HYBRID WARFARE AND ITS TARGET OF ALTERNATIVE MEDIA. By Intibah Kadi 23 January 2018

HYBRID WARFARE AND ITS TARGET OF ALTERNATIVE MEDIA. By Intibah Kadi

23 January 2018

The news of whistleblower media outlet, The Intercept, holding on for three years to an important NSA document, the contents of which lead to understanding which powers were involved in the earlier years of the War on Syria, has brought into question what exactly The Intercept claims to represent. A number of leaks of important documents including from Edward Snowden gave the media site an air of credibility and prestige, with many believing it had the potential to do good in this world. But a report from Mint Press’ Whitney Webb, puts everything clearly into perspective. https://www.mintpressnews.com/intercept-withheld-nsa-doc-that-may-have-altered-course-of-syria-war/233757/  (Webb's article pasted below due to censoring).Not only did The Intercept, publish evidence three years too late, but failed to write about important events around this document and what they meant. 

Webb’s article blew away any remnants of the notion that The Intercept is a vital link in the fight for justice and accountability. Her article firmly places The Intercept in the forefront of its proper context, that is; a Deep State “controlled opposition” apparatus.

In the case of Syria, it is clear that The Intercept, at no stage,  had an interest in the truth and in fact has deliberately obscured facts from seeing the light of day. The author’s mind went back to statements a researcher, Eva Gonzales,  made in mid-2016. She reported that she sent a highly sensitive and explosive piece of research, to the head of The Intercept. The other end was deathly silent. It was an important piece of “whistleblower” material but not for The Intercept evidently and, was clearly too close to the bone. One of the many alternative media outlets approached considered the research very important but expressed unwillingness to “put one’s hand in the hornet’s nest”. She claimed that not a single “alternative media” site felt able to publish it, despite several of their well known journalists telling the author that it was brilliant and important work. Reading her research back then, it seemed unbelievable that The Intercept would ignore it.

Clearly it was dangerous material and, as The Intercept presents itself most suitable for such risky exposes, they were the go-to people for publication. After all, isn’t that what The Intercept portrays itself as; fearless? This was something clearly for their basket. Now, reading Whitney’s piece in Mint Press, it makes sense why The Intercept ignored that submission.

The article was titled, “The Clarion Project and the ISIS “Dabiq” Trail”. It was based on detailed research which implicated a number of players in the USA and Israel in a phony ISIS magazine which was used for a variety of purposes, perhaps surveillance and recruitment. But, what caught my eye was the fact that, given everything pointing to the magazine “Dabiq” being a Clarion Project publication, it contained in one of it’s editions a “threat by ISIS” to a Senator for his writing a support letter to President Assad. https://evagonzalesthewriter.wordpress.com/2016/09/06/the-clarion-project-and-the-isis-dabiq-trail/ The Senator promoted this fact publicly and refers to it often when embarking on his activities in “support” of Syria. 

Following a logical line of enquiry, the writer notes that this Senator pragmatically severed links, just a few days before meeting President Assad, with Ted Cruz (he was on his inner election team). In addition to this, the Senator is linked to the Christian Zionist church which has church planting interests in Syria, and the member of the church who has become extremely active inside Syria was rescued by the Senator from the prospect of having to return home without a visa to Syria. This operative got stuck enroute to Syria with visa approval looking unlikely and claims that the Senator solved the visa problem in one afternoon by telling the President’s adviser that she was his “aide”. Her status as an “aide” was later confirmed by her in a media interview in Syria. 

Possibly, in light of no such position being stated on the original visa application, the Senator and his colleague went to extraordinary lengths to “clarify” this inconsistency, repeatedly stating that she was not an “aide” but a simple caring “housewife”. This is the same Senator named in the Neo-Con Clarion Project’s fabricated ISIS magazine “Dabiq” as an “enemy of ISIS”. The massive community of Christian Zionists of the USA are the most crucial allies of Israel and outnumber many times the population of Israel. Of interest here, they have a greater ability in finding ways to penetrate the barriers into Syria.

Controlled opposition in its many forms, whether from social action organisations to political or environmental ones, from the plethora of media outlets, to online petitions, have left many genuine seekers of the truth reeling, exhausted, disheartened and disempowered as they expend endless energy trying to figure out who is truly an alternative source of information and action and who is not. 

Add to this, the role these outlets play in espionage or projects that go against the interest of a nation the “empire” targets. Naturally, people make mistakes, and alternative media outlets can get things wrong, but something like this report about The Intercept clearly indicates it is a “controlled opposition” project. 

