>>> During the same week, the front covers of Newsweek and US News and World Report showed the same Iraqi kissing different soldiers. And the guy also had a prominent spot smashing the statue of Saddam at the stage-managed pull-down in Baghdad. Surely Hollywood will soon be calling for this hot young actor.

posted 25 April 2003 | Thanks to Eschaton

>>> FOIA expert Michael Ravnitzky of American Lawyer Media sent out the following information on 21 April 2003:

BILLY CARTER FBI FILES STILL CLASSIFIED NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION; ALSO THOSE OF MAYOR FIORELLO LAGUARDIA

The Office of Information and Privacy of the Department of Justice has just informed me that sections of the classified portions of Billy Carter's FBI File must remain classified national security information. They also notified me by separate letter that some of the classified portions of Fiorello LaGuardia, who died in September 1947, must remain classified over 55 years later!

posted 25 April 2003

>>> It's no secret that government officials punish media outlets who don't kiss their asses. Their main weapon is simply to stop cooperating--no more access to officials, no more invites to press conferences, no more off-the-record leaks and "background briefings," etc. But it's extraordinarily rare to hear an official--much less a member of the Cabinet--admit that this is what they do. During a "Pentagon Town Meeting" on 17 April 2003, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld came right out and said it:

Q: Mr. Secretary, my name is Ricardo Springs. I'm a Nav Air employee, but on rotation here at OPNAV. First I want to congratulate you and thank you for the successful prosecution of the war. You did a fine job. My question is, despite having embedded journalists and all the positive and some negative things that they brought to coverage of the war, what more can be done to turn around the media's overwhelming negative coverage of the war? Do you have any thoughts about that?

Rumsfeld: ... But I think there's not anything you can do -- with our Constitution, which is a good one that allows for free speech and free press -- about it, except to, you know, penalize the papers and the television and the newspapers that don't give good advice, and reward those people that do give good advice. That's about all we can do, and that's probably enough.

posted 25 April 2003 | Thanks again to Eschaton

>>> Another memory hole situation is created by language barriers. Stephen C. Mercado of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology brings up a case in point during his review of the Japanese-language book Rikugun Noborito Kenkyujo no shinjitsu [The Truth About the Army Noborito Research Institute]:

Regrettably, this book, like many others, will probably remain untranslated. Since the end of World War II, Japanese authors have written countless histories covering the period between the Japanese seizure of Manchuria in 1931 and the surrender to the Allies in 1945. The past 25 years, in particular, have seen a stream of works on intelligence during those years. Unless some company rises to the challenge of publishing these unheralded books, as Schiffer Publishing in Pennsylvania is doing with the works of German military writers, few outside Japan will have the opportunity to learn much of Noborito and the other intelligence organs of the Japanese empire.

posted 25 April 2003

>>> The top Cold-Shouldered Story of the Week, which I titled "Bush spoke of 'taking Saddam out' a year before Gulf War 2," has already been herded into Time's pay archive. They still let you read the first, crucial paragraph for free, though:

Mar. 31, 2003

First Stop, Iraq

How did the U.S. end up taking on Saddam? The inside story of how Iraq jumped to the top of Bush's agenda — and why the outcome there may foreshadow a different world order
BY MICHAEL ELLIOTT AND JAMES CARNEY

"F___ Saddam. we're taking him out." Those were the words of President George W. Bush, who had poked his head into the office of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. It was March 2002, and Rice was meeting with three US Senators, discussing how to deal with Iraq through the United Nations, or perhaps in a coalition with America's Middle East allies. Bush wasn't interested. He waved his hand dismissively, recalls a participant, and neatly summed up his Iraq policy in that short phrase. The Senators laughed uncomfortably; Rice flashed a knowing smile. The President left the room.

A...

The complete article is 6535 words long.

>Purchase this article

posted 18 April 2003

>>> The US military's press service has withdrawn one of its stories. This notice was sent on their email list:

Date sent: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 17:12:48 -0400
Send reply to: defense-press-service-l-request@DTIC.MIL
From: "AFISNEWSMailbox, AFIS-HQ" <AFISNEWSMailbox@HQ.AFIS.OSD.MIL>
Subject: DELETE THIS STORY: "JPRA Helps Return Captives to Normal Life"
To: DEFENSE-PRESS-SERVICE-L@DTIC.MIL

Subject story was released prematurely. Revised story will be released in a few days.

Eugene Harper
Director
American Forces Press Service

A search at Google News revealed a fragment of the story:

Following the link to Defenselink.mil originally gave a 404 error but now brings up a complete different article:

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Apr2003/n04172003_200304173.html

If anyone has this article, please send it.

posted 17 April 2003

>>> Leann in Oregon wrote to The Memory Hole about an article that disappeared from Yahoo News. On the morning of 9 April 2003, she went to her My Yahoo page and saw the following headline in the news section:

"Iraq first domino in Mideast plan"

Yet when she clicked on it, the article was gone. The article was published on 9 April, so it was brand-new. It was from the news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), which Yahoo News carries. But for some reason they pulled it soon after it came out.

