Travel Channel Has Fox News Pundit and Ancient Astronaut Theorist Investigate JFK Conspiracies

11/5/2013

In the news today, the internet is salivating over a mysterious box containing drawings of extraterrestrials as ancient mythological figures. The drawings by Daniel Christiansen date from the 1930s to the 1980s and are obviously influenced by pulp science fiction illustrations. Christiansen illustrates material related to Chariots of the Gods and The Spaceship of Ezekiel and yet somehow we are meant to see this as independent confirmation of ancient astronauts, according to internet posters, because Christiansen claimed to have encountered an alien and… believed really hard in ancient astronauts? Frankly, I can’t fathom why the art, made largely after Chariots (1968), almost entirely after the Bible-UFO movement of the 1950s, and absolutely after “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926) should be evidence of anything.

But let’s talk instead about the latest cable television attack on the concept of credibility.

The Travel Channel has a new series called America Declassified in which a group of journalists investigate “mysteries” of American history, with a focus on conspiracies. So far this does not have anything to do with ancient history, but the first episode (which aired Sunday night) did feature a prominent appearance by conspiracy theorist, ancient astronaut believer, and Ancient Aliens pundit Jim Marrs, proving that it doesn’t matter how extreme your ideas, or how racist or anti-Semitic you are in expressing them, cable TV is happy to have you as long as you’ve been on before. (See also: Glenn Beck, working on a new deal to bring his online channel to cable for 24 hour conspiracy theorizing.)

The program had conservative Fox News pundit and former CIA officer Mike Baker investigate JFK assassination conspiracies with an assist from Marrs. Baker, interestingly, isn’t just a Fox News pundit but also the president of Diligence LLC, a company that benefited financially from its strategic partnership with firms working with the U.S. government during the occupation of Iraq in 2003. (Baker left the firm in 2004 and rejoined in 2009.) As Baker investigates government conspiracies, I’m going to guess that few will involve anything so provable as where U.S. government money goes when it enters the world of “private contractors.”

The program offered nothing new but instead rehashed old ideas about where a second shooter could have stood. Lacking the courage of their convictions, the producers failed to bring Baker’s segment to anything resembling a conclusion, causing me to wonder exactly what the point of the segment (one of three in the hour) was supposed to be. It existed entirely to imply sinister conspiracies without presenting much, if anything, in support of them. Among the conspiracies, the show claims that witnesses who contradicted the Warren Commission report were “mysteriously” killed—by whom they do not say. The show then contradicts its own narrative of all-powerful conspiracies by interviewing a witness who contradicts the Commission’s findings and yet somehow is still living. (She claims she did not see Oswald in the Texas School Book Depository stairwell right after the shooting, when he should have been descending the stairs. Memory, being as fallible as it is, makes it impossible to know if she remembers events in the right order—For example, Pres. George W. Bush thought he remembered seeing the first plane hit the World Trade Center on TV early on September 11, 2001, even though such footage wasn’t available until much later.)

Baker was overly taken by a plaque on the Texas School Book Depository stating that Lee Harvey Oswald “allegedly” shot Kennedy from the sixth floor. He implies—but does not assert—that this is the conspirators’ confirmation that the official story is a lie. If that were the case, they had a funny way of doing it. (Conspirators love leaving clues in broad daylight for those “with eyes to see.”) The plaque was put up on March 29, 1981 and was written by a known individual—Shirley Caldwell. The wording reflected the discomfort of the state of Texas with identifying any site in Dallas with the assassination; there had been a massive battle to get Texas and Dallas to put up any sort of historical marker in Dealey Plaza in the 1960s and 1970s. The plaque used a legalistic wording reflecting the fact that Oswald had never been formally convicted in a court of law and therefore was only alleged by the government to be the assassin.

The show depicts the plaque after its recent vandalism. Someone has been carving around the word “allegedly” ahead of the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination. The plaque was restored and repainted this week.

All of that is neither here nor there because the outrageous part of the show was the inclusion of ancient astronaut theorist Jim Marrs alongside actor, comedian, and UFO and conspiracy buff Richard Belzer as “experts” on the Kennedy assassination.

Let me remind you that Jim Marrs recently asserted that ancient astronauts founded the conspiracy responsible for controlling world governments and that the New World Order worships ancient aliens as gods. We are supposed to trust Marrs’s views on the Kennedy conspiracy after he concluded that the evidence for a global cult of ancient-alien-worshipping politicians is “compelling…almost overwhelming,” including his allegation that aliens orchestrated 9/11?

Is there anything that disqualifies someone from appearing on TV?

