Mysteries

Tom Engelhardt (of TomDispatch) addresses the deafening silence about Sy Hersh’s last NewYorker article The Redirection. I suggest you head on over there and read it (read Hersh’s too if you haven’t) and then come back for a discussion about a theme that is dear to my heart, the censorship of silence. As Tom notes, Hersh makes some startling points:

• There has been a total shift in the US Mideast policy, Sunni religious fighters are once again our friends, Shiites are the bad guys.
• The office of the VP is running covert ops funded by funds looted from Iraq.
  
• The looted funds allow the operations to be run without the involvement of the CIA, the NSC, the Pentagon, and, naturally Congress.
• Some of the same players were part of Iran/Contras, they realized that involving the agencies listed above led to their temporary undoing back in the 80’s.
• The US is conducting covert operations (meddling, you might say) in Iran
  

And nobody in the media, despite Hersh’s reputation, talks about any of this. It is not approved, discussed or refuted, it is simply ignored. I’ve written before about the office of the VP being a secret government, but my focus has been on the infiltration and corruption of the existing institutions, here we learn that operations are being run wholly outside any government institution (other the the OVP), financed by theft, and dedicated to ends really known only by the participants.

Hersh, in an interview available at Antiwar.com, talks about the New York Times, where he worked for nine years:

I always have a mixed feeling about them. It is the most important newspaper in America. It still is. When they report a story, it has enormous influence. They just haven't figured out this presidency. I think that just maybe they don't know how. I mean, it is sort of amazing to me they haven't figured out this presidency.

Here, to my mind, Hersh gets all naïve on our asses, and that fits the general pattern. The critics of the news media in the blogosphere also love to say that the NYT and the WP are not doing their jobs, they fail to ask the tough questions out of laziness, top reporters and pundit eat too many cocktail weenies and live in such an isolated environment that they can’t do their job right.

The NYT is doing what they are supposed to do, the reporters, pundits and editors are all performing splendidly, so the big bloggers ask their questions only as the media has already framed the issues. Within those parameters you can agree or disagree all you want, outside them, even to ask questions, you disappear. That proves that the media is effective, you do not stray from the narrative without the risk of being marginalized.

So it seems that Hersh's story lies outside the defined parameters. He thinks (or says he thinks) it's because the NYT has not 'figured out this presidency'. In time, maybe after an attack on Iran, it might show up in the narrative, the evidence will ooze out about crimes that have led to death, disaster, and destruction. There will be hearings, trials, and pardons. In the meantime, we have to let things run their course in silence. Why worry?