Abby Martin Interviews Bob Graham On "Breaking The Set"
Jon Gold Thu, 10/03/2013 - 8:37pm
Abby interviews former Senator Bob Graham on Saudi Arabia's connection to 9/11, and several other subjects. *The actual date was 10/2/2013.
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Great interview.
Great questions as usual from Abby. Graham was flustering and blustering somewhat, trying to provide a coherent answer to the question about going to war against Afghanistan to capture one man. He weaseled his way around it, but failed to sound convincing.
I was, however, hoping that she was going to ask Graham about that mysterious breakfast meeting in the Capitol on the morning of 9/11 between him, Porter Goss, John Kyl, Mahmoud Ahmad and several others. Ahmed was the former head of the Pakistani InterServices Agency (ISI) - which had close connections with Osama bin Laden and others. Ahmad was the alleged "money man", having authorized several international wire transfers of up to $100,000 to the supposed hijack team "ring leader" Mohamed Atta in the weeks leading up to the attack. Goss was appointed in 2004 as CIA Director, only to resign mysteriously in 2006 after only two years on the job - no satisfactory explanation was ever given for suddenly quitting. The same team which were in the Capitol that morning had also met in Islamabad, Pakistan, only a few weeks earlier. After a 35 year career in the Pakistani military-intelligence community, Ahmad was suddenly fired from his post in October 2001, 5 weeks after 9/11, and he has not been heard from in public life since then.
What business was being discussed between the future head of the CIA, the former Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the guy who allegedly authorized the funding of the worst ever attack on US soil?
I think Abby Martin plays softball with all her "gets."
In a recent interview on her program Breaking the Set on media matters, specifically the Media Shield Law, with Zoe Carpenter of The Nation Martin missed an opportunity to confront a member of the "alternative" press about other important government influences on the media like pass through funding and other incentives which The Nation among others have purportedly participated in the past.
Pass through funding as a means of influencing media in The Nation Magazine and the CIA : http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/2011/04/15/the-nation-magazine-and-the-cia/
softballs?
Interesting but ultimately baseless critique. From what I've seen the questions she asks are some of the most effective at undermining the false narrative of the war on terror. They may not be as 'hard hitting' as you prefer, but I've never seen a senator struggle to answer such a basic question about why we needed to invade Afghanistan (he obviously forgot the line, and rarely anyone ever asks the logic behind such a ridiculous move). Her interview with Howard Dean was excellent too.
The lady from the nation doesn't represent the policies of the paper itself, to me confronting her about that would be as useless as going up to Amy Goodman and handing her a document about WTC7 and proceeding to call her a gateekeeper while standing in front of her. But apparently there are those in the 'movement' who prefer the in your face confrontational approach. I personally prefer Abby's approach, which seems to provide fare more actual useful results.
Thanks for conflating me with ambush journos.....
First off, thank for conflating me with someone who thinks that ambushing Amy Goodman at her own event was a good idea;
yes, thank you for doing my thinking for me. There has to be a proper forum to get an idea across. Take the Dixie Chicks, for example. I know that they were against the war in Iraq but I don't know what there feelings are about war in general. The reason is because the original statement they made was at one of their concerts and was basically a blurb as far as I can tell and doesn't go very far in telling me what their umwelt is. I suppose I could investigate that but I don't want to be exposed to their music which would certainly follow. The point is there is a time and place for everything.
A great place to dig for the truth would be if you had your own show on a 60 million dollar start up network like Russia Today as does Abby Martin. No one points out the absurdity stated by Senator Graham that the "entity" that attacked the U.S. on 9/11 "emanated" from Afghanistan as justification for the war there when he had just stated that important elements of that self-same entity were emanating from San Diego as well as "near Sarasota, Florida." Why not attack those cities? While the latter may seem absurd, it is no more absurd than attacking Afghanistan especially, as we all know, the Taliban offered to give up bin Laden and that the only hitch there is that negotiation is not a part of a battle plan. But what does it all mean vis a vis Saudi involvement? According to Graham it is a "mystery." The knowledge of Saudi involvement in 9/11 goes back to 2002 at least and perhaps before; we all know that. Recently featured on this blog site for his statement that the bin Laden capture story was a "big lie," Pulitzer Prize winning journo Sey Hersh stated: "Our job is to find out ourselves, our job is not just to say – here's a debate' our job is to go beyond the debate and find out who's right and who's wrong about issues." I don't think Martin does that here. We need a new journalism, a strident one, almost frenetic and coltish that fits and moves apace and au fur et à mesure within a zeitgeist in which the government is spying on everyone (to create a climate of fear is the foremost goal of that action) and according to an ex president, Jimmy Carter, has "has no functioning democracy at this moment;" anything else is just dithering.