How about Marrs’s recently expressed belief that the Thirteenth Amendment was passed illegally and therefore slavery should still be legal?
How about Marrs’s belief that Jewish financiers are descended from aliens and are secretly controlling world finance in order to further an alien-Jewish agenda?
How about Marrs’s claim that Obama hired 15,000 Russian mercenaries to impose martial law on the United States in service of a socialist revolution?
How about Marrs’s call for Americans to disobey any law signed by Barack Obama?
How about Marrs’s claim that the aliens are controlling global Islamic terrorism to start an apocalyptic world war?
How about Marrs’s claim that civilization will end in less than nine months due to a conspiracy by the Chinese, Obama, and the aliens?

So, we have the Travel Channel, owned by Scripps Networks Interactive, which operates UKTV in conjunction with BBC Worldwide, a company funded through the British government. It is showing a program starring a man who makes money selling intelligence and security services to world governments, including America’s, but is at the same time investigating conspiracies involving those governments. He then interviews a man who believes that an alien-Jewish conspiracy is planning to institute socialism after the collapse of civilization next year. Together, they are supposed to have reopened the Kennedy assassination.

Oh, and Jim Marrs is published by HarperCollins, a division of News Corp., which until this spring was also owner Fox News Channel, Baker’s favorite media outlet and the way he catapulted to fame. Today, Fox News is part of 21st Century Fox, but both companies still answer to Rupert Murdoch.

Then, to tie it all up in a ribbon, the production company behind the show, Indigo Films, is responsible for such other gems as Psychic Espionage, Secret UFO Files, Roswell: Final Declassification, America’s Psychic Past, Vampire Secrets, and America’s Loch Ness Monster. It’s no stretch to say that the independently-owned company makes much of its money from “alternative” and “conspiracy” programs it sells to cable channels, including History, Travel, and Discovery. In fact, you might even call these conspiracy programs an industry of their own.

Yup, that’s about par for the course on cable television—but this is one conspiracy I’d like to see exposed: how government and corporate money funnels to interrelated publishing and broadcasting groups that in turn hire the same few pundits and authors to feed us the same few conspiracy theories every few months for a steady, regular profit, and in turn impoverishing public discourse.

38 Comments

Gunn

11/5/2013 05:10:56 am

Maybe it's like "Mockingbird," the classic government media intrusion, come full-circle back to the future...now. The government feeds us.

We know how conspiracy carries a heavier penalty than for the crime itself, many times. The murder of JFK was bad enough, but in my view, the ensuing cover-up was/is much worse. The real problem here is that once there is a cover-up, it must continue, until something finally exposes all the lies. If there was once a cover-up, there's still a cover-up. This is the worst part of the conspiracy to kill JFK, even according to criminal justice standards, not just my viewpoint.

It is not logical that Oswald acted alone, or that he shot JFK. There was a now-obvious conspiracy, and our past government covered it up. It's still being covered up, fifty years later.

Why did Bill Lord write to the FBI about possible pressure coming from Dubya? This is a smoking gun. Dubya was not yet married, a young coke-head and alcoholic, if media suppositions of the time are true. He was in his late 20's, and his father was head of the CIA. Both are Bonesmen. Bill Lord's now-public communications with the FBI implicate both Bushes in the cover-up.

We recall that Bill Lord was on the ship with Oswald for a few weeks, and he was going to testify contrary to what was wished. He complained to the FBI. Good source material to google-up. Remember the Alamo and the name Bill Lord.

Gary

11/6/2013 12:00:14 pm

Anyone who will look at a map of the parade route can see that the block where Kennedy was shot was the worst possible place to do so, which leads to the conclusion that it took place there because Oswald, who was known to take shots at people, worked there.

BigMike

11/6/2013 03:52:00 pm

There is one thing that you're right about Gunn... It is not logical that Oswald acted alone. His SOLO actions were completely and totally ILLOGICAL. Which should not be a shock because we know for a fact that the man was mentally ill.
Only a few years before he had tried to defect to Russia with a huge amount of "secrets" he "stole" from his time as a "secret agent." The KGB looked over the supposed intel and determined that it was all fictional ramblings. There is not now, nor was there at the time he tried to defect, any record of Oswald ever being part of any government organization other than the Marines. So the Russian government politely told Oswald that he held no value for them and that he would not be allowed to defect. Oswald's answer to this: attempted suicide.
These are not the actions of a sane and mentally healthy individual. So, no, his actions were not logical. They were psychotically pathological.

11/7/2013 04:48:06 pm

Right, the perfect sort of fellow to frame. He may have thought he was on some sort of mission to thwart the assassination, like a bit part helping the FBI, or whatever. Just enough to get framed. Some think he himself was supposed to be shot right way, but managed to make it to the theater. He didn't shoot JFK.

I read in researching that a few others were groomed in a similar way that Oswald was, in creating the weird Russian background, etc. Bill Lord was going to testify that Oswald, in his opinion, was somehow connected with the government, after spending two weeks with him on a ship to Europe.

I mentioned Bill Lord before. He complained to the FBI. There is a record of the correspondence between Lord and the FBI. This is the smoking gun I talked about earlier, implicating George Bush, Jr., as a potential alcoholic, coke-head heavy in his dad's cover-up before Laura calmed him down.

