Tuesday, September 28, 2010

CIA Admits Faking Bin Laden Videos: A Bald-faced Lie

I finally got around to checking Jones' claim - repeated numerous times since the summer - that the CIA has openly admitted to faking at least some of the Bin Laden videos. He never gave a source for this statement, and as it certainly wasn't in the headlines I had no idea what he was talking about.

It turns out he was bluffing.

In an interview with Max Keiser, Jones mentioned that the admission appeared in the Washington Post's "Spy Talk" section, an online column by Jeff Stein. He repeated his assertion that the "fat Osama" video was faked.
You can read the article Jones is referring to here. As you will see, it makes absolutely no mention of the actual Bin Laden videos, much less the "fat Osama" video that is widely considered a fake. The article is about the CIA's idea to create fake Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein videos with actors doing things their supporters wouldn't have liked (drinking, having gay sex, etc.), and the creation of one test video featuring dark-skinned CIA agents drinking alcohol around a campfire. The unnamed agents quoted by Stein claim that fake Bin Laden videos would have been too expensive and probably wouldn't have worked anyway, so the whole idea was ultimately rejected. Also, their superiors refused to give the green light for the project. One officer told Stein the project was taken up by the Army at Fort Bragg, but no details are provided. In short, no one connected with U.S. intelligence or the military has confessed to creating the "fat Osama" video or any of the others that have appeared.

I don't understand why Jones would lie about this. He certainly knows it isn't true. In a May 25th Prison Planet article, Steve Watson summarizes the Spy Talk piece and asks, "Could the CIA group of 'dark skinned actors' have been behind the infamous December 2001 'Fat-Nosed Bin Laden' video, that was magically found in Jalalabad after anti-Taliban forces moved in?".
Jones has made the leap from speculation to solid "fact".

34 comments:

Paul said...

I'm glad you picked up on this. I've heard Jones mention this a few times and it drove me nuts. He said something like, "I was reading the news and buried in there was the CIA admitting they faked the Bin Laden videos! There it is! Mainstream news!"

This is really one of those moments where I truly don't understand how his supporters can say its all true if you look into what Alex says.

Anonymous said...

The article in question says " The agency actually did make a video..." (of Bin Laden ). Stein uses CIA officers as his source.

Sounds like at least a partial confession of the CIA making fake Bin Laden videos to me....even if Jones refers to one particular video when the admited vid is another one

Anonymous said...

Several bin laden vids are 100% fake. The question is, who did the faking?

The Halloween vid was denounced by Walter Conkrite as a fake....

...who benefited?

Anonymous said...

Agent Jones merely mixed up a few things- he went from reading the report in the WP of at least one fake bin Laden video, to linking that to the 'confession' vid, the fat guy vid, saying they admit that they faked that one- which easily could have been a careless leap.We dont know. His info from several sources about how the fat man vid was faked was knowledge he had prior to the WP story- thus the leap was easier to mistakenly make.

He had the info on how the fat man vid was baloney (a widespread and commonsensical idea)-then he read the WP sentence by Stein about the CIA man told of how they made a Bin Laden vid.....if he read it under bad conditions like sleep deprivation, etc. then he could merely have been mistaken and not lying.
Those Bin Laden vids are in serious disrepute-the guy is long dead-if he ever existed.

(The WP Spy article itself looks like disinfo, it has about 20 pages worth of intelligence 'between the lines')

None of this is important in comparison to the meatier stories in the link you provided- this 'Jones being a liar about fake vids' is a distration away from the gravy.

S.M. Elliott said...

"If he ever existed"? What does that mean? The entire B.L. family is a figment of someone's imagination? The mujahideen were somebody's imaginary friends? Sheesh, it must be nice to live in a universe where you can just wish someone out of existence.

Jones needs to do a more careful reading of the news before repeatedly discussing it on-air. Even if he's not deliberately deceptive when he makes errors like this, he's being incredibly sloppy with the facts.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I had the same reaction to anonymous saying, "... if [Bin Laden] ever existed."

Why even try to have discourse on the internet? There are too many idiots and astroturfers.

Anonymous said...

If he ever existed as popularly conceived. Is that too hard for you guys to consider?

Anonymous said...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/3970901.stm

S.M. Elliott said...

Ah. Yeah, I think he's too elusive to be nailed down. The media has kind of used him as a hook on which to hang preconceptions about extremism, but his motivations are probably more complex than we can currently imagine.

Tokyo Shemp said...

He's probably been dead for many years. However, that doesn't mean these conspiracy theory nuts are helping figure that out. I don't know how you and The Last Name Left stomach reading these people. I gave up on it years ago. The last time I went anywhere near it was concerning the satanic panic. I guess I've also looked into the nutjobs destroying the election integrity movement with tinfoil hoaxes.

