Why is the media burying new revelations about 9/11?

[Karmadillo]

There is, perhaps, a little more media attention to this story than noted below. CBS had a segment (anti-Clinton without allusions to greater implications, according to posts on DU) and FOX flogged the story yesterday (again, as an anti-Clinton exercise--some coincidence that the "liberal" CBS news and the wingnut FOX are on the same page). Still, the article seems mostly on point in noting how unwilling the corporate-owned media is to pursue the story too far. The corporate-owned government must be protected at all costs.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/atta-a11.shtml

The revelation that a military intelligence unit had identified four September 11 hijackers as Al Qaeda operatives working in the US a year before the 9/11 attacks has sparked a flurry of disclaimers and denials from official sources, while most media outlets have ignored the story altogether.

The fact that the government had long been tracking some of the hijackers, including the putative leader, Mohammad Atta, was revealed in a front page article in the New York Times on Tuesday. Citing Republican Congressman Curt Weldon and an unidentified former military intelligence officer, the article reported that a Pentagon unit known as Able Danger had by the middle of 2000 identified Atta and three of the other September 11 hijackers as members of an Al Qaeda cell operating in the US.

<edit>

If the claims concerning Able Danger are true, they point to a massive cover-up within the government, a cover-up that can have no innocent explanation. They deliver a further and devastating blow to the official history of an event that has had a profound effect on American foreign and domestic policy. Yet the media is all but silent.

<edit>

Because it points imperiously to the existence of a conspiracy within one or another intelligence or security agency, not to mention the Bush White House, to shield the future hijackers and allow some form of terrorist attack on US soil to occur. All of the efforts of the 9/11 commission—as well as the entire official media and both the Democratic and Republican parties—have been concentrated on excluding even the possibility that something more sinister than bureaucratic incompetence or institutional roadblocks were responsible for an intelligence failure of staggering dimensions.

<edit>

One thing is certain: without the tragedy of 9/11, the government could not possibly have shifted public opinion to tolerate invasions in the oil-rich regions of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf and an open-ended policy of militarism codified in the doctrine of preventive war. Nor could it have carried out the massive attack on democratic rights that has been justified by appeals to national security and the “war on terrorism.”

more...

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. Not the case

Every paper I get in the morning had a large story on it.
Local news radio discussed it.
If you are talking about Faux, that is not news. Same with MSNBC and CNN.
not anymore.

[EST]

2. One call on Washington Journal open line this morning,

with the usual "Clinton's fault" spin.

[Karmadillo]

3. What papers do you get? Did the stories address the

implications of conspiracy the revelations raise? Or did they focus on the need for greater cooperation between intelligence agencies? The stories I've heard have noted the revelations without making any effort to explore meaning. And, as of today, the story does seem to have died. That would seem to be the point of the article I linked to.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

5. four in english

NYT
Chi Trib
Chi Suntimes
Southtown Daily
(not to mention the foreign language ones.)

[Karmadillo]

7. What did they say?

Thanks.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

8. NYT actually did it straight, but not on Page 1

The Trib had four paragraphs, no analysis and no hint of how bad it makes Bush look
Southtown was almost identical to the suntimes (they share resources, apparently)

9/11 commish wants to know why they weren't told. They want congress to investigate
They would have written a different report with lots of different emphasis. One of the aides was quoted that what info they got did not mention Atta.
DOD says they gave everything to 9/11.

Geez. It is hard to believe which group is telling the truth, huh, especially after they (9/11)had to threaten, beg, borrow, steal and go public before the Bush WH even began the slightest make-believe of cooperation.

[H2O Man]

4. In the upcoming months

the administration, with the cooperation of some in the corporate media, will increase the amount of coverage that implies: {a}how dangerous the world is today; {b} how the democrats were not gutsy enough to confront the threat when Clinton was president; {c} how democratic leaders who question the administration today are giving aid and comfort to the enemy; and {d} how the administration had to slightly bend a few rules, but only to protect you and your family.

By coincidence, on August 16th, there is a court hearing for the two AIPAC workers who were indicted for espionage last week, and on September 6, Larry Franklin's trial for espionage begins. Also, by the end of October, Fitzgerald should wrap up his investigation into the Plame scandal.

The administration and their puppets will attempt to justify their criminal behaviors in terms of "national security." To do so, they will continue to try to increase the atmosphere of national insecurity.

[laststeamtrain]

6. Thanks for posting this.

What can I say? The right wing calls the Clintons 'left-wing socialists'. The center has shifted so far to the right the left is represented by center/right zeros like Michael Kinsley, etc. The media, print and broadcast are owned by multi-gazillion-aires. The schools barely touch on history from anything except an American Triumphalist perspective.
The struggle for a just society is a very long-term deal...

Best,