Hollywood and bin Laden

My time has been limited lately and I"m traveling tomorrow, but rest assured I haven't gone black again.  I'm working on a few meatier posts, namely one on the history of the CIA and Hollywood and more Pakistan and OBL fun.  Stay tuned.  Until then, the New Zealand Herald published an interesting piece on the upcoming OBL movie and quoted me extenisvely.  I rarely point out when I'm in various media--seems too self serving--but given my time contraints at the moment, quoting myself in the Auckland paper is the best I can do--just hope I don't go blind from it:

Raelynn Hillhouse - who the Guardian says "regularly breaks news on the clandestine world of private contractors and US intelligence" on The Spy Who Billed Me blog - dismisses the New Yorker's "puff" piece and suggests Islamabad approved the covert US assassination.

She alleges the Saudis, using an intermediary, paid Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency to keep bin Laden under house arrest, necessary to stop his Wahhabist supporters dethroning the House of Saud.

But Hillhouse doubts "we will ever have definitive answers". Instead, the White House will probably pump up the patriotic version.

"What I find so disturbing is that the Administration knows that large portions of the US finding bin Laden story are fabrication and it's very keen on selling this cover story to the US public," she says.

This is "not to hide key operational details and capacities, but rather to satisfy the PR needs of a re-election campaign. The Soviets couldn't have done a better job".

In other words, she suggests, it's politics. The media narrative makes the President look a decisive man of action, the liberal version of George W. Bush's stunt landing a plane on a US carrier in 2003 to declare "mission accomplished" after invading Iraq.

"It will be very interesting when the timeline of the CIA's knowledge of where Osama bin Laden was being hidden and the US decision to go in and take out bin Laden comes to light," says Hillhouse.

"It's my understanding that it will not at all fit with the official narrative of the quick acting, decisive leader."

King may be barking up the wrong tree: burnishing Obama's image is good cover for America's shadowy "war on terror". As truth is war's first victim, the true story, if it emerges, will probably be messy, full of loose ends, and unflattering to combatants on both sides.

Comments

[Jack Parsons]

Excellent! Next, please get quoted in the Telegraph, the BBC, and Al Jazeera English. The G, T, BBC and AJz are the most valid English-language world news sources available.

For example, the G used the term covert US assassination, a phrase not found in any major US news outlet.

As to image-making: there is strategic value to all this. The 10th anniversary of 9/11 is only days away, and the timing of the assassination de-winded the sails of any disaster porn party in the works. "American lost its innocence" porn party. "Stabbed in the back by our former proteges" porn party (oh wait we don't talk about blowback).

[CM]

Here's a story straight out of your book:

"An Air Force civilian employee who resigned in July amid allegations he ran an illegal contractor spy ring in Afghanistan is still facing possible criminal charges, according to a new report."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/64497.html

add'l background here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/world/asia/15contractors.html?pagewanted=all

[HansenLaurel34]

Some time ago, I did need to buy a good house for my corporation but I did not have enough cash and could not buy anything. Thank heaven my dude proposed to try to get the personal loans at trustworthy creditors. So, I acted so and was satisfied with my collateral loan.