This is probably mostly an indication that a lot of people have lower level reading and critical thinking skills. Anyone who is into Alex Jones, for example, can't be too bright. They might be strong in other areas of life, but for reading and thinking, they are ironically the sheep being led to insanity by Alex Jones, Michael Rivero, and all the other conspiracy theory freak losers.

Anonymous said...

The idea that Bin Laden was created by the US, or that he might be innocent, or semi innocent of 9-11, or he is a dupe, etc.- this a common notion around the world, held by people of all walks of life.

The last two comments merely mocked the idea, without offering counter evidence, while the BBC pushed this idea. I suppose you will now say that the BBC is now infested with Jones types who strongarmed the BBC's 'Power of Nightmares' into production?

SME ought to know that the offical Bin Laden narrative is riddled with holes and mysteries- its not funny. People were killed. People are being killed right now over all this...

I inserted the comment about him maybe never existing purposedly, to see if you guys would jump on it, and totally ignore the other, more important points, and you proved me right in my expectation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVutUGDiQN0

I dont agree with every point in the vid

S.M. Elliott said...

So basically, Anon, "I said something retarded to see if you would pay attention to the non-retarded things I was saying"? Whatever. The other things you mentioned aren't worth addressing. Yes, I do think it's important - key, actually - that Jones distorts the news to fit his own preconceptions.

I think a huge part of the reason B.L. & Co. are furious with the U.S. is that they AREN'T receiving CIA aid anymore. They expected the CIA to stick around and help rebuild Afghanistan after the Soviets were expelled; instead the CIA said, "Well, thanks, guys! Good proxy war! See ya!" and bailed.

S.M. Elliott said...

@ Socrates, I would love to believe that Jones fans and most conspiranoids are simply ignorant or lacking a few critical thinking skills, but I suspect the problem sometimes goes far deeper than that. How to explain the brilliant, educated, scientifically literate paranoids who should know better? (not that there are many of them...)

Anonymous said...

Socrates, you said you thought BL has probably been dead for years....So then some of the vids must be fake, made with the resources of a state, perhaps, or maybe it was the Girl Scouts? You seem to be aligning yourself with AJ so a certain extent.

Anonymous said...

SME, I'm actually dismayed. So you know for sure BL doesn't get anything from the CIA?

I never said BL never existed. "If he ever existed" was a device. I was hoping you would see the importance of a fake BL vid being used to help swing a US election....I hoped the Kaiser interview link you yourself provided about Googles penetration into our lives would interest you more than AJ's possible careless reading of one news article would....The BBC production might be a distortion-I dont know- it might be mostly true. It should be evidence to consider, then maybe we can get to the bottom of the issue. Bin Laden got the rap, but the FBI says they dont have enough evidence to indict him for 9-11? He's never been tried in abstentia..... Cicero warned us about 'the enemy within'

I dont believe that 19 rustics with box cutters brought the greatest empire the world has ever seen temporarily to its knees, unless they were either allowed to at some level... or they had some inside help, at the least.

Anonymous said...

I suppose 'rustics' will divert you again....

Josh.S said...

"I dont believe that 19 rustics with box cutters brought the greatest empire the world has ever seen."

...What? Rustics? Most of the men involved had college educations and a few were licensed pilots. I don;t understand the "a bunch of arabs with box cutters couldn't have done this" argument. You act as if they're were trained US soldiers with body armor and guns on board or something.

Also, they didn't "bring the greatest empire the world has ever seen to it's knees." They committed the murder of thousands of innocent people and caused a nation tragedy, but the US was far from "brought to it's knees"

S.M. Elliott said...

Anon, I already know about Google's penetration into our lives. I didn't need Jones or Keiser to fill me in on that. So let's move on to those "rustics".
BL came from one of Saudi Arabia's most affluent and ambitious families, received more education than the average American does, and oversees (oversaw? who knows?) a vast empire of intricately interlinked NGOs. His henchmen are mostly well-educated guys from good families. Yes, they headquartered in a cave system for a while, but we're not talking about natural caves full of bat droppings, are we? You could make many arguments that Things Are Not As They Seem regarding 9/11, but the "cavemen with boxcutters" line of reasoning is a dead end. Think of something new. Something that every other Truther on the planet doesn't say every other day.

In short: If you want everyone to stop focusing on the stupid shit you're writing, stop writing stupid shit.

Now, on to issue of BL and the CIA. Of course, neither you nor I know for certain that funding and cooperation stopped completely with the end of the Soviet aggression, but we do know that Islamists were upset that the CIA bailed. It came up frequently as a complaint, along with Palestine, U.S. interference with Iraq, military bases in Saudi Arabia, etc. The bottom line is that there are many unknowns, but you cannot prove that BL is/was a CIA agent, that he's dead, etc. This is all speculative in nature. The things we do know about BL - for instance, that he donated $20,000 to the defense fund of El Sayyid Nosair - indicate that he was/is a dedicated Islamist with a serious hate-on for Israel and the Western world.

