September 11 Commission Report - Gnostic Liberation Front

and seized video tapes he had shot for the programme. These have not yet been returned.” [U.S. troops
seize (UK) Channel 4/Guardian journalist, by Brian Boyko, The Guardian, January 9, 2006]
“The British government has threatened newspapers with prosecution [Guardian Unlimited] under the
Official Secrets Act if it releases the memo where Bush claimed to want to bomb Al Jazeera
headquarters in Doha, Qatar. The Daily Kos reports that the two Brits who leaked the memo to
newspapers are already being prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act.” [Bombing Al Jazeera Story
Update, http://brianboyko.com/category/iraq-war/]
These tactics have silenced the ‘witnesses’ who would challenge the Bush organization
over the past 25 years. Never the less, investigations are sometimes spurred by
organizations, groups and individuals not under the influence of the US government. For
instance:
− the Kazakhstan-Mobil Oil bribery case was initiated in British courts;
− the Russian money-laundering scandal was opened first by the Russians, closed
by the US Attorney General without a scandal, and then re-opened by the Swiss
who discovered the problem to be far more massive than US investigators
reported;
− the French legal system is in the process of bringing Richard Cheney and
Halliburton to task for the Nigerian oil scandals. (The US investigation of
Cheney for violation of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was mentioned in
one US story by the Boston Globe;)
− the Marcos gold/Swiss bank scandal would have died had it not been for a Swiss
janitor;
− the Iran-Contra scandal was actually pushed into the media by the Israelis, who
felt betrayed by George Bush Sr;
− the Valerie Plame (forged Iraq WMD evidence) scandal was initiated by a
“blogger.”
To deal with these emergent scandals, the Bush organization has, over the years
developed an effective system for “killing” bad news, as well as its bearers, and
managing the flow of negative information that manages to surface to the public attention
through minor news channels. This system includes several means to control the
information made available to the American citizenry:
1. Control of the legal and investigative systems (FBI, DEA, CIA, Congressional
Hearings, Independent Commissions),
2. Control of the major media through the three “F’s: fool’em, feed’em and
force’m.”
Here is the real terrorist threat. People who make a living reporting the news and
investigating crime are pretty much aware of what happens when a member of their
profession pursues investigation of these crimes: they know of these deaths and career
terminations, and live their lives in fear of those consequences. To avoid those
consequences, nearly all reporters and investigators generally stop at Level 1 or Level 2,
and the investigation is dropped. The group behavioral phenomenon is that of the fable
of “the emperor has no clothes!” The crowd of reporters remains quiet as a group, except
THE SEPTEMBER 11 COMMISSION REPORT Page 322