I was able to find the same article on The Age (Melbourne, Australia):

Iraq first domino in Mideast plan
Thursday 10 April 2003, 10:05 AM

The US wants the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq to be a catalyst for change in the Middle East, an objective which could spark problems with other countries.

For US strategists, regime change in Baghdad opens the door to a new Middle East with greater democracy, social modernisation, an end to terrorism, the expansion of US interests and the security of Israel.

The "Democratic Domino" theory favoured by conservatives close to the White House suggests that democratic change in Baghdad would serve as an engine for change in nearby countries such as Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

If not, there are those within the administration who are not shy about making veiled threats of change by force.

Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security - two proponents of the "democratic domino" - have clearly stated that Washington's ambitions do not end in Baghdad, though no-one has suggested the use of force.

"I think a lot of countries, including Syria, will eventually get the message from this (Iraq war) that it is much better to come to terms peacefully with the international community, to not acquire these weapons of mass destruction, to not use terrorism as an incentive of national policy," Wolfowitz said.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell, however, told the Arab daily Al Hayat that "nobody in the American administration talks of invading Iran or Syria," but Washington does wish those countries would change their policies.

Saudi Arabia, a traditional ally of the United States, is now in a difficult position with the United States.

Many Washington commentators close to the administration have pointed out that most of those responsible for the September 11 terror attacks on the United States in 2001 were Saudis, and that the Saudi government did not give the expected support for the US-led campaign in Iraq.

Some analysts fear however that the administration's approach to reforming the Middle East could backfire.

"The more the Bush administration talks about bold ambitions to transform the political status quo in the Middle east, the more the Bush administration implicitly or sometimes explicitly threaten Iraq's neighbours," said Jon Alterman, of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"The more we talk about how this will lead to regime change (in other countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia) the more I think we give these countries an incentive to try to keep Iraqi politics unsettled."

On a more positive note, the United States also has been more visible in welcoming democratic progress in other countries in the region, such as after elections in Morocco and Bahrain.

Powell also announced last year that $US25 million ($A41.65 million) would be spent in a campaign to promote social and political change in the Middle East.

And Washington has promised renewed efforts to settle the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as soon as a Palestinian prime minister is in place as a counterweight to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

(The article is dated 10 April because Australia is a day ahead of the US.) I immediately wrote to Yahoo News, asking them why the article had been removed. I never heard back.

I was concerned that this type of thing would happen when Yahoo News first started carrying AFP's articles. Being based in France, AFP isn't as inclined to spin the news the way the US media do, and the agency often publishes news that isn't flattering to America.

It would seem that not only is Yahoo News removing stories that don't toe the line, but they don't publish certain AFP stories in the first place. For example, Yahoo News didn't carry "US Marines Raid Rooms at Media Hotel in Baghdad," which came out on the AFP wire on 15 April 2003.

Posted 18 April 2003

From "Recycling the Past as Playbook" by Dana Milbank, Washington Post, 8 April 2003:

Unmask the Senior Administration Official: The White House last week released the transcript of a briefing by a "SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL Aboard Air Force One." Under White House rules, the official could not be named, but careful readers may detect a clue:

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: There was a Marine minister there. There was no prayer.

Q Ari, did you ever discuss that one? I mean, that statement that Scott referenced . . .

That transcript is located here.

posted 09 April 2003 | thanks to the Drudge Report

Some new books fit into The Memory Hole concept:

I Am the Central Park Jogger by Trisha Meili. The woman who was raped and beaten almost to death in New York's Central Park in 1989 has come forward to reveal her identity. Her identity wasn't completely unknown until now; African-American newspapers in New York published her name soon after the incident. But this is the first time she has revealed herself or talked about the savage assault and its aftermath.

A Look Over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency by Richard Helms with William Hood. Helms worked for the OSS, then the CIA from its formation in 1947 until 1973. From 1966 onward, he was the Director of Central Intelligence. It was thought that he would never write his autobiography, but here it is. With an introduction by Henry Kissinger, you can be sure that this book won't reveal too much, but every spook's memoir adds pieces to the puzzle.

posted 09 April 2003

Another mention of the suppressed footage of the Hilla massacre (first mentioned here on 02 April, below).

The horror. The horror. And unlike Apocalypse Now, there are real, not fictional images to prove it. But they won't be seen in Western homes. The new heart of darkness has emerged in the turbulent history of Mesopotamia via the Hilla massacre. After uninterrupted, furious American bombing on Monday night and Tuesday morning, as of Wednesday night there were at least 61 dead Iraqi civilians and more than 450 seriously injured in the region of Hilla, 80 kilometers south of Baghdad. Most are children: 60 percent of Iraq's population of roughly 24 million are children.