Anonymous said...

You forgot to mention that the hijackers were competent pilots....seriously, we dont even know for sure who all the plots were...

...Supposedly, the real reason BL turned to attack the US was our positioning troops near Mecca during the Gulf war in 1990-1991 and thereafter (a site Wahabists smashed up themselves, in a fit of puritanical fervor).

Anonymous said...

Makes no mention of a bin laden tape? Did we read the same article?

Anonymous said...

You need some better reading comprehension. The article is about how they were throwing around the idea of making fake saddam tapes and how that plan never got off the ground.

The one paragraph about bin laden admits they actually did make a bin laden tape. Nowhere does it mention that it was a "test" tape.

The next paragraph where he says things ground to a halt is referring again to the subject of the article - the fake saddam tape.

Anonymous said...

FYI SME, 'rustic' does not necessarily mean that someone isn't smart or that they aren't educated or did not come from a well to do family.

Anonymous said...

Your use of profanity was unwarranted. You referenced two of my statements with curses, when Ive already shown you how one was a device or incomplete statement, and the other, you misinterpreted the intention or meaning.

You said, (following the other anon's lead), "it makes absolutely no mention of the actual BL videos"

But the article in questiopn did mention a BL video being made. I suppose to you its not an 'actual one'...maybe here the language was inexact...You will say the vid in question in the article involved stuff almost no-one ever saw.

You miss the main point- at least one or two BL videos are probably fake, whether admitted or not- this is telling, but instead of delving into the importance of this widespread claim,which is serious, you decided to take Jones to task for overstating, or whatever, about possibly admitted faked vids..... You made a deal out of it, when the important thing is that the vids are fake, or seem to be, or need to be re-examined, etc.... Your whole post ought to have been about who might have done the faking, or what evidence do we have that they were faked.....But no.

What's more important to you? Apparently fake vids used to bolster the govt conspiracy narrative, and fake vids to help keep Bush in power four more years? OR ...Jones "bluffing" We know the answer.

Cursing, profanity... tsk tsk- and in front of the children (and the bunny rabbit)

S.M. Elliott said...

Re: "Makes no mention of a bin laden tape? Did we read the same article?"

The article doesn't mention any of the tapes that were released to the public. This fireside video was not released, hence I call it a test tape. If the tapes we've actually seen are fake, no one has yet admitted to that. Time will tell.

"Rustic" denotes the unsophisticated, the simple, the rural. Peasants. There are many rustics in the Middle East, but BL and his clan were never among them. There's a popular misconception that militant movements begin with the lower classes, but this is rarely the case. The middle and upper classes always get the ball rolling - they're the ones with the time, money, and education to spare. Real rustics have enough to do merely surviving.

Re: "Your use of profanity was unwarranted."

Maybe so, but it's my blog. Deal or get lost. And if you're Mr. B, you can fuck right off.

Anonymous said...

Who is Mr. B? What are you going on about?

Tesla considered Edison to be a rustic of sorts.....it has a wider meaning than you say. One can be a rustic, despite their wealth or education. You ought to be more concerned about fake BL vids

S.M. Elliott said...

Not much anyone can do about the BL vids, is there? They've already served their purpose as propaganda - whoever made them. If they're someday proven to be fake, I won't be surprised.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I'm no expert on any of this. I would not be surprised if tapes were faked. Maybe Bin Laden didn't admit to 9/11 involvement. Maybe he had nothing to do with it. I don't know. But surely Alex Jones is the last person to use as a source or be associated with.

I looked into Bin Laden's health. I found Guardian articles, and it looked like he might have died a very long time ago.

I think SME has it correct. The CIA supported Bin Laden when it served a purpose with their cold war ideology. Once Russia bailed out of Afghanistan, the association ended. Once the Taliban started destroying magnificent century old statues carved into the mountains, you knew the Taliban were very sick fockers.

It wouldn't be the first time they have allied themselves with tyrants only to bail out later. There was Noriega from Panama. The big example is probably Saddam Hussein. The US military loved him when Iraq somehow kept Iran in check. Obviously GW's Iraq War was criminal. There's the conspiracy. It was called the White House Iraq Group.It employed astroturfers such as the Rendon Group. War is definitely the biggest racket, and the US MIC is its Godfather.

I somewhat remember seeing how Prison Planet twists around mainstream material to prop up their conspiracy theory schtick. But like I said before, I stopped visiting Prison Planet a very long time ago. Rense and Flocco were the first obvious sites to be full of nutjobs. Then I learned of how wrong Michael Rivero is as a source. Then through TLNL, I learned how Alex Jones is in the same milieu. It's just he is smarter than others at coding his schtick. They are all part and parcel of what is referred to as right woos left.

