Posted on 07/05/2005 5:57:37 PM PDT by wagglebee
The New York Times, NBC and other dominant media have destroyed the Constitution's Freedom of the Press. Today giant tears are shed at the New York Times because one of their own, Judith Miller, appears to be on the way to prison for up to 120-days because she nobly refused to give up a source. The Supreme Court recently ruled that she, as a journalist, must assist a federal government investigation when ordered to do so.
The First Amendment, in pertinent part, says: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . . .
"Abridging" means placing limits on. The Supreme Court ruled that these words must be interpreted from the perspective of the federal government. The Government's ability to use journalists as agents of the federal government when so desired cannot be abridged.
The American National Security State is supposed to grab all the power it can. Its mission is to project power. It is not entrusted with the mission of maintaining a healthy First Amendment Freedom of the Press. To the contrary, it is in the best interest of the National Security State to whittle, attack, whine and cry at every opportunity to turn dominant media into a tool by which federal propaganda is spewed across the nation twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
The Founding Fathers gave dominant media the mission of counterbalancing the State's natural inclination to destroy the Constitution. Dominant media, as envisioned, was to probe and question the National Security State, especially when it displeased the National Security State.
But that takes courage and a willingness to be called very bad names by National Security State propagandists. It means being leaned on by the Justice Department, snarled at by its biggest, meanest federal legal guns; careers threatened, wives intimidated. It means watching your Rolodex go up in smoke.
All those wonderful federal sources who spoon-fed you, the dominant media journalist, story after story for which you were praised and rewarded with even better stories – as long as you did not demand that officially sanctioned stories be backed up with actual documents and other provable facts.
These "sources" would never again be available to you if you ever crossed the Beast, the National Security State. You'd actually have to push away from your desk, get out of your chair, go out into the cold, cruel world, walk past your favorite pub and find sources.
Real sources, not the federal shills that made you a household name and provided a very comfortable living, feeding propaganda you knowingly and willingly placed into the collective mind of the masses. Now you would have to join those journalists you so despise and look down on – the "bottom-feeders," "conspiracy theorists," Internet journalists and other journalistic lowlifes who continually bang away at the National Security State.
So, when the tough stories appeared, stories like TWA Flight 800, you shuddered at the thought of challenging a very determined cover-up, even though you knew the federal propagandists were feeding you garbage. You shuddered and then folded, jumping into the warm, safe lap of the Beast, wagging your tail, whispering "feed me, feed me."
According to three media sources - one deep inside NBC on July 17, 1996, when missile-fire brought the giant 747 down - in the hours after TWA Flight 800 was shot down a bidding war ensued for a video showing missile-fire bringing down TWA Flight 800. The bidding went above $50,000, at which time, the Fox News team, New York, was blocked from further bidding. The video ended up in the hands of NBC, where it was confiscated by the FBI.
The head of the Fox News team in the field on Long Island was then approached by an American military officer who said there was a major screw-up, the White House had ordered a 48 hour "stand-down" while it decided how to handle this crisis. Dominant media had a decision to make. Significant evidence of missile-fire was already in hand. Much more was easily available. There were witnesses who watching TWA Flight 800 as it headed east toward Paris. They then watched as a missile approached and brought the plane down. They didn't see some mysterious light way off in the distance. They were not confused. They knew what they had seen.
We now know the FBI and CIA knew they witnessed missile-fire, according to documents recently unearthed through the Freedom of Information Act.
The New York Times would have had this vital information if it merely conducted an honest investigation. It did not. Instead, it allowed the FBI to feed it an approved storyline, complete with selected facts – a bomb brought the 747 down. A political decision was then made at the top of the Clinton administration. It was an election year. A criminal act might provoke the sleeping masses.
The lapdog New York Times might lose its role as the dominant media "investigative" team. The Beast could lose control of the crisis. Truth could conceivably prevail if the shills at the New York Times ceased running interference for the National Security State.
But it was not to be. Federal propagandists told the New York Times a criminal act did not bring down TWA Flight 800. All that explosive residue was from a dog training exercise. The New York Times did not interview the St. Louis Airport Police Officer who conducted the training a month before TWA Flight 800 crashed. He would have given the New York Times information proving beyond any doubt that the dog training exercise did not take place on the 747 that would later become TWA Flight 800.
If the New York Times had interviewed the pilots who were onboard the 747 at St. Louis during the entire time the dog training exercise took place, it would have quickly become apparent that the dog training took place on a 747 parked at the adjacent St. Louis Airport gate. Mere competence would have exposed the cover-up.
At that point courage would have been required. The New York Times had neither. It was the Beast's official lapdog.