Only Me

11/5/2013 07:19:24 am

This is similar to the show Unsealed: Alien Files...which, according to the synopsis of the episodes I've seen aired, is covering the same territory as Ancient Aliens. For example, episodes titled "Alien Plagues", "Aliens and Presidents", "Alien Gods of Egypt", etc., are offered. It seems there's no end to the propagation of shows that expound on the same, tired, old subject matter.

As long as there is a population of "true believers", conspiracies and alternative theories won't die.

Coridan Miller

11/5/2013 08:19:04 am

Sounds more legitimate than America's Book of Secrets.

charlie

11/5/2013 01:57:20 pm

With schools in the US no longer even making a half-hearted attempt to try to teach critical thinking, results in the dumbing down of America. Those who have no serious critical thinking skills seem to love this sort of garbage. I know you have stated that H2 wants a "higher" demographic and all, but I seriously think the majority of those who watch this conspiracy type shows are the ones who don't think very often. Thinking hurts their heads you know. Yes, headaches can be nasty, but take two aspirins and get some rest. Then, learn to think for yourself. Why trust these conspiracy types any way? Why should we believe what they say? Where are their sources? Always they claim that their sources must remain "in the shadows" as they "fear for their personal safety" or some such excuse. I call BS on them unless they have real proof. Same goes for "America Unearthed", "Ancient Aliens" and the rest of that type of show. And they ARE just shows, with little proof, ever. Speculation is all they offer, oh, and questions, always questions.
Off topic, but H2 has run a promo spot with Giorgio asking something along the line of "Are we just talking about folks tales here?" Well, YES that IS what AAT's do, they talk about ancient myths and old folks tales.
Just my 2 cents worth.

The Other J.

11/5/2013 07:38:13 pm

Although I don't disagree with your larger point, I will take exception to the sweeping statement that schools don't even make half-hearted attempts to teach critical thinking. For a decade that's exactly what I did in classrooms at the college level while running a writing center and managing a staff of 40 who did that every day all day. My wife does similar work at the high school level.

The problem isn't with half-hearted or full-hearted attempts. The problem is manifold, partly cultural and partly structural within education. Culturally, much of the shift in tone when it comes to the kind of topics and discourse found in mass media today starts with the mass deregulation efforts in the late 1970's/early 1980's. Some deregulation was necessary -- the cable industry probably would have taken a lot longer to get off the ground if it didn't happen. But with the deregulation, the U.S. lost elements like "equal time" for news broadcasts, and top and bottom of the hour newsbreaks -- which once were mandated. News departments were considered a public good, and if you had a station -- television, radio -- you also had to have a news department, and that department had to cover things that were in the public interest (council meetings, hearings, the boring stuff).

News departments were never money-makers, though, and with the deregulations we lost the regular coverage we used to have (no more regular Cronkite), and over 90% of the radio stations across the country axed their news departments all together. News was no longer a protected species and had to compete with commercial television in the marketplace. In order to compete with entertainment, news had to become more entertaining, and it wasn't long before you got water-skiing squirrels on the San Diego local news (Anchor Man based that on a real thing).

So strike one for educating the public -- the largest source for the relatively straightforward presentation of information was kneecapped overnight, and in its place came opinion in the format of news and infotainment. It's probably no coincidence that voting turnout also began to decline with a less-informed public. And that's good for some people, but probably isn't the best way to run a functional democracy.

The education side is a little more simple to address but more infuriating -- testing uber alles. The one thing educators know about standardized tests is they only teach students how to take standardized tests. But standardized tests are easy to tabulate and fit into spreadsheets to present to municipal and state governments for budget considerations, and that's become the priority -- so much so that school districts are hiring more and more administrators at much higher salaries than teachers in order to manage the testing load, while they're cutting the actual teachers needed to educate the kids in the first place.

It gets worse: Depending on your state, you may have a government-mandated boondoggle that seems almost designed to cripple your schools and shunt kids of families who can afford it to private schools and tutors while streamlining the poor and minority students into some other state system. It works like this: The state mandates that not only must the testing be done, but if the numbers aren't up to scratch, they lose funding. And if they lose funding, they lose teachers, support, programs, etc. -- which won't help them prepare their students to pass the test. What's more, the schools have to pay to contract out their test-prep to a private company who lobbied for the privilege to provide the school districts with test prep materials. The problem, though, is the company isn't staffed by educators, the tests are often faulty, and in many cases, they just don't come up with the required materials, so the teachers have to do it themselves on their own time -- yet the company still gets paid out of funds the school could have used to hire teachers, aids, buy educational materials, tutoring, etc.

