Posted on 01/05/2006 8:19:12 AM PST by Irontank
The mainstream U.S. media outlets have failed to report a major terrorist plot against the U.S. - because it would tend to support President Bush's use of NSA domestic surveillance, according to media watchdog groups.
News of a planned attack masterminded by three Algerians operating out of Italy was widely reported outside the U.S., but went virtually unreported in the American media.
Italian authorities recently announced that they had used wiretaps to uncover the conspiracy to conduct a series of major attacks inside the U.S.
Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said the planned attacks would have targeted stadiums, ships and railway stations, and the terrorists' goal, he said, was to exceed the devastation caused by 9/11.
Italian authorities stepped up their internal surveillance programs after July's terrorist bombings in London. Their domestic wiretaps picked up phone conversations by Algerian Yamine Bouhrama that discussed terrorist attacks in Italy and abroad.
Italian authorities arrested Bouhrama on November 15 and he remains in prison. Authorities later arrested two other men, Achour Rabah and Tartaq Sami, who are believed to be Bouhrama’s chief aides in planning the attacks.
The arrests were a major coup for Italian anti-terror forces, and the story was carried in most major newspapers from Europe to China.
"U.S. terror attacks foiled,” read the headline in England’s Sunday Times. In France, a headline from Agence France Presse proclaimed, "Three Algerians arrested in Italy over plot targeting U.S.”
Curiously, what was deemed worthy of a worldwide media blitz abroad was virtually ignored by the U.S. media, and conservative media watchdog groups are saying that is no accident.
"My impression is that the major media want to use the NSA story to try and impeach the president," says Cliff Kincaid, editor of the Accuracy in Media Report published by the grassroots Accuracy in Media organization.
"If you remind people that terrorists actually are planning to kill us, that tends to support the case made by President Bush. They will ignore any issue that shows that this kind of [wiretapping] tactic can work in the war on terror.”
"The mainstream media have framed the story as one of the nefarious President Bush ‘spying on U.S. citizens,’ where the average American is a victim not a beneficiary,” commented Brent Baker, vice president of the Media Research Center, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to encouraging balanced news coverage, "so journalists have little interest in any evidence that the program has helped save lives by uncovering terrorist plans."
The Associated Press version of the story did not disclose that the men planned to target the U.S. Nor did it report that the evidence against the suspects was gathered via a wiretapping surveillance operation.
Furthermore, only one American newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, is known to have published the story that the AP distributed. It ran on page A-6 under the headline "Italy Charges 3 Algerians.” The Inquirer report also made no mention of the plot to target the U.S. - although foreign publications included this information in the headlines and lead sentences of their stories. Nor did it advise readers that domestic wiretaps played a key role in nabbing the suspected terrorists.
One obvious question media critics are now raising: Did the American media intentionally ignore an important story because it didn't fit into their agenda of attacking President George Bush for using wiretapping to spy on potential terrorists in the U.S.?
"It's clear to me," says AIM's Kincaid, "that they're trying their best to make this NSA program to be an impeachable offense, saying it is directed at ordinary Americans. That's why they keep referring to this as a 'program of spying on Americans' - whereas the president keeps pointing out it's a program designed to uncover al-Qaida operations on American soil."
I dont even remember hearing about that. Thank you MSM!
And they say the MSM isn't against America.... ha!
The media can't talk about plots against the country that the administration has stopped because support for the NSA program, already very high, will go even higher.
And the Dimwhits just can't have THAT.
The Republicans should be shouting this from the rooftops. But they won't.
Okay, so where do we go from here? Call WAPO and the WashTimes and ask for coverage on this? Simply outrageous!
Not only would the public react strongly in favor of such security measures, but there would be more added irony that Italy was doing domestic wiretapping.
That's how they broke up the Algerian terror cell.
fourth estate = fifth column
Too bad the libs I know won't accept a story from newsmax. Would be nice to have this reported in other places. Perhaps some links to the articles from the other papers cited.
MSM Mantra: "We report what we decide." Anything to undermine the president, nothing that might help.
There are smaller conservative papers in the U.S. Where are they? And since the big news media here cares nothing about our national security, perhaps the story will be addressed in the State of the Union speech coming up soon. The American people should be told directly about the tendencies of the media to keep stories that don't fit their agenda away from the public and their tunnel vision quest to impeach this President.
not the least bit surprised.
NY Times mantra..."All the News We See Fit to Print"
Note tagline.
Thanks for posting this!
http://www.geo.tv/main_files/world.aspx?id=99448
Three Algerians arrested in Italy over plot targeting US
ROME: Three Algerians arrested in an anti-terrorist operation in southern Italy are suspected of being linked to a planned new series of attacks in the United States, Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said on Friday.
The attacks would have targeted ships, stadiums or railway stations in a bid to outdo the September 11, 2001 strikes by Al-Qaeda in New York and Washington which killed some 2,700 people, Pisanu said.
The Algerians, suspected of belonging to a cell established by an Al-Qaeda-linked Algerian extremist organisation, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), were named as Achour Rabah, Tartaq Sami and Yasmine Bouhrama.
The first two were arrested Friday in the Salerno area south of Naples, and in Curingia, in the southern Calabria region, respectively.
Bouhrama, 32, had been in jail in Naples since November 15 in connection with another investigation of the GSPC. He is believed to be the head of the Salerno cell and to have liaised with other cells in Milan, Brescia and Naples.
The three in custody are also alleged to have procured false papers and funds to finance the GSPC, a hardline fundamentalist movement that rejects the Algerian government's attempt to draw a line under years of Islamist rebellion.
Pisanu said Friday's swoop was part of a wider operation involving other countries. Links were uncovered between the GSPC's Italian activities and groups in Britain, the Italian news agency Ansa reported.
The President is within his Constitutional rights on this matter of gathering intelligence when ever and where ever he can and More Power to Him! He is about protecting and preventing - Feingold and crowd are showing the world what a traitor to ones country is all about in their efforts to deep-six America’s security.
I thought that the NY Times motto was "All the news that fits."
The Internet and talk radio are the only way to get the truth out.
We need to get talk radio all over this.
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