US involved in terrorism, media manipulation: Analyst

The United States and its allies, including the UK and Israel, have been “tremendously involved in terrorism”, says former intelligence linguist Scott Rickard.

Rickard was commenting on reports by Newsweek and the Washington Post over CIA involvement in assassination of Imad Mughniyah, a high-ranking Hezbollah figure, by Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, on February 12, 2008.

In a Friday story, American political journalism organization Politico said that Newsweek published the story two hours after the Post.

The Post, which had coordinated the publishing with the CIA, was not originally supposed to publish it on January 30, but it did as it “learned that the CIA had tipped off other outlets that the story would be coming out, (so) the paper’s editors decided to publish it immediately,” Politico said.

In its report, the Post quoted a former US intelligence official as saying that the CIA had been tracking Mughniyah‘s movements prior to the operation and also helped build a bomb, remotely detonated by Mossad after being planted in the spare tire of a parked SUV in the Syrian capital Damascus.

Rickard told Press TV on Saturday that the complication was a result of efforts to “suppress” media over publishing stories that clearly indicate American involvement in “terrorism”.

“The fact that the CIA is directly involved in the media industry and most people in the media industry won’t even comment further is a clear indication that Operation Mockingbird that started in the 1950s is still going on,” said the former intelligence linguist.

He further noted that many are reluctant to speak about these stories as “they are involved in the intelligence community” or that “they don’t want to lose their contacts in the intelligence community.”

The fact that such communities have “influence on what stories can be published and what stories cannot” is a “clear indication that there is no freedom of the press in the West”.

“There are literally thousands of individuals who work in the media industry on behalf of the intelligence communities.”

Rickard also referred to the assassination of Mughniyah’s son, Jihad, on January 18 this year by an Israeli attack on a Hezbollah convoy in Syria’s Golan Heights, calling it a war crime by Tel Aviv.

Five other members of the Lebanese resistance movement and an Iranian commander, Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, were among the dead.

NT/NT

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