Sey Hersh
Can't believe you're quoting Hersh in such a positive sense - Hersh is an obvious "deep state" operative who played the first violin in the KAL 007 blatant provocation against the USSR designed to heat up "Cold War Two" white hot - has assured the world that "Oswald acted alone" - now playing a little game with the bin Ladin farce - saying the whole thing was a lie - to get your attention - then "what I meant was" the aftermath. To compare that greasy bastard with Abby Martin - who questions 9-11 - well, I guess we're just not on the same page. Oh, also, are you saying receiving a Pulitzer prize is a GOOD thing ?!?
I like the quote......
"You get the Pulitzer for good story telling, not necessarily telling the truth. I was being somewhat ironic in quoting Hersh, as I pointed out in another post, Hersh is a trained liar but he is good at it. But the quote is spot on: "Our job is to find out ourselves, our job is not just to say – here's a debate' our job is to go beyond the debate and find out who's right and who's wrong about issues." That address the five "Ws" of journalism at least. Look, I like RT but I am not going to have a wet dream over it; it is Russian Oligarch Radio at best. If you listen to Abby on Media Roots you get an ad libitum Abby and there is a completely different persona on RT which to paraphrase Adam Curry of No Agenda is: "a Berkeley Birkenstock girl wobbling in high heels." Rather crass, I admit, but it gets to the point, plus, I think, she is really from Oakland. This interview with former Senator Bob Graham that is in question is a canned hash set piece and doesn't, as we say in psychology, add anything of significance to the furtherance of the literature.
As for Sey Hersh, I think that my stylization of him, from another post, is rather terse and cogent: " The Guardian goes on to state how Hersh gave us stories on My Lai, Watergate, Cambodia and Abu Ghraib, yet much of these stories remain untold. Of My Lai, Hersh tells an encapsulated story of how a renegade company and its defective leader went off the res and razed an entire village. Hersh's one-off massacre is supposed to serve as a cautionary tale of what war can do if we are not careful, not guarded. This a'int how it went down. In his book Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam author Nick Turse speaks of "a My Lai a month." There was nothing unique or encapsulated about My Lai, that strategy was policy. There is also nothing unique about a Pulitzer Prize winning newsman coming late to the table and parsing out news that is no longer news, it can only be one thing: pushback."
following the money
and the 9/11commission said it wasn't important to find out where the money came from!!
HOWEVER: south carolina republican sen lindsay graham, born 1955, who was at that infamous (but not widely enough reported) breakfast mtg, is not the same person interviewed by abby.
the latter is former democratic gov of fla, sen robert graham, born 1936, brother of former washington post publisher, philip graham.
before committing the suicide (?) which nullified his will revisions, thus allowing wife katherine to obtain complete control of wa. post and all, he (philip) was one of the prominent journalists 'recruited' to the cia by friend frank wisner as part of operation mockingbird which influenced american media to slant news in favor of cia agenda.))
(this is not meant to cast aspersions on environment/education minded bob, just interesting to wonder about graham sibling dinner conversation..)
'anyone can commit a murder, but it takes an expert to commit a suicide.: (legendary cia asset wm corson, close cohort of cia head jim angleton, to investigative journalist and former marine lt col roger charles.) and cancers, heart attacks and suicidal depressions, by the early sixties could be 'administered' undetectably, courtesy of infamous dr. sid gottlieb. p. 267, "mary's mosaic, 'the cia conspiracy to murder jfk and mary pinchot meyer, and their vision for world peace," by peter janney.