I don't mind a good conspiracy theory, but I personally want to see the best evidence, so to speak, and that means just say no to Alex Jones.

Websites that come across as conspiracy theory tinfoiltainment really turn me off. If you can't make a case with good sources and not sounding like a lunatic flapping his arms, there's no point in giving that person the time of day. SME is doing a good job exposing Alex Jones so the rest of us don't have to. That was a motto of some website I forget who used to do the same to Bill O'Reilly. They said they watched him so the royal we could do other things. It's appreciated.

S.M. Elliott said...

It's an American disease: Supporting fascistic thugs, and expecting them to behave even though history has already taught you (numerous times) that they will turn on you eventually. It's like trying to pet a rabid dog, over and over and over, getting bitten each and every time. In that sense, the U.S. is partly responsible for the rise of Islamist extremism. But we can't kid ourselves that they have a handle on it, that's it all an illusion.

There are conspiracies, of course. And I believe some conspiracy theories could be more or less on-target. But many of them - maybe even most - are just jury-rigged from speculation, specious connect-the-dots reasoning, hoaxes. Unless you're grounded in logic and common sense, unless you're willing to do some thinking on your own, you're not going to be able to tell the difference between a somewhat valid theory and lunatic-fringe twaddle. Jones' theories range between these two extremes; some are plausible, others are just idiotic. His most devoted fans refuse to differentiate, even though they're probably capable of sorting it out. As I mention in the intro, I would never have started this blog if I hadn't heard several people quoting Jones as an authoritative source. I started listening to him, and being the somewhat gullible person I am I would hear something intriguing and think, "WOW. Is that true?". But I'm also a curious person, so I would look into it. And 9 times out of 10 I'd find that Jones' info *wasn't quite accurate*. I quickly learned that alternative media suffers from a lot of the same maladies as mainstream media, only more so because it doesn't even pretend to hew to any journalistic standards. Anything goes.

Anonymous said...

You can read the article Jones is referring to here. As you will see, it makes absolutely no mention of the actual Bin Laden videos, much less the "fat Osama" video that is widely considered a fake.

If by 'widely considered a fake' you mean widely considered a fake by the people who follow Alex Jones, that would be correct. If you mean by people in general, or people who have some expertise in the matter, I'd like to see some evidence for that.

As an aside to the commentators above, the CIA never funded Bin Laden. There were only ever around 3,000 Arab Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan at any one time, as opposed to 250,000 Afghan mujihdeen. The latter were most certainly funded by the US (and the Saudis). See Lawrence Wright's
The Looming Towers.

Anonymous said...

Jones is wrong about Bill Gates saying he wants vaccines to stamp out (over?)population?

Jones is wrong about the Fed being mostly a private and corrupt concern?

Jones is wrong about the infrastructure for martial law already being in place?

Jones is wrong about 9-11 being, at least in part, an inside job?

Gee whiz.

SME is right about the fat Osama vid being widely viewed as fake- when you factor in the world apart from the US.

S.M. Elliott said...

@ Oct. 13th Anon: I should have been specific. When I wrote "widely considered a fake", I was thinking of 9/11 Truthers. Beyond the Truth movement, I have no idea what people think of the fat Osama vid. I suspect the average person who has seen it believes it to be genuine. I did because I have some experience with people on dialysis, and they tend to bloat beyond recognition.

@ Oct 14th Anon: I don't know about any of those things except the Bill Gates vaccine thing. I think he just misspoke, mentioning vaccines and family planning in the same sentence without explicitly differentiating the two. I have seen no other evidence that he wants to kill anyone, and I think he has come under attack because he is not a conservative.

S.M. Elliott said...

P.S. I misspoke (miswrote?) myself just now, because I do know that the apparatus is in place for martial law. It has been since Nixon's time. But Jones goes much further than that, saying that concentration camps are already semi-operational and mass graves are waiting for us.

Whichever president is the first to declare martial law will the most unpopular president in the nation's history. They know this, and they won't do it unless they feel there's no other option left.

Also, the Fed is a quasi-private institution and I have no problem with it being dismantled and replaced if that's what the people want.

Unknown said...

"it makes absolutely no mention of the actual Bin Laden videos, much less the "fat Osama" video that is widely considered a fake. The article is about the CIA's idea to create fake Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein videos with actors doing things their supporters wouldn't have liked"

So there you go. CIA admits they fake Osama videos. And hence the well grounded opinion held by most who study the fat Bin ladin videos - that they are fake - is right. The CIA faked them. There are also admissions that Terror Alerts are invented to forward political agendas such as popularity coming election time.

You are clutching at straws mate.

WHy dont you go and do something constructive for the movement? Go read articles at Porject Censored for a start.

S.M. Elliott said...

What movement? I don't belong to a movement.

You cannot prove at this time that the CIA faked the Bin Laden videos we've all seen. Neither can I. What you've stated is a guess, not a fact.

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