Placing Gonzales’ research about Clarion Project’s fake ISIS magazine with my observations about the Senator’s utilization of a fake ISIS threat,  together with this report on The Intercept by Webb, makes interesting reading when considering the many desperate attempts of Syria’s enemies to breach her barriers.

Mint Press itself, is no stranger to possible espionage and the attempts to discredit it as a reliable source in the alternative media community. In 2013 they fell victim to a dirty scheme at the hands of a purported independent Jordanian (or is he Israeli?) “journalist”. In the Arab world, not just the Western media, this Israel couch surfing “journalist” was ridiculed whilst also, maddeningly hinting that the Syrian government was responsible for the attack at Al Ghouta.  http://www.alquds.co.uk/?p=86582

What the world community of genuine activists and supporters of justice and resistance to the designs of “the empire” need to remember is that, it is a constant battle to keep up with the truth and lies within our movement.  As the writer said in her August 2017 article, NATO has every design on Syria covered and why would it leave the social media movement untouched?  http://thesaker.is/social-media-as-a-tool-of-hybrid-warfare-the-case-of-syria/ Hence it will always be a battle to ascertain where the controlled opposition strikes and what kind of operatives  and projects on the ground are really part of that.

* Interesting to watch in relation to this topichttps://t.co/NA2HFHGHN1

(posted here as many countries portray site as dangerous to open)
The Intercept Withheld NSA Doc That May Have Altered Course Of Syrian War

If this document had been published sooner, it could have dramatically changed the course of the war by exposing the true face of the “moderate rebels” — and potentially saved tens of thousands of lives. That didn’t happen, and no reason has been given by the Intercept for its delay.

by Whitney Webb

October 30th, 2017

By Whitney Webb 

On Tuesday, the Intercept published a hitherto unknown document from the trove of National Security Administration (NSA) documents leaked by Edward Snowden over three years ago. The document was notable as it shed light on the early days of the Syrian conflict and the fact that, for the past six years, so-called “revolutionary” groups aimed at toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have largely acted as proxies for foreign governments pushing regime change.

The document explicitly reveals that an attack led by the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which was intended to mark the anniversary of the 2011 “uprising” that sparked the Syrian conflict, was directed by a Saudi prince. The document proves, in essence, that the armed opposition in Syria – from the earlier years of the conflict – was under the direct command of foreign governments pushing for regime change.

NSA graphic released by The Intercept outlines Saudi involvement in organizing Syrian opposition 

attacks on Syria’s civilian infrastructure.

According to the document, Saudi Prince Salman bin Sultan had ordered the FSA to “light up Damascus” and “flatten” the city’s civilian airport. The Saudis had also “sent 120 tons of explosives/weapons to opposition forces” for the operation. The Saudis, as the document notes, were “very pleased” with the outcome, which claimed at least 60 lives.

The implications of the NSA document are significant. It offers the clearest proof, in the form of official U.S. government documents, detailing the direct relationship between the armed Syrian opposition and foreign governments, and exposing the fact that this relationship existed much earlier than the mainstream narrative on the conflict had previously suggested.

However, the Intercept article regarding the document is unusual for several reasons. First, the report inaccurately claims that the attack launched at the Saudis’ behest did not result in any confirmed casualties. Second, it states that the 2011 uprising in Syria was an organic, “peaceful” movement that led the Syrian government to wage “an open war against their own people” — a narrative that has since been debunked.

Yet, the largest oversight of all is the article’s failure to mention the U.S.’ role in funding the Free Syrian Army, as well as the CIA’s well-documented role in training the FSA and pumping tons of weapons into Syria in order to foment and exacerbate the conflict in its early days. In light of the NSA document’s revelation that the U.S. had been given advance notice of the planned FSA attack – on a civilian target, no less – Washington’s decision to let it proceed clearly suggests that the U.S. was involved in and well aware of the Saudi directives to the FSA. However, the Intercept piece chooses not to mention this crucial context.

Intercept’s three-plus year delay in releasing document

Free Syrian Army fighters clean their weapons and check ammunition on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria Nov. 14, 2012. Khalil Hamra | AP

That didn’t happen, however, and no reason has been given by the publication for its notable delay. The Intercept has exclusive publishing rights and an exclusive hold on the content of the Snowden leaks, of which this newly released document is a part. Indeed, the Intercept was founded after the Snowden leaks were made public and its first hires were Glenn Greenwald and Lauren Poitras, the only journalists possessing the full Snowden cache. Those documents now belong to the Intercept’s founder — billionaire eBay founder,  — and his for-profit media company, First Look Media.

