The EyeOpener Video Report

50 years ago this month, the President of the United States had his head blown off in broad daylight. As is to be expected, there are those who will passionately argue that this event is of little historical significance. What is somewhat surprising is that those who argue thusly include some of the most respected academics and researchers of our era, yet the picture that emerges from the historical record is one fundamentally opposed to that painted by the critics who argue that his death was of no significance.
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The term “war on journalism” is an apt description of the current state of affairs because there is a war being waged on the public right now. It is a war for the hearts and minds of the population, and it is being waged by the bought-and-paid for government and the compliant repeaters in the corporate controlled dinosaur media that is bleeding readership and viewership as alternative entities increasingly dominate the information battlefield. Find out more about this war and the forces that are waging it in this week’s edition of the EyeOpener Report with James Corbett.

If there is one thing that defines our current political era, it is the unprecedented crackdown on government whistleblowers. If the Bush administration’s invocation of the little used State Secrets Privilege to silence those exposing corruption is taken as the beginning point of this era, we have seen a steady progression throughout the past decade, culminating in Obama’s unprecedented war on whistleblowers.

In June 2003, then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller learnt Valerie Plame’s name along with journalists like Robert Novak and Bob Woodward. From July 2005 to October 2005, Miller spent 85 days in jail for not revealing her sources on Plame to Patrick Fitzgerald’s grand jury investigation into the Plame affair. Although every aspect of Miller’s imprisonment is strange, by far the strangest is Miller’s continuing refusal to speak out about the real Plame scandal, and that the entire Fitzgerald investigation, including her time in jail, was based on a complete sham.

The official story of the “leaking” of Plame’s identity is a sham. Despite the fact that the Department of Justice in general and Fitzgerald’s office and Libby’s lawyers in particular, had been provided with information proving that the real Plamegate scandal had started in 2001 with Grossman’s phone call to his Turkish contacts warning them about Brewster Jennings, nothing at all came of this scandalous information. Instead, one low-ranking neocon was convicted and had his sentence commuted by President Bush for obstruction of justice.

When Hillary Clinton appointed Marc Grossman as US Special Envoy News coverage of the appointment dutifully noted Grossman’s long career at the State Department and past accomplishments, including his appointment as Career Ambassador by President Bush in 2004 and his Secretary of State Distinguished Service Award in 2005.

We all know the official story of Plamegate by now: the Bush administration, angry at ex-Ambassador Joe Wilson’s op-ed accusing the White House of “twisting the evidence” to lead the country into war with Iraq, leaked his wife’s identity as a CIA agent to journalist Robert Novak, who then revealed it in the Washington Post. After a lengthy investigation, “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s Chief of Staff, was convicted for obstruction of justice and Richard Armitage took the fall for leaking the name in the first place.

The Afghan war has provided NATO with access to control the $200+ Billion opium trade. The war has given NATO a key toe-hold in a geostrategic region, bordering perennial US target Iran as well as providing access to the key Central Asian nations- a vital area in NATO’s ongoing quest to encircle China and Russia. The occupation also affords the ISAF forces direct access to Afghanistan’s mineral resources, and the compliant Kabul regime is only too happy to allow multinational corporations access to those resources.

Preserve the crime scene. Follow the money trail. Establish the motive. Look for those with the means to pull off the crime. Any criminal investigator will tell you that these are the most basic principles of any investigation. But none of them were followed on 9/11. Of course, there was no serious criminal investigation. No attempt to preserve the evidence or establish the means, motive or opportunity. No inclination to follow the money.

It has long been acknowledged that the Saudis have been one of the key players funding, arming, training and smuggling terrorists into Syria during the conflict. But the Saudi connection to the fighting in Syria took on a new dimension in the wake of last month’s chemical attack on Ghouta. The Saudis are now being blamed for supplying the chemical weapons that the rebels used in the attack.