Major Terror Plot Against U.S. Ignored

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."

This one gives a brief legal insight, "the government ... tightened laws, giving investigators more scope in their surveillance of suspects."

Anybody here know where to look up changes in EU law regarding surveillance and privacy?

Denis Barnett
Rome, Italy, November 17, 2005 (AFP) - Italian anti-terrorist police said Thursday three Algerian men arrested earlier this week were members of a banned Islamic group and were "potentially" able to carry out a terrorist attack in Europe.
Three Algerian men were arrested in police operations late Tuesday in the southern port city of Naples and in Brescia in the north. The three are "members of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat," a Carabinieri spokesman told AFP.
The police gave no details about where or when the attack was to have taken place, but were to hold a news conference in Naples later Thursday.
Meanwhile, an interior ministry source told AFP that the Italian media had "overplayed" the arrests.
"The possibility, and I stress possibility, that they would carry out an attack, could concern Europe or another region of the world, not Italy," the source said. The men, named as Yamine Bouhrama, 32, Khaled Serai, 35, and Mohamed Larbi, 31, were expected to be formally charged with international terrorism on Friday, prosecutors said.
Italy has arrested scores of Muslims since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, usually in a blaze of publicity. However, a great number have been quietly released without convictions in the months following their arrest.
In the latest arrests, Bourhama was seized at Naples main railway station while the other two were arrested in Brescia. Police also searched several homes in the Brescia area.
"The arrest of more suspected terrorists is a worrying sign, but also it shows the efficient investigative and intelligence work going on in the north and south of Italy," said Gianni Alemanno, a minister in Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government.
Italy has frequently received threats from extremist groups via the Internet for maintaining its 3,000-strong military contingent in southern Iraq.
In the wake of the London bombings last July, the government tightened anti-terrorist laws, giving investigators more scope in their surveillance of suspects.
Anti-terrorist police wiretaps and surveillance established that the men had contact with mujahedin groups in Bosnia and other Islamic fundamentalists living in Norway, France and Britain.
Police said Bouhrama and Serai had moved to France and then to Norway in the summer of last year, using false identification documents.
They returned after a few months and frequently moved between the Italian cities of Brescia, Vicenza, Naples and the southern province of Salerno. Bouhrama had spent time in training camps in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Georgia, investigators said.
Police reportedly decided to arrest the men after intercepting references to an attack in recent weeks, particularly after it appeared that one of the men was planning to leave Italy.
Sources told Italian media the men were in contact with members of the Armed Islamic Group GIA seeking the overthrow of the secular government in Algeria. The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat in Europe is an offshoot of the GIA. One of its leaders, Djamel Lounici, was jailed by an Italian court after being arrested in Naples for giving logistical and economic support for terrorists in Algeria.
Police in Naples said the men were also linked to a group of North African men arrested in London in January 2003 after British police discovered a factory making the toxic chemical ricin.
According to the Corriere della Sera newspaper, the men first came to the notice of Italy's military intelligence service SISMI in 2002.
Italy, in common with other EU states, stepped up security in the wake of the London transport bombings in July and Berlusconi warned Italians they were in the "firing line" of terrorism because of Rome's support for the US-led war in Iraq. AFP http://www.quepasa.com/english/news/world/Italy.arrests.terrorists/394198.html

Re the Old Leftist Media: 'They're no longer "the press" in the original sense of the term, but rather advertising handouts promoting the nefarious goals of their masters.'

Bingo!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh, yeah, prob'ly most of us would agree with that!

Here's a thought, FWIW; wouldn't it be instructive if someone would investigate how much "campaign advertising" money goes to the Old Media, from the Crats- is that the newest form of bribery?

Hmmmmmmm. Let's just suppose that the Pubs are charged 1 million for a specific ad/timeslot; and the Crats raise that, to say, 2 million and maybe get some of the choicest spots (prime time, etc) or even the same deal. Suppose the Crats have a standing order that they will always pay more, for the same type of deal? It would be one powerful reason for the Old Media types- the Chronkeeks and the Chronkettes- to slant their "news".

I've thought for a long time that one way to get some financial honesty in political campaigns would be to require not only where the money comes from, but also, where it goes.

Why else would these blowhards rate millions of dollars in salaries/perks- when their Nielsens are tanking? Or maybe it's just because they're so darned cute.

Or am I all wrong on this?

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