* via damien, this A1 WSJ story on ghorba - here's the lead-in:
Exiled Iranian Has Another Run As U.S. Informantthat's a pretty good start. laura gets a shoutout, yay. i don't think i noticed a single new thing in the story. curious that it's getting FP attention - and none of it friendly.Mr. Ghorbanifar Resurfaces With Material on Tehran After His Iran-Contra RoleConcern He's a New Chalabi
As tensions rise between the U.S. and Iran, Manucher Ghorbanifar has been fanning the flames.
5 comments:
curious that it's getting FP attention - and none of it friendly.
The war between the news staff and the editorial page goes on...
good point. i wonder how long this piece has been sitting on the shelf...
Judgements of the editorial page notwithstanding, on the journalistic side we're not talking about a staff of pikers.
The real question is "what else do they have sitting on the shelf?"
what a lovely question that is, Don.
You've been throwing up a lot of similar questions lately. always spot-on.
Hey, a snippet heard here, a comment read there, a neural gap closes and I ask. Can't help it, the environment here makes me ask 'dangerous' questions. ;)
It speaks volumes that SAPs are being developed with 'exposure damage control' provisions. The implication is that they know they're up to something that people are going to think (for good reason) is wrong. The policy is 'bury it but be ready when someone digs it up'...
Or perhaps when it's to be 'revealed'/'leaked' at a predetermined time. 'Limited hang-out' takes on a whole new dimension under the Bush administration.
That said, most of the time when we read stories of the latest under-the-table highjinks BushCo's been up to, it's mentioned (often very quietly) that the lead agency 'sat' on the story (for days, weeks or months) at someone's request. Risen & Lichtblau's original NSA story was 'shelved' for what, 8-9 months, because there was an election in the offing (as though a governing party's potentially illegal conduct wasn't legitimate criteria for re-election).
Thanks to hints here and there (Tice & Hoekstra, for example) we know there are other, possibly many, programs on the go. How many stories are out there , at this or that news agency, sitting on shelves, that should be in the open but for illegitimate political CYA purposes?
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