Whenever lawyers for ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling sought to illuminate the political context for his prosecution as a leaker, prosecutors objected with the support of the federal judge, but politics has always lurked in the case’s background, writes Norman Solomon.
Category: Media
NYT Is Lost in Its Ukraine Propaganda
Exclusive: One danger of lying is that you must then incorporate the falsehood into the longer narrative, somehow making the lies fit. The same is true of propaganda as the New York Times is learning as it continues to falsify…
Flattering the Dead Saudi King
Though Saudi King Abdullah was a repressive leader at home who contributed to political and sectarian violence across the Middle East, his death is mourned by Western leaders who were dependent on his vast ocean of oil and his vaults…
A Leak Case Based on Fear and Guesses
The U.S. government based its leak case against ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling on little more than circumstantial evidence that he had spoken to reporter James Risen though it was unclear about what and lots of fear-mongering about Iran and nukes,…
CIA Found No Magic in Operation Merlin
The espionage trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling has focused less on evidence that he leaked secrets about “Operation Merlin,” a CIA scheme to slip flawed nuclear designs to Iran, than on the merits of the unsuccessful covert op which…
CIA Wants Its Reputation Back
The CIA doesn’t like to be portrayed as the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, so it has been using the leak trial of ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling to insist that it really can shoot straight and indeed is brilliantly protecting…
The CIA’s Prosecutorial Defense
In the trial of alleged CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling, the U.S. government appears more intent on burnishing the CIA’s tarnished reputation than proving Sterling’s guilt. The defendant almost looks to be collateral damage in this PR process, as Norman Solomon…
How Propaganda Conquers Democracy
In recent decades, the U.S. propaganda system has grown more and more sophisticated in the art of “perception management,” now enlisting not only government PR specialists but careerist journalists and aspiring bloggers to push deceptions on the public, a crisis…
Hypocrisy on Parade in Paris
At the Paris procession honoring the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, world leaders locked arms in defense of free speech although many of the participants including the French have been busy cracking down on freedom of expression, notes Michael…
The Syrian Ambassador’s Complaint
The Western news media calls itself “objective,” but many foreign crises are reported in a biased way, fawning over one side and hammering the other. To provide a sense of the “other side” in the Syrian civil war, we are reposting an interview with Syria’s UN…