I saw one question yesterday that was about favorable bond rates -- and that's for freshman ESL students, most of whom are poor and many of whom are refugees. Not many kids who just got here from Nepal or Afghanistan know a damn thing about bond rates, nor should they -- they're just trying to figure out prepositions and subject-verb agreement. And that's what teachers are now spending more than half their time dealing with at the high school level in most states. And when those students fail, the ones with enough cash can go to the private schools, and the ones who can't are left to fail with limited options for the future.

Who wins here? The test prep company who got the contract and didn't do anything; the private schools who snap up the wealthier left-overs; the military recruiters who can offer the other students something like a future; and the prisons who will inevitably nab a good percentage of those students who aren't educated enuogh to do much more than petty crime. The studen

11/5/2013 07:39:18 pm

(cont.)

The students don't win, and they're often not even capable of understanding how they're being underserved. If you wanted to design a way to cripple public education, you could do worse.

So I don't know how schools are meant to get in even a half-hearted attempt at teaching critical thinking when they can't even get proper test-prep materials for a mnadated state test that won't evaluate those missing critical thinking skills in the first place, but will ask freshman ESL students about favorable bond rates. There's a reason I needed a staff of 40 to get all those college kids up to speed on basic critical thinking and argument skills, and that reason didn't begin with the schools but it sure ends there. And by the time those kids get to an age where they might pay a bit more attention to the news discourse available to them on television, they're so intellectually underprepared that networks assume Jim Marrs will pass as the voice of reason, and I'm not sure those kids would know any better. But it's a hell of a lot cheaper to produce.

Shane Sullivan

11/6/2013 06:03:24 am

I assume that's why there are college graduates who don't know that there's such a thing as the Aurora Australis, much less what it is.

(Incidentally, I was home schooled- not because of the inefficaciousness of the public school curriculum, nor for weird religious reasons, but because my sister's high school principal threatened to expel her for missing too much school when she had Mono, while simultaneously maintaining a policy that sick students shouldn't come in.)

Varika

11/7/2013 07:10:37 am

Speaking as a recent graduate of a teaching program, there's another factor most people never have any CLUE about, particularly when blaming "the schools," by which most of them really mean "the teachers." I understand that in MOST fields, what you find when you get out of school and into the real world isn't the same as what you had in school. However, MOST fields don't teach you to do wonderful things like differentiated instruction based on students' learning styles, abilities, and skill sets, and then send you out in the real world where a book is put in your hand and you're told to be on x page on y date and OH WELL if the kids didn't get it in time.

The problem isn't even standardized testing, because students would perform better on standardized testing if teachers could actually institute best practices. The problem is unrealistic and unreasonable expectations to BEGIN with. The standardized tests are supposed to test kids' knowledge of the state standards; those test-writing places have to do at least a LITTLE work on that front. But when those standards are so tight that FIFTH GRADE can't meet the third grade standards, then we've got to stop and re-think from that very ground on up.

And to be honest, I don't think, for as long as our schools have grade levels based on age instead of skills, where you can't be held back more than twice no matter how you perform--which means you aren't getting the help you need, either--that this problem is going to be resolved.

Personally, I actually advocate for a radically different approach to education; if I have to pick a system that's already out there, I go for Montessori, where education is hands-on learning and the student takes an active roll in determining what they will learn and when, which gives them so much more incentive than just "you'll be punished if you don't do it right."

But I will say this, Charlie and Other J.: when talking about the poor quality of US schools, members of the public have to look to their OWN responsibility for it. Charlie, in order to better our schools, would you take an increase in your taxes? Probably not. Most people scream bloody murder at the very idea. It's the public who has stripped so much funding from education by voting into office politicians who cut school taxes repeatedly. It's the public who have stripped teachers of any ability to effectively punish students--I don't mean with corporal punishment, but you're not even supposed to tell them "No!" anymore, "it might hurt their self-esteem."

One last comment, to Shane: Shane, before you start whipping out "oh, they don't know what that is!" stop and think: how is it pertinent? If it's meteorologists, then yes, they damned well should know what it is and where it is and WHY it is. Same if it's physicists or astronomers. But why on EARTH should, say, a computer programmer in New England even CARE about it? So many people pull out, "HAH! I know this trivia and you don't!" as proof of a lack of education, but the truth is, it's a function of the human mind to pack away in mothballs information that isn't needed or relevant. I happen to know what, where, and why about Aurora Australis because earth and space science is an interest of mine, but I couldn't even begin to name hockey teams, say. And even though I took a course just last year this time in music appreciation, I can't list more than a handful of classical composers. I can't name the nations of Europe without a map, either, other than the ones I have an interest in. But then, most people in Europe couldn't even tell you if Delaware was a state or not, much less where in the US it is. If you want to talk about the failings of education, don't use bits of random knowledge as examples. Talk about literacy rates, or how students in the US can't solve x types of math problems, or why the hell do we let out kids get out of school with most of them not having learned SPANISH if they didn't come in knowing it, given how prevalent Spanish is as a language in the US.