Examining Omidyar’s connections to the U.S. political establishment offers a plausible reason for the Intercept’s delay in publishing documents so crucial to understanding the situation in Syria. Omidyar was a frequent guest of the Obama White House from 2009 to 2013, garnering more face-to-face visits with Obama during his two terms than did Google’s Eric Schmidt, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, New York Times owner Arthur Sulzberger and even fellow tech billionaire turned major media owner, Jeff Bezos.

Omidyar also directly co-invested with the U.S. State Department, via USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), in opposition groups that played a key role in overthrowing Ukraine’s democratically elected government in 2014 – a U.S.-brokered regime-change operation that shares some notable similarities with the Syrian conflict. His investments with USAID have continued since the Intercept’s founding, helping fund the NGO’s more recent overseas programs aimed at “advancing U.S. national security interests” abroad.

Also worth noting is the fact that PayPal, of which Omidyar is a major owner, has allegedly been implicated in several of the still-withheld NSA documents for its business relationship with the NSA and its role in the agency’s mass spying program. In addition, former Intercept writers have asserted that Omidyar was “shockingly disinterested in the actual journalism” of the paper, suggesting that the Intercept was created explicitly to delay the release of damaging documents from the Snowden cache until deemed acceptable to the U.S. political establishment and others who stood to lose face were the entire cache to have been made public.

Indeed, another interesting coincidence supporting this thesis is the fact that the Intercept published this latest piece only after the U.S. State Department itself began to report more honestly on the nature of these so-called “rebels.” A day before the Intercept’s story on Syrian “rebels” and the Saudis, the U.S. State Department – for the first time – admitted that “moderate” rebels in Syria had previously used chemical weapons, a charge it had categorically denied for years in order to facilitate laying the blame for any and all chemical weapons attacks in Syria on the Syrian government.

In other words, the Intercept released the document, which effectively destroys Washington’s “moderate rebels” narrative with its own internal documents, only after the U.S. government itself began to unravel that very same narrative.

The Intercept did not respond to MintPress News’ request for comment regarding the timing of the document’s release.

Founder’s connections shape Intercept’s journalism

Billionare Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay and The Intercept. Bennet Group | AP

Omidyar’s connection to U.S. regime-change efforts abroad may also explain why the Intercept – until now, that is – has consistently given voice to journalists who have echoed the U.S. establishment regarding the Syrian conflict.

For instance, Murtaza Hussain – the author of this latest Intercept piece – has written numerous stories downplaying the terrorist and Wahhabist elements of the Syrian “rebels.” In the last two years, Hussain has written pieces portraying known Al-Qaeda propagandists, such as Bilal Abdul Kareem, and Al-Qaeda-linked organizations, such as the White Helmets, in an overwhelmingly positive light, failing to mention in both cases the significant evidence tying these entities to known terrorist groups. In another piece, published last August, Hussain gave voice to al-Nusra Front leadership in a lengthy interview that largely whitewashed the group’s Wahhabist leanings and links to terrorist acts in Syria.

Last September, on Twitter, Hussain asserted that Saudi Arabia’s funding of armed factions was not necessarily “good” but that “there is little to indicate they contribute to terrorism.” That last statement has been thoroughly debunked for years, but most recently by Hussain’s own piece on the newly released NSA document.

https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/923028049909682176

Hussain is by no means the only Intercept writer who has taken such a pro-opposition stance regarding Syria. A recent Intercept piece on Syria, published in September, committed glaring factual errors on basic facts about the war, while also mistranslating a speech given by Assad so as to link him to American white nationalists. In addition, the paper recently hired Maryam Saleh, a journalist who has called Shia Muslims “dogs” and has taken to Twitter in recent months to downplay the role of the U.S. coalition in airstrikes in Syria. She also has ties to the U.S.-financed propaganda group Kafranbel Media Center, which has close relations with the terrorist group Ahrar al-Sham.

For a paper ostensibly dedicated to “fearless, adversarial” journalism, it is strange that the Intercept gives voice to journalists who echo the U.S. position regarding the Syrian war while rarely publishing the work of journalists who have challenged prevailing Western narratives on that war — journalists who, as the Intercept itself recently revealed, have been right all along regarding the myth of the Syrian “moderate rebel.” Yet, given Omidyar’s political connections and the paper’s handling of the Snowden cache, this unfortunate decision is unsurprising.

Feature photo | Syrian rebels attend a U.S. military training session in Maaret Ikhwan near Idlib, Syria during the height of the rebel offensive.