Posted on 01/13/2006 12:31:08 AM PST by tgambill
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."
www.newsmax.com
© 2005, Assyrian International News Agency. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use.
Tony Blankley: "The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?"
plink
Muslim news is reliable than our own?
bttt
Assyrians are Iraqi Christians.
Thanks for the ping piasa.
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ON THE NET...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1541389/posts?page=2709#2709
FBI: `Very vague' intelligence alert warns of possible threats to U.S. stadiums
AP ^ | 3 July 2002 | AP
Posted on 07/04/2002 7:57:24 AM PDT by habaes corpussel
ST. LOUIS - The FBI has issued a "very vague" alert warning that people with ties to terrorist groups are downloading images of U.S. stadiums from the Internet, an agency official said Wednesday.
The intelligence bulletin was sent in recent days to law-enforcement agencies nationwide.
"There's no specific threat," said Bill Eubanks, head of the FBI's St. Louis office. "They just simply accessed the Web site."
Images downloaded from www.worldstadiums.com. included the Edward Jones Dome, home to the NFL's St. Louis Rams, and Indianapolis' RCA Dome, he said.
The FBI said it has contacted authorities in both places about security precautions.
St. Louis Police Chief Joe Mokwa called the alert "noteworthy," but said he sees no "imminent threat." Both stadiums were to be closed Thursday for the July Fourth holiday, officials said.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/2005/11/009076print.html November 19, 2005
Italy: Algerian Suspects Allegedly Planned To Kill 10,000
From AKI, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
Brescia and Naples - The three Algerians detained on Tuesday in the Italian cities of Brescia and Naples were planning a massive terror attack - "on a ship as big as the Titanic, packed with explosives" - that aimed to kill "at least 10,000 people", as well as an attack on "Italian citizens and interests" in Tunisia, according phone conversations between the three men, which Italian anti-terror police say they intercepted after al-Qaeda's deadly 7 July attacks on London and on the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh.
In their tapped phone conversations, Yamine Bouhrama, Mohamed Larbi and Khaled Serai described the 7 July London subway and bus bombings that killed over 50 and injured 700, and the 23 July Sharm El-Sheikh terror attacks that killed 90 people and injured over 150 as "highdays and holidays", according to police. The three also spoke of having "documents ready", "war on the infidel", and "a bigger party" than the London attacks.
They are suspected of being members of the al-Qaeda-linked Algerian militant formation, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). Investigators allege they were not just in Italy to provide logistical support such as false passports and residency permits, but were actually "potential operatives" who were "ready to attack"...
Bourhama is thought to have undergone training at terrorist camps in Chechnya and Georgia and may be capable of making explosive belts used by suicide bombers. He allegedly had in his possession a bottle of "perfume" containing toxic substances, police said.
While under surveillance, Serai is believed to have been followed to Norway, where Mullah Krekar, an Iraqi Kurd who heads the radical Islamic militia group Ansar al-Islam, has lived since requesting political asylum in 1991, despite being wanted around the world. The US has accused Ansar al-Islam of offering sanctuary to al-Qaeda fighters fleeing Afghanistan, including the now leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi...
Posted at November 19, 2005 08:48 AM
from the above post...
As they say....troubling.
Already posted
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1552393/posts
Oil-for-Food a Failure From the Start? (Saddam bio labs, to put sarin in perfume bottles)
FoxNews ^ | Feb. 11, 2005 | FoxNews
Posted on 02/12/2005 8:49:38 AM PST by FairOpinion
The Iraqi Survey Group also found that supposed "humanitarian" imports under Oil-for-Food gave Saddam the ability to restart his biological and chemical warfare programs at a moment's notice. Spertzel said what scared him the most in Iraq was the discovery of secret labs to make deadly weapons like the nerve agent, sarin, and the biological poison, ricin, in spray form. ...
...But Spertzel believes Saddam was cooking up an even more sinister plan — putting the poisons on department store shelves across the United States and Europe. He said that plan was "actively pursued" as late as March 2003. And that plan was at least, in part, funded by Saddam's corrupt Oil-for-Food activities.
"Some of the photographs that were obtained from this same laboratory had multiple different shapes of glass spray bottles, perfume spray bottles — presumably to mimic different brand names," Spertzel said. "Can you imagine somebody going into Macy's department store and spray a little bit of a perfume to see whether they like the scent, only instead of perfume they're getting a face full of sarin?
"That would kill within, within a few minutes. If this were to appear at a couple different locations, imagine the economic impact in the U.S. — people would be afraid to buy anything."
Yep and thank you piasa.
For your links, please add these 2 below.
I stayed up one riight recently and just
worked on "stadium" and updated the
"key word" on certain threads so it would pop up.
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=stadium
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=stadiums
Really? Tell me more.
Aren't they Arab Christians? Well, either way I believed the Turks ethnically cleansed a large segment of their population.
I don't know if anyone else has asked the question, but if we can eavesdrop on conversations w/al Qaeda operatives in the US, why don't we just round them all up and send them back to the rock they crawled out under from on a BUFF?
That thread has links and references to related stories (same perps in recent arrests, related perps and incident plans in Novmber arrests). None of the stories says anything about warrantless wiretapping, and the thread above has some speculation regarding the condition of EU law on the matter of warrantless wiretapping.
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