(....also I applaud your parents and would like to point out, for others who might be in the midst of such a situation, that that is lawsuit territory for the school; federal law (IDEA, for one) has sections that specifically cover long-term illnesses. Principal should have been arranging for a visiting teacher if your sister was missing that much school.)

11/5/2013 07:40:22 pm

(cont.)

The students don't win, and they're often not even capable of understanding how they're being under-served. If you wanted to design a way to cripple public education, you could do worse.

So I don't know how schools are meant to get in even a half-hearted attempt at teaching critical thinking when they can't even get proper test-prep materials for a mandated state test that won't evaluate those missing critical thinking skills in the first place, but will ask freshman ESL students about favorable bond rates.

There's a reason I needed a staff of 40 to get all those college kids up to speed on basic critical thinking and argument skills, and that reason didn't begin with the schools but it sure ends there. And by the time those kids get to an age where they might pay a bit more attention to the news discourse available to them on television, they're so intellectually under-prepared that networks assume Jim Marrs will pass as the voice of reason, and I'm not sure those kids would know any better. But it's a hell of a lot cheaper to produce.

11/5/2013 07:42:43 pm

(No idea how that last bit got posted twice. It wouldn't let me post at first and threw up a warning that I had to wait a bit, and then doubled that last bit. Ah, tech.)

Ronald Stepp

11/5/2013 10:15:09 pm

Um, Dude. I woke up on the morning of 9/11/2001 and turned on the TV to SEE live repeat footage of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center Building. They carried it ALL DAY long, so I am not sure what you mean when you say footage wasn't available till much later. They were shooting live when the 2ND ONE hit for pete's sake.

11/5/2013 10:17:35 pm

shoot, or are you talking about the 2nd one? Now you have me confused. 8 )

11/5/2013 10:18:57 pm

shoot now I am confused. did I see them rerunning the 1st one that morning or were they showing the 2nd one? Someone refresh my memory, did they have video running that morning of the 1st one?

Jason Colavito link

11/5/2013 10:30:07 pm

The second plane was shown hitting live and then rerun throughout the day. Footage of the first plane wasn't available until a French film crew's video was broadcast (I believe first on CNN) after 11 AM. They happened, by coincidence, to have been filming firefighters at the time. You can review the raw network footage of 9/11 broadcasts on YouTube to confirm.

Here is where Bush's memory was faulty. Here he is just three months later:

" I was in Florida. And my chief of staff, Andy Card -- actually I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. And I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on, and I use to fly myself, and I said, 'There's one terrible pilot.' And I said, 'It must have been a horrible accident.'

"But I was whisked off there -- I didn't have much time to think about it, and I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my chief who was sitting over here walked in and said, 'A second plane has hit the tower. America's under attack.'"

The footage wasn't aired until after 11 AM, so he could not have seen it live on TV.

Matt Mc

11/6/2013 12:20:44 am

I was working as a online editor at CNN in DC on september 11th. I was called into work and got there at around 10am and joined in the mess and confusion that was going on. One of the things I was doing that morning was recording footage coming in of Satellite feeds. We received the footage of the first plane hitting the building at around 10:45 that morning and aired it about 15 minutes later.

One of the problems we had that morning was that footage was coming in like crazy from multiple source but none of it was cleared for air. The french footage we received was cleared at the time of reception only for local NY broadcast. I took us about 15 minutes or so to get the footage edited and cleared for air, the filmmakers did not offer the footage up for free and wanted both credit and reimbursement for the footage.

I believe at the time we were the first national outlet to air the footage, except for those that were airing the feed from the local NY station.

Weird thinking back about those two days, the longest days of my life I worked for 48 hours straight with no breaks at all. It all seemed like a blur at the time but now in retrospect it all plays out so clearly. I learned a lot about myself that day and questioned if live news was what I wanted to do as a career. It was very hard capturing and editing (on tape mind up on a non linear grass valley system) while trying to deal you with own emotions, especially when the footage that is being seen is unedited and graphic.

Sorry for the off tracking, it has been a long time since I have thought of the actual events of that day.

11/6/2013 01:07:59 pm

Thank you for sharing that, Matt.

11/6/2013 02:54:06 am

Why did the government change the way they do business, interacting or NOT interacting with other federal law enforcement agencies, soon after 911? Because it became known that the NSA did not share information in a way to stop the assault. Frankly, our government knew it was going to happen. "Bin Laden Determined to Strike America" just a few weeks before it happened. Yes, it was allowed to happen. We didn't cause the buildings to collapse, as some nuts believe, but we very obviously let it happen.

News reports? We saw the Mockingbird attempt to control media coverage right after 911. Jason, do what you do best, if you don't mind. Did or did not the media of that specific time period squelch early reports about the hoard of Israeli student spies in our homeland, and vanishing from our homeland after 911? I read "alternative" reports that the big news about the spies was dropped and blocked by mainstream media. If so, why? It's because the story made it look like Israel knew something was about to happen...and they did.

