On January 27, Raymond Davis, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier, shot and killed two Pakistani citizens in that nation's second-largest city, Lahore, using a semi-automatic Glock pistol. Davis claims he acted in self-defense when they attacked his car to rob him -- both of the dead were armed and had lengthy records of petty crimes -- but each was shot five times, and one was killed after Davis was safely back in his car and the victim was fleeing. After shooting the two dead, Davis calmly photographed their bodies and then called other Americans stationed in Pakistan (likely CIA officers) for assistance; one of the Americans' Land Rovers dispatched to help Davis struck and killed a Pakistani motorcyclist while speeding to the scene. The Pakistani wife of one of Davis' victims then committed suicide by swallowing rat poison, saying on her deathbed that she had serious doubts that Davis would be held accountable.
That's just the background. The crux of the issue comes from the Guardian piece within Greenwald's post:
The American who shot dead two men in Lahore, triggering a diplomatic crisis between Pakistan and the US, is a CIA agent who was on assignment at the time. . . . Based on interviews in the US and Pakistan, the Guardian can confirm that the 36-year-old former special forces soldier is employed by the CIA. "It's beyond a shadow of a doubt," said a senior Pakistani intelligence official. . . . He served in the US special forces for 10 years before leaving in 2003 to become a security contractor. A senior Pakistani official said he believed Davis had worked with Xe, the firm formerly known as Blackwater.
[...]
A number of US media outlets learned about Davis's CIA role but have kept it under wraps at the request of the Obama administration.
The New York Times laughably explained their sycophantic deference to the Obama administration under their favorite, specious "lives would be lost" strawman. In case you haven't been paying attention, that is the line that the Obama administration faithfully trots out any time their foreign policy is challenged in even the most innocuous ways. This was on display as top ranking administration official after official collectively lost their shit over Wikileaks' exposure of just how fucked up and useless our endless wars in the Middle East have become. Greenwald notes further in a related post that this isn't the first time that the New York Times has played 'Mother May I?' with the US Government before publishing a newsworthy story:
In his lengthy recent article on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, NYT Executive Editor Bill Keller tried to show how independent his newspaper is by boasting that they published their story of the Bush NSA program even though he has "vivid memories of sitting in the Oval Office as President George W. Bush tried to persuade [him] and the paper's publisher to withhold the eavesdropping story"; Keller neglected to mention that the paper learned about the illegal program in mid-2004, but followed Bush's orders to conceal it from the public for over a year -- until after Bush was safely re-elected.
This issue cuts far deeper than the normal line of how the media pisses its pants over appearing liberally biased and goes out of its way to plug Republican talking points, how they routinely ignore the real issues facing America in favor of Sarah Palin's Twittertwats or the latest warmed over DC conventional wisdom bull shit.
The latest example of all of these things being the way the DC media falls all over itself to cover deficits, reducing federal spending, and promoting austerity as the solution to all of our fiscal problems. Meanwhile, unemployment continues to hover at 9%, economic growth is anemic, and the reams of historical and empirical data and sound economic theory on how government should run deficits during a recession and should spend more are summarily ignored and given no voice. Because Republicans disagree with economics because it is as elitist as arugula and dijon mustard, and deficits only matter when a Democrat is in the White House. We sure as hell didn't hear anything about deficits as they were exploded under the Bush administration through trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy, two open-ended wars that were among the first in American history to be funded by borrowing, and an unfunded Medicare prescription giveaway to seniors. But now that a Democrat is elected and something must be done about the anemic, regressive economic situation following eight years of Republican policies, the middle class and the poor must tighten their belts because we can not afford Social Security or Medicare and we must reduce federal spending at all costs because deficits threaten our very existence.
The bottom line is that we do not have a functioning media, but rather a pathetic facade of what has now become an effectively state-run establishment that exists for its own ego, profits, and endless quest to retain its stature among the American elite. I think that's the most telling part of the Bill Keller quote above. He clearly gets a giant chubby remembering his 'vivid memories' of sitting in the Oval Office and having President Bush beg and implore him not to run a piece that would damage his administration. The leader of the free world! Begging me! Me! Bill Keller! IN THE OVAL OFFICE OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGTHISISSOTOTALLYAWESOME! But try telling someone that the American media is state-run, and you will be labeled a Crazy and Unserious Person and told that this is the Greatest Country on Earth and that our First Amendment rights grant us freedom of the press. But what other conclusion can you feasibly draw when we have prominent media outlets that seek permission before running stories from the very elected officials whom they are supposed to hold accountable? It kind of makes you wonder what other important information our Free Press is withholding at the behest of our elected officials.
(Post title and lede lifted from Anti-Flag's Anatomy of Your Enemy)
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