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.
Thanks for the post.
I was beginning to think I had been redirected to DU for a moment. (No need to let an ugly set of facts destroy such a beautiful theory...)
Wait, wait! I've got it! There were TWO missles! One by the military and one by the terrorists! Each thought the other had done it, so neither fessed up or took credit. Wow! How could this have been missed for so long! Yeah, that's the ticket!
Call the NYT! </sarcasm>
Look into the Arrow Air crash in Gander. You might think different after digging into that.
I'm not sure about that. As I recall (and if anyone has better information, please correct me), the US offered to pay compensation directly to the families of those killed. Iran insisted that the compansation be paid in one sum to the government, claiming that it would distribute the money to the families. The US balked. So the money has been set aside, but not actually disbursed.
Some folks around here will simply not accept that some occurrences are accidents, especially when there's a convenient political demon to blame.
Stephanopolous isn't the only one who has made statements like that. There was another government official who said something similar. More recently. Perhaps other freepers will remember the incident.
exact cause of ignition remains a mystery
Aviator probably knows this, but to recap on how we keep planes full of potentially explosive stuff from exploding all the time:
To have an explosion in a jet-fuel tank you need to have several things:
... and, finally, the granddaddy of them all:
Before TWA 800 designers concentrated mostly on eliminating possible sources of ignition. Since, operational considerations include not having fuel tanks contain an inflammable mixture in the ullage, to give belt-and-suspenders safety.
A third level of safety will be added soon by inerting, by putting inert gas into the ullage so that the fuel can't evaporate and form inflammable vapor.
Hope this helps. The explosion thing is kind of counterintuitive (if it happened once, why doesn't it happen all the time? people ask). The answer is, too many odd details need to fall into place, which is why it's happened only four or five times in millions of flight hours.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
O Thor and Odin! Oh daemons of Niffelheim! I take it all back! Now I have seen the light!
Actually, my theory is that Team America was firing a missile at a French mime and it ricocheted off the Tour Eiffel, making one and one half earth orbits and plunging onto TWA 800.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
I know I'm not the only person who repeatedly saw the video, I think on Fox NYC, of a missile going over the lady in a tacky long red coctail dress. The video did not show the plane blowing up, just the missile in the background climbing upwards.
If I recall correctly, many other Freepers saw it.
.
I find it very interesting that my postings on the CLINTONS' being behind the Downing of TWA Flight 800, as another diversion away from their own worst misbehaviors, have been posted online ever since those victims went down.
I find it doubly interesting that HILLARY herself has felt compelled to go on Talk Radio to complain about "All those bad things they are accusing me of doing on the internet"..!!!
Especially since JFK jr's plane also went down in the Atlantic on the eve of his own TV Announcement from the Albany N.Y. Capitol steps that he was running for the U.S. Senate against HILLARY. Even though HILLARY had coldly threatened him not to earlier that same year (Per DICK MORRIS).
"It's the TV, Stupid, no matter who pays for it" = CLITNON M.O.
...still.
.
This is really peripheral to the main subject of the ping list, but there may be good info for those who 'cross research' such things.
Sounds like a Kook to me.
Max alt: 4500 Meters, which is 14,763.779 feet.
Stephanopolous isn't the only one who has made statements like that. There was another government official who said something similar. More recently. Perhaps other freepers will remember the incident.
Yeah, and if you did a Google or Nexis search, you'd probably find dozens of people who referred to the "bombing" of the World Trade Center on 09/11/2001. Some folks will claim that those "slips" prove that there was a controlled demolition of the towers.
That's part of the conspiracy mindset. If you can find a thousand sources saying the same thing and one saying something else, the lonely voice must be the voice of truth. If the same person said the same thing a hundred times and something different once, the one differing utterance must have been the truth "slipping out."
If the navy were carrying out a life-fire missile drill in the area, it would require that every crewman on every ship that fired, and everyone who observed the exercise, remain silent for the last nine years. If it were a terrorist attack, that would require a lot of air traffic controllers sticking to their lie about the plane's altitude and speed. Not to mention that a heat-seeking missile would have honed in on an engine, not split the fuselage.
The odds of keeping a conspiracy secret are inversely proportional to the square of the number of people who know the secret. My Lai and Watergate were blown within months, when only about a dozen people were involved. A coverup with at least scores and more likely hundreds of people involved? I'm not buying it.
This just can't be...I thought it was a center fuel tank that exploded!.....< /sarc >
You are correct.
By the way, did you know that he was in Vietnam? :)
I don't know if it was a missle, a bomb, accident, or Beer Fart that brought it down. What I do know is, it happened just weeks before the Atlanta Games. Tourists were already flooding into the Country. Bubba and Bubbette would stop at nothing to insure a cover story held until at a minimum the Atlanta Games and the Election had passed. The precious Clinton reputation was more important than any factual investigation.
The Clinton Legacy DEMANDED that if anything bad happened for any reason, there had to be a way to either dismiss it or blame it on the VRWC.
BINGO!
Thanks for the ping!
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