Did not Israel have a direct split-off of the cable for receiving NSA material, too? Did not they help set the system up? And now, today, are we not hearing about further NSA abuses? Who watches the NSA and its budget? Are they reading this blog message? Probably, though it may take a few minutes. Hi NSA! Were is that JFK cover-up file?

It's been fifty years, give us a break, will ya? Why hasn't all the pertinent material been released, still? It's because of the lengthy fraud, and the associated shame. George Bush, Sr., you still have time to spill your guts. Forget your Bonesman vows, both you and your dumb offspring. Good Ole Jerry would thank you.

11/6/2013 03:41:13 am

Gunn I can say with first hand knowledge in being in the newsroom at CNN that day and the day after, at no point did anybody try to control the news we were pointing out. We had tons of high ranking people in studio and on satellite that were just as surprised, shocked, saddened, and angered as everyone else was. Believe what you will but no one was controlling the media that day not even the producers (who were scrambling and struggling to figure out what was going on like the rest of us).

There might be more to the story, who knows, but not in that aspect. That day the push was to find out what the hell was going on and to let everyone know. I am proud to have played a part in that. I have never edited so much footage over such a short period of time in my life and I am proud to say that because of my and my coworkers efforts we kept the nation and world informed as best we could of under the circumstances.

11/6/2013 10:39:25 am

Okay, but what about the student spies trailing the bombers right up till the end? What about the cheering by fake Arabs? Check it out.

11/6/2013 11:34:31 am

I can only speak for some small gatherings in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt that were in fact cheering as they were watching the news. That was not staged it really happened. I edited several of those clips after receiving footage from both AP and Reuters. It was not very surprising/ Most of the reactions we aired from around the world were ones of shock and sadness.

As for the students I have no idea what you are talking about.

Like I said before there was no media manipulation going on that time period. It was one of the few times in my professional career that agenda and advertiser pressure was not present (did I mention the manipulation that does go on is advertiser driven not government driven).

11/6/2013 10:06:18 pm

Sorry, Matt, but I still disagree with you, and you apparently didn't look up anything about the Israeli student spies. I was hoping Jason would do some digging, but then again, he may not want to confirm what I'm saying. The fake cheering Arabs was right in view of the Twin Towers while they were on fire, from a distance. It was reported and checked out, but the media didn't cover it, just like they didn't cover anything much about the spies, except right at first before it was squelched.

I notice most people here on this skeptics blog have a lot of trust and faith in our government and media. What's wrong with this picture? How is the NSA doing these days, Matt? Is your faith still strong, even though your privacy has been compromised?

Ben Franklin's warning comes to mind about how those who would give up freedom for safety deserve neither.

11/6/2013 10:21:46 pm

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/2/8/cheering_movers_and_art_student_spies

Here's a pretty good introduction I found. There's plenty online, if you care to google. Of course, everything has a slant to it; it's a matter of figuring out what's straight.

11/6/2013 11:37:49 pm

Well Gunn I looked at that article and well it is just more paranoid propaganda.

I am one of those those who was not surprised about the revelations about the NSA, of course they were spying on us, its what they do. Of course they overstepped their boundaries, its what the do. The FBI did in in the Hoover days. I am happy that now the public is made aware and hopefully things will change (but that will be short lived because as soon as the public outcry is over it will start back up, it is what intelligence agencies do).

I think of it this way, there are many things our Govt has done wrong, many things it could of prevented, many ways things could of been better. That is kind of like life, if we want we can find a conspiracy in almost anything but that does not mean one exists. Just because people did not look at information correctly, ignored, discarded it does not mean that collusion exist. Some times there is no good answer, sometimes it really is because people in the world just hate us and what we represent.

And I will be in fully disclosure here, in early 2002 I left CNN to go work for the State Department at an US funded Arabic television station geared to counter Al Jeezara's influence in the middle east I work there as a editor for 4 years before I decided to leave the live news all together, I than worked for a production house and a several daily TV shows for ESPN. When I worked for the state department I did directly manipulate the media but none of it was ever shown in the United States since there are laws against the practice when federal funds are involved.

Thane

11/6/2013 07:40:32 am

Gunn,

While I agree the US had good reason to believe there was going to be an attack on US interests or some form of attack in the US, there is no evidence the government knew the exact date, time, and nature of the attack.