In all probability, 9-11 would never have happened if the New York Times had merely done the job the Founding Fathers assigned. In the aftermath of TWA 800, with a fully informed citizenry, America's masses would have demanded real protection based on real facts, not federal propaganda.
We can reasonably infer that today's constitutional crisis, the Supreme Court's removal of the First Amendment's Freedom of the Press would not have occurred. The Supreme's are political creatures; dare we suggest political whores? Would they dare destroy this most vital portion of the First Amendment if they knew they were attacking journalism's junkyard dog?
The Supreme's knew they were destroying a National Security State lapdog that did not need or deserve special protection under the First Amendment.
Unfortunately, non dominant media journalists who do sally forth to battle the dreaded Beast now do so without any pretense of a constitutional amendment protecting them. And now the ultimate irony – New York Times reporter Judith Miller now gets to go to prison because of the failure of the New York Times to protect and defend the First Amendment's Freedom of the Press.
This guy's a felon who's been flogging a lie to bereaved family members for almost ten years now. Now he reinvents himself as a martyr to press freedom. Oh, please...
For one thing, he was never a member of the press.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
It's a party- Huslters for everyone.
WOW!
Baloney. There a very strong possibility that the real cover-up of TWA 800 was that the incident didn't involve terrorism at all -- it was an accidental shoot-down of TWA 800 by a U.S. or NATO military vessel conducting exercises off the south shore of Long Island that night.
I agree that he is suspect, but the government's story about TWA 800 has never seemed true to me.
Great find! This is a keeper.
You could be correct, but more evidence points to terrorism. That is what I think happened.
The head of the Fox News team in the field on Long Island was then approached by an American military officer who said there was a major screw-up, the White House had ordered a 48 hour "stand-down" while it decided how to handle this crisis. Dominant media had a decision to make. Significant evidence of missile-fire was already in hand. Much more was easily available. There were witnesses who watching TWA Flight 800 as it headed east toward Paris. They then watched as a missile approached and brought the plane down. They didn't see some mysterious light way off in the distance. They were not confused. They knew what they had seen.
We now know the FBI and CIA knew they witnessed missile-fire, according to documents recently unearthed through the Freedom of Information Act.
The New York Times would have had this vital information if it merely conducted an honest investigation. It did not. Instead, it allowed the FBI to feed it an approved storyline, complete with selected facts – a bomb brought the 747 down. A political decision was then made at the top of the Clinton administration. It was an election year. A criminal act might provoke the sleeping masses.
The lapdog New York Times might lose its role as the dominant media "investigative" team. The Beast could lose control of the crisis. Truth could conceivably prevail if the shills at the New York Times ceased running interference for the National Security State. '
snip
In all probability, 9-11 would never have happened if the New York Times had merely done the job the Founding Fathers assigned. In the aftermath of TWA 800, with a fully informed citizenry, America's masses would have demanded real protection based on real facts, not federal propaganda.
i agree.
interesting, it's a taboo subject.
I think our debating it--which has been, and still would be, interesting--obfuscates the point of the post: America as we knew it in, say, the 1950's, is close to moribund. Another tragic USSC decision.
Highly unlikely. While I've never been all that happy about the center fuel tank explanation... the keeping of a secret ~requires~ that there are only a few people that know that secret. A naval vessel has hundreds of people onboard, and then perhaps hundreds more ashore in the exercise that would all know what happened. Opsec in the Navy is pretty good... but its not that good. Somebody would squawk.
bookmark
There are two basic factors that strongly indicate that it was highly unlikely that TWA 800 was brought down by a missile fired by terrorists:
1. If it were terrorists, then they picked a terrible location from which to attempt something like this. TWA 800 was flying at an altitude of something like 13,000 feet at the time it was "hit," which means it would have been at or near the limit of almost any conventional surface-to-air missile. If a terrorist wanted to shoot down a passenger jet flying out of Kennedy Airport that night, he would have positioned himself much further to the west -- where outbound aircraft from JFK weren't flying so high.
2. Related to #1, Flight 800 was flying several thousand feet lower than usual that night -- to make way for a northbound United Airways flight to Providence, Rhode Island that was running behind schedule. This was a turn of events that a terrorist could not possibly have foreseen -- if he had positioned himself at that location, he would have been firing under "normal" circumstances at a target that was several thousand feet higher than an altitude already at or beyond the edge of his missile's range.
A special prosecutor!
Evidently they wanted to simply allow Joe Wilson to lay blame without proof and they would stand idly by.
so why were the two journalists tossed in jail for stealing into the fbi's hangar where the debris was being reassembled?
You are the one spewing baloney.
And yet we all know that their "investigation" was a pile of bullsh!t -- which obviously requires complicity on the part of many people. I don't know anybody who believes that nonsense about an "exploding center fuel tank."
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