Claim: Pentagon tried to ‘intimidate’ journo covering Blackwater By Daniel Tencer Thursday, November 26th RAW-
Claim: Pentagon tried to ‘intimidate’ journo covering Blackwater
By Daniel Tencer
Thursday, November 26th, 2009 -- 9:22 pm
michael mullen Claim: Pentagon tried to intimidate journo covering BlackwaterThe office of Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the highest-ranking soldier in the US, tried to intimidate a reporter working on a story about security contractor Blackwater's operations in Pakistan, the reporter claims.
Jeremy Scahill -- whose story alleging secret assassination and bombing campaigns inside Pakistan run by Xe Services, formerly Blackwater, appeared in The Nation on Monday -- said he received a phone call from Adm. Mullen's office the day before the story appeared, informing him that his story "didn't match up with reality."
Speaking to Laura Flanders' GRITtv, Scahill described how he got little cooperation from the government in his investigation -- until he received a phone call from Adm. Mullen's office the day before the article was to be published.
"I didn't call them," Scahill said. "They called me. They wouldn't tell me how they got my number. They wouldn't tell me how they heard about the story. And they told me that my story didn't match up with reality."
Scahill said he interpreted the move as an attempt at intimidation.
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"How would any journalist perceive a call from the top US military chain of command, when you haven't called them [and] they won't tell you how they heard about the story? I did take it as an act of intimidation on the part of Adm. Mullen's office."
The following video was posted to the Web by GRITtv, November 25, 2009. Scahill's comments about Adm. Mullen start around the 8:00 mark.
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It is a stretch calling this attempted intimidation
The caller obviously identified themselves as being from the Admiral's office with a concern that Scahill may not have the story right and that they would look bad. I am not saying either the Admiral's office or Scahill were right but since they identified themselves and didn't make any threats of any kind it is really hard to put this into an attempted intimidation category.
Had the caller not identified themselves as being from Admiral Mullen's office one could then say it was an attempt at intimidation.
I think the contacts that Steven Jones got from a mysterious person who said they had connections and actually tried to bribe him not to publish his first paper certainly rose to the level of attempted intimidation.
I don't know ...
my dictionary contains the following definition of intimidation ... The feeling of discouragement in the face of someone's superior fame or wealth or status etc.
Seems to me, this is an accurate characterization of the phone call described by Scahill ... what other purpose could account for this action on the part of the Admiral's office. It's very suspicious.
Why is Scahill Surprised?
Of course he's being tapped, monitored, watched.
We all are.