Yes, Bin Laden was on recorded for months proceeding the attack promising a significant attack on the US but we have a large presence in the world. WEehad hobbled our abilities to perform effective espionage and infiltration in the Clinton years with the dictate that US Intelligence agencies can't do business with shadowy characters. Sadly, it's the shadowy characters that are tapped into the nasty underworld of terrorism, espionage (governmental and corporate), and other assorted unsavory and criminal activities. Not to mention our lack of interpreters of Arabic, Farsi, Afghani, and other assorted languages and dialects. It's very hard to find the right needle in the intelligence haystack that will lead to actionable intelligence. Most disruption of terrorist plots are a result of long investigation and considerable luck in obtaining the relevant bits of information to fill in the puzzle. When you add that to natural human biases (i.e. "No terrorist has ever hit the homeland. All that attacks have been on our assets elsewhere in the world, we should focus on our outside the US assets they would more likely target"), it becomes even more difficult to see the pattern and get the analysis right.

Until I see concrete evidence that WE knew the attack target, date, time and method, I will give the benefit of the doubt to out intelligence services. There are too many people truly dedicated to protecting the US and US interests to believe a secret of that nature could be kept.

11/6/2013 10:37:01 am

I grew up in a mindset where the people at least recognized that we always had a reason or else made up a reason for going to war. I'm saying either can work, and have worked. I believe 911 was a too-convenient reason for going to war, though of course we didn't go to war for that reason. But the atmosphere of 911 enabled the ease and opportunity of going to war.

There is a dark side to our intelligence services, besides the more obvious good side protecting us. The operative word is: control. I guess a lot of this has to do with being willing to give the government the benefit of doubt or not, as you say. In the case of 911, I am a skeptic. (Don't forget to check out about the student spies.)

11/6/2013 10:46:04 pm

I guess Jason doesn't have time to do everything. Here's something to consider:

http://www.naturalnews.com/040696_nsa_spying_tech_companies_government_surveillance.html#

A big part of the problem is media folks who put their heads in the sand and trust the government more than they should. Of course, like in Mockingbird, some media folks work directly with the dark anti-free-speech folks who like to spoon feed us soft news, like how many squares of toilet paper we should be using to wipe out butts.

Subliminal (or should I say subliminable) messaging is a whole other subject.

11/7/2013 07:28:02 am

Gunn, in my opinion the problem was that no one agency had all the information. Yes, when combing back through everything that we had, right after 9/11 when people were screaming "WHY DID WE NOT KNOW!?" we found that the government AS A WHOLE had all the information. The problem was that the NSA had, say, the piece that said they were going to fly planes into the Twin Towers. The FBI had the piece that said these students look suspicious. The CIA had the piece that said there was going to be a foreign attack on US soil. Other agencies had this and that. But they don't TALK to each other. (My problem with Homeland Security is that instead of FIXING that problem, as they were originally INTENDED to, they've become just another left hand that doesn't talk to the right hand.) There was nowhere that had ALL the information at once up, aside from the terrorists.

Added to that, the Twin Towers were built to withstand "airplane strikes," so "Oh, they're gonna fly planes into the towers? Big whup, the towers have been hit before" and nobody stopped to think about the difference between a four-passenger Cessna and a Boeing 767. (A 767 weighs between 229,000 lbs and 450,000 lbs, depending on how heavily it's loaded, and carries 23,980 gallons of jet fuel. The largest model Cessna I could find that was in servise on 9/11 weighs and carries a TENTH that much, weighing between 21,600 lbs and 36,100 lbs and carrying a maximum of 1,926 gal. of jet fuel.)

For all that conspiracy theorists jabber on about how it didn't have to happen, the real truth is that what happened was LITERALLY inconceivable to anyone in America before it happened.

One final note, Gunn: much like hypnotism, studies have repeatedly found that subliminal messaging has a limited effectiveness at best, so I don't know why you're even bothering to mention it. You can take off the tin foil hat. Attempts are more likely to nauseate you or cause seizures than control your mind.

11/7/2013 10:10:22 am

Well, I suppose hypnosis does have limited effectiveness, while some subjects don't have a chance:

Forget about the JFK murder; concentrate of his brother's murder, which is an open and shut case of conspiratorial cover-up. Sirhan positively did not fire any shots into RFK, especially from the rear. The two had always been facing one another. It is easy for the average person to see that Sirhan didn't comment this murder...he was in fact hypnotized to respond to a cue, most likely from the lady in the polka-dotted dress. In this case, the LA police department worked with the Federal government to cover up the murder. The RFK killing is much simpler to understand as a murder cover-up than his brother's. Hypnosis can ruin one's life.

Just the fact that Sirhan still sits in prison shows that our Criminal Justice system sucks when it comes to fairness. In the case of Sirhan, nobody cares about him enough to see that he is finally set free as an innocent man. He's still alive in prison, befuddled by what hypnosis did to him. He can be de-programmed with the right person, but the authorities don't want this to happen. Obama will not help him, because he doesn't want to be politically incorrect.

11/7/2013 11:55:46 am

Gunn, hypnosis CANNOT cause anyone to do something they cannot see themselves doing, so that doesn't remove personal responsibility for one's own actions.

