ABC News accused of treasonous report

worldnetdaily ^ | May 23, 2007 | Joe Kovacs

[ovrtaxt]

Brian Ross of ABC News

ABC News is coming under heavy criticism for its exclusive report revealing a purported CIA covert operation designed to destabilize the government of Iran.

Brian Ross of ABC reported last night:

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a "nonlethal presidential finding" that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions.

"Isn't this type of reporting TREASON?!" asks Robert Lipps in an ABC thread receiving hundreds of comments. "Where's the responsibility for the good of the country? This is disgusting! What are you thinking?"

Dawn Mansfield wrote: "Why, if it is covert, are you airing it and telling the Iranians what we are doing? Do you want more war and more killings of Americans? Let them do their job's and keep your mouths shut."

(Story continues below)

ABC's report has also caught the attention of at least two Republicans running for president.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said he was "shocked."

"The reporting has the potential of jeopardizing our national security," Romney said. "To put it quite plainly, it has the potential of affecting human life, we may never know."

Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado called it "absolutely irresponsible for any media to publish a story like this."

"When foreign governments and terrorist groups can simply watch the news to find out about potential U.S. intelligence operations, we have a problem on our hands."

Tancredo will ask the attorney general to open a criminal probe into the source of the leak and the network's decision to disclose the information, as well as call for congressional hearings.

"I just hope Democrats and the media show as much interest in this as they did over Valerie Plame," he said.

ABC News has responded to the criticism, saying in a statement:

"In the six days since we first contacted the CIA and the White House, at no time did they indicate that broadcasting this report would jeopardize lives or operations on the ground. ABC News management gave them the repeated opportunity to make whatever objection they wanted to regarding our report. They chose not to."

ABC did receive some supportive comments on its thread, including:

• "I for one appreciate ABC's courage in letting Americans know what the government is up to. It's the present insane U.S. government, not the Iranian, that's a threat to U.S. citizens." (Janet)

• "Thank you, ABC News for keeping the public informed on the idiotic plans the Bush administration has in place to further escalate the conflict in the Middle East. Cheney is trying is hardest to start a war with Iran. The people of the U.S. need to WAKE UP and put an end to this madness. We need more accountability in Washington to prevent another Iraq from destroying the region." (Eric)

• "Hurrah to ABC! Anybody with half a brain is going to know that this info was deliberately leaked by the 'Bushies.' More posturing. More cowboy diplomacy! Thanks ABC for doing the job the press is supposed to be doing and should have been doing in 2001." (Rob Meyer)

[Fred]

There have been comments at the ABC website saying that the Bush admin wanted this story out. I am trying to figure out what the benefits are from such a story being made public. Any suggestions..

Time for an AG probe. I think this kind of leak is far more dangerous than Valerie Plame shopping at Nordstroms...

[Fedora]

Brian Ross was also involved in ABC's Nigergate coverage. There seems to be a major rat's nest at ABC.

Wilsongate: Motive, Means, and Opportunity

Active in encouraging speculation against Berlusconi and Blair were former US intelligence agents linked to VIPS who shuttled between the US and European media. Former CIA agent Vince Cannistraro, who in retirement had gone to work as a security advisor for the Vatican and an intelligence consultant for ABC News (where Morton Halperin’s son Mark Halperin served as Political Director) had been serving since the Clinton administration as a frequent source for US correspondents of Britain’s Guardian, which was also quoting Valerie Plame’s former CIA colleague Larry Johnson (later of VIPS) by September 2002. Cannistraro also served as a source for the Italian media. Although during the Clinton administration various articles had quoted Cannistraro linking Iraq to Al Qaeda, from about September 2002 on Cannistraro began telling US and European reporters that there was no evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He also began complaining, as he expressed it to the Guardian on October 9, 2002, “Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA.” Cannistraro elaborated to the Washington Post on October 25, 2002, “they are undertaking a campaign to get George Tenet. . .fired because they can't get him to say what they want on Iraq.” Later Cannistraro would claim that Saddam Hussein used him to make peace overtures to the US via Iraqi agent Tahir Habbush in December 2002, when Hussein was reportedly sending similar messages through channels such as former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter--an antiwar propagandist financed by Iraqi agent Shakir Al-Khafaji--to sympathetic world leaders such as Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Nelson Mandela. Meanwhile as Cannistraro was serving as Saddam Hussein’s courier and discrediting Bush’s war effort in the European media, the German TV show Panorama broadcast a similar message from VIPS’ Ray McGovern and David MacMichael, along with Bob Baer and former UN weapons inspector David Albright, in an episode which aired March 6, 2003, a day before Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA, headquartered in Vienna, Austria) first publicized the Niger forgeries. Later Germany’s ZDF Television, which been airing interviews about the forgeries with ElBaradei, Baer, and Seymour Hersh, supplied a video of the Niger forgeries to ABC News for a July 15, 2003 show which quoted Cannistraro blaming the forgeries on Italian intelligence: “The Italians, as a NATO ally, thought they had some valuable information that played into current NATO requirements as well as U.S. and U.K. requirements about Iraq and Saddam Hussein, and they passed it on.”71

SNIP

On the same day Kennedy made his statement, a second delegation of US Democratic Congressmen arrived in Iraq, consisting of Kucinich’s antiwar coalition ally McDermott, Michigan Congressman and former Democratic Whip David Bonior, and California Congressman Mike Thompson. . .During the trip, McDermott spoke live from Baghdad to ABC’s This Week on September 29 to comment on a statement he had previously made, “The President of the United States will lie to the American people in order to get us into this war.”

SNIP

On February 15, 2003, Levin, Rockefeller, and their Intelligence Committee colleagues left for their secret fact-finding mission abroad, returning February 27.179 Less than a week later, Levin and Joseph Wilson appeared together with the French ambassador Jean-David Levitte present on ABC’s Nightline on March 4, 2003--the same day the US was first informed that the information French intelligence had provided on November 22 had been based on the Niger forgeries.

SNIP

[Note 71:] Brian Ross, “Intelligence Scam: Flawed Uranium Intelligence Came From Forged Documents Sold to Italians”, ABCNews.com, July 15, 2003, http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/US/uranium030715_docs.html, cached at http://web.archive.org/web/20030801154848/http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/US/uranium030715_docs.html; Brian Ross, “Forged Iraq Documents Were Full of Flaws: Forged Documents Detailing Uranium Sale Were Full of Errors”, July 16, 2003, ABCNews.com, http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=129574&page=1; Brian Ross and Chris Vlasto, “Possible Deal Aborted? Claim: U.S. Government Spurned Peace Talks Before the War With Iraq”, ABC News, November 5, 2003, archived at Information Clearing House, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5164.htm

[Brimack34]

Did the President get a question on this today?

[fatez]

I am not advocating this, but someday, someone who lost a loved one to these treasonous types of 'reporting' is going to get take out their revenge on one of these media outlets.

If one of my kids died or were hurt because of this so called reporting, I don’t know what I would do.

I do not understand why Bush does not take off the gloves on this kind of stuff, the country would back him on this one.

[quant5]

“That can only mean that the CIA wants Iran to know this news, or that it is actually old news. I feel better about this if that is the case.

I give our guys more credit. I think we’ve been in Iran with some operations for at least a year and a half now, but maybe this simply raises the level.”

Yeah, those 3 carriers and dozens of destroyers and support vessels have kinda tipped the Iranians off we are up to something. Covert means plausible deniability and in this case, and information war to keep Iranian civilians out of harms way. “Clandestine” operations mean secret and involve true “black op” arts such as assasinations, blowing stuff up and other physical nasties on the enemy.