Roland Huguenin-Benjamin, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Iraq, describes what happened in Hilla as "a horror, dozens of severed bodies and scattered limbs". Initially, Murtada Abbas, the director of Hilla hospital, was questioned about the bombing only by Iraqi journalists - and only Arab cameramen working for Reuters and Associated Press were allowed on site. What they filmed is horror itself - the first images shot by Western news agencies of what is also happening on the Iraqi frontlines: babies cut in half, amputated limbs, kids with their faces a web of deep cuts caused by American shellfire and cluster bombs. Nobody in the West will ever see these images because they were censored by editors in Baghdad: only a "soft" version made it to worldwide TV distribution.

According to the Arab cameramen, two trucks full of bodies - mostly children, and women in flowered dresses - were parked outside the Hilla hospital. Dr Nazem el-Adali, trained in Scotland, said almost all the dead and wounded were victims of cluster bombs dropped in the Hilla region and in the neighboring village of Mazarak. Abbas initially said that there were 33 dead and 310 wounded. Then the ICRC went on site with a team of four, and they said that there were "dozens of dead and 450 wounded". Contacted by satphone on Thursday, Huguenin-Benjamin confirmed there were at least 460 wounded, being treated in an ill-equipped 280-bed hospital.

Journalists taken to Hilla from Baghdad on an official tour on Wednesday talked of at least 61 dead. The Independent's Robert Fisk described the mortuary as "a butcher's shop of chopped-up corpses".

source: "Cluster Bombs Liberate Iraqi Children," by Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, 3 April 2003. [read]

posted 04 April 2003

The London Independent's Robert Fisk reports on a massacre of children in Iraq, the aftermath of which was filmed by AP and Reuters. But it looks like that graphic footage will never see the light of day:

At least 11 civilians, nine of them children, were killed in Hilla in central Iraq yesterday, according to reporters in the town who said they appeared to be the victims of bombing.

Reporters from the Reuters news agency said they counted the bodies of 11 civilians and two Iraqi fighters in the Babylon suburb, 50 miles south of Baghdad. Nine of the dead were children, one a baby. Hospital workers said as many as 33 civilians were killed.

Terrifying film of women and children later emerged after Reuters and the Associated Press were permitted by the Iraqi authorities to take their cameras into the town. Their pictures – the first by Western news agencies from the Iraqi side of the battlefront – showed babies cut in half and children with amputation wounds, apparently caused by American shellfire and cluster bombs.

Much of the videotape was too terrible to show on television and the agencies' Baghdad editors felt able to send only a few minutes of a 21-minute tape that included a father holding out pieces of his baby and screaming "cowards, cowards'' into the camera. Two lorryloads of bodies, including women in flowered dresses, could be seen outside the Hilla hospital.

source: "Children killed and maimed in bomb attack on town" by Robert Fisk and Justin Huggler, Independent (London), 02 April 2003. [read]

posted 02 April 2003

In their latest column ("Corporate Homicide"), watchdogs Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman reveal the existence of a startling report from the Justice Department:

A 1,400 page summary of evidence against the tobacco companies filed in the Justice Department's civil racketeering case against the tobacco companies indicates that maybe the evidence does indeed exist for a second degree murder charge. The Justice Department is seeking to recover $289 billion from the tobacco companies.

We wanted to get a copy of the seven-volume filing, but the Justice Department wouldn't let us copy it, or give us a copy on a CD -- which they obviously have.

Instead, the Department said we could come over and "look at it -- but not copy any part of it." So we did.

The documents show how the major tobacco companies for decades conspired to deceive the public about the harm caused by tobacco products, worked to discredit scientific studies linking smoking and disease, manipulated their products to make them more addictive, and marketed tobacco products to children.

The Department alleges that the tobacco companies in 1953 launched a decades-long "fraudulent scheme" to deceive the public about the dangers of smoking and discredit scientific and medical evidence that smoking was a cause of disease.

The companies "designed their cigarettes with a central overriding objective -- to ensure that the smoker could obtain enough nicotine to create and sustain addiction."

They deceptively marketed "light" and "low-tar" cigarettes as less hazardous despite knowing from their own research that this was not the case, the Department charges.

They also manipulated the design of these cigarettes so that they produced less tar when tested by government smoking machines, but not when smoked by actual smokers who changed their smoking habits to maintain nicotine levels, according to the Department.

The Department charged that the companies "continue to advertise in youth-oriented publications, employ imagery and messages that they know are appealing to teenagers, increasingly concentrate their marketing in places where they know youths will frequent such as convenience stores, engage in strategic pricing to attract youths, increase their marketing at point-of-sale locations with promotions, self-service displays, and other materials, sponsor sporting and entertainment events, many of which are televised or otherwise broadcast and draw large youth audiences, and engage in a host of other activities which are designed to attract youths to begin and continue smoking."

If someone out there has access to this document, please send it to The Memory Hole.

posted 02 April 2003

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