Now as it happens, I actually agree with you that Sirhan was not responsible for ALL the shots that RFK took. I can't say for sure whether he was responsible for ANY or not. However, the fact remains that he was there, he had a gun, and he did in fact discharge it. These are indisputable facts. Whether one of those bullets hit RFK or not, he was TRYING for it, which means prison is where he belongs, because ATTEMPTED murder is still a capital offense. And as I said above, if he couldn't see himself shooting at RFK, the hypnotism would not have worked, so "he was hypnotized into it" is not a legitimate defense. If you want to bring forth evidence of the kind of systematic torture and abuse known as brainwashing, THEN we can talk about diminished responsibility.

My personal opinion is not that there was a high-level conspiracy to take down RFK, but rather that one of his bodyguards took advantage of Sirhan's attempt to get away with murder, himself, and that what cover-up there was, had more to do with not wanting to erode public confidence than it did anything else. IF there was a cover-up, and not just piss-poor police work, which the LA police force is rather infamous for.

Sensational murder conspiracies don't sit well with me, particularly ones that involve government agencies conspiring with one another. When governments want people dead, they turn to their military (or police) snipers, someone dies, and no one ever finds out who did it. They don't need to screw around with crazy people and foreign nationalists and massive publicity. Hell, they don't even need to bother with a sniper! Just quietly poison him, have an ME declare it a tragic heart attack or stroke, and that's the end of it, nobody ever even LOOKS for murder.

11/7/2013 04:34:10 pm

Yeah, the bodyguard did it. What I'm saying is that the bodyguard knew of the proposed timing...what was to come, with the Sirhan distraction. Some people described how Sirhan has a weird, detached look on his face, like he didn't really even know what was going on, which would be the effects of the hypnotic state.

You are right that most people wouldn't go against their moral convictions while hypnotized, but what if the victim thought he or she was doing something else? There is a famous, real case from Europe a long time ago about someone who successfully hypnotized a fellow inmate and ended up stealing his wife, and otherwise behaving crudely until it was discovered. It turns out that some people--a few, can be hypnotized rather easily, and Sirhan is one of these.

I believe there was an actual conspiracy to program Sirhan in order to frame him for RFK's murder. I'm saying that Sirhan didn't know what he was doing. I've read that with someone he trusts, he can be de-programmed to the point of finding out details about his initial programming.

Anyway, some don't believe these kinds of things have happened here in good ole America. Call me an alarmist, I guess, but my degree is in criminal/social justice, and I know injustice when I see it. Sirhan liked to fool around with self-hypnosis, too, but his biggest mistake was trusting others to hypnotize him.

Paul Cargile

11/6/2013 03:14:24 am

Mike Baker was always funny when on Greg Gutfield's Red Eye. He had a funny Fox News column back then too.

11/6/2013 08:09:24 am

@OtherJ
I was not trying to say the fault is on the schools entirely. I do know they are hindered by the state and local governments and the school boards. Also, it seems that many parents seem to not be concerned about how well the kids are educated today. Learning needs to start at home, to be encouraged and valued at home. That seems to not be the case for much of the USA of late. My Dad demanded that I get an education, he said I needed to get at least a C in all classes as I was at least average. Not any real pressure as I have always enjoyed learning. I still do. It just does seem that we now have college grads who cannot find the US on a map unless the national names are printed on the map.
Here in Louisiana, they want to push "biblical science". Yes, even the moronic governor supports that crap. Disgusting and it will not give us an educated next generation at all.
Sorry to rant on at Jasons' blog.

11/6/2013 11:45:26 am

No worries, man. I probably would have spilled all that in a separate post because I think it's relevant to the "How does Jim Marrs keep ending up on documentary television?" question, but you opened a gate for me to unload. And we just finished a round of conferences, which makes it all the more prominent at this moment.

Seriously, freakin' bond rates for ESL students...

titus pullo

11/8/2013 03:22:52 am

I've lived in Dallas. In fact every time some one came to visit I had to take them to Daley Plaza. It is somewhat run down and when you get there you are surprised how small the whole area is..the "grassy knoll" is about the size of my front lawn. As for the idea that it was an impossible shot..I have been up to the sixth floor of the Texas School Depository and looked out the window next to the window that Oswald took the shots from. It is an easy shot...a ridiculous easy shot to hit a very slow moving car at most 60 yards away..he had a rifle with a scope and he could shoot. I take my son out plinking with our 22 and I'm not a very good shot and I could have easily taken JFK's head off at that range. Oswald did it..he was a very mixed up and disturbed young man..and he did it alone

11/8/2013 04:48:10 am

I lived there, too and looked out of that window and I agree. It's the one from the grassy knoll that would be difficult. You would have only a moment to take a shot. And why choose, if you could choose anywhere, the one place where the car would be speeding up and not anywhere along several blocks with the open car moving slowly and thousands of office and hotel windows looking out on it. No patsy is needed.

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