In an earlier post, I wondered whether the “CIA secret prisons” story, for which leak receptacle Dana Priest won a Pulitzer Prize, might not be bogus, an untrumor fashioned to cause trouble for “New European” governments that have supported the cause of civilization in Iraq. The evidence for my hypothesis continues to mount (or, to be more precise, the absence of evidence for the tale’s truth gapes ever wider). Yesterday Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy whatchamacallit, told a parliamentary committee that he had “no information whatsoever” to confirm that the prisons existed or that terrorists were interrogated within them. Since Dr. Solana’s anti-American credentials are brightly burnished, it seems doubtful that he would have made that admission if he had not given up hope that proof would ever turn up.
Many of his fellow leftists will keep the accusation alive, we may be sure, but the focus of attention has now shifted to the CIA’s purported failure to file the proper paperwork concerning its “clandestine” (an odd term, since the pilots submitted flight plans and operated openly) flights through European air space. What’s next? CIA operatives welshing on traffic tickets?
While it remains possible that there is a grain (0.002285714 ounce) of truth to Miss Priest’s prize winner, the evidence now weighs heavily in the other direction. We might want to consider what that means.
First, the only plausible motive for the invention was to disrupt American alliances and thus hinder the War on Terror. That a highly placed source within the CIA, whether Mary O. McCarthy or another, wanted to do that should cause deep concern, if not alarm.
Second, this incident is yet another example of the unreliability of “news” based on unidentified sources. For reasons that elude me, anonymous leakers have, in the media’s estimation, the highest level of credibility. In a sensible world, they would be recognized as barely more entitled to a presumption of honesty and accuracy than graffiti on a men’s room wall.
Third, the elite media have again displayed their gullibility to any fiction that fits their preferred view of the world. It’s apparent the Miss Priest and her editors at the Washington Post didn’t exercise “professional skepticism” when told about CIA “misconduct”. Nor did they consider whether the alleged activities would in fact be blameworthy. As usual, terrorist suspects were given the benefit of every doubt, the American authorities the benefit of nothing whatsoever.
I wonder whether the Post will now assign a reporter or two to look into the origins and progress of the apparent hoax that it played such a major role in propagating. That would be a useful exercise. We all know how likely it is to be undertaken.
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