Worse Than Williams: NBC, Richard Engel and Their Fake Syrian Kidnapping Story
Source: 21stcenturywire.com
Faux hostage: NBC’s Richard Engel played starring role in this US propaganda classic.
“Syria is one of the biggest propaganda schemes of our time. When the dust settles, if it does, it will be revealed”
- Professor AbuKhalil
“Journalists are never real journalists if they are agents of power no matter how they disguise that role.”
- John Pilger
Keen to help Washington in its all-out campaign for regime change in Syria, we can now see very clearly – to what lengths major US media outlets are were willing to go, by using a completely contrived situation to publicly demonize the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
Let’s be clear. We’re not just talking about mere spin here. Broadcast executives knowingly facilitated the concocting of a false narrative which just happened to fit perfectly into Washington’s own neatly arranged foreign policy objectives at that very moment…
Back in December 2012, Engel claimed he was kidnapped along with four other journalists while traveling inside Syria by “pro-Assad Shi’ite forces”. Engel went on to claim how his “pro-Assad” captors brutally tortured reporters and even killed their ‘Free Syrian Army’ rebel chaperone, before eventually being “rescued” by other rebels. Engel did endless rounds in the US media retelling his sensational tale, skillfully crafting a narrative of suffering at the hands of the evil and merciless “Syrian government”, and “Iranian-aligned Shi’ite forces”.
This week, the story finally collapsed. It turns out that Engel was at the very least an unquestioning (journalist?) dupe or ‘useful idiot’ in this saga. We’re told he is fluent in Arabic and a veteran international correspondent, so it really doesn’t really make sense that he would be so stupid as to fall for such a transparent charade. At worse he could also be a knowing accomplice to it. One cannot say if he was definitely in on the ruse, but it’s more than safe to say that he played a staring role in a giant US media propaganda exercise, himself voluntarily inserting faux ‘Shi’ite’ and ‘pro-Hezbollah’ talking points into his narrative. Not surprisingly, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and others happily swallowed this scripted account, over and over. Two and a half years later, the principle players finally admit it was fake. Investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept reports:
“As it turns out, that seems to be exactly what happened. Last night, Engel posted a new statement on the NBC News website stating that, roughly one month ago, he had been contacted by The New York Times, which “uncovered information that suggested the kidnappers were not who they said they were and that the Syrian rebels who rescued us had a relationship with the kidnappers.” That inquiry from The NYT caused him to re-investigate the kidnapping, and he concluded that “the group that kidnapped us was Sunni, not Shia” and that “the group that freed us” — which he had previously depicted as heroic anti-Assad rebels — actually “had ties to the kidnappers.”
“NBC officials knew at the time that there was reason to be highly skeptical of the identity of the captors, but nonetheless allowed Engel and numerous other NBC and MSNBC reporters to tell this story with virtually no questioning.”
“The Brian Williams scandal is basically about an insecure, ego-driven TV star who puffed up his own war credentials by fabricating war stories: it’s about personal foibles. But this Engel story is about what appears to be a reckless eagerness, if not deliberate deception, on the part of NBC officials to disseminate a dubious storyline which, at the time, was very much in line with the story that official Washington was selling (by then, Obama was secretly aiding anti-Assad rebels, and had just announced – literally a week before the Engel kidnapping — “that the United States would formally recognize a coalition of Syrian opposition groups as that country’s legitimate representative”). Much worse, the NBC story was quite likely to fuel the simmering war cries in the West to attack (or at least aggressively intervene against) Assad.”
That’s a pretty comprehensive assessment of what went down, and this also hints at coordination – at a very high level – between the mainstream media and the US government.
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SPOOKS NOTE: For those versed in the art of grifting and professional con artistry, this type of Kansas City Shuffle scam would require that at least one member of the kidnap victims’ party be in on the con, so as to ensure that the rest of group stayed in line and didn’t do anything stupid during the staged operation.
Without a doubt, this is a prime example of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird in action – from beginning to end – a purely fake story, created and designed to cajole both public and also mainstream media opinion over towards the US State Department’s stated goal of regime change in Syria.
Greenwald adds here: “At the very least, NBC owes a serious accounting for what happened here, yet thus far refuses to provide one (note how, as usual, the media outlets who love to sanctimoniously demand transparency from others refuse to provide even a minimal amount about themselves). There were — and are — a lot of shadowy interests eager to bring about regime change in Syria and to malign Iran and Hezbollah with false claims. Whether by intent or outcome, that’s what this story did. If it was not only false at the time, NBC executives repeatedly broadcast it, but recklessly disseminated with ample reason to suspect its falsity, that is a huge journalistic scandal.”
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Read the rest: 21stcenturywire.com
