John Newman made astute comments about what Shenon was up to some months back. I once spent a couple of weeks researching David Ivry, who (a.) was the onetime commander of the attack on the USS Liberty, (b.) oversaw the attack on the Osirak reactor during Operation Opera in June 1981, (c.) befriended Dick Cheney during Operation Opera, and was later thanked by Cheney in his book IN MY TIME for helping getting rid of Saddam Hussein, (d.) met with Donald Rumsfeld in 1998 while several Rumsfeld associates were carrying out a Kennedy School of Government study group into 'Catastrophic Terrorism' (e.) left his position as director general of the Israeli Ministry of Defence to become Israeli Ambassador to the US in 2000, (f.) met with senior neoconservative figures in the White House three or four times through the first half of 2001, the last meeting a few weeks before 9/11, and (g.) left his ambassadorship in 2003 when the Iraq war started to become the Vice President of Boeing International, and to join several other weapons companies with guys like Richard Perle. When Ivry became the ambassador, Shenon was drafted to write a NYT piece about what a great guy Ivry was, and there was no mention of the USS Liberty. The comment in his new article with Sabato, stating that the document release will "..simply help fuel a new generation of conspiracy theories", is misleading and disingenuous on about four different levels.
Anything detailed and factual on - for one example - the real activities of William Harvey and David Phillips, is going to cause trouble for the CIA. That sort of stuff will be embarrassing forever. The archives released their first batch as a 'shot across the bow' (their words) to let the various agencies - but really, just the one agency, as the CIA are the ones with the most to be embarrassed about here - know that the documents were going to come out. Maybe the CIA thought they would exhaust all other options before attempting to stonewall NARA. With weeks left, it's crunch time, hence 'negotiations' between NARA and the CIA, where the latter will now try and argue that revelations about what a traitorous, criminal bunch of pricks they were back in the day will reflect badly on their attempts to perform traitorous and criminal activities today.
It doesn't look great. If documents are withheld further, it's clear there's stuff they couldn't bury that is still problematic for them. We'll know fairly soon, I guess.
Anything detailed and factual on - for one example - the real activities of William Harvey and David Phillips, is going to cause trouble for the CIA. That sort of stuff will be embarrassing forever. The archives released their first batch as a 'shot across the bow' (their words) to let the various agencies - but really, just the one agency, as the CIA are the ones with the most to be embarrassed about here - know that the documents were going to come out. Maybe the CIA thought they would exhaust all other options before attempting to stonewall NARA. With weeks left, it's crunch time, hence 'negotiations' between NARA and the CIA, where the latter will now try and argue that revelations about what a traitorous, criminal bunch of pricks they were back in the day will reflect badly on their attempts to perform traitorous and criminal activities today.
It doesn't look great. If documents are withheld further, it's clear there's stuff they couldn't bury that is still problematic for them. We'll know fairly soon, I guess.