Fox’s Bergdahl Jihadi Story: “Secret Docs Based on a Purported Eyewitness” Supplied by a Shady Right Wing Group
OK, I might as well post the link to this BREAKING BOMBSHELL SCOOP from the always reliable Fox News, but everything you really need to know about it is right there in the first paragraph:
U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl at one point during his captivity converted to Islam, fraternized openly with his captors and declared himself a “mujahid,” or warrior for Islam, according to secret documents prepared on the basis of a purported eyewitness account and obtained by Fox News.
New frontiers in anonymous sourcing! But actually, Fox journalist James Rosen (yes, the one Glenn Greenwald is always championing) does tell us something about where he got these double secret purported eyewitness accounts:
These real-time dispatches were generated by the Eclipse Group, a shadowy private firm of former intelligence officers and operatives that has subcontracted with the Defense Department and prominent corporations to deliver granular intelligence on terrorist activities and other security-related topics, often from challenging environments in far-flung corners of the globe.
The group is run by Duane R. (“Dewey”) Clarridge, a former senior operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1980s best known for having been indicted for lying to Congress about his role in the tangled set of events that became known as the Iran-Contra scandal.
Ooohhhkay. When did it become 1980 again? First Ollie North pops up, now this.
For a bit more context on Clarridge, here’s a New York Times article on what he does, mentioning that he was behind a completely bogus report published at Breitbart “News” in 2010 that Mullah Omar had been placed under house arrest in Pakistan: Ex-Spy, Duane R. Clarridge, Runs His Own Private C.I.A.
When the military would not listen to him, Mr. Clarridge found other ways to peddle his information. For instance, his private spies in April and May were reporting that Mullah Muhammad Omar, the reclusive cleric who leads the Afghan Taliban, had been captured by Pakistani officials and placed under house arrest. Associates said Mr. Clarridge believed that Pakistan’s spy service was playing a game: keeping Mullah Omar confined but continuing to support the Afghan Taliban.
Both military and intelligence officials said the information could not be corroborated, but Mr. Clarridge used back channels to pass it on to senior Obama administration officials, including Dennis C. Blair, then the director of national intelligence.
And associates said that Mr. Clarridge, determined to make the information public, arranged for it to get to Mr. Thor, a square-jawed writer of thrillers, a blogger and a regular guest on Mr. Beck’s program on Fox News.
Most of Mr. Thor’s books are yarns about the heroic exploits of Special Operations troops. In interviews, he said he was once embedded with a “black special ops team” and helped expose “a Taliban pornography/murder ring.”
On May 10, biggovernment.com — a Web site run by the conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart — published an “exclusive” by Mr. Thor, who declined to comment for this article.
He declined to comment because the story was false, of course, and wingnuts never admit things like that.
Oh… and speaking of Oliver North?
Breitbart “News,” 13 May 2010: BREAKING: OLIVER NORTH CONFIRMS MULLAH OMAR CAPTURE.
According to secret documents prepared on the basis of a purported eyewitness account and supplied by a shady right wing “private intelligence” firm run by a guy who was convicted of lying to Congress and pushes false stories through Breitbart “News,” this is getting ridiculous.
All we need now is Fawn Hall to show up with a BREAKING BOMBSHELL SCOOP that Bergdahl worked on WMDs for the Taliban.